Her Errant Earl by Scarlett Scott Read Free Book Online

shoulders,
shucking the garment from her body entirely. “I prefer you naked.”
    And naked she was. Victoria fought the urge to cover
herself. She stood very still, watching from beneath lowered lashes as her
husband’s warm gaze ran over her body like drizzled honey. She waited, knowing
she was no beauty, that she was in fact rather small and spindly without all
her trappings. Keats was very adept at showing her to advantage, but now she
had no such assistance. She was sure he must have seen lovelier women, perhaps
even his Italian opera singer. The thought made her stiffen.
    “Why the ferocious frown, my dear?” He traced her lips with
a light touch, running his finger down her neck to her breasts. He circled her
nipple in a lazy path that had the bud tightening and her body aching for more.
“You are more beautiful than I recalled.”
    He thought her beautiful? Her gaze snapped to his face,
searching his expression for the slightest hint of insincerity. There was none.
His eyes were direct, his expression frank and admiring. No man had ever paid
her a compliment as kind in her life. True, there had been her fair share of
effusive flattery by gentleman who looked at her and saw her father’s fat purse
and not her true self. But this was somehow different. Was it the way he’d said
it, or simply that he had said it, that mattered so much? She didn’t
know.
    A sudden surge of courage overtook her. She wanted to see
him as well. She made short work of the knot at his waist. His dressing gown
slid to the floor in a soft whisper of sound. He was breathtaking. The knot of
desire building within her grew. He was lean yet muscled from sport, his chest
broad and covered with just the right amount of hair to be considered manly.
But what truly attracted her attention was not the lovely definition of his
taut stomach or the long, strong lines of his legs. No indeed, it was the rigid
arousal jutting proudly from the apex of his thighs.
    Good heavens. She nearly swallowed her tongue. She
certainly hadn’t seen that on their wedding night. Blushing furiously,
she forced her gaze back up to his face. The grin on his sensual mouth was
positively wicked. Perhaps she’d wandered into water that was well over her
head. She felt very much as if she were drowning.
    It seemed he sensed her sudden worry. He tipped her chin up.
“Don’t fret, my dear. We shall go as slowly as you like.”
    It wasn’t precisely the speed of their joining that
concerned her, but rather the mechanics of it. Now she well understood the stab
of pain she’d felt the last time. Would it hurt again?
    “You’re worrying your lip.” He cupped her face in his large,
capable hands and delivered a tender kiss to the lip in question. “You mustn’t think
too much. Only feel.”
    “Feeling is what lands me in trouble,” she couldn’t resist
pointing out. She certainly felt too much for the debonair man standing nude
before her.
    He grinned down at her. “What is life without a spot of
trouble now and again?”
    Easy, she supposed, for him to say. He’d never had to move
an ocean away from the world he knew only to be abandoned in a countryside with
only a gaggle of servants for company. But holding on to resentment couldn’t be
beneficial to the tentative truce she’d struck with her husband, and she knew
it. Perhaps he was right after all. Maybe she should trust him.
    Could she? Though it was balmy in their chamber from the
warmth of the summer sun, she shivered.
    “Cold?” He scooped her up into his arms in one effortless
motion. “I can warm you.”
    No one had ever carried her before either. Apparently, it
was to be a night of many firsts. Victoria threw her arms about his neck to
hold on to him as he crossed the chamber to her bed. She took the opportunity
to study his handsome profile. His jaw was strong, stippled with the day’s
growth of dark whiskers. Unlike many English gentlemen, he eschewed a beard and
mustache. She found it enhanced the