But you could have had me. The words hovered unspoken in her mind. Clearly he hadn’t thought she was ready. Maybe he’d thought he was being considerate. But she did not wish to be treated like a fragile ornament. People seemed to think she was delicate and frail—it was her coloring, she thought, and her slight frame. But she wasn’t. She never had been. On the inside she was fierce.

And she was ready to prove it.

Chapter Seventeen

RICHARD DIDN’T KNOW if he was in heaven or hell.

His wife, whom he had not even properly bedded, was . . . She was kissing his . . . Good Lord, she had her mouth on his cock, and what she lacked in skill she was making up for in enthusiasm, and—

What the hell was he saying? She wasn’t lacking in skill. Did skill even matter? This was every man’s erotic dream. And this wasn’t some courtesan, this was his wife. His wife.

He should stop her. But he couldn’t, dear God he couldn’t. He’d been aching for her for so long, and now, as she knelt between his legs, kissing him in the most intimate way imaginable, he found himself enslaved by his desire. With every hesitant flick of her tongue, his hips arched off the bed, and he was brought treacherously closer to release.

“Do you like it?” Iris whispered.

She sounded almost shy. Good God, she sounded almost shy, and yet she was taking him in her mouth.

Did he like it? The innocence of the question nearly unmanned him. She had no idea what she was doing to him, didn’t know that he’d never even dared to dream she might give of herself in such a way.

“Richard?” she whispered.

He was a beast. A cur. A wife wasn’t meant to do such things, at least not before she’d been given time to be gently initiated into the ways of the marriage bed.

But Iris had surprised him. She was always surprising him. And when she cautiously took him into her mouth he was lost to all sanity.

Nothing had ever felt so good.

Never had he felt so loved.

He froze. Loved?

No, that was impossible. She didn’t love him. She couldn’t. He did not deserve it.

But then an awful little voice from deep inside—a voice he could only conclude was his wayward conscience—reminded him that this had been his plan. He would use their brief honeymoon at Maycliffe to seduce her, in heart if not in body. He had been trying to get her to fall in love.

He should not have done that. He should not have even contemplated it.

And yet, if she did . . . if she did love him . . .

It would be wonderful.