Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 127368 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 509(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127368 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 509(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
I got back up to my hands, feeling my breasts swaying, my body rocking to the violence of his thrusts.
“Ian,” I warned.
“Don’t come.”
“Ian!” I exclaimed.
He spanked my ass and demanded, “Don’t fucking come, Daphne.”
The sting of that spank, his cock.
I couldn’t hack it.
“Oh God,” I moaned.
He let my hair go and grabbed my hips, slamming me back, the pads of his fingers digging in so hard, I knew they’d leave bruises, and I gave zero shits.
“Baby,” I begged.
“No,” he denied.
“Baby,” I whimpered.
He shoved his thumb up my ass and ordered, “Now.”
Splintering before him, I came apart and was surprised there was something left for him to keep fucking as I came, and he fucked my ass and cunt, and I kept coming.
Finally, pressing into me, he pushed me off my hands and knees to my belly, pulled out of my ass, planted both of his hands on my cheeks there, immobilizing me. He then fucked me even harder as I gasped and clenched, and took it happily before he gritted his release, buried deep but pushing like he could get deeper.
He collapsed on top of me.
When I had the capacity of speech, I noted, altogether breathlessly, “You’re a damned bossy lay.”
He nuzzled my neck. “Like you don’t love it.”
“Just observing.”
He chuckled, the noise slithering over my skin in a satisfying way, then I gasped as he abruptly not only pulled out of me, but me out of bed.
His hand in mine dragging me toward the bathroom, he said, “Shower.”
I smiled and replied.
“Okeydokey.”
“After we do that, I have to return something I’ve stolen.”
Now at that, I entered the bathroom grinning.
Thirty-Two
THE CONSERVATORY
I sat in the Conservatory with one of Aunt Louisa’s diaries in my hand, my legs crossed, my foot bouncing.
Update.
Clearly Portia and Daniel were in the throes of an epic make-up fuck session. They hadn’t been seen all day, and to my text to ask her how she was, Portia replied, Talk later, Daph. We’re busy. She ended that with five kissy face emojis, and if I didn’t get the gist, an eggplant and a peach.
No.
My sister would never grow up.
I found that heartening and worrying at the same time.
Ian and I would be doing much the same thing, however, if he hadn’t set a late morning meeting with his dad to talk about the title handover.
So, although I’d read a bit of what Louisa wrote about Lord Walter and Lady Anne (and yes, they seemed a true love match), mostly my mind was on what was happening with Ian and his dad.
It seemed he’d been gone forever, and I was worried.
When he emerged from the plants about two minutes after I had that thought, I was no less worried.
“Looking at your face, I don’t really have to ask how it went, but still, I’m going to ask. How’d it go?”
“For shit,” he bit off, going directly to the drinks cabinet and pouring himself a stiff whisky, not bothering with ice.
He came to me with glass in hand, folded onto the couch beside me and immediately turned to his cigarettes.
“Since nothing is going to change, except a title, I don’t know how it could go poorly,” I noted carefully.
He lit his smoke, blew out a plume, sucked back some whisky even though it was barely noon, and said, “I didn’t say things weren’t going to change.”
“Uh-oh,” I mumbled.
He turned to me. “As this event began to loom, I pulled the covenants and read them. So did my solicitor. I had ideas. Obviously, I would carry them out after Mum and Dad were no longer with us, but I had ideas.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“Like the days of house parties and hundreds of people attending a ball are long gone. Mum entertains. Small dinner parties. Huge bashes for all our birthdays. Her annual Christmas party. They host a Bonfire Night out on the front lawn every November for the village. And she and Dad throw a massive event every five years for their wedding anniversary.”
That would seem sweet if they were a happily married couple who were truly celebrating their love through the years.
As it was, it was more than a little sad that Lady Jane would go through that motion.
“Okay,” I prompted when Ian said no more.
“But I’m sure you’ve noticed on the first two floors alone, three wings of eight go entirely unused. The whole second floor is constantly deserted. It’s a waste.”
I couldn’t disagree.
“So, I thought a veteran’s convalescent home,” he continued. “Or an orphanage. Or a psych hospital. There aren’t enough good mental healthcare facilities in this country.”
I was staggered.
And more than a little alarmed.
“You’re going to turn Duncroft into…something not a home?”
“Daphne, for the most part, only two people live here. The trust that runs this place is embarrassingly enormous. It’d have to be to use the interest to run this house and provide for the staff and family in it. But the years of something like Duncroft existing for the purpose it was built, to lord, quite literally, over the location where it was erected, are long past. This is a relic of another time. But it could be useful.”