He pressed a kiss to her palm, then flicked his tongue against her skin. “I hadn’t.”
“Do you still wish to be noble?” she asked him, her tone hesitant.
Her reason for daring to appear at his chamber suddenly occurred to him. She had decided to give him an answer. If the drawn expression on her beautiful face was any indication, she was hoping he hadn’t rescinded his offer for her hand. Which meant that her answer was yes.
If anything, the realization only served to make his cock even stiffer than it had been before. The urge to bury himself inside her was strong and tempting. But there remained a hint of the gentleman in him, reminding him that he ought not to act so rashly. Not this time.
No, instead he would toy with her and make her wonder as she had with him. Two could play at her game. “In what way, Tia?”
“You know very well, you scoundrel.” She pinned him with a frown.
He wanted to kiss it away. “No. I don’t. I’m afraid you must say the words aloud.”
She sighed, clearly not pleased with having to raise the flag of surrender in their small war of wits. “I wondered if you still want to marry me, you insufferable man.”
There it was again, that fierce nature of hers. Theirs would not be a boring union. Not at all. “When you phrase it so sweetly, how can I deny you?”
“Oh, bother. Perhaps you should just kiss me, then,” she said, half suggestion, half command.
He did, slanting his lips over hers and tasting her when she opened for him. She kissed him back with the same fiery passion that threatened to undo all the good intentions he’d just so carefully built up in his mind. He tore his mouth from hers before he took things too far, gazing down at the woman who was to be his wife.
“You’ve decided you’ll marry me, Tia?” he asked, even though it was already a foregone conclusion. He rather wanted to hear her say the words.
She paused, as though reluctant to relinquish her final bit of power over him. “Yes. I will be your wife, Heath.”
His wife. The small, gorgeous creature before him was to be his wife. The mother of his children. The lady of his estate. He had come to East Anglia intending to find his duchess, and find her he had. Even if she wasn’t at all the sort of wife he’d meant to find. Even if she brought him perilously close to the man he’d once been, the fervent young man who’d been driven by passion and painting, who’d been hopelessly selfish. Who’d left the woman he loved to die alone. He could never, would never, forget what he’d done. The memory of Bess would haunt him until the day he too took his last breath.
But there was no room in this moment between him and Tia for ghosts. He knew that in his heart as surely as he knew she would make a good wife to him. He desired her, but more than that, he needed her. And she needed him in much the same irrevocable way.
“Thank you.” He released her waist and took her hands in his, bringing them both to his lips for a kiss. “You’ve done me a great honor.”
He vowed to himself as he looked down on Tia that he would do whatever he must to ensure the reckless man he’d once been remained buried. He would never again betray another woman he cared for. The last time had very nearly been the death of him.
Chapter Seven
After nearly five years of happily living as a widow, she was once again a wife. Tia shivered as she awaited her new husband in her new chamber. They had remained in East Anglia at Thornton’s estate after the house party, deciding that they would not delay their nuptials. Cleo had been thrilled to throw together an impromptu wedding. Even the wayward Miss Whitney had offered to stay and help before returning to her father and stepmother’s care. Tia’s other sisters, Helen and Bo, had joined them, along with their parents the earl and countess of Northcote. Her no-account brothers had been too busy gadding about, as brothers were often wont to do.
The wedding had been lovely if not a touch bittersweet, for Tia had known that at the end of the wedding dinner, she’d be leaving the comfort of her sisters behind for a new adventure and a new life as the wife of a man she’d known for little more than a fortnight. It had decidedly not been her intention in attending Cleo’s house party to leave a married woman. But then, she’d stumbled in the gardens and had been saved by a man who kissed like the devil and knew his way around a lady’s buttons. She’d been trapped by her own inability to resist temptation.
