The Wicked Duke (19 page)

She kept her gaze on the door of the dressing room. He would come that way. A maid had pointed out the door at the far end of that room that offered access to His Grace's apartment. And vice versa.

Her nerves had her close to nauseous. She felt foolish, in this bed, her back propped on pillows, awaiting her deflowering. Surely there had to be a better way—

Suddenly Aylesbury stood in her chamber. He did not emerge through the dressing room after all. He appeared
inside the doorway to where her bedchamber connected to her sitting room.

The illumination from the small lamp left near that door washed over his tall form. He wore a long robe. She could not see the top of a nightshirt at his neck.

“You look surprised. Were you expecting someone else?” he asked.

“I thought . . .” She pointed to the dressing room, since her voice would not cooperate.

He walked over. “I do not use the duke's apartment.”

Why?

He began unbuttoning that robe. “Close your eyes, if you are likely to be shocked.”

“I am not a child.”

“Of course not. Forgive me for insulting you.”

His robe parted more with each button he worked. His naked chest showed, then his whole torso, then—

She did close her eyes. She would be sophisticated another day.

Bedclothes moved. A weight suppressed the mattress. She opened one eye a crack to see him lying on his back beside her, looking up at the drapery, with the sheet up to his waist.

He turned, and rose up on one arm. “I am not practiced at doing this with an innocent. You must tell me if I hurt you. When I do, if I do.”

She nodded, dumbly. Nerves no longer afflicted her. Raw panic did. “I think you should kiss me,” she said, “or—”

“Or?”

“Or I may lose my wedding breakfast.”

“I have never had such an unusual invitation, Marianne.”

“I thought I should warn you.”

He gave her a sweet, long kiss. “Better?”

She nodded. Sensations other than nausea took over. She ventured a touch on the skin of his shoulder, then tiptoed her fingers down his back. Then a bit lower. He was indeed naked. Completely.

He kissed her again. Her body did not mind. Pleasure scurried around inside her, like a joyful imp lighting little fires as it moved.

He looked down at her nightdress. After a bit of study, he found a button buried beneath a layer of lace near her neck. Her unfastened it, then sought the next one. She watched that male hand, dark and experienced, doing that which he had probably done many times in the past.

He looked up at her. His hand paused. “Do you mind?”

“I do not know. I will admit that it is—”
Exciting.
Naughty and titillating and—

He stopped, and instead kissed her while he caressed down her body. The thin lawn of her dress did little to interfere with the sensation of being claimed by that hand. His handling of her drew her toward the delirium she had experienced in the garden.

Another kiss. Deep and invasive and shocking. At the same time his caress lined up her side, then onto her breasts. The intense pleasure defeated her shyness. Her body had been waiting for that all day, maybe even since that night in the garden.

He had no experience with innocents, he said, but he had much experience with women. Even she could tell that, from the way he knew just how to drive her mad. When his caresses became quick and focused on the hard tips of her breasts, arrow after arrow of intense thrills shot through her. They aroused her low and deeply, and awakened erotic hungers that got worse and worse.

Then his hand moved to between her breasts and rested there. She almost cried when he stopped. She opened her eyes to see him looking down at her. Passion firmed his jaw and mouth. It added new depths to his eyes.

His hand played with one of the buttons.

“Do you mind?” This time he did not sound so solicitous. Nor did he appear so.

She shook her head. She would agree to anything if it meant he did not stop.

His fingertip traveled back to her breast's tip. He gently teased at it. “You do it. I am preoccupied.”

She fumbled with the buttons, one by one, until she could reach no more. All the while he aroused her and watched what it did to her.

He ran his fingertip down the small gap between the sides of the dress, where her skin had been exposed. “Show me how lovely you are.”

She understood what he meant. In the very small world in which they both dwelled together now, she just felt his meaning.

She pulled the dress open, so it fell on either side of her body and exposed her breasts and more. The chamber's cool air licked at her, arousing her even more. Her
breasts rose high and firm and heavy, their tips hard, revealing how desire affected her.

He knew, of course. She would have no secrets from this man, not about this. He deliberately skimmed his fingers across her nipples, again and again, ever so slightly touching them, until she fought not to groan.

Another kiss, controlled but fevered. His mouth lowered to her breasts, and he kissed them. Then, he used his tongue to do what his fingers had been doing.

She lost any claim to control. She could hardly bear the intense desire of the demanding, needy pleasure streaking through her. Shame became something that belonged to a world she abandoned in her crazed need.

With a few deft moves he had her completely naked. His embrace encompassed her so she felt his skin against hers. Shock after wonderful shock stole her breath when his hands moved freely over all of her. He deprived her of the remnants of modesty. Each relinquishment of privacy spun a denser cocoon of furious pleasure. Inside it she experienced an intimacy that awed her.

Even her mound did not escape his controlling touch. A caress there made her squirm. With one leg thrust over her left thigh, its knee pressing her right one, he prevented her from clamping her legs together the way she tried, to escape the sharp and insistent sensation he forced on her. An anguish of discontentment permeated her, as if her whole being cried for something it could not have.

Instead of relieving her, he made it worse. Wonderfully worse, until she did cry out her frustration. His mouth teased and sucked on her breast until she groaned aloud
from the tension racking her. His other hand explored her mound, and deeper. Strokes against the moist pulsing flesh sent her to a delirium where nothing existed in her except a high-pitched, overwhelming urge to find release from the torture of ever more intense desire.

He came over her. She clawed at his back in her desperation. A fullness pressed against her, then into her. At first it felt wonderful.

Then it hurt.

“Now,” she managed to say after a gasp.

It hurt more. Enough that the need and pleasure became a shadow to the pain that tore through her.

