The Scandalous Love of a Duke (18 page)

~

Katherine could not believe how smoothly John could manipulate people. He had returned to his guests an hour after leaving them and managed to charm his way out of giving any explanation for his absence. They fawned over him and he merely smiled or nodded. She would swear even if he showed his contempt for their company they would suffer his rudeness.

His family were more reticent however, and she had watched them watching him with questions in their eyes. They knew something was wrong, as she did, but she also guessed he would not accept their help any more than he would accept hers.

Sitting up in bed, Katherine thumped her pillow to fluff up the feathers, before lying back down on her other side. She couldn’t sleep. John was in a room barely yards from where she lay and his stark look as he’d stood on the terrace in splendid isolation kept haunting her thoughts.

She could not balance the John she saw now with the young man who’d romped with Phillip in the lake years ago.

Then she thought of the tower room. He’d promised not to take her virginity. He had not. Not even when she’d urged him to. The John she’d known as a child was inside the other – in pain. But why?

Sitting up in bed again, she knew she could not sleep unless she tried to speak to him once more. He had no one else.

The room was so dark, she had to feel her way about the edge of it to find the door, and then she progressed along the hall still using touch, her fingertips brushing across statues and doors, which she counted to find her way.

~

A cry of pain escaping his lips, John woke and sat up, feeling the weight of horror in his chest. The sheet was tangled and twisted about his waist and sweat made him feel clammy. The single candle he’d left burning at his bedside was flickering wildly, reduced to a stub.

For a minute John had no idea where he was, but then his mind escaped the web of his hated dream and his fingers lifted and swept back his hair as he regained his breath. Why would his mind not let this go? He was not a child anymore. His father was right, it didn’t matter. And yet it did, deep down, it did.

God.
Why would they not tell him though? What could be so bloody secret? “Forget it,”
he growled at himself, his voice echoing in his bedchamber.

Then he slid his legs over the edge of the bed and rested his elbows on his thighs and his head in his hands as he felt the despair which always came after his dream.

God,
he no longer gave a damn about the blackmail. Wareham could do what he wished. John’s power was too great for any scandal to touch him. People wouldn’t care. They had not even challenged his absence tonight. People didn’t dare judge a duke.

The air in his room felt thick and hot as he breathed steadily, trying to get control of his mind. It was no use, no matter what he wished he couldn’t let the question go.

Why had she not been there?

Clarity suddenly gripped his thoughts like ice gripping shifting water and solidifying it. If his family would say nothing, then there was only one choice. He had to find out for himself. It was easily done. Harvey could use the same influence he was using to discover Wareham’s history. Then once John knew, this would be over. There would be no more uncertainty and no more dreams.

He felt a sudden longing for Katherine, it was a warm sharp ache in his chest as his hands fell to his thighs and his back straightened, but before he could even qualify it, he heard movement outside his room.

Bloody-hell
, had someone heard him cry out like a child?

The door handle turned without a knock and his breath caught as he watched the door open, though he didn’t move.

Katherine.

She slipped in when there was a wide enough gap and then closed the door behind her. Her eyes were instantly on his as he sat facing her with only a slither of sheet across his hips covering his nakedness.

Clothed in her white nightgown from neck to toe, she looked like a damned angel come to dispel his darkness. Her hair fell about her shoulders, tumbling down her back, glowing gold in the flickering candlelight.

He had just thought of her, and here she was, as though he was truly some dominion of the Devil who could conjure her up. She hesitated by the door.

“What are you doing here?” he said, before taking a deep breath as he felt desire sweep away all his previous thoughts, he wanted her physically and emotionally with every fibre of his body. He needed her to ease all else. He knew she could. She was the only one who could.

“I came to see you.”

“Obviously. Why?”

“I… you need someone, John.”

I need you
,
Katherine.
“Katherine,” he said, in a deep heavy voice, weighted with the hunger and pain he felt, “if you stay in this room I cannot say what I’ll do. I told you earlier I am not in a good mood. I am in no mood for restraint. Get out if you wish to preserve your chastity.” It was a cold and callous thing to say but maybe it would chase her off and save her from herself, and him. “Go away, Katherine,” he said more gently. He did not really wish to hurt her.

But instead of leaving, she came across the room in swift strides which stirred the white linen covering her, filling the air with the gentle sound of fabric moving. Then her hands were in his hair, brushing through it, and she pulled his head against her breasts, he could feel them soft and warm beneath her nightgown.

Ah God
, her touch was such gentle agony.

“John.”

He closed his eyes, already reaching for her and clinging to the cloth by her hips. “Leave, please, Katherine. It is what you ought to do. I have nothing to give you. You know it as well as I do.”

“You have yourself,” she whispered, her fingers stroking through his hair, “and I have myself to give you. Trust me. You needn’t hide from me.”

He felt like crying, he felt like that damned child driving away in the carriage with his grandfather and fighting tears because he knew if he let them fall he would be beaten. He couldn’t cry, he couldn’t ever trust a sole with the truth inside him. But he could have her. He could have her and feel eased as he used to feel eased even by the she-wolves he used to devour abroad. Except she would be giving generously, not taking in return, and she was full of light he wanted to bathe in. He wanted to be free of this darkness.

Lifting his head away from her breasts, he looked up and met her gaze.

Her eyes were shining with that look he thought might be love. The fairy tale glowed there for him to read, and he wanted to believe it could be true. “If you do not want to consummate what is between us, Katherine,
go
.”

“I can’t.” Her fingers touched his cheek as her gaze held his. “You were right, I love you. I have loved you for as long as I remember and I cannot walk away knowing you need me. I can help you, John.”

