One Lonely Night (Regency Erotica) Read online

  One Lonely Night

  Catherine Gayle

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  One Lonely Night

  Copyright © 2011 by Catherine Gayle

  Cover Design by Adrienne Thorne

  Published by Night Shift Publishing at Smashwords

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without written permission.

  For more information: [email protected]

  Vivian rolled over and tried to block out the sounds coming from the suite next to hers. It proved to be far from an easy task she’d set for herself.

  The walls of Quinton Abbey were quite thick. She’d never had this problem before while here, but tonight she’d left her window to allow some of the cool, summer air to come into her chamber. Apparently this couple, whoever they were, had done the same and were rather enjoying themselves.

  Their moans and groans were making it impossible for Vivi to sleep. She rolled over, put her pillow over her ears, and wondered what it would be like to enjoy the marriage bed with quite such vigor.

  Her husband, Lord Tucker Flynn, had been a very caring lover during the whole of their six month marriage. He was always so gentle with her, so sweet. And it was perfectly lovely when they coupled—pleasurable, even, despite the dire warnings Vivi’s mother had given her the night before her wedding. But there had never been anything between them that would cause such…such unbridled enthusiasm, for lack of a better term.

  The amorous activity of her neighbors had Vivi in quite a state, indeed. Hot. Tingling. Achy with a need she couldn’t explain.

  She was half tempted to knock at Tucker’s door for relief, but she doubted their typical lovemaking would provide much of a reprieve from her current state of affairs.

  When the woman’s erotic scream broke through Vivian’s pillow and a flood of wetness surged straight between her legs, there was no doubt in her mind any longer. Nothing Tucker would ever dream of doing with her could possibly satisfy the raging need currently building inside her.

  Vivi tossed the pillow aside. It was useless. Besides, the man was now groaning again. Perhaps they were finished for the night. She could hope.

  Indeed, the activity next to her soon seemed to come to a close. No more thumping and bumping. No more rhythmic, insensible moans. Just quiet. Blessed, blissful quiet.

  Thank goodness.

  But Vivi was still so overly warm, she couldn’t possibly get to sleep. After laying there, trying to do so but failing miserably, she tossed back the counterpane and walked out onto the portico just outside her room, drawing the door almost to a close behind her. The nighttime air felt good on her skin. She lifted her hot, sticky mane of curls off the back of her neck and let the breeze cool her down, closing her eyes to enjoy the sensation more fully.

  A light wind kicked up and fluttered over her thin nightrail, tickling against the sensitive flesh underneath. She wrapped her arms over her chest and looked out at the grounds below her to the sound of muted voices in the next room. Her room was directly over the rose gardens, which almost glimmered in the bright light of the moon tonight.

  The muffled talk turned to a woman’s gasp, and then they were out on the portico next to her. Vivi dashed quickly behind a potted fern and pinched her eyes closed. She’d die of mortification if they knew she’d been privy to their encounters tonight, and she couldn’t get back inside her room without alerting them to her presence.

  Their amorous pursuits were soon underway again. “Is this good, love? Is this what you wanted?” the strained, masculine voice asked. Was that Lord Lipscombe? It certainly sounded like him. Vivi was tempted to peek, just to see for certain.

  But no. She couldn’t.

  She shouldn’t.

  But in the end, she couldn’t resist. Moving her head just so, she could see through the fronds of the fern. And it was most decidedly Lord and Lady Lipscombe on the portico next to her. Good Lord, but he was a big man. He looked even larger in the nude.

  The viscount had his wife bent over the railing, entering her from behind. Vivi’s eyes widened at the thought of Tucker doing such a thing to her. Her pulse raced and suddenly, she found it difficult to take a deep breath.

  Then Lord Lipscombe guided his wife’s hand to her mound and had her touching herself while he continued thrusting into her. His hands moved to her full breasts and he pinched her nipples. Vivi gasped as her own breasts suddenly felt strangely heavy and needy. Thankfully, Lady Lipscombe was currently in the midst of making far more noise than she had, yet again. They didn’t notice her.

  She moved ever-so-slightly closer to them, careful not to disturb anything. Lord Lipscombe kept molding and tugging at his wife’s breasts. Vivi’s hands went to her own, pinching her extremely taut, swollen nipples through the sheer fabric of her nightrail. It was nothing short of miraculous that she didn’t moan aloud her relief. Her pulse roared as one hand moved lower, lifting the hem of her gown and delving inside to her most secret place.

  “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 kno
cked 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.

  Goodness. How had she been married to Tucker for as long as she had been without realizing such sensations were possible? Her husband must not be as experienced in the art of intimacy as Lord Lipscombe.

  Too bad for Vivi. Oh, what she wouldn’t give for a night with a man who could teach her such manners of release.

  Blast, she shouldn’t allow herself to think like that. She loved Tucker. Dearly. And she wouldn’t ever want another man’s touch. Vivi closed her eyes and leaned back against the wall, trying to regain her composure. In a moment, she’d go back inside. Now that she’d found some relief for the ache in her sex, perhaps she’d be able to sleep.

