The Wicked Duke (21 page)

At the time, she had no idea she would end up married to him, of course.

“Perhaps this time it will die down fast. Everyone has feasted on this before, and it can't hold anyone's interest for long again.”

“Normally I would agree. However, members of the government who have no love for me have now taken an interest like they did not before.” He took her hand. “You are not to worry, so stop frowning. The worst that will happen is I will be publicly embarrassed, and even that will be hard to manage with a duke.”

“How would you be embarrassed?”

He shrugged as if it mattered not to him, but his eyes held depths that made her wonder if it would in fact matter a good deal. “A trial in the House of Lords,” he said. “I do not think the other peers will allow it, when there is no evidence.”

Public embarrassment did not do justice to the kind
of humiliation he described. She did not think any man could remain nonchalant about that prospect. Not even a duke.

Her astonishment gave way to more curiosity. Evidence made all the difference, of course, in any trial. If there was none, why was he investigating the whole business? Did he see more danger than he claimed?

Another thought slithered into the others. He proposed soon after he came up to town this time. A coincidence? Or did the one relate to the other—

He squeezed the hand he held, drawing her attention. His eyes no longer held shadowed depths, but bright ones. “You are recovered?”

“Recovered?
Oh
. Yes, I am . . . well recovered.”

“Then come with me.” He stood with her hand still in his. He led her out of the dining room and up the stairs.

A maid waited in her apartment to assist her when she retired. Aylesbury walked in with her in tow and, with a vague gesture, sent the maid scurrying out the door.

He turned and swung her into his embrace. Kisses and caresses submerged her under an onslaught of pleasure. She did not even realize he had her dress unfastened until the sleeves sagged on her shoulders.

She glanced askance at one of them. He took the opportunity to push it farther down.

“You do that with aplomb,” she said. “I expect practice helped you develop the skill.”

“Lots of it.” He eased his hold of her, so the whole bodice could drop. Then the whole dress, until it puddled at her feet. “I have my preferences. Short corsets
like this one, that lace in front, for example.” His fingers deftly worked at unlacing that garment.

“My maid could have done this.”

“Only if I were prepared to wait a moment longer.” He displayed no impatience, but that corset abandoned her body with alarming speed.

“It was good of you. To allow me to . . . recover.”

“You should wait until the morning before you conclude I am good.” A deep kiss distracted her from thinking much on that veiled warning, but not from the way her chemise drifted down to join her dress.

His hands moved over her naked body, arousing her, claiming her. She thrilled at his possessive touch. Her vulnerability excited her. Her breasts turned heavy, and sly desire titillated where she had “recovered.”

When he set her back and looked at her, she was too immersed in pleasure to know much shame. She looked, too, down at her body's pale skin and dark, hard nipples. She still wore her hose. She wondered if she was supposed to remove them herself.

He began untying his cravat. “Get on the bed, Marianne.”

She obeyed, climbing onto the huge bed, pushing aside the bedclothes. She lay there while he undressed. His gaze never left her. She turned her head when he stripped off his lower clothes.

“That will not do, Marianne.”

She glanced to see him standing right next to her.

“I am going to show you how to receive pleasure, and
also how to give it. I do not want you merely willing but too shy to participate. So, look at me now.”

She turned her head at the tone of command. He stood naked, a mere arm's length away. He was lean and muscular. His chest commanded most of her attention. His shoulders and arms reflected activity in their hard and taut lines.

He waited, and she knew why. Finally she lowered her gaze to his erection. It did not appear nearly as odd as she expected.

“That is because of you,” he said. “That is my desire for you.” He reached for her hand, and placed it on the evidence of that desire.

It did not feel how she expected either. It moved under her touch. Enlarged, unless she was mistaken. She drifted her fingertips along it, fascinated by the reaction she evoked.

“You like that,” she said. “It is why in the garden . . .”

“Yes.”

She looked up at him, but continued her light touch. “And if I had allowed it?”

“I would have ravished you.”

“It is a good thing I punched you, then.”

“A firm
no
would have sufficed.” He gestured for her to move over, and joined her on the bed.

“Are you going to ravish me now?”

“It is not my intention.”

“But you are not sure?”

He spoke between kisses on her neck. “I thought to wait a few weeks for a true ravishment, but one never knows these things.”

“Will you warn me when you intend that?”

“I doubt it.”

She wondered if being ravished included the delicious way he now caressed her breast and the maddening fervor taking control of her.

He wove a sensual cloak over the bed, and she soon ached. Pleasure made her crave yet more pleasure. Her whole essence waited and urged and grasped for more.

His mouth closed on one breast. His fingers played at the other. The combined sensations sent her mind crying from the beauty of it, and from the urges building. She relinquished any pretense of restraint. Despite her dazed sense of time and place, she found one thread of sense and moved her arm so she could touch him again, to share the pleasure. To participate.

That changed their passion more than she expected. A new tension entered him. Their kisses turned frenzied and impatient. She vaguely realized they both expressed their arousals in that fervor, she as well as him.

He caressed lower, at first carefully, then less so. All of her consciousness lowered, too, until the need pulsing there dominated her body and mind.

“Now,” she gasped, the lesson from the last time coming to her in her anguish.

“Not yet.” With expert, ruthless touches he drove her further into her oblivion of need.

She could not bear it. She thought she would die. She released her painful frustration by clawing at his shoulder.

“Allow the release your body wants, Marianne. You have to permit it.”

That made no sense. Then it did. Something in her understood. She took a step without knowing she could. The tension that tortured her shattered in a glorious release of exquisite pleasure and fulfillment.

Her awe detached her from everything else, even her awareness of him. Even as he came over her and pressed into her, even as she filled her arms with his strength, she dwelled in astonishment as waves of perfection eddied through her.