She stared at her reflection now, wondering that she didn’t look different. For six years her identity had been Lady Stokey, and now she answered to a new name. It would take some time to accustom herself to the change, much as it would take her some time to feel as if Chatsworth House was her home. She had traveled through much of the day to Devonshire’s family seat, had gone through the necessary introductions before the servants, had enjoyed a late meal and had retired to her chamber where her lady’s maid had attended her.
There was no outward difference in her at all, she concluded. She possessed the same unbound blonde curls, the same eyes, same nose, same mouth she’d always despised for it was shaped far too awkwardly. She wore a silk-and-lace nightgown that had been prepared for just this occasion.
Her wedding night.
Ever since that day in the hunting cabin, Heath had forced a respectable distance between them. The proprieties having been observed and scandal neatly avoided, Tia was eager to be alone with him once more. She missed his kisses and knowing touch. In truth, she’d grown frightfully fond of him over the last few weeks as he’d courted her. He was surprisingly considerate, as evidenced by the efforts he’d clearly made to ready her chamber for her. It was beautifully decorated, with touches of bright color and not even a hint of dust to show it had been unused for the last few years. She knew it would have been an undertaking and that he’d given thought to her tastes when he’d directed its preparation. A lovely lithograph of a butterfly hanging on the wall had made her smile when she’d first entered.
A knock on the door adjoining her chamber to his startled her from her reveries and sent a jolt of anticipation snaking through her. Her husband awaited her. She gave her reflection a last look, smoothing down her hair before she turned to greet him.
“You may enter.”
The door swept open to reveal Heath, looking unfairly handsome in a silk dressing gown. A slow smile curved his sensual mouth as his gaze met hers. “Good evening, wife. You’re looking particularly ravishing.”
“Flattery will get you nowhere, sir,” she teased, crossing the room to him. As much as she’d never thought to be a wife again, she had to admit she enjoyed the sound of the title on Heath’s lips.
“Devil take it.” He caught her waist and hauled her against him. “I was hoping to bed you tonight. Is there any way I can change your mind, Your Grace?”
Tia enjoyed his banter. It was a side of him she’d never dreamt existed before getting to know him. She found herself smiling back at him, reaching up to run her fingers over the soft abrasion of his beard. Thinking about it grazing her skin made her instantly wet. She couldn’t help it. “Perhaps there are ways you could persuade me,” she suggested, relieved that their time of polite courtship was at an end. If she’d had to wait much longer, it would have driven her mad.
“Ah, a lady of reason.” His gaze was brilliant and hot on hers, sending a frisson of desire through her. “How might I persuade you?”
“You may begin by kissing me,” she told him boldly.
His hands slid upward, along the curves of her waist and higher, spreading fire in their wake. When he reached her breasts, he cupped them, his thumbs unerringly finding her hardened nipples beneath the thin barrier of fabric between them. He flicked over them once, twice, three times. It wasn’t the kiss she had requested, but it was enough to send another stab of desire to her core. How was it that with a mere touch he could make her desperate for him? Desperate to be taken by him, loved by him, possessed by him. She didn’t know what madness he wrought on her, only that she didn’t want it to end.
“Where s
hall I kiss you, darling?” His voice was deep and dark and seductive, rolling over her senses like burnished velvet.
She moaned as he gently tugged at her aching nipples, arching into his capable hands. “Everywhere.”
He lowered his head to press a soft, open-mouthed kiss on the side of her neck. “With great pleasure,” he murmured before moving to the hollow at the base of her throat where her frantic pulse beat. His tongue darted against her skin. “You even taste of violets.”
She had dabbed a bit of her perfume on that exact spot earlier. “I hope you don’t mind. It’s always been my favorite scent.” Lord Stokey had detested violet water and had forbidden her from wearing it. After his death, she’d worn it every day simply because she could.
“Of course not.” He dragged his mouth up to her earlobe, catching it between his teeth. “I can’t smell violets without my cock going hard.”
