Mad Jack (Sherbrooke Brides 4)

He felt her hand stroke his cheek. He reached up and unbuttoned the glove and pulled it off. He sighed deeply at the touch of her naked fingers against his flesh.

“Open your mouth, Jack. Yes, that’s it. Not quite so wide or I’ll fall in. Yes, just tease me.” It was too good. He wanted more. Actually he wanted everything and he wanted it all at once. He raised his head and chanted again, “I’m a man. I’m a man who isn’t a clod. My heart’s pounding louder than a drum in the middle of a battle.” He was amazed at how she was making him feel. He pressed his forehead against hers. “How can you, just a little slip of a girl, make me feel like I’m going to explode if I don’t dive my hands under your petticoats right this minute?”

“Your hands can dive,” she said. “Aunt Maude told me I was to be obedient to your wishes as soon as we were married.”

His laugh was on the painful side, but he didn’t really heed it because he was kissing her again.

“Gray,” she said into his mouth when his hand lightly caressed her breast. “Gray?”

Just the sound of her saying his name was more than enough to make a sane man dive over the waterfall. He didn’t want to rip her gown, but the buttons fought him, making his fingers trip over them, and finally, he simply jerked the fabric apart. Then he saw her chemise, another barrier that was all lacy and soft, and he couldn’t bear it. He cursed, then ripped.

When her breasts were bare, he saw that she was staring up at him, her face a bit on the pale side, set in petrified lines. “No,” he said. “Don’t be embarrassed or afraid of me, Jack. I’ve seen your breasts, don’t you remember? I saw them at great length, four days of great length. I saw them so much that I grew jaded. I remember turning away once to look at my dinner plate, at the mess of potatoes in the center of the plate.

“It’s true that I looked at your breasts again as I was eating my potatoes, but I remember thinking food thoughts, like wondering if your breasts would taste as good as the potatoes. No, I don’t suppose it was necessary to tell you that at this point in time. Don’t panic on me, Jack.”

“I won’t panic. I was sick then. You had no choice but to look at me.”

“And now you’re my wife. I still have to look at you.”

Then he touched her. Even as he closed his hand around her, he leaned down and began kissing her again. He said into her mouth, “Do you have any notion of how you feel to me?”

She squirmed on his lap, and he knew it was all over for him. “No, don’t move. I’m very serious about this, Jack. That’s right, don’t even breathe. Now, let me look at you and touch you and you don’t do a single thing, particularly move.” She didn’t move, just lay there looking up at him. He managed to find a smile for her, but it hurt, really hurt just to make his mouth move like that. He wanted his mouth on her breast. But not yet. He couldn’t. If he did, he wouldn’t be able to stop himself. Why was she making him feel so utterly out of control?

“A puzzle,” he said. “This is all a puzzle. Tell me, Jack, when I touch you, like this”—he lightly laid his hand over her right breast—“when I just stroke my fingers over you, what does it make you feel?”

How to tell him that she wanted to rub herself against his palm? That she felt like someone had lit a fire in her belly and the warmth of that fire was spreading outward, making her tingle and ache and feel terribly urgent. She said, “I read a book. I saw several drawings. I want you to do those things to me right now. I don’t want a nice soft bed. I don’t understand how this will work, but you do. You’ve had nearly eight more years than I to practice and learn. Just do it, Gray. Please.”

He shuddered like a palsied man. He cursed even as he lifted her up, facing him. He untangled her braids with his fingers, loosing her hair over her shoulders. He pulled the gown and chemise to her waist. Then he stopped. He took a very deep breath. “What book did you see? Don’t tell me you found this book in my library?”

“No. Aunt Mathilda gave it to me. She said she’d found it at Hookham’s, back in a dark corner, where a clerk whispered prurient material was hidden. She said she wasn’t up to explaining marital concepts to me, so I was to acquaint myself with the basic sorts of things. It all sounded impossible. And those pictures, surely they simply couldn’t be right.”

“Tell me about the pictures.”

She was sitting on his lap, naked to the waist, his hands on her hips, and he was looking at her, just looking, nothing else, and waiting to hear about those pictures. “A man was leaning over a woman and he was licking her stomach, Gray—at least that’s what it looked like. Isn’t that silly?”

God in heaven, he was going to expire. “Close to unimaginable.”

“Then there was a naked man and a naked woman, really close together. Actually, she had her legs wrapped around his waist. His hands were holding her against him and he was dancing around the room.”

“We’ll do that next Tuesday,” he said. “Jack, don’t you have the basic idea yet?”

“Yes,” she said. “I have an excellent idea.” She pulled away from him to sit on the other seat. She leaned toward him, those breasts of hers right there for his mouth, his hands, and pulled off her other glove. Then, smiling at him, she lightly laid her hands on him.

He jumped, then moaned. She pulled her hands back. “I’m sorry, Gray. Did that hurt you? I can’t imagine why it would. I didn’t pull or jerk you or anything.”

It was then that he realized he simply couldn’t wait for that very soft feather mattress at the Swan’s Neck that Douglas had told him about, that particular bed in the third-floor corner bedchamber that Douglas had said Alexandra had adored to the soles of her arched feet.

“Dammit, it’s still our wedding day. It’s not even our wedding night yet. The sun’s still out. I’m going to die. I’m going to educate you right now, Jack, all right?”

She nodded slowly, her eyes on his groin.

He was on her immediately, jerking her gown up, tangling his hands in her petticoats, trying to ease her garters and stockings down, all at the same time. He stopped, pulling himself back. “No,” he said. “I can do this. I can even manage to do this with a modicum of self-control and finesse. I am not a pathetic excuse of a man who is so selfish he doesn’t care if the woman is awake or asleep or simply a piece of fruit.”

“In all the pictures both the man and the woman were naked,” Jack said. Without another word, she began pulling up her gown.

He looked until he couldn’t bear it. It was the stretch of stocking-covered leg that finally got to him. “No,” he said, pulling her hands away from her garter, “this isn’t the way it should be done. Jack, I want you to come back onto my lap and kiss me. Then we’ll see.”

She sat on his legs, her own legs apart, facing him. “One of the drawings was like this,” she said. “Except the man and woman didn’t have any clothes on. I think I could come to like this.” She grabbed his face between her hands and leaned forward to kiss him.