Instead, he lifted his arms and gripped behind his neck. Intertwining his fingers, he held strong where he stood. She licked and sucked and explored the slit where his seed seeped out. Finally, she took him between her lips and deep into her mouth.
Fireworks exploded behind his closed eyelids, and he threw his head back with a load groan. “Hell!”
Only when his balls tightened did he step back, yanking his pants up. Looking at Miranda nearly completed his undoing.
Beaming up at him, she said, “That was quite nice.”
“Nice?” She’d nearly brought him to his knees, and she called it nice?
“I would like to do that again.”
“So would I.”
“Honestly?” Her face lit up like an eighteen-candle candelabra.
Leaning in, he kissed her. Words couldn’t express what he wanted to convey, and a sudden fear consumed him that those feelings might be akin to love.
Chapter Six
Miranda had ceased listening to her brother twenty minutes earlier. After dragging her out of her bed, he’d thrown her dressing gown at her and demanded she meet him in the library downstairs. Although her ankle might not have been as swollen as before, the ugly purple and blue bruises showed it hadn’t yet healed. She had hated to call the footman from his rest, but as he arrived dressed and by her bed within moments, it seemed a good guess all the servants were up.
Daniel said nothing as they helped her into the room with the aid of two more footmen. Unlike her husband-to-be, who had easily lifted her weight, the poor footmen, being much smaller in stature, hadn’t even attempted to carry her, but offered her their shoulders. When she was finally settled, a maid placed a shawl over her lap for modesty and the servants all vacated the room. Leaving her the soul focus of her brother’s wrath.
“How did you get here so fast?” she finally broke from her musings to ask. But once the words had slipped past her lips, she remembered she wasn’t supposed to know he would be arriving.
His look told her he thought she might be addled. “Did you expect me to simply allow you to marry a man when you were contractually bound to another?”
“You make me sound like a piece of chattel,” she mumbled, though not loud enough for anyone to hear. She wondered when her brother had become so pompous. They hadn’t been close, but she had rather liked him before this.
“Do you love this new man?”
Did she love him? She wasn’t sure. She had been so infatuated with being his countess and, like most girls in the village, she’d had a teenage crush on him. The only difference being she’d genuinely believed she would be his countess one day, while the others could only dream.
“I supposed I might be or, at least, could be one day.”
Could she love Andrew? If the man Andrew appeared to be turned out to be the man she’d spent the last two days with, falling in love with him would be little hardship. He appeared to treat those dependent on him with dignity. None of her tutors had spoken ill of him. Other ladies swooned when he walked into a room, or so Miranda had been informed. But, in truth, his assertion that, although he wanted to marry her, the decision was hers to make, proved the merit of the man.
The waiting silence from her brother alerted her she had missed something important. He stood over her, hands on hips. “Well, what do you have to say?”
She couldn’t very well admit she had not been paying attention without receiving another earful, so she improvised. “I didn’t think you actually cared what I had to say.”
Where the hell was Sarah? She should have been there with her. Sarah hadn’t gone out that evening, and it had been her and Andrew’s crazy plan to bring her brother there anyway. Andrew and Sarah had established quite a friendship over dinner that evening. He had left briefly to freshen up and deal with a few things, but had returned shortly before afternoon tea. Neither Miranda or Andrew had been left alone again by her Aunt Sarah, which may have had something to do with the conversation Miranda started once Andrew left—wanting to learn all there was about sex. Sarah, never one to balk, explained a great deal more than Miranda had expected and nothing like her tutors had.
“Enjoy yourself, gel. None of this lie there and let him take his pleasure nonsense. If you want something, you tell him, or, better yet, show him what you want. But, I have a feeling your Andrew will take great care to make sure you enjoy it, too.”
From there, Miranda worked up the nerve to ask a great many things. She didn’t wish to be ignorant on her wedding night. Sarah brought books from her personal library to aid in the education of Miranda. Ensconced safely in her bedroom, she’d opened the first book only to slam it shut again. Though she had thought she was alone, she’d nevertheless checked to be sure that was still the case. Naughty and exciting were equal emotions flaring within her.