She shivered from his confession and his warm breath and the thought of his cock all at once. For some reason, his lips on her ear made her want him even more. His slow lovemaking was so seductive, so delicious, that she feared she wouldn’t make it much longer without begging him to take her. She wanted him inside her, hard and deep and wonderful. She longed for him in a way that frightened her. It was new, foreign. Never before had a man been such a source of weakness for her.
“You’re making me mad,” she told him on a whisper. She ran her fingers slowly through his thick hair and rubbed her cheek against his. His neatly clipped whiskers were a welcome abrasion.
His tongue followed the whorl of her ear and he rolled her nipples between his thumb and forefinger again. “Good. I want you on fire for me, darling. Naked and wet and hungry.”
Dear, sweet God. The things he did to her. He hadn’t even kissed her mouth yet, for heaven’s sake, and she was already quivering, a wanton woman in his arms. The attraction between them had not dimmed like a candle left burning too long. If anything, it had grown even more intense. How was it that a mere month ago, she had never given him a second thought and yet now, she couldn’t imagine her life without him in it? She didn’t know. But what she did know was that if he didn’t soon kiss her, she’d perish from the wait.
She decided to be bold and turned her head so that their lips met at last. She opened for him, running her tongue against his. He kissed her deeply, holding her close, as if she were cherished. Heath cupped her jaw, keeping her still as he ravished her mouth. Slowly, he led her backward across the chamber, step by step until at last she felt the bed behind her.
He tore his lips from hers, gazing down at her. “Take off your gown for me, darling.”
She gathered twin handfuls of silk and pulled the hem up over her body. The fabric slid over her already sensitized skin like a lush caress, heightening her arousal. Her eyes locked with his, she raised it higher, revealing first her hips, then higher still. His searing stare dipped.
“Shall I continue?” she asked with feigned innocence.
“Yes,” he said without hesitation, his voice thick and low with desire. “Don’t stop.”
Tia shimmied, lifting her gown slowly to bare her breasts before whipping it over her head and tossing it to the floor. It fell behind her in a scarcely audible whisper of sound. She cupped her breasts, watching the way his eyes went heavy-lidded and darkened to the color of the sky just after sunset. “Is this what you wanted, Your Grace?”
“God yes,” he groaned. His hands went back to her waist, lifting her gently onto the bed. He tugged open the knot on his dressing gown and shucked it, leaving him naked and glorious before her.
She allowed herself the luxury of admiring his lean, powerful body. He was not a man who sat about eating muffins all day, that much was certain. His chest was carved of muscle, his stomach taut and lined with whorls of golden hair that ran directly to his rigid cock. He was hers, she thought.
He joined her on the bed then, straddling her and lowering his head to suck a nipple. She arched and moaned as the wet warmth of his mouth shot a flame of desire directly to her core. His fingers slid between them, exploring her slick folds with an expert touch. Somehow he knew exactly how to touch her, how much pressure to exert, where she ached the most. He toyed with the bud of her sex, rubbing it fast and just hard enough to make her moan again as he sucked her other nipple. Looking up at her, he caught it between his teeth and tugged.
The delicious sensation of a climax built within her. She was very near to the edge. When he sank a finger deep inside her, touching her exactly where she longed to be touched, she lost control. The pleasure was as swift as it was sudden, claiming her with such force that she shook against him and cried out.
“Damn,” he muttered, kissing the side of her breast as he withdrew his finger “I wanted to go slowly, but I can’t wait. I need to be inside you now.”
“Yes,” she agreed, spreading her legs wider in welcome. She wanted him, all of him. Tia took his cock in hand and guided him to her ready entrance, tipping her hips to bring him deep. Her mind might not be entirely at peace with the notion of once again being a wife, but her body was more than sure. This was what her body wanted. Needed. Desperately. Oh yes.
“Ah, fuck.” He braced himself over her, the tip of his cock just far enough inside her to make her desperate for more. “Tell me what you want, wife.”
“I want you,” she said, breathless, the wicked words making her even more wild with need. She rather liked being called “wife” by the handsome man atop her. “Inside me.”
