Tempting Gemma 3 Page 3

  Finally, she cried out, “Please, Charles…please!”

  With a grunt of satisfaction, he laid her down on the padded gym floor, angled her legs straight over her head and holding them in that inelegant position, thrust into her.

  “That’s it, baby, come on my cock!”

  Heaven help her, at his command, she did, riding the crests like a surfin’ queen, higher and higher. Her inner muscles convulsed all along his length, drawing him deeper, squeezing him…so good…so very, very good.

  Just when she thought she couldn’t bear anything more, he pulled out. She watched, her eyes heavy-lidded with pleasure, as he came hard, spraying jets of cum across her breasts and belly before finally toppling forward onto the floor beside her.

  Afterward, lying side by side, their chests still heaving, Charles turned his head and looked at his dear little wife. She never failed to amaze him.

  He’d thought her rather quiet and even a bit timid when they first met, which had stirred in him a desire to look after her. But later, by their wedding day, that had alloyed into a combination of rampant desire and burning frustration that proved no match for his better intentions.

  More recently, he’d begun to notice that she was really quite spirited. Even so, he didn’t want to overdo. And heaven knew, she’d been…something…during the Great Rite, as the villagers called it. He was still trying to sort all that out but the memory of her above him, taking him was alloyed in his mind with equal measures of reverence and resentment.

  Attempting to reconcile all that, he asked, “Not too much?”

  “For whom?”

  He laughed and reached out, his fingers entwining with hers. After a few more moments, he said, “Being married is much better than I expected.”

  “Hmmm,” Gemma replied, noncommittally. With her strength returning, she raised herself up on one elbow and studied him. He looked very young just then, not nearly as formidable as he could when he bestirred himself to do so.

  She thought of the hula hoop and, provoking through it was, the bouncy ball. And of the pearls, tucked away in her dressing room. She pondered what they signified.

  They still knew each other so little; she couldn’t begin to claim that she understood him. Yet, she was beginning to get a glimmer.

  Softly, she said, “You’re pleased at how the fair came off, aren’t you? Especially…the bit at the end. It was important to you, wasn’t it?”

  Emotion played across the face sculpted by an overly indulgent deity. The instinct to deny, to shrug and raise the shield of indifference was evident but so was what she was coming to perceive as the intrinsic honesty of his nature.

  “Yes, it is,” he said finally, “My father wasn’t much for respecting the old ways. Might even say that he twisted them into something they were never meant to be. That mattered to the people here. I promised them I’d put it all back properly.”

  “So that they would accept you?”

  He looked surprised by the notion. “Not a matter of accepting. I’ve the title, the land, the wealth, it’s all mine whatever I do. But they’re the backbone of this place and I wanted them to feel…valued, I suppose, not as though they were of no account.”

  The way they had felt when his father was alive? The way he had felt?

  Gemma was coming to the conclusion that she had been fortunate to be spared very much contact with her own parents. Although by no stretch of the imagination could being sent off to dear old Mary Magdalene be considered a stroke of luck. Even so before then they had left her largely to her own devices, which in turn had left her free to find Tillie Fenster. That reminded her, she owed Tillie a letter.

  She wrote it later that day in the quiet of the private sitting room that Charles had decreed should be hers alone. It was a pretty place with an excellent view out toward the lake. At her request, footmen had removed half the furniture, making it considerably less cluttered. She had already decided to have the fussy wallpaper stripped and the walls repainted a simple pale peach. Once that was done, she thought the room would suit her very well.

  In the meantime, she was content to sip the tea a maid brought her as she thoughtfully contemplated the hitherto unexperienced pleasure of a room of her own.

  Chapter Five

  Charles was called into the City the following day--some ministerial crisis or other. He came home grumbling that it had all been a tempest in a teapot. He was done with London for the rest of the summer.

  The prospect of even more concentrated bouts of her husband’s company did not dismay Gemma quite as much as it might have done. The intrinsic honesty of her own nature compelled her to admit that there were times when she enjoyed having him about.

  In addition to their regular workouts in the gym, he had taken to inviting her on excursions to various parts of the estate that he thought she might find interesting to paint. More often than not, he was right. She had a fond memory of him stretched out on a patch of grass, watching her admiringly as she captured the little pavilion on canvas.

  Of course, she had scarcely finished before he was fucking her up against the nearest tree but she had come to expect that. One might even say anticipate it in a manner that was not entirely unpleasant.

  His ardor--which since the honeymoon had showed no sign whatsoever of decreasing--appeared to know no limits. She would have wondered how he had ever managed to get anything else done in life if he hadn’t confided to her that she aroused him as no woman had ever done before.

  “Can’t get enough of you,” were his precise words, as he lay gasping over her, chest heaving in the aftermath of yet another coupling that had wrung his balls dry, if only for the moment.

