Enchanting the Beast, page 27
Even then, he had to kiss her first.
“You were late,” Phil said, her mouth swollen from his attentions.
Nico eyed her hopefully. “Were you worried that I’d changed my mind?”
“Certainly not. I was worried that Prince Albert had you clapped in irons.”
Ah, well. Nico felt an immense satisfaction that she no longer doubted his love. And that she belonged to him now. Forever. “The Master agreed that we’d made the best decision under the circumstances. And he will have Edwina transferred here to London for trial. I asked him for leniency for Roy’s sake, and as long as Edwina keeps quiet about the relic, I think she may have a reduced sentence.”
Nico leaned forward and nuzzled her ear. “Now, enough of that,” he whispered. “This is our wedding day. You smell delicious.” He trailed his tongue along the sweet curve of her lobe. “And taste even better. We really don’t have to wait until after the wedding breakfast, do we?”
Phil shivered and laughed all at the same time. Delightful combination. “Nico, you must promise to behave. Everyone will gossip.”
The carriage lurched to a stop in front of Phil’s town house and Nico sighed and sat back. “You sure you wouldn’t rather give them something to envy?”
Phil gathered her ivory skirts into her hands and gave him a smile that made his head spin. “Oh, my dear. They already do—that’s half the problem.”
Nico tried not to swagger as he escorted Phil up the walk. She made him feel like the most desirable man in London, despite his lowly social status.
The front drawing room overflowed with people, wine, and food. Nicodemus watched Phil’s face and then quickly scanned the room, trying to see what she did. But his wife was right, he was as sensitive to ghosts as a block of wood, and despite his fervent desire to see the spirits that haunted the former brothel, he couldn’t see a shadow.
He escorted his bride into the throng of well-wishers, most of them Phil’s friends or patrons. A quartette played on the terrace and Nico led Phil past the open French doors, sweeping her into a dance, if only for an excuse to hold her in his arms.
“It hasn’t been so terrible,” Phil said.
“What?”
She nodded toward the crowded drawing room. “My friends and acquaintances. Their reaction to our marriage.”
Nico frowned. “You shouldn’t be so worried about what other people think.”
“I’m not. I’m just glad that I misjudged their character.”
“Then I’m glad for your sake.” A rush of warmth flowed through Nico. “I am so lucky to have found you,” he murmured.
Philomena reached up and traced her fingers down his cheek and jaw. “And I, you.”
Nico twirled her and settled her back into his arms. “How long before they’ll leave?”
Phil looked over her shoulder into the drawing room. “Quite some time, I’m afraid. Consider the anticipation as thrilling as the act, love. It’s the only way I shall make it through the day.”
Nico threw back his head and laughed, his spirit so light and carefree that he felt he might fly as easily as Venus had. And indeed, throughout the long afternoon, he took Phil’s advice, knowing that they would eventually be alone together, and that the wait only added spice to his desire.
And it worked…until Phil started to drive him mad.
At first she only seemed distracted, her gaze flicking past him to rest on an empty corner of the room. But her words began to fade in the middle of a sentence, and although it seemed that she purposely tried to ignore something over in the corner, her head would suddenly swivel in that direction and her cheeks would redden. Her friends didn’t appear concerned by her behavior. He supposed they were used to it. And it didn’t bother him that she saw ghosts; on the contrary, it only endeared her to him even more.
It was his wolf that made him watch her with predatory interest. His animal nature could smell her arousal and respond. By the time the party wound to a close, he couldn’t take his eyes off of his new wife.
He watched her from across the room while she said farewell to the last remaining guests, steadying his glass of brandy as he casually leaned against the wall. He suppressed the low growl that rose in the back of his throat when she caught him watching and looked over at him. The slightly glazed look in her gray eyes set his every nerve afire.
Hexword stood next to him and said something, but Nico didn’t understand a word of it. He handed the man his glass and strode across the room as Phil shut the front door behind her. Her body fairly vibrated at his touch when his arms closed around her. “What is it?” he asked, only a bit surprised at the huskiness in his voice.
