A Duke Never Yields (33 page)

“If you knew,” he said. “If you knew how beautiful you are to me.”

She made a noise against his chest. “You’ve seen far more beautiful women than this.”

“My love, I have not.” His hands slid down to gather up her chemise. “May I, Abigail?”

She didn’t resist as he brought the thin linen up her waist and over her chest. She tilted back and raised her arms, and in a whoosh of whiteness it was gone, and she was bare to the waist before Wallingford.

“My God.”

“The Harewood Chest,” she said ruefully. “Not so impressive as my sister’s inheritance, but . . . well, she is the older sister, after all.”

“My God,” he said again.

“Rather a nuisance to bind up, you perceive, when one needs to pass as a young man. As one does, from time to time.”

“As one does,” he agreed. A little smile brushed the corner of his mouth, though his eyes didn’t so much as flicker up to her face. Instead he rubbed his thumb against the tip of her right breast, very lightly, sending a long shiver into every corner of her body. He bent and kissed the hollow of her throat, and then he lowered his enormous frame, kissing his way in a line down her center, until he knelt before her with his face buried in her belly and his palms cupping the curve of her bottom. She rested her hands on his smooth black shoulders.

The room stood still around them, lit dimly by the electric lamp: the soft white walls, the forest green curtains, the large, comfortable armchair angled companionably next to the lamp table. The bed stretched from the center of one wall, covered in matching forest green velvet with a neat heap of pillows at the head. Wallingford’s warm breath spread from her belly. His shoulders rose and fell beneath her hands.

Remember this moment
, she thought.

Wallingford’s fingers stirred at her back, slipping inside the waistband of her drawers and around to her front. He found the ribbons and untied them and, still kneeling, allowed the last of her barriers to slide down her legs to the ground.

He kissed her curls and rose to his feet.

“And now?” she whispered. Her hands still lay atop his shoulders.

Wallingford shrugged off his formal black jacket and tossed it expertly to land on the back of the chair. “And now, I have the very great honor of applying all this academic theory into delightful practice.”

She loved his starched white shirt, his crisp white tie, his gray silk waistcoat: so very formal and well-tailored, so perfect a contrast with his shining dark hair and wicked eyes. She touched his lips with one finger. “And how do you propose to begin?”

Without warning, he sucked her finger into his mouth and caressed it with his tongue. His eyes never left hers. “We begin,” he said at last, giving her finger a final kiss good-bye, “as such lessons always begin: with a thorough examination.”

“Oh no.” She took a step back.

“Oh yes.”

He swooped her up, arranged her on the chair, and settled on his knees between her legs. “Don’t hide from me, Abigail,” he said, and gently pulled her hands away. She tried to close her legs together, but his shoulders had wedged firmly between her knees.

“Now, then,” he said. “Unclench your limbs, my dear. This may take some time.”

“Oh, God.” Abigail closed her eyes and let her head fall back against the back of the chair, cushioned by the sleek black wool of his dinner jacket. She felt the crispness of his shirt between her knees, the solid muscle of his arms beneath. His palm touched her gently, somewhere atop the mound of curling hair, and her breath sucked sharply inward.

“You’re perfect,” he whispered. “Look at you. Each beautiful piece of you, exactly in its place, pink and shining.” With exquisite slowness, his finger drew downward until it brushed her inner flesh and ran along each lip, with such lightness it felt simply like a slender wand of heat passing over her.

“Wallingford, please. I can’t stand it.” She was melting, exposed, restless. Her legs moved urgently against him.

“Hush.” His finger moved, inserting just the very tip inside her. “You’re wet, love.”

“For God’s sake! Of course I am.”

“I understand that indicates the presence of physical desire?”

“Of course it does!” She tugged at his hair.

He ignored her tugs and absorbed himself utterly in his examination of her. “These are your nymphae,” he said in wonder, touching each one.

“Is that what they’re called?” she gasped.

“Yes. Except yours are much prettier than the illustration.”

“You’re disgraceful. Let me up, do.”

He didn’t answer. She felt his warm breath, and then the firm pressure of his lips, and she jumped.