“Now.”
She hit his shoulder. “You said to tell you if you hurt me, and when I do you ignore me.”

He rose up enough to look down at her. “I thought you were saying you were ready.”

“You did not tell me to tell you that, did you?”

He dipped his head and kissed her cheek. “At least the worst is over, I think.”

“You
think
?”

“I am sure. Almost.”

She had to admit that she no longer felt real pain, only a fullness her body did not want to accommodate, and a raw soreness. She could see and feel the tight rein he had on himself.

“You should probably finish it,” she said.

“I do not mind waiting. This is . . . pleasant.”

In other words, he felt no pain. How nice that one of them enjoyed this. “No, no. Go ahead. I will not mind.”

“How brave you are.”

He moved in her. Not painfully, but . . . she could not name what it did to her. She felt too sore for pleasure, but . . . her body responded in ways that implied it could be very pleasant, another time.

The effects on her spirit astonished her, however. This act renewed the stark awareness of reality that she experienced when he found her in the dining room.
His. Forever
. She could not deny he had controlled her body, her mind, and a good part of her soul from the first kiss tonight. She sensed how he strained now to avoid hurting her, and imagined his power when he no longer had that concern.

His passion drew her in so she was not separate from it. Kisses to her neck, shoulders, and breasts revived some of her euphoria. Pleasure allowed her body to accept him better, and made the fullness more welcome. In the moment of his completion, as the final pleasure shuddered through him, and his need made him almost vulnerable, she experienced a most peculiar reaction. Joy.

He dropped on his back afterward. The passion and intimacy gave way to the world, and the drapery above her bed, and the reality of the man beside her.

“Why don't you use the duke's apartment?” she asked in a quiet voice. The night seemed to demand quiet tones.

“Because he lived there.” He stood and reached for his robe. She watched his body move out of the corner of her eye. Lean and muscular, his muscles corded as he donned the garment, covering himself from her view.

He turned and looked down at her. She waited for him to speak, if that was his intention. When he did not, she did.

“It is not always like that, is it?”

“I will not hurt you like that again.”

“I did not mean— It is not always so polite and careful, is it? I should not expect it to be, should I?”

He reached down and traced his fingertips along the side of her face. “No.”

He left then.

She had not needed to ask. She had sensed the power in him, much like she felt when riding a horse that is forced to trot when it wants to gallop. Nora's words came to her, about men being bestial and crude and cruel.

Thinking about Nora tinted her mood with sadness and misgivings. It would have been horrible to face this night ignorant, and to have known only pain and fear. The shock might never pass.

*   *   *

L
ance returned to his apartment sated, but aware he had not acquitted himself very well in this ritual.

He should have sought advice from one of his brothers. Probably Gareth. Eva had undoubtedly been a virgin when she met Gareth, while Lance was fairly certain Padua had not been when she met Ives.

At least he had not brutalized Marianne, despite the overwhelming urge to take her fast and hard. He had not lost sight of who she was, or what she was. He may not have given her much contentment, but except for that one unfortunate moment of misunderstanding—an honest mistake on his part, but, he admitted, one he welcomed because he held on to control by the thinnest of tethers—except for that, he trusted it had not been too bad for her.

No, his deficiencies had been more social than physical. He should have seduced and cajoled, flattered and teased. He should perhaps have pretended he loved her. She had not been raised to be a peer's wife and part of a political and dynastic match. She probably expected more than carnal satisfaction at best.

Not that he had even given her that either.

Unable to consider sleep at the moment, he left the apartment and walked back toward her chambers. Instead of entering her door, he let himself in another one near it.

He did not come here much after his father died. Not at all in the last year. If he visited London, it was to forget the ghost who lived here, not entertain him.

The vague moonlight that leaked into the sitting room did not permit more than dark forms to reveal themselves, but he knew every item and where it was. The decanters on the table by the wall. The books, so rarely read, in their case nearby. The sofa and chairs. Percy's scent still pervaded the place, as if it had not been aired since his last visit to town.

He had not killed his brother, but God help him, he definitely did not mourn his passing. The unholy relief he experienced on learning of his brother's demise had been short-lived. As if in punishment for his lack of grief, fortune made certain Percy could not be forgotten quickly.

Now he had made a marriage in an effort to banish that oppressive shadow. How Percy must be laughing. At least it had been Marianne. It could have been someone as malevolent as Percy himself.

He left the apartment. As he passed the duchess's door, he thought of Marianne inside. Her family had surely pressed her hard to accept his proposal. Radley might have threatened to cast her out if she refused.

He had left her thinking she might face violence in the marriage bed, or far worse than she had known tonight. Gareth, renowned for his charm with the ladies as well as his skill, would be appalled with him on many counts tonight.

Hell, he had been an ass.

He pressed the latch and retraced his steps to the bedchamber. Marianne had put her nightdress back on, all buttoned and beribboned up to her neck. She looked to be sleeping under that canopy.

Her eyes opened. He could not see her expression well, but he could imagine what she assumed.

“You look very small there, Marianne.”

She rose on her elbows and looked at the bed. “I am not so small. It is the bed that is huge.”

“You also look very alone.”

Did she wipe sleep from her eye, or a tear? “More strange than alone. Foreign. And more different than I expected, in so many ways. Does that make any sense?”

“I understand completely.”

“They should warn us that marriage does that. It is not fair that we are not prepared better.”

He lay down beside her. “I assumed you would want me to go, but I will stay for a while now, if you do not mind. Perhaps you will not feel so foreign then.” Gareth's
voice whispered in his head. He repeated his bastard brother's prompt. “Do not worry. I will not impose on you again tonight. Sleep now.”

Her body relaxed. She yawned and snuggled deeper under the bedclothes. “You should cover yourself. You will get cold otherwise.”