The Scandalous Love of a Duke (9 page)

He took a deep breath as she began lifting it, drawing it from his waistband. He let her take it off.

She was biting her lip again once he’d freed it from his head and arms, her eyes and hands skimming over his torso. His heart thumped and his groin was heavy with need.

Leaning forwards, he bent over her to unlace her stays.

Her hands gripped his bare skin as he continued to undress her.

“John?” she whispered uncertainly when she was naked to the waist, her gaze meeting his.

She was afraid now, he could see that.

“I’ll not hurt you, I swear it. I’ll do nothing you do not wish.”

Her skin was beautiful, unblemished and milk-white. So English – his English rose
.

His hands cupped her breasts and he kissed her again.

She kissed him back, her arms innocently reaching about his neck even though he was naked to the waist and she might touch him more intimately.

Katherine revelled in everything John did as her fingers sifted through his black hair.

He was touching her with exquisite gentleness and adoration. His fingers kneaded her breasts and trailed across her bare skin.

She dared herself to touch him too, and let her hands fall to his shoulders.

He was hot and his skin felt like velvet. The muscles across his abdomen were rigid slopes and hollows.

Her thighs rested open about his as he kissed and touched her. Her heart pounded. She craved him with something that was painful misery and blissful hunger, as the tension he had taught her body the day before rose.

The things he did were wicked and wrong,
her conscience shouted it, but she did not listen.
I think this you is the real you, this reckless girl who has come to tryst with me.
She’d known it for a long time.

His head dropped and his mouth claimed her breast again, tugging on her nipple as he sucked her gently. Her fingers rested in his hair once more as the place where he’d touched her yesterday begged for attention.

“John, please.” His name came out as a tortured sound.

His head lifted and he smiled as his fingers slid her skirt and petticoats upwards. Her fingers shook as she held his bright crystalline gaze and her hands fell to the waistband of his trousers. He did not stop her. She did not stop him. But her heart pounded.

His hands slipped beneath her petticoats and brushed her inner thighs. Shivering, she instinctively moved forward to sit flush against his body.

She did not dare touch him where she wished to. But as his trousers and underwear slid down, she gripped his hips, her fingers pressing into the first curve of his buttocks as he kissed her deeply, his tongue penetrating her mouth, as her breasts crushed against his chest. It was the most beautiful feeling in the world to be so close to him physically.

When his thumbs skimmed over her, she arched against him, longing for him to do the things he should not. “John.” Her voice gave another plea.

He kissed her cheek, her chin, her neck. “I’ll not take your virginity.”

She did not care if he did, she longed for him to do it.

He touched her, there, between her legs, his thumbs gently caressing, and she widened her thighs, urging him closer.

“Let me take off all your clothes.”

Her eyes flew open. She hadn’t even known she’d shut them.

She nodded and then he helped her stand.

Her body trembled as he stripped her garments from her hips, letting them pool on the floor.

This was utter madness and yet it was complete heaven too.

“Cold?” he asked, as his fingers gripped her waist and then he gently pressed a kiss against her temple.

“No.” Her arms lifted about his neck.

He kissed her again and his hands gripped her buttocks, his fingertips pressing into her flesh.

When he ended the kiss, his hands slid down her thighs and then lifted her back onto the table. In a moment he was between her parted thighs again, naked skin against naked skin. He could do anything now, but she trusted him not to break his promise. She wished he would.

She looked down.

“Touch me,” he whispered as his hands pressed her legs wider and he set himself against her. When she did not, he took her hand. “Like this.”

It had not been cowardice preventing her, just a lack of knowledge. Now she knew.

He moved his hips, sliding against her as he came through her hand.

The movement was like a chant, or a charm, repetitive and mesmerising. He was watching what he did.

She watched too, aware that she was blushing. Then her gaze lifted to his face. His expression was deep concentration. She was not sure who she was doing this with, John or the Duke. But she did not care.

Sunshine poured through the windows, illuminating the room and what their bodies warming her skin.

She felt as if she stood on the very top of the world. She never wished to come down. Her fingers clung more tightly and his breathing changed, then his thumb moved across her thigh and rubbed and pressed.

“John.” She only said his name because she needed to make some sound. Her free hand clawed into his shoulder.

Was it only yesterday she had refused the bonnet he gave her and sent it back for fear he was buying her favours? Today she was giving them freely, wantonly, desperately.

His gaze lifted and despite his stiff expression she saw need in his eyes – hunger.

“John,” she said again, pulling his mouth to hers.

He kissed her aggressively as the pace of his movements quickened. She felt his urgent determination, and as though he refused to leave her behind, his thumb pressed harder.

An ache inside her swelled and overflowed, submerging her in a wave so she could no longer kiss him, and her fingers clung in his hair, while he worked through the grip of her other hand, until he cried out, and then stilled. She felt him throb and his release was warm and liquid.

Her muscles trembled when their kiss ended, and she hugged him close.

He was trembling too.

Surely they had just shared the most intimate thing it was possible to share.

Even the soft triangle of hair at the apex of Katherine’s thighs was pale, not blonde but a very light brown, and her nipples were the same rose hue as her lips, both upper and lower.

He picked up his coat and found out a handkerchief to wipe her hand. It still shook.

Her skin felt so soft, and yet he supposed it could be no different to any other woman’s. Yet every other woman was gone from his mind. There was only this
one
woman.

Meeting her gaze, he then picked her up, bracing her legs about his waist as he carried her to the only chair in the room, a single leather armchair.

John knew his grandfather used to come up here and just sit in silence. Now he understood his grandfather more, John guessed the old man had built this and come here for the same reason John was here, to escape the dukedom for a while.

“God, you are beautiful,” he said, sitting down with her exotically placed astride his lap. “I ought to put you in a box and keep you. I could take you wherever I needed you then.”

