“Are you sure you don’t want a big wedding like mine?”
Jack grinned. “The family and I enjoyed yours just months ago, and besides, you know my father was never, ever going to give his blessing, no matter what, not for Damon, not for any man. I was giving him an extra year to get used to the idea, but it just wasn’t happening. So, fait accompli instead, which is more exciting and fun!”
They didn’t run out of the room, which would have drawn people’s attention, but they did move rather quickly to the entrance and then started running along the curb to Damon’s coach. Jacqueline was laughing, so happy she couldn’t help it. And Damon’s driver had been warned, so the moment they were in the coach, it started moving, and they started kissing. She couldn’t help that either! It had been far too long since she’d seen him, tasted him, felt him in her arms.
“Wait—” he tried.
“No!”
He chuckled. “Just for a moment.”
He was getting something out of his pocket, and he brought her hand to his lips to kiss it before he slipped a ring on her finger. The beautiful large emerald was surrounded by so many diamonds, Jack laughed.
“It’s the perfect wedding ring to receive from a pirate,” she teased. “Are you sure it’s not ill-gotten booty?”
He smiled tenderly. “My father gave it to me, a Chandler family heirloom. They are expecting us. They were as hopeful as I that you would say yes. They’ve missed so much of my life, they are thrilled to be part of our elopement. We have their blessing, at least.”
“You know we might have to marry again someday for my parents.”
“If they ever accept me, certainly.”
“My mother approves. She did invite you to the ball, after all.”
He rolled his eyes. “Just so she could slap me.”
Jack grinned. “You had to expect that, and it may even happen a few more times. But she wants me to be happy, and she could see that I am with you.”
“Are you?”
She kissed him soundly to answer him, but it wasn’t long before she wanted more. “Can the driver go any faster?” she asked breathlessly.
“I think this is as fast as we can go at night without running off the road. Besides, considering what we’re doing, I don’t want to face a clergyman and my parents just now.”
She laughed and reached under her gown to pull off her drawers before climbing up on his lap to make love to him. The bouncing of the coach was exceptionally nice once she felt him inside her!
In the throes of passion, she cried out, “Faster!”
“I told you the driver—”
“Not the driver. I meant you!”
“Now that I can happily accommodate.”
Chapter Fifty-Two
THEY ARE ARRIVING,” DAMON warned.
It was morning. Jacqueline had been awake for only a few minutes but had heard the carriages and voices below their window, too. She probably shouldn’t have sent off that missive to her parents last night, right before the wedding.
Damon’s parents had welcomed her warmly and led them into the parlor, where they’d awakened the clergyman who had been standing by all evening. The room had been filled with every flower on the estate! Although the man was a bit sleepy, he’d performed the ceremony with dispatch, but in a moment of confusion he’d asked, “Who gives away this woman?”
But Jacqueline had laughed. “I do!”
After she and Damon had taken their vows to be man and wife, they’d raced upstairs to their bedchamber. Not that they hadn’t already made love twice in his coach on the way to Essex. But missing him as much as she did while they were apart had made her insatiable, and she hadn’t gotten her fill of him yet.
“I’m not leaving this bed,” Jacqueline said now.
She climbed on top of Damon to straddle his hips and was only a little surprised that he was already hard enough for her to mount. She grinned down at him and wiggled her hips.
“Do I need to teach you that you should let me lure you into—”
“Do I need to divorce you already?” she countered.
He went very still. She punched his shoulder. “You’re the one who needs teaching about what’s a tease and what isn’t. You’re never getting rid of me—Bastard.” She giggled as she said it.
He rolled his eyes. “You really do find that funny, don’t you?”
“Don’t you? Especially since your real father has already legitimized you as his firstborn and heir. By the by, I like him and your mother. At least one of us can say that about the other’s parents.”
“I’m sure I’ll like yours—someday.”
She chuckled. “Probably not.” Then she gasped as he twitched inside her.
A lambent light entered her eyes just before she leaned down to put her lips to his. She hoped, she really did, that this need to devour him would settle down eventually . . . well, at least settle down to moderation. Once a day, maybe twice. Had she really thought when she was on the ship with him in a sea becalmed but with her passions running wild that one more week of him would have sufficed? Such a silly notion.
The kiss got hot. Gooseflesh spread across her bare back where his hands moved. They were both naked, never having put on any nightclothes last night, even when he got up to pour them wine, or when she got up to stoke the fire in the wee hours when it got a little chilly in the room. They had made love for most of the night. Maybe it wasn’t morning and was afternoon instead?
He finally gripped her hips for a harder thrust, but he gasped and tried to flip her over. She fought to stay mounted. He let her win. She rewarded him by grinding her hips to his, but she got the reward, that beautiful explosion of sensual delight.
And the gasp “Oh . . . my . . . God!”
He laughed as she threw back her head to enjoy the full luxury of that climax, but then he did the gasping as he followed with his own. She ended up staring at him and marveling once more that he was hers. She hadn’t been glad of the day she’d met him, but if she’d known then what she knew now, she would have been. So many variables could have revealed the truth sooner if he hadn’t been desperate to help the father who raised him, if he hadn’t hated James for taking his mother away, if he hadn’t had to get a pirate back in prison one way or another . . . if . . . if . . .
She shared one with him now. “Half of my rage when we first met was because I wanted you even then, but knew I couldn’t have you.”
“Do I need to say again how sorry—?”
She put a finger to his lips and smiled. “No, but you can promise never to keep any secrets from me again.” She gave him a wicked grin. “Imagine how much sooner we could have been doing this if you’d been honest from the start.”
“Or you might have killed me.”
“I had my chance and merely gave you a paltry wound. What does that tell you?”