“Hush, love.” The words brushed intimately inside her. His hands moved atop her thighs, holding her down.

“Oh, don’t. Oh, don’t.” Her mind seemed to be levitating above her body.

“Your scent, Abigail. I can’t describe it; I want to drown myself in it. You’re divine.” His tongue flicked across her, hot and wet, and she let out a little scream. “Does that hurt?”

“Yes! No!”

“Shall I do it again?”

“No! I . . . Oh yes. Yes!” Her hands worked in his hair.

His head bent down, and his tongue flicked again, over and across, up and down, exploring each fold and crevice, everywhere except where she most wanted it. The delicate movements eased into strokes, longer and lusher, and she writhed and panted, pinned like a butterfly under his searching mouth, every nerve in her body gathering and expanding between her legs.

I can’t stand it, I can’t stand it, no one could stand this
, she thought, but her mouth could form no words, and her voice caught deep in her throat. She gripped his hair instead. She heard herself make a mewling noise, not even human.

“Look at you, so plump and rosy,” he murmured. “Look right here. You’ve turned vermillion.”

“Wallingford, please!”

“Please stop, or please go on?” He kissed her. “Now let me concentrate, darling. I’m searching for something, something terribly important. Though as I’m such a brute and a novice, I shall require your expert guidance. Is it here?” He flicked his tongue.

“No . . .”

“Here?” He flicked again.

“No . . . oh, God, oh,
God
, Wallingford . . .”

Another flick. “Here?”

“I shall
die
!” she gasped. “And you will have . . .”

“. . . Here? . . .”

“. . . the very
devil
of a time . . .”

“. . . Not here, surely? . . .”

“. . . explaining yourself to my sister . . .”

“. . . Here, perhaps? . . .”

“Higher, damn you!”

“Ah.” His voice grew warm and rich. “Thank you. Then it must be
here
.”

And her breath left her body, and her body itself was engulfed, and there was nothing in the world but Wallingford’s stroking tongue and the swirl of perfect sensation building in the tender vortex between her legs. On and on he went, his large hands holding her in place, keeping her trembling limbs from losing hold altogether, until the mad swirl reached its flood and rushed toward her and sent her flying, crying his name, clasping his head between her hands.

Wallingford held still, breathing against her throbbing flesh, murmuring words she couldn’t hear through the roar of blood in her ears. His scent drifted up from the jacket behind her head, clean and masculine, a hint of smoke. Gradually, the roaring ebbed away, and Abigail sank gently back to earth, cradled by the chair and by Wallingford’s caressing hands. She opened her eyes to the intricate plasterwork on the ceiling. The endless pattern fascinated her. She felt as if she were floating up toward it, and yet her limbs were heavy, limp, satiated. A curious paradox, she thought.

Wallingford stirred. She rolled her chin down, and saw him smiling at her, his lips gleaming and his navy eyes crinkled with masculine smugness.

“I expect you’re pleased with yourself,” she said.

“Immensely.”

“Any half-wit could have found it.”

“Still, I’m deeply grateful for your direction.” He was still smiling.

She leaned forward and kissed him. “Thank you. That was marvelous. More than I ever imagined.”

He laughed. “Darling, I haven’t even begun.”

“Haven’t you?”

In answer, he rose and unbuttoned his gray silk waistcoat, unfastened his gold cuff links and placed them under the lamp. The deliberate movements dissolved her lassitude. She sat up and helped him with his shirt. His trousers, she saw, were sporting a dramatic bulge.

She looked up. “May I?”

He nodded.

She stood and pulled down his braces, one shoulder at a time, and then she tried to unfasten his trousers but her fingers had lost their dexterity and he, urgent, pushed her hands away and undid the buttons himself. Drawers, shirt: He removed each one, until he stood as naked as she, his staff jutting forward from his dark hair, his eyes fierce.

She took his hands and backed toward the bed, drawing him with her, until the velvet brushed against the backs of her legs. “Your turn,” she said.

He drew back the covers and laid her on the bed, among the pillows, and kissed her long and passionately, a possessive kiss. She ran her hands over his smooth back, over the hard contours of his muscles, over the hairs springing from his chest. “You’re beautiful,” she said. “Did I tell you that, last time?”

