“ I’m calling it a night, Holbrook,” Lord Tucker Flynn said, pushing his cards across the table as he shoved his chair back from the table. “You’ll have to find some other dunce to cheat the rest of the night.”
The earl looked around the darkened room at the stragglers still hanging about. At this late hour, few remained, save those gentlemen such as Holbrook (if he could truly be called that) who had no wife to join above stairs. Well, truth be told, Holbrook had a wife. Just not one above stairs.
The rest of them, in general, were unmarried. Tucker and Viscount Raynesford, however, were exceptions to that general rule.
“ Raynesford,” Holbrook called out, “you look like a man eager to lose some coin to my superior skill. Take over for Flynn.”
The viscount didn’t even bother to look up from his book on horse breeding. “Not tonight. You’d do better trying my brother.” His voice was a slow drawl as he turned the page. “But you’d have to return to London to do that.”
Holbrook cursed beneath his breath then scoured about for someone else to swindle. Tucker could do nothing but chuckle and shake his head as he left the undercroft and headed up the stairs. Why would a libertine such as Holbrook even agree to come to such a house party? He would be bored to tears in no time, and there were no lightskirts about for him to chase after.
Luckily, Tucker had no intention of chasing after anyone’s skirts, save those of his wife. He and Vivian had been married now for about half a year. He’d attempted to slowly woo his bride, gradually teaching her the seductive arts. She’d been a willing and ready student, to this point, and very responsive even if a bit inhibited. But he’d not wanted to take things too far, too soon. The last thing he needed was for Vivi to scare off and bar him from her bed as his sister-in-law had done with his brother. Gideon had told him horror stories of months spent trying to woo his wife again after he’d asked too much of her in the early stages of their marriage.
Perhaps this little visit to Quinton Abbey was exactly what Tucker needed to move things to the next step with Vivi. A change in locale might encourage her to be more experimental, more adventurous.
That’s what he’d been hoping for, at least, when he accepted the invitation.
Tucker rounded the final corner in the spiraling maze of hallways, then opened the door to the suite he and Vivi shared. No light filtered beneath the doorway to her chamber. She must have already gone to bed.
He knocked lightly. No response. Tucker knocked again, a bit louder this time. Still nothing. Was she already asleep? He hadn’t intended to stay away from her so late.
Blast Holbrook. The lecher had distracted him from his purpose.
Still, there were some very intriguing ways he could wake his wife.
Tucker grinned at the images racing through his mind and pushed Vivi’s door open. Her bedclothes were rumpled and tossed about, and a pillow lay on the floor near a chintz armchair, but Vivi was not in the room. The door leading out to her portico was cracked open. Perhaps she had stepped outside for a bit of air. Well, that gave him yet another interesting manner in which he could surprise her.
Tiptoeing across the floor so as not to alert her to his presence, Tucker carefully made his way to the cracked doorway.
Then he stopped cold. His pulse roared to life, pounding through his veins faster than he had ever experienced before.
The unmistakable sounds of a couple in the midst of a passionate encounter came into the room. He’d be damned if anyone was going to make a cuckold of him. But who here would, other than perhaps Holbrook? He’d left the earl down in the undercroft.
Whoever the bastard was, Tucker would rip him limb from limb.
Tucker peeked through the crack in the doorway, searching for Vivian. Finally, he found her, tucked neatly behind a potted fern. His jaw dropped open when he saw her though-she had one hand on her breast while the other had her nightrail lifted to her waist as she desperately frigged away at her mound. Her cheeks looked flushed in the moonlight and her breaths came heavy and shallow, but there was no one with her.
Instantly, Tucker’s rod was hard as granite from the view before him. He adjusted his breeches. Then he adjusted his positioning so he could determine where the couple in heat might be. There were most decidedly male grunts mixed in with the feminine sounds.
Finally, he spotted them. Lipscombe and his wife were out on their portico, naked as jaybirds, straight in the line of Vivi’s eyes. Tucker stood there for several long moments, thunderstruck. His sweet, little wife, still so very innocent and shy in their lovemaking, was covertly spying on a peer as he did an upright with his lady.
He’d never have imagined it of her. Perhaps his hopes for this fortnight were not in vain.
Lipscombe increased the pace of his thrusts and Vivi’s hand kept time with him. When the viscount pinched his wife’s teats, Vivi followed suit with her own breasts.
Tucker couldn’t take just watching any more. He undid the flap of his breeches and pulled out his painfully hard shaft, then stroked himself while he watched the scandalous scene before him.
Lady Lipscombe let out a scream of pleasure. Moments later, her husband followed her into bliss with his own shout of release. Vivi had yet to find hers, however. When the viscount carried his little wife back into their suite, Tucker’s wife still stood on the portico, frenziedly rubbing against her nubbin with a tortured look on her face.
Could she not achieve her petite mort on her own? Then again, now that Tucker thought about it, he wasn’t entirely certain she’d ever experienced such pleasure. Not really. She always smiled afterward and told him how lovely it had been, but was she ever in rapture from his touches? Not that he could recall. This was a lapse he’d have to rectify. Soon. Not to mention often.
Yet here, standing out in the open air where anyone might chance upon her from down in the gardens or standing out on their own porticos, she was attempting to bring herself to a pleasure she’d never known before. Tucker stood back and watched, careful not to disturb her studied efforts as he wanked his yard.
Then finally, her breath came out in wild little gusts and soft, high-pitched sounds came from her throat. Vivi’s eyes rolled back in her head and she closed them, then leaned back against the wall as her hands came to rest by her sides.
Magnificent. Tucker couldn’t wait to see her spend like that when he’d brought her to it.
He wouldn’t have to wait long.