What I Did For a Duke (22 page)

“Give him a shilling, Genny!” Millicent demanded cheerfully.

The duke untied his own blindfold and relinquished it to the next volunteer, which was Olivia.

He resumed his seat at the edge of the proceedings.

They both knew he’d won more than a game of blindman’s buff.

A
nd when Genevieve went up to her bedchamber later, it wasn’t to sleep. It was to pace the carpet and to watch the clock. Out of spite, time slowed.

But it could not defy the turning of the earth, and midnight arrived.

And down the stairs she went.

She found him in the library this time. But he wasn’t standing at the window gazing out into the darkness. He was standing near the doorway, watching the foyer for her, which made him almost too easy to see.

“Were you looking for me, Miss Eversea?” he asked softly.

She found she was so nervous she couldn’t reply. She simply bit her lip.

He smiled at her. “Were you perhaps looking for scintillating conversation? A discussion about art? Of which I know a little more now than I did when I first arrived, I’ll have you know.”

“Do you?” She was too astonished to be irritated by his teasing.

“I spent an hour or so in here the other day. Quite a collection you have. I wanted to investigate it.”

“Why?”

“Why did I spend time in the library? My curiosity was . . . aroused.”

Something about the way he said “aroused” looped around her as surely as a warm arm around her waist. She was desperately nervous. But she was curiously thrilled to suspect he’d done it to learn more about her.

“Why was your curiosity aroused? What did you learn?”

“I read that Boticelli painted something called
Venus and Mars
in which Mars, poor devil, is nearly naked and flattened as though Venus has just thoroughly had her way with him, and that Veronese painted one in which, ironically, Venus is entirely naked and Mars is clothed. I prefer to imagine the latter.”

“But you knew that already. Do you even
like
art?”

A hesitation. “I like cricket.”

“And that’s all?” She was smiling now.

“I like dogs. I like horses and hunting and fine wines. I like traveling. I like books about the natural sciences. I like chess and fishing and I like making money hand over fist and I enjoy making love to beautiful women. I like speaking with you. And looking at you. And I read a book about art and I tried to become interested in light and form and the like. I think I prefer to imagine the firelight playing about your form.”

Genevieve had never heard a list she’d liked as much, though she could hardly say why. He was more of an artist in some ways than people who professed to enjoy it were, people like Harry—and even herself—who could not see without analyzing. It was in the things he saw and the words he chose to describe them and in how he touched . . . as he was touching her now.

Because almost before she realized it, the backs of his fingers were sliding against her throat. Where the skin was satiny smooth and pale.

“And so. Do you intend to have your way with me, Venus?” he murmured.

She still didn’t have the vocabulary for this sort of sensual encounter. Her entire being seemed to rush the surface of her skin, greedily savoring his touch.

“I’ve told you what I want. How much do you want to know, Genevieve?” It sounded like a serious question. Also a fairly fraught one.

“How can I answer that honestly when I don’t know how much there is to know?”

“You’re not entirely naïve about . . . the process.”

Very romantic.
The process
.

“It’s impossible to remain naïve when I live with my brothers who will go on talking and surrounded by animals that will go on mating in front of one.”

“You may be reassured to learn there’s more to it than horses and dogs would have you believe.”

“Given that my brothers have more than once risked their lives over it, I gleaned as much.”

He was smiling at her. His hand never stopped moving over her skin, but he smiled. She’d noticed that he seemed to find her infinitely amusing, even, dare she say it,
enchanting
.

He liked
talking
to her.

This amused her.

“Oh, I can assure you women have risked their lives for it, too.”

Her heart was walloping away in her throat, and she was certain he could feel it, as his fingers lingered there. Nearly everything on her body that could stand erect was erect now, clamoring for his touch. The hair on the back of her neck, her arms. Her nipples.

“Are you afraid, Genevieve?”

“No. You do enjoy saying my name.”

“It has a lilt.”

“I see.” Her voice was faint.

“Because you should consider being a little afraid.”

And now she was, just a little, despite the fact that his tone sounded entirely reasonable.

“Why?” she whispered.

“Once we’ve made love, you might find you won’t be able to do without me.”

Made love.
Christ, but she was in over her head, but in the moment it seemed there was nothing she could do to extricate herself. She didn’t want to extricate herself, and therein was an important clue to the fact that she’d lost her sanity. Or handed it over to him.

“Difficult to imagine.” She’d meant to sound sarcastic. But her voice had begun to make a liar of her, because it had gone lulled, soft, trembling.

His turn to smile in the dark.

“I meant what I said in the garden,” he gently warned.

“Have I been coy so far?”

“No,” he said shortly.

Well, then. What next?