“I don’t remember.” He kissed her neck, her collar.

“It’s true. You’re like a statue, sculpted from stone, only real and alive. You’re beautiful. I could admire you forever.”

He shook his head, as if he didn’t believe her, and traced his lips to her breasts. He took her nipple into his mouth, and everything flared up again, her entire body bursting into heat. Her hips strained upward to find him. He suckled her tenderly, rolling the other nipple between his finger and thumb, and her back arched beneath him.

“Shh,” he said. “Wait, my love.”

“I don’t want to wait.”

His hardened organ pressed into her leg. She tried to wriggle her bottom, to bring herself closer to that tantalizing weight, but he laughed into the skin of her breasts and held her steady. “All in good time.”

She made a frustrated noise. She craved him so much, all of him; she was aflame with it. His hand slipped downward, across the plane of her belly, down her mound to find unerringly the dear little button he’d lavished earlier, even more tender now, aching with intensity. “Oh,” she groaned, and went limp.

Wallingford lifted his head. “Is that all it takes to render you compliant?”

“Yes,” she said honestly.

He circled her, rubbed her delicately, and up it built again, her beautiful swirling of sensation, even more effortless this time, as if her body recognized his touch and knew exactly how to respond.

“Please,” she said. “I’m ready. Please.”

Wallingford lifted his head from her breast and looked in her face, and his eyes were glazed over with the same passion she felt.

He mounted her. His thick staff, his battering ram, pressed between her legs. Abigail clenched herself for his thrust, but it didn’t arrive; instead, he lowered himself atop her, resting on his elbows, until his face hovered only inches from hers. “Listen to me, darling.” His voice was rough, as if he were fighting to hold it steady. “Tell me truly. Is there any possibility of a child?”

“No,” she said at once.

He kissed her. “And this time. Shall I take care, or not?”

Her mind went blank at the enormity of his question, at the gift he offered her. “Isn’t that a hardship for you?”

A little shrug. “One I’m accustomed to bearing, as necessary.”

“Oh, Wallingford.” She stroked his cheeks. A child,
his
child. Could she accept that risk? If she bore his child, he would insist on marrying her. She knew that beyond any question of doubt. Marriage to Wallingford? Her heart shrank in fear. And yet something else rose inside her, something primeval, something that craved his seed and his life, craved a total union, craved every possible bond between them. Craved
him
, all of him.

He kissed her again. “Take your time, darling. I’m only out of my mind with desire, knocking at the very gates. There’s no hurry at all.”

No
, she thought.

“Yes,” she heard herself say.

“You’re certain?” He pressed against her entrance, lodged the tip inside her. He felt enormous, too impossibly large to take in. How had they done it before?

No
. “Yes.”
Oh, God
.

His back flexed, and she braced herself, but there was no pain, only a long and marvelous stretching as her flesh parted, as her body took him in, as the battering ram glided up inside her without opposition.

“Oh!” she said in surprise.

He rocked against her, working himself deeper, smiling at her. “I’m inside you, little elf,” he said, lowering his lips to kiss her. “
Inside
you.”

He was. He
was
inside her. He was part of her, and it was beautiful. She felt as if she were blossoming from the inside out, in lush petals of Wallingford. She curled her hands around his shoulders and kissed him back.

“Raise your knees,” he said.

She raised her knees. “Oh, that’s nice.”

“How nice?”

“
Very
nice. Oh!”

He lifted himself a little higher. “Like this? Faster?”

“Yes! Oh!” She could hardly breathe. He filled her to bursting, hitting some exquisite nerve at every stroke. Pressure built inside her; impossibly intense pressure, like the swirling tide he had wrought for her just a short while ago, only more profound, more solid and dimensional. “Like that! Oh, God!”

He kept moving, thrusting over and over in an unstoppable rhythm, watching her face for every flicker of response, and she loved him for it, loved every powerful movement of his body into hers.

“Oh my God, my God . . . almost . . .” She dug her heels into his legs, dug her fingers into his back, forced him harder, and without warning a fierce packet of energy burst over her, radiating through every pore of her body in hard and eager waves.