  At least she would if the Lipscombes had finished with their nighttime adventures.

  Something hot grabbed her hand and Vivi’s eyes flew open. Tucker? Somehow, she contained her cry of surprise. Heat raced to her face. Had he been watching her? Had he seen her unthinkable behavior?

  He pressed a finger from his other hand to her lips. “Shh, sweetheart.” Vivi nodded her agreement and he drew her fingers to his lips, drawing them inside his mouth.

  Gracious heavens, those fingers had just been inside her sex, a place where nothing but his member had been before. He licked and suckled, with each draw acting as a pull to her core. Somehow, a new flood coated her private area, reaching to her curls. She couldn’t take her eyes from him if she tried.

  Not that she tried.

  Then he leaned against her, pressing her back against the wall. Tucker’s hot staff pressed hard into her belly. The flap of his breeches was down, so nothing stood between them but her paper-thin nightrail. He leaned his head down until his steamy breath tickled over her ear. “Such sweetness from your garden,” he murmured. “I’ll have to drink from the source tonight.”

  Vivi shivered at his words, and her heart took up an unnatural rhythm. Could he do that?

  Did she want him to?

  Before she could make up her mind, Tucker took hold of her hands and pulled her back inside her chamber, shutting the door behind him. When the darkness of the room engulfed them, he cupped her face and brought her lips up to meet his. This was far from his usual sweet and tender kiss. It was hard and hot, and his tongue sought entrance to her mouth almost immediately. Vivi stood on her tiptoes and wrapped her arms around his neck to steady herself from the shock of his behavior.

  As his tongue ravished her mouth, Tucker moved his hands down her arms, over her back, and down to squeeze her bottom. He pressed her closer against him, settling her against the saddle of his hips and the pulsating heat of his loins. Then the moist warmth of his mouth moved down her neck, trailing a path of open-mouthed kisses over her collarbone and breasts. He nipped ever-so-gently against the side of her breast through her thin nightrail and Vivi jumped with a thrill.

  Never before had she imagined Tucker, her gentle lover, would bite her. Never before had she imagined she would want him to.

  “You enjoyed that display, did you?” he growled, picking her up and carrying her to the large four-poster bed. Tucker parted her legs with his knee when he came down over her. “You liked watching him fuck his wife?”

  Heat burned her cheeks, but not as much heat as pooled at the apex of her thighs. But what use was there in denying it? “Yes,” Vivi said on a shaky breath.

  Pulling the nightrail over her head, Tucker dragged the palms of his hands over her swollen, aching nipples and she cried out.

  “I watched you touching yourself. Pinching here.” He closed his lips over one painfully sensitive nub and scratched it with his teeth, and Vivi arched her back into him while biting down on her lower lip. “And pulling here.” His tongue shot out and wet her other teat, then he blew on it with cool air, and she moaned—one of those deep, throaty moans from next door she’d been so intrigued by in the first place. “And rubbing hard down here.”

  Tucker moved down her body. Without even knowing what she was doing, she squirmed away from the intimate touch she knew was coming. But he took hold
of her hips and held her in place, then delved his tongue where no tongue had gone before. It was the most exquisite sensation Vivi had ever known. He swirled and sucked, nipped and prodded, licked and scraped—and she, all the while, could do nothing but writhe and grasp and moan.

  But Tucker didn’t stop there. Vivi tried to catch her breath while her husband worked his fingers inside her, constantly using his lips and teeth and tongue over her button. She failed. There was no point in attempting to breathe. Yet again, that crashing response built within her and then crested, and she feared her scream was of the ear-splitting variety.

  After a she came down from floating amongst the clouds, Vivi realized Tucker was no longer in the bed with her. She couldn’t let him give her such pleasure without finding his own. Once she regained the bones in her arms, she pushed herself up on her elbows.

  “I’ll be back with you in a moment, my love,” he said from near the hearth. One of his heavy boots hit the floor. “We are far from finished tonight.” His tone carried a promise.

  She shivered at the thought of what else might await her. After all, she’d never experienced such a thing with her husband before. Heavens, she’d thought him unschooled in such things. Now it seemed, perhaps, that he simply hadn’t schooled her in them before now.

  The soft sounds of him padding barefoot over the hardwood floor greeted her only moments later. Her pulse picked up with each of his steps as she anticipated his arrival. When he reached her side, he leaned over the bed and kissed her again. Her own musky essence mixed with the normal spicy taste of him on her tongue.

  With him standing there next to her, fully nude, a truly wicked thought crossed her mind. She decided to act upon it without asking Tucker for permission.

  Vivi reached out and took his shaft in her hand. He groaned, but deepened the kiss. It felt soft and smooth, yet incredibly powerful and hard against her palm. He didn’t seem to mind, so she closed her fist over him, squeezing just a bit.