“Fanny,” she whispered, nearly choking on the name.
Nico felt his brows rise. Ah, the ghost who had shown Phil so many intriguing bedroom techniques. Who had taught her that lovemaking was something to enjoy…unlike most other society ladies, who had been taught to fear it. He owed a great deal to Fanny.
Nico’s eyes scanned the drawing room. Hexword held Royden by the arm, caught Nico’s eye, and began to drag his brother to the front door. Sarah supervised several hired maids in the cleaning up.
“I’ll take him back to the hotel,” Hexword said. “He’s had a bit too much to drink.”
Nico eyed his brother. The man was completely foxed. He frowned and hoped that the Master would indeed be lenient with Edwina. “Thank you, Hexword.”
The older man nodded and said his farewell to Phil, and Nico closed the door behind them with a tired sigh. His wife immediately went back into the drawing room toward that blasted corner, where nothing stood but a potted palm, and cocked her head in studied concentration. Nico followed her as if Phil had a leash around his throat.
“Sarah.” He hadn’t meant to growl her name. “You can clean up later.”
The were-snake glanced at her mistress, then calmly shooed the maids from the drawing room. “I will ssee to it that you aren’t dissturbed.” She sounded so smooth and unruffled, but Nico caught the gleam in those dark eyes, the half smile curving the thin lips as Sarah closed the withdrawing room doors behind her.
He never thought he’d become so fond of a snake.
Phil gasped and Nico closed his hands over her shoulders. “What do you see, Phil?”
Her cheeks colored and she trembled. “Fanny is more aware than the other ghosts here. This can’t be a coincidence.”
Nico’s body tightened even more. Now that they were alone, he allowed his wolf to shadow him, allowed the beast some freedom. He wasn’t afraid that his wolf would overwhelm him. Their love had proven to be stronger than the darkest forces on earth.
“I have waited all day, ghost-hunter. If you don’t tell me what Fanny is doing, I’ll go mad.”
She turned and looked up at him, her mouth parted, her eyes glassy with desire. “It, um, involves a table.”
Nico eyed the sturdy oak table holding the remains of their wedding breakfast and grinned. He took his wife into his arms and kissed her while he expertly unbuttoned the back of her silk gown, pulling it down her shoulders. He loosened the stays of her corset, just enough to yank the front of the garment down to bare her breasts. He didn’t have the patience to remove all of her clothes. Yet.
While he lavished attention on her nipples with tongue and mouth, he begged her to tell him more. But she only moaned in reply, clutching at his head, burying her fingers in his hair. Nico straightened and scooped her up in his arms and carried her over to the table. He swept a corner clear and lowered his wife onto it, staring into her eyes. “What else?”
The ribbons in her hair trembled. “It…it involves sauces.”
“Sauces?”
Phil’s cheeks bloomed with renewed color. “The tasting of them. On various parts of the, um, body.”
The experience in her eyes and the shyness of her voice fascinated Nico. Damnation, sauces. He glanced along the length of the table, but their breakfast had been light fare….
He ran a finger through the frosting of their wedding cake. “I don’t believe I’ve had a piece yet, Phil. Surely the groom should eat of his own wedding cake?”
“It’s…a requirement.”
Nico raised a brow.
“I’m sure it says that somewhere,” Phil panted. “In some etiquette book or other.”
Nico dotted her lips with his finger. “I’m certain it does,” he murmured as he kissed her. The sweetness of the frosting made a delicious contrast to the salty flavor of her mouth and Nico’s tongue swept inside until no trace of the sugar remained.
Fascinating.
But he wasn’t one for too many sweets. He straightened and studied the table while he pushed Phil’s skirts up around her waist. She wore satin drawers trimmed in lace and they distracted him for a moment. He’d waited all day to touch her. He spread the slit in the fabric and muttered a rather insincere apology when they ripped. He pressed his palm over her hot core. Phil threw back her head and groaned.
