Read Online Bared to the Viscount (The Rites of May Book 1) by Lara Archer - Free Book Online
Authors: Lara Archer
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morning.
Now he was skulking in shrubberies, watching other people copulate, getting himself off quite spectacularly fantasizing about the vicar’s sister sucking his cock—and had done it where that very girl herself had been able to watch him.
It was a good thing the path in front of him hadn’t been clear. If he had been able to run after Mary, if he had been able to catch her, what on earth had he been planning to do?
He liked to think it would simply be to beg her once more to marry him, but he suspected that would have come somewhere down the list after trying to rip the clothes off of her.
Damn.
His whole world had shifted straight off its axis, and he didn’t know if he could ever set it right again.
* * *
Mary fled through the woods as fast as the moonlight would permit her, stumbling over rocks and roots and still not slowing.
Why had she come out here at all? It was just that the air in the vicarage had seemed unbreathable after the viscount left. The thought of the woods and the dark and the cool air had called to her, and she’d come out, thinking only to walk for a time to clear her head and soothe the aching pulses of her heart.
Even then, it had been clear to her she’d done the right thing in turning down the viscount’s proposal. Duty alone had compelled him to ask for her hand. Lord knows he’d looked so ill at the prospect she’d thought one of his loved ones must be dying.
So what if some deep-buried part of her clawed at her brain with the thought that she could just say “yes,” and have him with her, have him share her bed and her body forever.
She would never listen to that voice.
John was her friend, and she’d never let his small lapse in judgment in the woods make him miserable for the rest of his life.
And now—well, she was more sure than ever that a marriage between them could only be a mistake. His desire for her was as thoughtless and base as the sexton’s lust for Mrs. Trumbull.
If she’d harbored even the slightest hope that his behavior in the woods had had something to do with her in particular rather than with circumstance—the vines that had exposed her legs, the thorns that had pulled his head against her bosom—well, that hope was utterly dashed.
He was a man. And men were mindless brutes when it came to female flesh. Even her flesh, meager as it was.
That was proved once and for all by John’s reaction to Mrs. Trumbull’s mouth around another man’s member and her wantonly spread thighs.
The older woman was an even less appropriate object for a viscount’s affections than a parson’s virgin sister. But the sight of Mrs. Trumbull’s flesh—even in the faint light of the moon, in the woods in the middle of the night—had been enough to make the viscount do just as he’d done with Mary herself on the forest floor that morning.
The sight of him pleasuring himself shocked her, she had to admit. She was shaken already, what with having to stop dead in her tracks to avoid crashing straight into the pair of lovers.
And then to see John, watching them as well from deep in the shadows of a pine. She could barely make him out—would not have seen him at all except that her mind was so attuned to his shape and form that the edge of his shadow drew her eye—but it was clear enough to her what he was doing. Stroking himself fervently, just as he’d done when he was with her this morning.
Pure lust incited him both times—nothing more complicated than that.
And lust was most certainly not a basis for marriage.
He’d feel the same way about one of the Lawton girls—no doubt he’d feel more entranced by their flesh, pretty and sweet and ample as it was. And in the daylight hours, when the pleasure of the flesh was not a man’s main motive for marriage, one of the Lawtons would be the sort of wife he needed. Fashionable. Tasteful. Able to plan soirees and play the pianoforte and laugh in a sweet and girlish way. Able to trim her own hats
Now he was skulking in shrubberies, watching other people copulate, getting himself off quite spectacularly fantasizing about the vicar’s sister sucking his cock—and had done it where that very girl herself had been able to watch him.
It was a good thing the path in front of him hadn’t been clear. If he had been able to run after Mary, if he had been able to catch her, what on earth had he been planning to do?
He liked to think it would simply be to beg her once more to marry him, but he suspected that would have come somewhere down the list after trying to rip the clothes off of her.
Damn.
His whole world had shifted straight off its axis, and he didn’t know if he could ever set it right again.
* * *
Mary fled through the woods as fast as the moonlight would permit her, stumbling over rocks and roots and still not slowing.
Why had she come out here at all? It was just that the air in the vicarage had seemed unbreathable after the viscount left. The thought of the woods and the dark and the cool air had called to her, and she’d come out, thinking only to walk for a time to clear her head and soothe the aching pulses of her heart.
Even then, it had been clear to her she’d done the right thing in turning down the viscount’s proposal. Duty alone had compelled him to ask for her hand. Lord knows he’d looked so ill at the prospect she’d thought one of his loved ones must be dying.
So what if some deep-buried part of her clawed at her brain with the thought that she could just say “yes,” and have him with her, have him share her bed and her body forever.
She would never listen to that voice.
John was her friend, and she’d never let his small lapse in judgment in the woods make him miserable for the rest of his life.
And now—well, she was more sure than ever that a marriage between them could only be a mistake. His desire for her was as thoughtless and base as the sexton’s lust for Mrs. Trumbull.
If she’d harbored even the slightest hope that his behavior in the woods had had something to do with her in particular rather than with circumstance—the vines that had exposed her legs, the thorns that had pulled his head against her bosom—well, that hope was utterly dashed.
He was a man. And men were mindless brutes when it came to female flesh. Even her flesh, meager as it was.
That was proved once and for all by John’s reaction to Mrs. Trumbull’s mouth around another man’s member and her wantonly spread thighs.
The older woman was an even less appropriate object for a viscount’s affections than a parson’s virgin sister. But the sight of Mrs. Trumbull’s flesh—even in the faint light of the moon, in the woods in the middle of the night—had been enough to make the viscount do just as he’d done with Mary herself on the forest floor that morning.
The sight of him pleasuring himself shocked her, she had to admit. She was shaken already, what with having to stop dead in her tracks to avoid crashing straight into the pair of lovers.
And then to see John, watching them as well from deep in the shadows of a pine. She could barely make him out—would not have seen him at all except that her mind was so attuned to his shape and form that the edge of his shadow drew her eye—but it was clear enough to her what he was doing. Stroking himself fervently, just as he’d done when he was with her this morning.
Pure lust incited him both times—nothing more complicated than that.
And lust was most certainly not a basis for marriage.
He’d feel the same way about one of the Lawton girls—no doubt he’d feel more entranced by their flesh, pretty and sweet and ample as it was. And in the daylight hours, when the pleasure of the flesh was not a man’s main motive for marriage, one of the Lawtons would be the sort of wife he needed. Fashionable. Tasteful. Able to plan soirees and play the pianoforte and laugh in a sweet and girlish way. Able to trim her own hats
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