Calypso Magic (Magic Trilogy 2)

"They are too large and fell off."

"That is an impossibility. A girl of your sizeCome along, Diana. I wish to seek out my bed without having a headache or an upset stomach."

"Still recovering from your bout of amour?"

"No," he said, his eyes glittering at her nasty tone, "I intend fully to continue with my bouting, just as soon as I've rid myself of you."

She again questioned his antecedents, adding a colorful description of his obvious relation to the braying cousin of a horse.

He laughed and whispered close to her ear, "Jealous, Miss Savarol?"

"Monsieur DuPres did say I was ripe for the plucking," she said. "That was when he took me behind a big fern."

His eyes narrowed, his lips thinned, and Diana, striving to look as demure as a vicar's youngest daughter, kept her own eyes down so he wouldn't see the drawing laughter in them.

"You disobeyed me."

"Oh, I am too fatigued," she said, yawning.

"I am adding that to my list. Your bottom will feel the flat of my hand." His fingers tingling alarmingly from his own image, he strode off, not looking back at her.

It was difficult, but Lyonel managed it. He didn't leave Lois until the following morning, exhausted and rolled in a sleeping ball in the rumpled bed. But there was a smile on her face, he noted, quite pleased with himself.

At least with this bout of amour, he had given her pleasure, something he prided himself on. He was an excellent lover and found that a woman's moans and groans added to his own passion. The only fly in the ointment was the flitting image of Diana's face in his mind's eye as he caressed Lois' delightful breasts. He found himself wondering as he finally fell into his own bed if Diana would moan and groan, or even perhaps scream when he pleasured her.

Stupid fool.

She would probably yell at himYes, a rutting pig, that's what she would call him. She would probably slap away his hands when he would try to caress her, be disgusted at the thought of his tongue coursing over every inch of her body

At least he was too tired, far too long gone from his bouts of amour to become aroused at the thought of thrashing her bare bottom with his bare hand.

Diana, innocent of bouts of anything remotely sexual, knew only that she felt more alive when Lyonel was with her. She realized, somewhat surprised, that neither of them knew much about the other. They couldn't seem to stop fighting long enough to just talk.

Talk, she decided, drifting into the sleep of the unawakened, was boring. Insults were more fun. And Lyonel was so baitable.

She felt only a slight twinge of homesickness as she drifted into sleep.

"You might at least pretend to like it!"

Charlotte dutifully brought her hands down to stroke her husband's back.

"Lord knows you used to beg for it! Are you already planning to cuckold me, as you did Lyonel?"

That brought her out of her plotting fog. She stiffened, feeling him probe between her thighs.

She started to say something, for she was furious at his carping, but he plunged into her at that moment, saying in a hoarse, angry voice, "You will bear me an heir before you take a lover, damn you!"

"Yes," she said just as he was on the point of spilling into her. "Yes, I will have your heir, then you will be out of my bed!"

He groaned, hating himself for being the biggest fool alive.

She waited until he was through and rolled of her. "I think, Dancy, that dear Lyonel will be my first lover. He is so marvelously large and well-formed, do you not think so? And his beautiful mouth and hands"

"Lyonel would never come within a foot of you, Charlotte." He was tired, too weary of the farcical marriage even to be drawn. He had lost a man he considered a friend, and all for a woman who hadn't been real. God, that he could have been such a fool.

"We will see," she said, and yawned in his face.

"You are a bore, my dear wife. I fancy I will visit the theater tomorrow evening. I saw a lovely young thing there a week ago. She, I think, will be most accommodating."