Nico suppressed a howl of dominance. She belonged to him. This belonged to him.
He reached for a decanter of brandy and poured a small amount into a glass, but didn’t drink. Instead he dipped in a finger as Phil lifted her head. Those lovely gray eyes followed his every move as he circled her nipples with the alcohol. “I’m thirsty,” he murmured.
Phil shivered.
“Are you?” Nico placed his wet finger in her mouth and she suckled. He felt his shaft jump in response at the same time her opening throbbed in his hand. Nico lowered his head and drank from her breasts, his finger still inside her mouth, her tongue a soft, wet instrument of torture. Brandy scorched his taste buds and competed with the sweetness of her skin.
Damn, but he loved Phil’s ghosts.
He made his wife squirm. He made her beg. Then he straightened and reached for more frosting, easing her thighs a bit farther open. He spread it over her nub and along her lips and tasted that sweetness again while she cried out and nearly tore the hair from his head. Nico idly wondered if that was the reason why so many men went bald after several years of marriage. He fervently hoped so.
Nico brought his wife to the edge; he could feel the tightening of her muscles as she gained her peak, just on the verge of tumbling off into ecstasy. He untangled her hands from his hair. “Thirsty again.”
“Nico!”
He reached for the brandy, dipped his fingers in again and went to his knees. It seemed as if her very skin heated the liquid, turned it into ambrosia. Nico satisfied his thirst, bringing Phil to a renewed crest, and he knew he couldn’t deny her this time.
He knew he couldn’t ask his body to wait any longer.
Nico stood and unbuttoned his trousers, his eyes never leaving his wife’s. Then he pulled her toward him until her bottom hung over the edge of the table. The darling woman bent her knees, put her hands above her head and gripped the edge of the wood.
He growled when he entered her, fast, hard, her opening so wet that he slid deep inside with his very first thrust. Phil arched her back and cried out with her release, sudden and powerful. Nico didn’t wait for her to recover. Couldn’t wait. He plunged inside her again and again, rocking the heavy table, knocking over glasses and scattering fruit and sending dishes crashing to the floor.
And when Phil cried out for more, wrapping her legs around his back and digging in her heels, Nico let his beast have free reign. He felt himself swell inside of her, heard her startled gasp of surprise, and then lost himself in the pure pleasure of wild desire.
His release made him come undone. Nico’s back arched, his head fell backward and he didn’t have the breath to voice the sounds that erupted in the back of his throat. Fierce spasms swept through his body, so much pleasure it felt almost painful. And it went on and on, until he felt he had drained every bit of his essence into his wife. Philomena. Who echoed his tremors with her own release.
Nico looked down at her, his hair sweeping over his brow and cheeks. She looked up at him with eyes widened in amazement. The wolf inside of him snarled with arrogant satisfaction. Phil reached up a shaking hand and stroked Nico’s jaw, and the wolf retreated to the farthest corner of his being.
Nico gently gathered her up into his arms, keeping himself inside her, loving the way they fit together.
Phil glanced at the floor, uttered a shaky laugh. “We’ve made quite a mess.”
“I’ll clean it up before the servants see it.”
“No, Nico. Not yet. It’s my turn, now.”
It was his turn for his eyes to widen in amazement.
“Sugar and brandy,” Phil murmured. “What will it taste like on your skin?”
He caught the back of her head and kissed her. Slowly, tenderly. “I love your ghosts, Phil.”
She untied his cravat. “And I love your beast, Nico.” She shoved his coat off his shoulders and her fingers flew over the buttons of his shirt.
Life with his ghost-hunter would surely be fascinating.
Eighteen
Nine months to the day later, Phil lay in the tester bed in her old room at Grimspell castle, her newborn baby held securely in her arms. Although Nico had insisted they keep her London town house—for nefarious reasons of his own—she loved being at Grimspell more. Nico had even agreed to move out of his room and into her old one since she loved it so much.