  “Just want to be with you, in you all the time.” With the fervor of a man who has discovered a cosmically humbling truth, he added, “Fucking you makes everything better.”

  No one would ever mistake her husband for a poet yet she could not doubt the sincerity that he so amply and regularly demonstrated.

  From time to time, they ventured into the village where they were always very well received. On one such excursion, the paused to chat with Mrs. Bambridge, the fruit-and-vegetable monger’s wife. Gemma had a rather different memory of her from the night of the Village Fair but by tacit agreement neither of them mentioned that.

  A few days after declaring himself officially a man of leisure, Charles suggested that they go for a run. With due regard for his wife’s modesty--astonishing since she hadn’t thought he’d realized that she had any--he presented her with an appropriate outfit. He even went so far as to don shorts and a T-shirt himself.

  They set off down the drive from the manor and out through the wrought iron gates before turning in the opposite direction from the village. The scent of blackberries filled the air but whereas Gemma would have dawdled to sample a few, Charles insisted they keep up the pace.

  He did moderate his own stride to better accommodate her but even so, she was beginning to lag when, at long last, he stopped.

  Bent over, hands on her knees, Gemma was vividly aware of her straining heart and labored breathing. Yet all in all, she felt surprisingly good. Running when one was not being driven by a pack of hounds was far more pleasurable than she had expected.

  The sound of water splashing made her straighten. Her husband was standing beside a tall hand-cranked pump set in the ground beside a wooden trough. As he worked the handle, the powerful muscles of his arms flexed in a most appealing fashion.

  Water spewed from the spout of the pump and splashed into the trough so vigorously that some spilled over the sides and ran down into the dark earth. Suddenly aware of how hot and thirsty she was, Gemma stepped forward eagerly. She cupped her hands and, as her husband pumped, filled them with lovely, chilled water sparkling in the sunshine.

  Nothing had ever tasted sweeter. She drank deeply, filling her hands again and a third time before belatedly realizing that Charles must be thirsty as well.

  He was waiting patiently, a smile curving his
mouth as he watched her.

  “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I’m being so greedy. It’s just this is the best water I’ve ever tasted.”

  “Thirst will do that for you,” he said amicably. “But it is good water. The sweetest you’ll find.” He sounded proud of that attribute of the land that she was coming to realize he truly cherished.

  They changed places and she took a turn on the pump. The water trickled out more slowly but it was still ample. When her husband had finished drinking, he bent over and stuck his head in the trough. Coming up, he shook himself vigorously.

  Taken by surprise, Gemma tried to dart out of the way but a shower of drops flew in her direction and found their mark. Her sports bra and shorts were quickly soaked.

  “Stop! You devil!”

  He laughed and pulled her into his arms. Beneath the wet chill of his sodden T-shirt, heat poured from him. Instantly, her nipples hardened. She put her palms up to push him away only to falter as her fingers lingered over the hard, sculpted muscles rippling below taut skin.

  “Charles--”

  Her voice sounded faint and far away. She was oddly dizzy. All the exertion, no doubt, and the blasted heat--

  “Gemma,” he murmured. His hands drifted round to her bottom. Cupping her cheeks, he lifted her, rubbing her up and down against his erection.

  A soft moan escaped her. They were right on the road where anyone could happen by. But if she could persuade him to go just a little farther into the trees…

  Abruptly, he stepped back. His hands lingered for a moment on her bottom but then they, too, were gone.

  “I’ll race you to the brook.”

  She couldn’t have heard him correctly. Hadn’t they already done enough running?

  “What?”

  “It’s about 400 meters that way,” he said, pointing. “I’ll even give you a head start.”

  He wanted to race…now? The man whose preference was to fuck all hours of the day and night was suddenly opting for self-restraint? Bloody hell.

  “How much of a head start?”

  “Enough that you might actually beat me.”

  He was daring her just as he had with the damn bouncy ball. No way would she fall for that again, at least not this soon. Still, she could see certain advantages to taking him up on his offer.

  “Count of ten,” she said, “and no cheating, you have to count slowly.”

  “Fair enough. Ready?”

  As she ever would be.

  “Go.”

  She spared a moment’s gratitude for the hounds who, if nothing else, had improved her running skills no end. She would disappear into the trees, veer away from the brook and spend a pleasant hour or so eating blackberries while her husband floundered around in the bushes looking for her.

  Eventually, he’d have no choice but to return home, tail between his legs as it were. There she would be, in something fetching, ready to console him for being unable to keep up with her.

  Seven…eight…nine…

  Supple as a gazelle, Gemma sprinted. She leaped over a bush, veered around a tree and cut perpendicularly away from the brook that she could just glimpse in the distance.

