Bound with Passion Read online

  “No—we won’t be needing anything—thank you very much—away you go—thank you!” Trevor hustled them out of the room and shut the door behind them, flipping the lock and turning to face Georgie and James with a look of sheer delight, accompanied by those hot, panting breaths.

  As if he were introducing himself for the first time, Trevor came away from the door and slowly walked toward them. “Mr. Rushford. Lady Mayson. The pleasure is all mine.”

  James watched as Trevor closed the distance. Past thinking, he reached for Georgie, wrapped his arm around her waist, and pulled her roughly against him, his front pressed into her back. He felt the rippling waves of excitement transfer between them. He slid his other hand along her left arm and then up to rest around her neck, fondling her with a loose chokehold. She hummed happily at the rough treatment.

  His cock had been thick and dully aroused for hours, but now that he had her pressed to him, watching Trevor approach with all of that predatory greed, it was hard steel against the soft cleft of Georgie’s arse.

  Stroking the satiny skin of her throat and collarbone, James watched how Trevor’s eyes followed the movement of his fingers, like a bird of prey follows the movement of an unwitting field mouse.

  “Do you want to make love to your wife, Lord Mayson?” James gripped her neck harder and let his other hand slide lower, trailing from her waist to between her legs, settling in with a rude, possessive grab. Georgie exhaled, and the release of air only put more pressure against James’s hard staff, as if she were deflating slightly to fit even more securely into his hold.

  Trevor was now standing mere inches in front of them. Georgie whimpered gently—so out of character, James thought, to see her and feel her against him like this, pliant. She was like a cat waking up from a long and satisfying nap. She raised her arms, arched her back, and stretched her hands so they reached behind James’s neck and clasped there.

  “Yes, Lord Mayson,” she purred. “Will you make an honest woman of me at last?”

  James watched—and felt—as her body responded when Trevor placed his hands reverently on her breasts. James kept his grip firm at her neck and at the hot juncture of her thighs, the better to complement the soft tenderness of Trevor’s hands.

  “Look at you . . . ” Trevor’s voice was vibrating with need. “Your breasts are warm and full in my hands. Are you ready at last to be my lawfully wedded wife, Lady Georgiana?”

  James held her to him, feeling every vibration of her pleasure, every hesitant breath, every small shudder as Trevor peeled away the last of her resistance with those gentle touches and those clear words. Leaning his head down, James caught Georgie’s earlobe between his teeth and began to nip and suck at the tender flesh.

  “Answer your husband,” James demanded.

  Georgie’s body reminded him of the crucible steel he’d seen in Sheffield: all of that rigid strength finally burning so hot that it nearly begged to be bent and molded into something new and useful, unlike what it had always been.

  She emphasized the arch of her back, pushing her arse against James’s cock and her breasts more firmly into Trevor’s hands. “Yes . . . ” Her voice was low and strong. “Yes.” She let her head fall against James’s shoulder. Trevor leaned in and began kissing the exposed swell of her bosom.

  Whatever happened in the future, James was going to make sure that this night was exactly as each of them wished it to be—unsullied by what had happened in the past or what might or might not happen in the future—because he wanted this and he was going to have it. He wanted it for Trevor; he wanted it for Georgie; he wanted it for himself.

  James lifted his hand from her throat and moved his fingers to her jaw, firmly tilting her head so her lips met his. He needn’t have worried about being forceful; she was as supple as a spring twig. Her kiss was dreamy at first, distracted as she was by the hand between her legs, the hands on her breasts, the lips that were now kissing the edge of her bodice and hinting where they would go next.

  Then her kiss began to awaken, her tongue seeking his, her lips tasting his. She pulled her lips away and cried out. James looked down over her shoulder to see that Trevor had freed one of her breasts and had taken it into his mouth with greedy pleasure.