Phil unwrapped her baby and counted the fingers and toes again, smiling with satisfaction when they proved to be all there. Her child had a shock of white hair and a face too scrunched to tell whether he would resemble his mother or his father.
Philomena hoped that he would one day shift into a miniature little wolf, but she supposed she wouldn’t mind if the lad turned out to be a ghost-hunter like herself. Her gift had eventually brought her the greatest happiness she could imagine.
Nico huffed in his sleep, still half sitting in the chair he’d pulled up next to the bed, his head draped over the side of the mattress where he’d collapsed after the baby had been born. She chided herself for worrying that she wouldn’t be able to keep up with his youthful exuberance and ran her hands through his white-streaked brown hair, smiling as his exhausted breathing filled the room. Nico had spent more energy in worrying about the birth than she had spent in the actual doing of it.
Her baby made the most fascinating little moue with his tiny pink lips, and Phil smiled at him with delight. She had worried that giving birth at her age might be difficult, but other than the usual pain, it had all worked out rather splendidly.
Philomena sighed. She had worried about a great many silly things. She had thought she’d spend her mornings searching for new wrinkles, fearful that Nico would notice them. She had thought he was merely infatuated with her and that his love would fade. She had thought that she wouldn’t have the strength to gentle his beast.
“How could I have doubted?” she whispered.
“Doubted what?” Tup replied, suddenly materializing at the foot of the bed.
Phil sat up, careful not to jostle the baby. Tup hadn’t appeared for the last month, and before that his visits had become increasingly sporadic. “Where have you been? I’ve missed you.”
Her ghost-boy gave her a rueful smile. “Ye have been busy, what with the baby comin’ and all.”
Phil cocked her head. Did she detect a note of jealousy in his voice? “I’m never too busy for you, Tup. When I think of how clever and brave you were when we faced the Bargest, well, I’m sure I don’t know what we would have done without you.”
The lad’s spirit manifested even stronger, his face lighting up with joy. “Aw, weren’t nuthin’ much.”
“Do you want to see the baby?”
Tup looked dubiously at the bundle in her arms and then shrugged. “Suppose I oughta.” He floated to her side. “Looks kinda like a monkey.”
Phil tried not to be offended. “He’ll fill out, Tup. You’ll see. Pretty soon the two of you will be sliding down haystacks together.”
Tup ducked his head. “I don’t think so.”
Phil studied the boy. Something was seriously wrong, and yet at the same time strangely right. “Why not?”
“Because it’s time for me to go.”
She blinked stupidly at him. For years she’d tried to help him go to his rest, but he’d just smiled at her and stubbornly refused. And now here he was, telling her… “Why?”
He pulled at his spiky hair. “Cause ye don’t need me no more.”
“Me? Need you?” She’d always thought that the boy haunted her because he’d needed a mother. He’d been abandoned to die on the streets of London, which meant he never had much of a mother to begin with.
Tup’s large hazel eyes suddenly looked older. “Haven’t ye figured it out, Phil? I stayed tied to the earth because of yer need, not mine. And now that ye have yer own son, ye won’t be needing me anymore.”
Guilt washed through her. All this time, she had thought he needed her. And now Phil suddenly realized how very much she’d needed him. Tears gathered in her eyes and rolled down the sides of her face. The joy she felt at the birth of her child was now tempered with an overwhelming sadness at the loss of her Tup. But to have him finally go to his rest, botheration, wasn’t that what she’d always wanted? “I shall miss you.”
Tup sniffed. “I’ll miss ye too. Ye’re the only mum I’ve ever known, and ye were a right good ’un.”
Phil’s breath hitched and she pulled her son to her chest.
“But don’t be so sad. Ye’ll be seeing me again one day.”
It took all of her willpower not to burst into tears and beg him to stay. As she would one day do with the child in her arms, she had to let him go if she loved him.