And there was a moment where she thought
he
might be at a loss. His hand paused against her throat. A moment passed where she was tempted to suggest,
Perhaps you’re the one who’s afraid
. But it wasn’t the sort of thing one said to him, even in jest.

But she was wrong. He did know where to begin, and as usual, it seemed as natural as breathing, as an exhale. He’d
already
begun; as they’d spoken he’d drifted nearer and nearer, and now he brushed his lips between her eyes. Surprisingly tender, devastatingly sensual, light as a breath. And just like that she turned into smoke; she was indistinguishable from the night; she was only sensation.

She knew only relief that he was kissing her.

She closed her eyes, the better to savor the filaments of pleasure that shivered through her when his lips dragged to her temple, when his tongue delicately traced her ear, when his breath blew softly there, lips and tongue landed velvety hot on that vulnerable place hidden beneath her jaw, that place where her heart thumped madly, betraying everything she felt. She turned her face into his kisses, asking for and seeking pleasure as though it was her due, as though it was her natural place in the universe to accept it from him, as though she was made for only this. And his hands slid down, down, down, possessively over her breasts, over the curve of her waist, tracing lightly, lightly, the seam of her buttocks.

And when she was thoroughly sensually drugged, at last his mouth reached hers.

The kiss was rough.

His lips crushed hers; he took it deep instantly, his tongue sinewy and searching. Her tongue dueled with his as his arms wrapped ’round her back, one beneath her arse, and held her hard against him as her head bent from the force of it. As if he’d transferred the force of his passion to her she was now feverish, shaking. His body hummed with tension; she felt it in him, in how his ragged breath shook his body, when her hands landed on shirt, then slid down his hard body to claim the power over him she knew she possessed. She dragged her hands hard over his hard cock.

He hissed in a breath, and ducked his head. He pressed his hips into her hands, grinding against her. She stroked him hard, feeling the enormous contours of him, growing harder, swelling beneath her touch. He took her face in his fingers and the words were gasps in her ear:

“Not here. Your bedchamber.”

Chapter 20

A
silent journey. Almost a dash. Short in duration, but long enough to allow her to change her mind and call a halt to all of it. But she fumbled at the doorknob with clumsy fingers, opened it, and led him inside.

And even as she turned to lock it, he stood behind her, his fingers deftly unlaced her, demonstrating an unnerving facility with undressing women. He spread the laces wide, and pushed her hair aside to place a soft kiss at the nape of her neck, before he urged the dress from her shoulders and gave it a helpful downward tug to ensure it was soon a rustling wad at her feet. She inhaled a shuddering breath as the air of the room struck her bare skin and gooseflesh rose over her. With trembling fingers, before she could think otherwise, she unfastened her stays and dropped them to the floor. She’d, in a fit of practicality, removed her stockings earlier. They were silk and easily shredded.

“Turn. I want to look at you,” he ordered.

“Why?”

“Because you are beautiful and I want you.”

Dear God. He spoke like he moved: quick, purposeful. His delivery made everything sound true and right and . . .
sensible
. Which was dangerous indeed, as the last thing this was meant to be was sensible. He’d undressed with startling alacrity while she was facing her door, and she hardly knew where to look first. She knew he meant it, because she could see in his fierce eyes and the swift rise and fall of his shoulders, and his hard cock, thick and large and curving up toward his belly, how much he did want her.

And he stared, drinking her in, and dear God, her knees went weaker still at the look in his eyes.

She wanted to tell him, too, that he was beautiful, but it wasn’t quite the right word. It seemed inadequate and perhaps not exactly true. He was overwhelmingly new to her, alien, and astoundingly . . .
male
. . . his skin very fair, his body spare, all hard, lean muscle, his chest furred with dark hair, a trail of it following the seam of his ribs to where his cock curved upward against his belly up from its nest of curling hair. His small, hard buttocks were almost comically white and muscular. She saw a few scars scattered over him.

He saved her from the onslaught of sensations and impressions and from having to make a statement when he pulled her against his bare body.

The feeling of his skin against hers, her hard nipples brushing his, was extraordinary; his skin was hot; he smelled wonderful and strange, of smoke and musk and something she was sure was uniquely his.

He didn’t want coy. She’d claimed she wasn’t. And yet it was counter to her nature to let momentum take her, to surrender. She struggled with it, and he felt the tension in her body.

“It’s all right,” he murmured into her ear, his breath, his voice, erotic, so persuasive, the voice of ultimate safety and ultimate danger. “I have you.
Shhh
, now, Genevieve.”

He teased her breasts with his fingers, savoring their softness, watching her head tip back when he was at first gentle with them, then demandingly palming her nipples. He placed a kiss at the base of her throat, and began to slide down the length of her body, stopping to nip, then suck at, each nipple, and she twined her fingers in his hair.