“And when I am in need of you?”

“You may put me on a chain about your neck and I shall be your servant.”

“You are talking nonsense.” Her eyes looked a little intoxicated.

“Being
here
is nonsense.” His afternoon of dalliance suddenly soured. Doing this was beyond foolish. It was ridiculous escaping and hiding here with a woman who could never be anything to him beyond this. She was no courtesan, nor was she one of the she-wolves of elite society. She had been his childhood friend.

He cast the thought aside. He refused to rationalise this, and he refused to think of consequence, or future. This was about escaping. He would not face the truth. Let the truth live outside this tower.

“Being here is folly.” She smiled, and yet he could see his words had let reality encroach into the room. She knew as well as he did she should not be here. “Did you choose the location for that reason?”

If she was trying to make him laugh, she did not succeed. He kissed her instead, his fingers gripping her upper thighs. He was hot again and aroused in moments.

He liked the way her lithe, slim body curved and undulated against him when he kissed her. There was no falsehood or façade with her. Every motion was instinct and natural need.

Her slender fingers braced the sides of his head as she kissed him back, while the apex of her thighs pressed against his groin.

It would be so easy to bury himself inside her and take her completely. He would not, but he broke the kiss and said across her lips, “Shall we go for a second round?”

She nodded, her teeth biting her lower lip again. Then she said, “You are very bad, now, aren’t you?” as though she was confused by the thought.

“My grandfather taught me. He was a very good teacher.” It was self-mockery, but he hid his emotions now too well for her to see. “But if I was really bad, Katherine, you would no longer be a virgin.”

Her eyes shone. “I am bad too. I shouldn’t be here. But I choose to be…”

“You should be. I have wanted you like this since the day of the funeral.”

“And I have wanted
you
like this since I saw you swimming in the lake before you even went abroad.” The words were obviously spoken without thought, and regretted the moment they were said. She turned pink and the colour stained her whole body.

My God, how beautiful.

But then he realised she was moving to rise, and his grip on her thighs firmed, holding her still as he digested her words. Had she just said she had wanted him before he’d gone?

“But you have probably had a hundred women like this anyway…” There was jealousy and anger in her pitch.

What was this?
Her revelation had somehow turned the steady ground beneath his feet to shifting sand. He felt a bitter, hard barrier of denial slip over him, covering the emotion which gripped in his stomach and his chest. He did not know how to feel anymore – how to respond. “Are you fishing for compliments, Katherine?” His voice had turned cold. He could not force warmth back into it. All his emotions were shuttered away, out of reach. He could speak the truth though. “In fact, the number of women I’ve probably had is far more, but none like this, Katherine, and none like you.”

“Flattery will win you nothing,” she taunted, clearly trying to cover her tracks and hide the vulnerability she obviously felt. She could not hide her emotion though.

“It has won me this tryst with you.”

“You did not win it!” Her response spoke of bitter hurt. “I am giving it to you.”

She tried moving again, but once more he stopped her. “Wait.” She had wanted him when he was one and twenty, little Katherine Spencer.

“You watched me swimming, in the lake?”

He felt as though his innards were tangled up somehow. He could remember that day. His grandfather had held a ball in his honour, before packing John off abroad. All his friends had come to stay for the house party, and they’d swum naked in the lake because it was so hot.

John had been preoccupied that day, engrossed in himself as he’d dealt with the changes planned for his life. If he was honest, he had not even noticed her, and of course she had not been invited to the ball. She had not yet come out, even though she’d been of age. Phillip had come though, with his parents, but not Katherine.

She was blushing harder.

“I am flattered.”

“Don’t be, it was just a childish infatuation.” Her gaze had dropped to his throat.

His fingers lifted her chin. “You don’t convince me. Have you carried a torch for me since then?” He was suddenly desperate to know, though he knew his voice only implied the merest interest.

“No!”

But the answer was yes, he was sure it was yes. Her voice lied but her body said it, soft and moulded to his, warm and wet between her thighs.

I am giving it to you.
That was why this innocent young woman had agreed to this immoral liaison. She was right, she should not be here, but she was, and she was because she cared for him, because she had cared for him for years, for the all the years while he had isolated himself and thought himself superfluous. For all the years he had held people away because of the false affection he’d been barraged with abroad. All that time she had been here longing and waiting for him. If only he had come back earlier to know.

Life was bizarre.

“I think you have. All this time. Am I the reason you have never married, Katherine?” It was an arrogant, selfish thought, but somehow he knew it was true. He could remember her blushes when she’d seen him at the wake, particularly when he’d spoken of a husband. She’d been standing there that day wanting him as much as he’d wanted her, only with a loyalty which had lasted years.

“No!” she said again, pulling away more aggressively. He let her go.

She climbed from his lap.

He felt in chaos.

He had thought the ground beneath him hard as rock, he had thought his foundations as solid as granite, built upon the bitter, cold, isolated ground his grandfather had lain inside him. But now he stood on quicksand.

She moved away, collected her clothes and then began dressing.

He rose, feeling like a fool, unsure what to say. “Well that explains you making this
choice
of yours.”

That of course had been the wrong thing to say.

She threw him a sideways look which called him a bastard for his mockery.

But he was
not
mocking, merely trying to adjust his head to this. He did not believe in romantic love but Katherine clearly did, and she thought herself in love with
him
.

He did not deserve it.

Anyway, what was romantic love? Lust. But,
God
, it was more than lust surely, and more than nothing if she had carried a torch of strong emotion for all these years. Lust he understood, he felt that for her, but it was short-lived. He wished suddenly that he understood what people called love between a man and a woman, and that he was capable of it. He also wished he was worthy of receiving it. But such tenderness had been forced out of him long ago.