  James stared in wonder, filled with love. It was hard to explain, even to himself. Perhaps a normal person would be jealous or harbor some secret fear that Trevor would love him less. But when Trevor looked up and caught his eye—Georgie’s breast firmly pulled between his lips—James had never felt more treasured. Whether it was because Trevor had an infinite supply of kindness and a generous heart, or it was just how the two men were wired together, James felt that loving this man and this woman brought him closer to both of them, deeper in love with both of them.

  Obviously sensing the depths of James’s feelings, Trevor pulled his lips away from Georgie’s breast and brought his mouth up to kiss James. Everything was in that kiss. Trevor dug his strong fingers into the back of James’s hair, kissing him with a near-violent clash of teeth and tongue and lips, with Georgie wedged between them.

  James reveled in it, but after a few seconds he wanted Georgie and Trevor to be part of the same circuit. He took his lips away and turned Georgie’s jaw another inch so she was now poised to receive Trevor’s kiss.

  “Kiss your wife, my love.”

  James nearly spent into his breeches when Trevor’s mouth met Georgie’s, their breath and lips so close to his own. Georgie’s hips canted back against James; Georgie’s mouth pressed against Trevor’s; Trevor’s fingers dug and gripped the back of James’s head. The three of them were suddenly one, attached to each another in this intimate, binding embrace.

  A few seconds later, all three of them glassy eyed, open mouthed, and panting, they stared at one another with all the heat and love that had built up among them. James spoke first.

  “May I prepare her for you, Trevor, as I’ve long wished?”

  Georgie made another whimpering sound in anticipation. Trevor smiled, then leaned in and kissed James, slow and deep, and then moved his mouth to Georgie’s and kissed her in the same way, both languorous and possessive. Mine . . . and mine, he seemed to say. These were the kisses of a man who had everything he wanted and was looking forward to finally indulging himself at his leisure.

  “Yes, Mr. Rushford,” Trevor said as he stroked Georgie’s bottom lip with this thumb. “I believe it’s time for my wife to have her next lesson in the art of slow lovemaking.”

  Georgie awoke feeling like a well-loved book, slipped snugly between two larger volumes of the finest leather. Her smooth skin felt sensitive from overuse as she moved slightly to test the soreness in her hips and shoulders. James was still at her back; the rough dusting of hair along his chest that narrowed down to his stomach felt familiar and foreign all at once. Trevor was at her front, his chest near her bare breasts. She breathed in the entwined scents of all three of them, quickly evoking and reigniting the previous night’s passion. James and Trevor had indeed taught her many new variations of lovemaking, very slow and very satisfying.

  Trevor began to stir, probably sensing she was awake; he was already so attuned to the subtle messages of her body, it was almost frightening. During the night, even after they had snuffed all the candles and collapsed onto the bed for much-needed rest in complete darkness, Trevor had somehow known how to best adjust her shoulder, her knee, her wrist. He moved her body in ways that were more comfortable than she herself knew how to move.

  Even now, she was surprised at how blissfully content she was, that she wasn’t stiff from sleeping with two men plastered against her. In the past, she had always preferred to slip away after she had taken her pleasure. She had seen that supplicating look in Trevor’s eye—after that wild night beneath the moon and trees at Mayfield House, then again in the carriage when she’d bidden him good night—and she’d avoided him ever since.

  She’d thought that would be the end of it and would set the tone for their future relatio
nship—physical contact yes, emotional contact no. But even though this large suite of rooms included three separate sleeping chambers, it had never occurred to Georgie to leave the intimacy of their large, shared bed afterward. Whether out of respect or caution, Trevor had avoided any emotional declarations during their lovemaking.

  Trevor began kissing her neck, whispering a tender, “Good morning, my wife.”

  She shivered as he made his way past her shoulder, until she eventually heard and felt and could nearly taste when he kissed James right near her ear.

  “Good morning, my husband,” Trevor whispered.

  Georgie had never considered herself prone to poetic fancies, but when Trevor and James spoke to one another in that intimate, loving way—so open, so honest—a hot and needy desire bloomed deep in Georgie’s belly. She suspected it was something a poet might describe as yearning.