He thrust home, sending a delicious spear of pleasure through her. “Like this, darling?” He kissed her before she could answer, his tongue plunging into her mouth in the same claiming.
She wrapped her legs around him, drawing him deeper. When he began a fast, hard rhythm, she met him thrust for thrust. He slammed into her again and again, his hand going back between their bodies to once again pleasure her. A few flicks of the sensitive button hidden within her folds, and she was coming undone again, clenching on him in a series of spasms. And then, he too was losing himself, sinking deep within her and spending his seed.
After five long years as a widow, she was indeed a wife once more, and at the moment, that didn’t particularly feel like a bad thing to be.
Heath had spent the night in his wife’s bed. It confounded him that he’d fallen asleep there with her rather than returning to his chamber as he ought to have done. Even as he flipped through the Times over eggs, kidneys and kippers the next morning, his reaction to Tia irked him. While he intended for them to get on well as husband and wife, and he certainly meant to take her as often as possible, he didn’t wish to become—damn it all—attached.
In the short time he’d spent courting her, he’d realized that he needed to rein in his recklessness where she was concerned. He had loved once, madly and desperately, and he had lost that love. He didn’t care to repeat his experience. Indeed, he’d gone to great efforts to close off that part of his life forever. The evidence was sealed up in a chamber in the east wing, for Christ’s sake.
And last night, he’d taken one look at Tia standing in her chamber in that frothy confection, her breasts and waist on display like his personal Venus, and he’d lost control. His plans for an unhurried seduction had been dashed the moment he’d felt her soft, nude curves beneath him.
He stabbed at his plate with extra vigor and attempted to focus on the news rather than allow his already hard cock to once again rule him. He needed to take care, or he’d be following Tia about like a lovesick swain and writing maudlin poetry to her hips. He’d accomplished what he’d set out to do. He’d gained a wife. Now he simply needed to regain his senses.
The door of the breakfast room swept open to reveal the very object of his frustrated musings. She was pretty as an angel in her violet morning gown, her curls piled high on her head. The smile she sent his way when their gazes met sent an arrow of heat directly to his groin.
Devil take it.
They exchanged formal greetings
, more for the sake of the servants than themselves, and he pretended not to watch her from the corner of his eye whilst she fixed her plate and was seated. In truth, he couldn’t not stare at her. She was such a gorgeous creature, every bit the butterfly, vibrant and exotic and delicate all at once. If he had still painted, he would’ve captured her a hundred ways. With morning sun filtering over her while she slept, buttoned up in a formidable silk gown, beautiful and nervous on their wedding day, naked and flushed beneath him.
“Your Grace?”
Oh bloody hell. She was talking to him and he was mooning over her as if he were a lad seeing his first woman. “You may call me Heath, my dear,” he reminded her. He’d been the duke for several years already, but he still sometimes looked about for his grandfather whenever someone addressed him as “Your Grace”. And his profligate grandfather was not a man he ever wished to be.
“Heath, then.” Her lips curved in a shy smile. “I fear you were engrossed in your newspaper and quite forgot I was here.”
No. He’d merely been too busy imagining her in various poses. Particularly the nude ones. “I’m dreadfully sorry. What was it that you said?”
“I wished to thank you for making me feel at home.” Her gaze was warm on his, trapping him in her thrall. “I daresay you went to a great deal of effort on my behalf, and it is most appreciated.”
He had written ahead and seen to the redecorating of her chamber with her tastes in mind. Apparently, she’d found it to her liking. But it wouldn’t do for her to continue staring at him as if he’d plucked the sun from the sky and handed it to her on the Cavendish family silver. She was doing wicked things to him with that frank, sensual look. And he was doing his damnedest to keep the wicked to a minimum and his raging emotions under tight rein where they belonged.
He cleared his throat, feeling uncomfortable. “It was no trouble at all. Mrs. Rhodes is an expert at seeing to the comfort of the household.”
Heart’s Temptation Books 1–3 Page 67