She hardly recovered, but slowly the world intruded. He was in her totally, looking down at her.

“What was that?” She blinked hard as reality reasserted itself.

“The scientific word is
orgasm
. Perhaps that is what is meant by marital bliss, however.”

“
Bliss
is a good word. I don't think that is what women mean when they say that, however.”

“Probably not, since many wives never experience it.” He reached down and bent her knees. He hooked one over his hip. She knew to do the same with the other.

The rest was not like the last time either. He was not as restrained. She had not totally recovered, but she did not mind the sensation of his thrusts. Her body accommodated them in its own way. Her excitement revived. The feel of him teased at her, intimating she might know that bliss again if he kept at it very long.

His finish came hard, in her and in him. Not so kind. Not so considerate. She felt the break in his tension and sensed his own release crash through him.

She did nothing to interfere with how he lost himself.
Even after he rolled off her, she did not speak, but drifted in the rare intimacy she felt with him. Finally he stirred, and kissed her.

“I do not know why you said I should wait until morning before saying you were good,” she murmured. “You did nothing to shock me, except in the best way.”

She felt his smile against her cheek. “It is not morning yet.”

*   *   *

I
t was a wonder he had not taken her right there on the table.

Dinner had been two hours of hunger that the food could not satisfy. It was all he could do to pay attention to their conversation. It had been months since he wanted a woman so much. Years.

Now he lay with Marianne in his arms. He enjoyed that more than was normal too. Perhaps this ill-advised marriage would actually be pleasant, at least for a while. One could never be sure from the first weeks and months. New pleasure had a way of obscuring the truth about a match, as his father's experience had proven.

Right now, contentment reigned. With her, and with himself. At least he had showed her how pleasurable pleasure could be. He had not left her incomplete again.

“How did you learn how to do that?” Marianne, ever curious, asked.

He did not mind, but her curiosity had the potential for being a problem at some point. It was not the normal sort. She had an unfortunate talent for seeing matters
too clearly and from all angles. Her questions could be incisive to a fault, and inconvenient.

“My father sent me to a very polite brothel in my youth. The older women there had a tendency to school green boys in certain things. I believe they thought it their duty to our future wives to explain that bliss should go both ways. Or perhaps they wanted payment in more than coin.”

“Had he not sent you there, would you have never known?”

He shrugged. “Men do not discuss much about whether their women know contentment in bed. The talk is much cruder than that.”

“I imagine so.”

He doubted she could come close to imagining it. Just as well.

He rose up on his arm and looked down at her. She had not covered herself much, and her smooth body looked lovely in the glow from the two lamps left by the maid. He smoothed his hand down her softness. Her skin felt cool and silky.

She looked up at him with an impish light in her eyes. “What are your intentions, sir?”

He responded by putting his hand to her mound, and stroking deeper into her cleft. She startled at the immediate intensity. Her lids lowered and lips parted.

He brought her along slowly, luring her back to the unguarded passion she had displayed. He watched her flex to the throes as they claimed her, until she abandoned any pretense of controlling what he did to her. She would probably permit him anything now, but he would not be too bad.

She caressed him, too, and sought to give him pleasure. That charmed him. He restrained his impulses and allowed it, even if he was already inside her in his mind.

“Someday I will do this with my mouth, Marianne.” He slid his finger around her lips, then tantalized her with short penetrations.

She blinked several times and looked at him. Confused. Curious. He teased at her until thought left her again.

He could wait no longer. Nor did he want to. He pulled over a pillow and flipped her, so she hugged the mattress and her bottom rose. She showed more confusion, until he kneeled behind her and put his hand to her again. She lay one cheek on the mattress and watched him out of the corner of her other eye.

Her erotic position pushed him to the edge of his control. He caressed her bottom. Round. Soft. Waiting. Her lower back dipped even more as she offered herself. He waited until she moaned, and the pleasure overwhelmed her.

He entered her slowly, holding his passion back while he enjoyed the feel of her. Erotic fury built fast, however, and soon it howled in him. He took her hard then, until pleasure exploded and cast him into a place of pure sensation.

*   *   *

H
e collapsed beside her, his arm thrust possessively over her back. Their heavy breaths matched each other's, meeting in the space between their heads on the
pillow. Slowly he calmed, and appeared to be drifting to sleep. Only instead that arm moved, and a caress traced down her back and up the hill of her bottom, and to where her hidden flesh still pulsed.

One touch sent her back to the height of her passion. She clutched the sheet under her hands. She closed her eyes and let it happen.

She almost wept before it ended. She screamed when it finally did. Even then he did not stop, but sent echoes of the ecstasy shuddering through her.

He did sleep then. She wondered if he intended to stay in this bed. Perhaps he thought to do this yet again, a different way. She did not mind his presence beside her. She thought it cozy and intimate.

She could not sleep at once, so she lay there as he held her. Her thoughts traveled drowsily over the day's events. Eva's revelation came to her, that Aylesbury now looked into his brother's death. After all this time . . . right when he chose to wed . . . After all this time . . . right when the government showed renewed interest . . . After all this time . . . even as he finally took a wife. An inappropriate wife with no fortune or rank, whom he did not love . . . After all this time . . .

She must have slept because suddenly she jolted awake. She found Aylesbury sitting upright in bed, wiping his eyes. In the distance a pounding sounded and a voice yelled. Then that stopped, but soon after the pounding resumed, right on her door.

Aylesbury rose and, naked still, opened the door. Marianne grabbed at the sheet and covered herself.

His valet stood there, his back to the threshold so he would not see in. “Milord, there is a man below, a messenger from Windsor.” He thrust his hand behind his back. A banyan dangled from it.