But he had a destination. He was dragging kisses down the length of her body, down the seam between her ribs, his hot hands fanning over her back, to cup her buttocks, to drag up the downy fine hairs along her thighs, gently stroking the tender skin between them, urging them, she realized, apart, apart, apart. And she had no time for shock or shame before his tongue delved between her legs, where she was hot and slick and aching.

She jerked. It was a lightning strike of unadulterated bliss through her body.

“Oh, God . . . it’s . . .”

“It’s Veronese.”

She gave a choked laugh. He
would
be witty now.

“Never say I’m not a lover of art.” He blew softly, and then his tongue stroked again.

She swore a word she wasn’t even certain she’d known.

“Tell me, is it good?” he murmured.

Was it
good
? She’d no words for what it was, and she didn’t want to narrate.

“Tell me.” He sucked gently, his hands stroking, stroking her thighs.

“Oh God.
Too
good . . . harder . . .”

How did she know she wanted “harder”? But she knew. She gripped his shoulders. Hard, strong, solid, necessary when the world around her was dissolving into spangled heat. She found herself arching against him as his tongue, like hot, muscular satin, stroked hard where she was slick and aching, and his fingers followed with deft and skillful strokes.

“Oh, God . . . Help me . . .”

Help me?
That seemed absurd. But she was afraid; she was hurtling toward a precipice over which lurked something extraordinary. She was comprised only of need.

He knew. “Soon,” he reassured her.

But what did that
mean
?

Salvation
was not too strong a word for what she needed. It built in urgency, until she was shamelessly rippling into his caress, her body abetting him. The universe narrowed to a single point of pleasure.

Suddenly she felt the edge of the bed against the back of her knees; his hands eased her backward in his arms. She tipped. Her eyes were closed. The counterpane scratched against her bare back. He pressed her thighs far, far apart. She was wide open to him now, and his muscular, brilliant tongue delved deeper, found an indescribable rhythm and stroked her, and her body colluded until they found precisely the rhythm she needed. Her fists knotted the counterpane, and she arched into him, rippling with the untenable pleasure. She hissed her breath through her teeth. She was hot or she was cold or there was some other word that meant both; all she knew was that her skin stung as if every cell of it was alive and singing hallelujah, and that pleasure was a river roaring through her, threatening the very seams of her being. Building, building.

And bliss crashed over with a white burst behind her eyes.

It whipped her body upward and tore a silent scream from her, and her skin was all over stars. She shook and shook beneath him.

“Alex. . . .”

“Hold on to me, love.”

Love?

Her body was limp and heaving from the extraordinary release, but he was brisk. She opened her eyes to find his hands propping him up on either side of her. He raised his long body up, and with one hand he positioned his cock and guided himself in.

No preamble. She gasped. There was a bite of quick pain. And he thrust past her resistance, into her snug heat, deeply, inexorably joining himself to her.

“Genevieve.” His voice was a ragged prayer. His chest swayed shallowly. “I . . .”

He’d lost his words.

She understood.

He hovered on strong arms over her, his eyes burning into hers, allowing her to adjust to the feel of him inside her. Extraordinary to be joined like this with him, to be so dominated, and yet to possess the power. She slid her hands wonderingly over his hard chest, and he closed his eyes to her touch. He was slick with perspiration, and she touched her tongue to his nipple. His lungs bellowed in and out. She watched his lashes shiver on his cheeks.

He opened his eyes again. The muscles of his back, his arms, quivered. His breath shuddered hotly over her.

“I want to go slow for you. I don’t think I can.”

She dragged a hand over his cheek and said all she knew. “I want you.”

And it was these words that loosed the tether on his control.

This. This is what my body is made for.

It was languid at first. He’d tried, at least, for a measure of finesse. He sank into her and pulled slowly back, allowing her to feel every inch of him again, and then again. She grew accustomed to the remarkable feel of him, and she felt, extraordinarily, an echo of the need he’d banked earlier rising, rising in her.

“Alex . . .”
she whispered. A question. A plea.

He groaned softly and swore.

“The way you feel, Genevieve . . . Mother of God . . .”

His pleasure was hers, the power she had to give him pleasure excited her unbearably. Instinctively she enfolded him, locked her legs around his back, inviting him deeper still, arching up to meet him as he sank into her again.

The cords of his neck were taut. He dipped to kiss her; she parted her lips and took his tongue to twine it with hers; their mouths melded, carnal and savage and sweet. Their teeth clashed. And as he thrust she found her head thrashing from him, because she knew she would come again.

And this made him wild.