  Ten… A small hillock rose directly ahead of her. All she had to do was drop down on the other side and she would be out of sight.

  Almost there. He was going to be so frustrated! It was almost a shame that she wouldn’t be around to see it.

  One more breath, one more stride and…

  Bam!

  An all-too familiar form crashed into her. Hurtling face down toward the ground, she was saved at the last instant by a sudden twist of the big hard body that cushioned her fall.

  “Speaking of cheating,” her husband said with an easy laugh as they landed together.

  His powerful arms were around her middle, holding her fast. With her back to his chest, she could feel the infuriatingly slow, steady beat of his heart, evidence of how easily he had brought her down.

  That vexed Gemma no end. The suspicion stirred in her that he had let her try to best him precisely to show her that she could not. And he had the nerve to accuse her of cheating?

  “I wasn’t!” she exclaimed in righteous outrage.

  “You were, don’t try to deny it. And now you’re going to pay the price.”

  They would see about that. She squirmed, trying to escape. “Let me go!”

  “Not quite yet.”

  Her husband loosened his hold just enough to allow her to sit up. But before she could scramble away, his shorts were undone, hers were pulled down, and, without even bothering to turn her around, he was lifting her onto the long, thick column of his cock.

  “Charles!”

  Undeterred, he lowered her further. “Damn, you’re so tight, a little more…oh, yes!”

  Facing outward, her legs braced to either side, Gemma gasped. He was too big…she was too stretched…

  Oblivious to any such concerns, Charles grasped her hips and began lifting her up and down smoothly and rhythmically just as though he was doing reps.

  Up and down, up and down…and again.

  Gemma struggled for calm. It wasn’t easy, particularly as his bumptious behavior was having the predictable effect. Try though she did to remain unaffected, she feared that the battle was already lost. Her traitorous body knew all too well the pleasure that awaited it. Greedy thing that it was, it cared for nothing else.

  “That’s it, baby, cream all over me!”

  Her head fell back, her breasts jutting skyward. A cry bubbled up in her throat.

  “Oh, yeah, so good!” Pausing momentarily in mid-rep, her husband added, “Any chance you could holler ‘yeehaw’ a few times?”

  She swiveled her head around and stared at him. Surely, she had heard that wrong. “What?”

  Helpfully, he explained, “Like a cow girl riding one of those mechanical bulls they have in the States.”

  He couldn’t be serious…but, of course, he was. This was Charles, whose enthusiasm for carnal activity knew no bounds, cultural or otherwise.

  With a sigh, she pointed out the obvious. “Shouldn’t I be wearing chaps and waving a ten gallon hat?”

  Her attempt at sarcasm went completely over his head. Happily, he said, “There’s the spirit but don’t worry, I’ll just imagine all that.”

  He would, too, she was sure of it. Who knew what lurid scenarios were running at any given time through his testosterone-addled brain. Cowgirls…harem slaves…pole dancers…car hops…the possibilities were endless.

  Best then to get this over with as quickly as possible. Resigned, she straightened up, grabbed hold of his shorts for leverage and raised the other hand gracefully over her head. Clenching her thighs, she tried a tentative, “Yeehaw!”

  Charles snorted with pleasure. A few minutes of wild bucking later--and several more ‘yeehaws’--they came together in a rush that left them both dazed, panting, and oddly enough, with a craving for barbecue.

  Chapter Six

  At breakfast the next morning, Gemma looked around the mostly empty table. The Furies were nowhere to be seen. She was delighted, of course, but as a dutiful wife, she felt compelled to inquire after their whereabouts.

  “Mother is down with a migraine and is keeping to her rooms,” Charles said with a cheery grin.

  Spreading marmalade liberally on his toast, he added, “Ismay has gone off to Argentina for some horse show or other. Last time she did that, she didn’t come back for a year so there you are. As for Brother Harold, he departed early this morning. Had a mountain of luggage with him and announced that he’d joined an expedition going out to Africa.”

  Helping herself to a few spoonfuls of fruit compote, Gemma asked, “Good lord, why ever would he do that?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea but whatever they’re looking for, I hope they take their time finding it.”

  Husband and wife smiled across the table at one another in perfect accord.

  Later, in the gym, Charles announced that Gemm
a was ready for the new, more advanced program to improve flexibility that he had been working on just for her. His obvious pride in his creation only heightened her instant apprehension. All the same, she told herself that after everything she had already experienced, it was foolish to become alarmed before she knew the particulars.

  “It’s based on the Kama Sutra,” her husband said. “Marvelous book, really holds one’s attention.”

  Mindful of the adage “forewarned is forearmed”, Gemma searched her memory for any scrap of information she might have as to the source of his inspiration. Being a properly reared young woman, she found none. Even so she was able to make the most obvious guess.