He shut his eyes. He couldn’t say I love you back. He felt horribly inadequate here. “I need you,” he answered, his eyes still shut as he took a deep breath and lust roared through his veins. He needed to feel in control again. He opened his eyes and looked up at her. “I need you. Don’t go. Stay.”
I want to feel desired and wanted for who I am and not what I have. I feel human with you.

His hands gripped her hips through the cloth, taking a firm hold, and her fingers splayed across the top of his head like a benediction. She was going to let him do this. He pressed his lips to the cloth covering her stomach and then took a breath as he pulled back, lifting his gaze to meet hers again. “Take off your nightgown.”

If he was decent and honest and good, he wouldn’t do this – if he was not so bitterly cold, lonely and in pain, he wouldn’t do this.

As she unbuttoned her prim proper nightgown, he lay back on the bed, his weight on one elbow, while his other hand lifted the sheet for her to join him, and once she was naked she did, lying down next to him.

His heart pounded as he leant over and kissed her, his hand covering her breast.

He’d said he had no restraint but he had, his desire was to take her fast and swift in a desperate race towards escape but this was her first time so he held back.

She was so very precious and special to him. Her soft body was like silk as his fingers skimmed over her, arousing her, while he kissed her with a deep slow adoration. Let her know what he felt. Let her know how much he longed for her, how she seemed to capture something in his chest and hold on to it in her gentle grip.

Katherine
.

His hand slipped between her thighs and stroked her there; her legs opening and letting him touch. She was gorgeous and beautiful and so giving.

When he slipped his fingers into her wetness and her warmth it was like heaven being opened to him.

Her fingers ran over his shoulders and her lips answered his kiss, her tongue dancing hungrily with his as he felt her breath turn to panting desperation, and then she could no longer kiss him but just cling as she toppled into ecstasy and he moved across her.

Treasuring the moment, fixing every detail of her in his head to keep forever, he settled between her legs, parting them wider with his own and positioning himself to enter her before she came back down to earth.

With a swift sharp stroke, he was baptised, dropped into the water and lost beneath it. He had died and now he was about to rise again, like a phoenix, out of darkness and into light. She was so warm and soft and generous in her giving, even though he knew he’d caused her pain. When her eyes flew open and met his gaze they were full of that look he thought was love.

Was it love? Could she love him? Him, who did not deserve love. Him, whose own mother could not do it well enough to have stayed by his side when he was young.

He moved and discarded the thought by burying himself in her. He did not wish to think of the past, just Katherine.

He moved slowly and carefully, adoring the woman with her pale glowing skin, which was orange in the candlelight, and her gold hair which spilled all about her as she lay beneath him.

Katherine.

Her hips lifted and pressed back against him and he saw her fingers claw in the sheet.

Katherine.

She bit her lip and shut her eyes, her chest rising and falling more quickly.

His buttocks worked harder, his hips moving in stronger, longer strokes as he felt lust take a hold of him, gripping him by the back of the neck and urging him to hurry, to get to the end – to simply take and not give.

But she seemed to like his stronger movement and, with a cry, after a while, her hands clasped his hips and he felt her break about him with a gasp, as though she could not quite believe how it felt.

It felt good for him too. It had never felt quite like this. It was her honesty and openness. It was because he had known her for years and knew who she was and that she loved him. Did he know that?
Yes, I know that
. He believed it in her.

He let his own reins go, feeling thoroughly relaxed and absorbed by her, giving her the honesty she gave him as he panted, sighed and growled while he claimed her over and over again.

Katherine.

Her fingers were moving all over his body, on his buttocks, at his sides, on his biceps and in his hair, as they shared this escape, shared this special act which could tie a man and woman together for a moment in time.

It felt so much more intimate with her. She was in his head, his heart and his soul while he was so physically inside her. He could tell she knew he’d let go. It had become a mutual abandonment.

He held her gaze and clung to it as he drew towards the end. Staring into her precious look of love, bathing in it, until the moment he broke and cried out. He could neither breathe nor think as release swamped him.

He shut his eyes.

God. God.
That had felt good. He felt so relaxed, sated and tired.

He rolled to his back and pulled her over him.

Her head pillowed on his shoulder and her leg and arm came over him. He was utterly humbled by her.

“I love you,” she said again.

He ought to say it back, even if it weren’t true, he felt callous not doing so, and yet he couldn’t lie, he had always loathed lying.
Have I not told you, your mother is dead
. Those were his grandfather’s words the day he had taken John back. That had been a lie, a lie John had been forced to live.

The feelings of childhood crashed in on him again.

This reprieve had only been momentary, but,
God,
what a gift.

Still physically sated, if not now mentally relieved, he fell asleep.

~

When John woke, the grey half-light of morning was seeping about the curtains, filling his room with an eerie partial illumination. It took a matter of moments for the memories of Katherine beneath him to return.

It had been the sweetest night he’d spent with any woman. He’d never been given the gift of virginity before. A surge of masculine need to protect raced in his blood even now, pure instinct in response to the utter humbleness he’d felt entering her.

He’d worship the ground she walked on for the rest of his life. There was a deep feeling of self-satisfaction within him, too, no matter that he’d had the dream last night. He felt whole and normal.

His eyes turned from the canopy of his ostentatious bed to look at Katherine and then he rolled onto his side. She was lying on her back, one hand resting backwards on the pillow while the other lay over her midriff. Her breasts rose with her breathing and her face was turned towards him. Her brow was clear of creases and her skin had not one single blemish even though it was so fair. Her nose, her cheekbones and her jaw were all perfect fragile feminine lines.

His fingers itched to touch.

With her eyes closed, her delicate light brown lashes rested on her cheeks. While her rose-pink lips were slightly parted, as though waiting for his kiss.

A sharp pain pierced his chest, a need and longing which was, again, more than physical.

He swallowed back his want. She would be sore and he could be patient and wait for the next time to come.