Page 45 of The Best Marquess

Pippa sniffed and peered at him over her spectacles. “Are you implying you might have tidied had you known you’d be bringing a wife here? I don’t believe that for a moment, my lord husband.”

My lord husband.

Lust roared through his entire body, and he stifled a moan. Those words and a spectacle glance? His cock began to strain against his trousers. “We’re going to have to do something about your saucy tongue, Lady Knighton.”

“Are we?” she said as she kicked off her heeled slippers with a heartfelt sigh. “When?”

Finn swallowed hard. They both knew what she was really enquiring about. “That is entirely up to you. It has been a long and harrowing day.”

“I can confirm my tongue will remain saucy until these wretched stays are far away from my person and I’m bathed and wearing my nightgown,” Pippa replied, her cheeks pink.

His no-nonsense, practical wife actually blushing? Perhaps there was hope.

“Shall I send for the copper tub?” he asked.

“No, do not torment the kitchens any more this evening. I’ll just have a sponge bath. As Ruby returned to Kingsford House to pack my belongings…perhaps you would assist me?”

A growl of pure need rumbled in his chest, and his whole body throbbed with anticipation. Yet he was an uncertain virgin, too. Slow. Each act needed to be slow and steady. “I aim to please.”

Pippa quivered. “My gown. Then my petticoat and stays.”

He took a deep breath to calm his own jangling nerves. When was the right time to tell her the truth? That those novels she had learned how to handle his cock from were the same source he’d discovered the best way to rub her clitoris?

Damnation. Words could wait when his fingers itched to touch.

As previously, so he didn’t fumble, Finn made his movements measured and deliberate. First, he unfastened the three buttons at the back of her pretty green gown then carefully lifted the fabric over her head. Without waiting for him, Pippa yanked down her petticoats with uncharacteristic urgency. In retribution, he took his time with her stays, easing and tugging the silken cords until she practically rocked.

“Something the matter?” he asked mildly, as though he wasn’t equally eager, as though his cock wasn’t raging against its own fabric prison.

Dressed only in a knee-length linen chemise, Pippa turned to face him. Then she tugged open the ribbon holding the bodice together, exposing her small breasts tipped with dusky pink nipples.

All Finn could do was stare, his mouth watering to taste, to lick and suck and nip.

Her hands played with the hanging ribbon. “They are too small,” she mumbled.

“No,” he replied. “They are perfect.”

Pippa bit her lip, then with a shrug of her shoulders, she let the chemise fall to the floor and delicately stepped away. Now he could see every inch of her, the dip of her waist, the flare of her hips, the thick bush of blond curls covering her pussy.

God, his wife was beautiful.

“I’m going to warm up in front of the fire,” she said, seemingly more confident now as she adjusted her spectacles. “Perhaps you might bring some water and a sponge.”

Finn watched her walk, near-panting at the sway of her dimpled, rounded backside. It needed adornment. Perhaps the wink of a small jeweled dildo from the Bliss collection, the one with the matching nipple clamps. God. It was far too easy to imagine Pippa writhing on a bed wearing nothing but her spectacles, her nipples swollen and throbbing under the harsh kiss of the clamps, her properly prepared arse stuffed full of dildo. How long would she last before begging for his tongue or cock so she might come?

With unsteady hands, Finn picked up a sponge and the porcelain bowl of water, then followed her over to the fireplace.

“You must stand still, Pippet,” he rasped, “while your husband attends to your bath.”

She obediently placed her hands atop her head, the movement causing the emerald hairclips to glimmer and her skin to look like molten honey in the shifting, dancing light of the red-gold flames.

Finn stood behind her and languidly dragged the wet sponge across her neck and shoulders, making her arch her back and giving him a glimpse of taut pink nipples. Then he pressed it against her shoulders and allowed the cool water to trickle down her front, anointing those tender peaks before continuing on to dampen the slight curve of her belly and settle in the thicket between her legs.

His wife whimpered. “Teasing me again.”

“Is me making you wet…making you wet?”

“Argh. I don’t want the chapter of sexual teasing. I want the paragraph. Hurry now.”