  But the yearning, as if it sensed that it might never be fulfilled, quickly transformed into the much more easily satiable white-hot lust. When Trevor said “Good morning, my husband,” and the sound of his sweet kiss against James’s lips was so close to Georgie’s ear, she wanted them both deep inside her again, as they had been last night.

  She must have moaned at the prospect, because Trevor finished kissing James and lifted his head onto his upturned palm and stared down at her. “Are you hungry again already, my lioness?” he asked as he trailed the tip of his finger down her exposed shoulder and let it slowly pull the edge of the white linen sheet away from her body.

  James began kissing the exposed flesh as soon as Trevor moved the sheet out of his way, and she reveled in the heated trail he left behind.

  She stretched and rolled to her back, still snug between them, like one of the big African cats that Trevor liked to compare her to. Throughout the night, he had called her lioness, or approved of her satisfied purring, or noted her catlike grace. At this moment, as she felt her muscles stretch and awaken against the warm flesh of these two beautiful men, she didn’t think she would balk even if he called her kitten.

  “I think you’ve both cast some sort of languorous spell on me.” She yawned. “I have never felt this lazy in my life. I feel as though I could lie here in this hotel bed with your bodies pressed against mine for the rest of my life and never miss much of anything.”

  She had joked last night that Trevor should buy a stake in the company that manufactured the French letters they were using to prevent a pregnancy. The salesman had assured Trevor he’d acquired more than enough to last for several months. Trevor had smiled in the dim candlelight last night and said, “I didn’t bother telling the poor man that we would be depleting our supply at four times the normal rate—with two ravenous men, and the insatiable woman who wanted both of them twice over.”

  Trevor smoothed the palm of his hand across the curve of her bare belly, and she arched her back to meet it. James kissed her shoulder again and then her breasts. Within a few moments, both men were poised to enter her yet again—this time with Trevor at her back and James face-to-face.

  Their bodies—James’s and Trevor’s—were so different and satisfied Georgie in such distinctive ways. James was all muscle and sinew, more precise somehow, lean and forceful when he thrust into her, deep and strong and direct like a powerful oar slicing through still water. Trevor was broader, both physically and emotionally; he encompassed her, filled her, surrounded her. She felt like Trevor could wrap all three of them in some magical protective layer.

  The contrast and the combination were indescribably fulfilling. Selfishly, of course, Georgie experienced peak after peak of sexual satisfaction from the physical completion of having them both inside her at the same time. But she also adored how they rubbed up against each other inside her, how they mated with each other just as much as they mated with her when they were all joined like that. She could actually feel them enjoying each other’s thrusts and pulls within the adjacent chambers of her body. It was spectacular.

  Over the years, Georgie had come to see her sexual appetite as simply one more thing that made her different from other people. Perhaps there was a bit of immature bravado in it—look at me, I’m bizarre and I don’t need your approval! She hadn’t been particularly interested in men—or women for that matter—until she left home. Life at Camburton Castle had seemed full and satisfying with her love of horseback riding and athletic pursuits. Then, when she arrived in Cairo, she’d discovered there were all manner of ways to find sexual satisfaction on her own terms, and she’d set about doing so.

  In the midst of those tawdry, delicious assignations, she let herself be wild. She let loose what she thought of as her primitive self. There was no shame in it. She loved the raw hunger, the scratching and crying out, yet . . . it was confined, delimited somehow. Those experiences were restricted to the physical. In fact she’d thought they were entirely physical, like eating or breathing. Of course you could have a particularly delicious meal or a spectacular ride that left your lungs burning with the pleasure of being alive, but then . . . it was over. She’d always thought there was something unseemly about constantly chasing after more.

  So, when she had let her primitive self out with Trevor and James—exposing herself under the moon, and then again in the carriage—she had assumed that they would either be appalled or, at the very least, would wish to keep that type of lovemaking as a private, sordid secret. Or perhaps separate, somehow.

  How could she have been so wrong?

  They were jubilant! “The grittier the better,” James had growled last night. Trevor had begged her to share her imaginings; James had baited her to think up the most perverse things she could.