And then she felt it when it was no longer within his control. His white hips drummed, the tempo grew ever swifter. She arched to meet him, drawing hot breaths in. She clutched his shoulders, her nails dragging over his biceps, and whimpered his name, for as their bodies clashed hard another release came from nowhere and she growled like a feral thing, thumping his back with her fists as the rush of pleasure crashed through her, bucking from it, and he pounded into her until he swore hoarsely and pulled from her body with a ragged groan.

His release wracked him, shook his big body like a rag hard as he spilled over her belly.

He lowered himself over her gently like one killed.

She held on to him, and he to her, until their breathing steadied.

She stroked his hair, realizing this was the first time she’d ever seen him truly peaceful, and wondering why his peace was hers.

“W
ell,” he murmured, finally. “Well, well, well.”

That’s exactly how she felt. Very, very well.

She was still on a cloud somewhere, except that the cloud was her bed, and the only thing anchoring her to earth was the body of the warm, sweaty man next to her, upon whose muscular arm her head now rested, and whose heavy thigh was now covering hers. He was so fair. His calves were slim and hard and elegantly muscled and she knew an impulse to nibble on one. She traced a finger around his nipple, just because it was a small round thing, a leathery little coin. It ruched like her own did.

“That’s excellent,” he murmured huskily, “what you’re doing, but I can’t possibly accommodate you again yet. Give me at least a minute or two. I’m not a man of twenty years.”

“Does it matter? Your age?”

“It does indeed. A bit.” He didn’t sound at all rueful about it.

Which meant Harry would be hard within minutes of such a romp, apparently. The things she was learning . . .

“I’ll wait,” she allowed magnanimously.

He laughed softly, and his chest jumped beneath her cheek.

“Genevieve . . .” he drawled after a moment.

And said nothing else.

She turned to him quizzically.

He lifted his head up a bit to look at her. “Oh. That’s all. Just ‘Genevieve.’ I just think from now on I’ll use your name as an exclamation of extreme satisfaction. When things are going very well I’ll shout ‘
Genevieve!
’ In lieu of hallelujah. Or if someone says, ‘Finally we should have fine weather after days of rain,’ I’ll say, ‘Well, Genevieve!’ ”

He laughed, and she was blushing.

For heaven’s sake,
now
she was blushing?

She’d been divested of her virginity officially, though she knew vigorous horseback riding and the like could occasionally do that rather
unofficially
to a woman. She’d thought it would be profound. She hadn’t considered how natural it might feel. She’d never suspected what splendid humor a bout of lovemaking would leave her in, or that lying with a naked man in its wake would seem entirely reasonable. She’d heard other women complain euphemistically about it.

She had no complaints.

Pleasure for the sake of pleasure. Passion for passion’s sake.

A relinquishing of control in order to gain control and power.

How right he had been. She’d thought it had been the talk of the seducer. Of course it had been, but he hadn’t lied.

“Moncrieffe . . .”

“Alex.”

“Alex then . . .” She paused. “What truly became of your wife?”

“Are you wondering whether I poisoned her? Don’t you think I did?”

“Of course you didn’t. But the rumor didn’t spring from nowhere.”

“You
are
clever.” He sighed contentedly.

“Yes.”

He was quiet a moment, perhaps pondering where to begin, or remembering the moment of his wife’s death. Perhaps she oughtn’t have asked.

“She died eating oysters. The doctor said her body reacted badly to them. It was the first time she’d eaten any, and it happens in that way for very few people. There was naught we could do . . . she rather suffocated, I suppose you could say. It interfered with her breathing, until she no longer could. It happened quickly, and it was horrible.”

Oh, dear God.

He must have felt her tense. “Are you sorry you asked?”

“I’m sorry it happened,” she said, her throat thick with the truth of those words.

He was quiet for a very long time.

“So am I.”

Which she sensed didn’t begin to encompass how he felt, but he’d always managed to convey a universe of meaning in whatever few words he chose to use.

She didn’t want to know more, and yet she did. Was he still sorry? Was that what had made him . . . well, the man everyone saw today?

“I didn’t know what was happening to her at the time,” he said softly, suddenly.

“Were you afraid?”

He thought about this, too. She liked this. The talking, the thoughtfulness, the carefulness with which he entrusted her with his memories.

“I will say this to you: I have been shot in war and in duels. I have been cornered by knife-wielding thugs. I’ve been kicked by angry horses and I’ve had vases hurled at me by angry mistresses. But I . . .” He inhaled a sound, then exhaled one, ruefully almost defeated. But his fingers trailed over her spine, as if he found comfort in the warm reality of her. “. . . I had never, never been more afraid.”

What she felt was a peculiar anger that the world should ever have treated him thus.