  Then, when she had suggested something deliciously vulgar, instead of revulsion or disdain, James had raised a slightly disappointed eyebrow and replied, “Oh, is that all? You wish to have Trevor put that into that orifice while I do that with my tongue and he does this with his hands? Is that it, then?” And then she had dissolved into a fit of laughter that left her breathless and joyful.

  And then, dear God, the two men had somehow magically transformed all of that giddy, innocent joy into hot licks of passion all over again. Nothing was ever too much, nothing was ever wrong. Who knew that marriage could be so liberating?

  Trevor no longer had a single doubt. The way Georgie bent and bowed against him or leaned forward to get closer to James or demanded what she wanted from their eager hands—this was all the evidence he’d needed to prove Georgie was deeply committed to both of them and this marriage, that she loved them in a spiritual, consummating fashion. He didn’t need the words when her body communicated so plainly the nature and depth of her satisfaction.

  But for her own sake, he desperately wanted her to declare the truth of her feelings.

  They spent the rest of the morning in bed, fulfilling her every whim, but by noon it was necessary to head to the docks and board their ship to Cairo.

  More than twelve hours of rapture the previous night and that morning had turned Georgiana, Lady Mayson into a mellow, sensual companion. Trevor had thought she would ignore their married state, or give it only a passing acknowledgement, once the formalities of the wedding were finished. Quite the opposite. Georgie reveled in being Lady Mayson, which afforded her the right to touch or grab or lightly caress Lord Mayson—and their dear friend James—with frequency and openness.

  As she introduced herself to the captain of the ship, for example, she reached for Trevor’s hand and smiled joyfully, introducing him as her darling husband. Then, with equal enthusiasm, she released Trevor and put her hand firmly on James’s upper arm. “And this is our dear, dear companion, Mr. James Rushford.”

  It had becoming quite the thing for friends to travel together for a few weeks or even a few months—if they could afford it—after their wedding. Of course, Bonaparte had gummed up the works for any of the more traditional continental visits of his parents’ day, such as Rome or Paris, but the fact remained that the three of them traveling together di
d not raise any eyebrows. Usually it was a maiden aunt or sister of the bride who joined the party, in case the newlyweds encountered any rough patches, but as far as anyone knew, James Rushford was a perfectly appropriate friend of the family.

  Trevor had booked two cabins, one with a large bed—or rather, large by shipboard standards—and the other a smaller, adjacent one for a valet or child, ostensibly for James, according to the ship’s manifest.

  Those two weeks aboard the Magnolia would stay in Trevor’s mind and memory for the rest of his life as some of the most enlightening he had ever known. The ship’s passengers were a mix of British, Dutch, French, Spanish, Turkish, and Egyptian nationals, with a smattering of Russians, Danes, and a few others. They weren’t all wealthy or aristocratic, by any means, but there was a camaraderie that sprang up among them nonetheless. After a day or two, it was not only the ship that was free of King and country, but it seemed as if everyone on board was likewise emancipated. National rivalries forgotten, the thirty or so men and a few women would laugh and exchange stories about their childhood homes or favorite music or the running of their farms or schools or businesses. There were also a few quieter types—most likely with the Foreign Office, even if they never said so outright.

  It struck Trevor as an egalitarian, utopian ideal, one he wished to recreate when he returned to Derbyshire. Georgie’s mother had long held a similarly all-encompassing view of the world, and over the summer months she transformed Camburton Castle into an artistic colony to foster it. Trevor wished to do the same at Mayfield House, only focusing his efforts on agriculture, science, and social reform. If it were possible for thirty people from so many different countries to find common ground aboard a small ship, perhaps it was possible on a much larger scale.

  “What are you writing so furiously?” Georgie asked quietly, a few days before they were due to arrive in Egypt. He looked up from his notebook, Georgie’s voice immediately distracting him from the complex equations he’d been working on. He’d awoken early, inspired to jot down copious notes after pondering a discussion on the latest drainage techniques he’d had with his new Dutch friend Pete Voorhees the previous night.