And he wanted to devour her in turn.
“A tart for a tart?” she asked archly.
Bloody hell, she was not letting that one go, was she? It shamed him to think he had once been so dismissive of her, that he had believed her nothing more than a beautiful flirt with a wild streak. There was so much more to her, so many hidden depths he had only just begun to discover.
“You are not a tart, princess,” he said firmly. “And since, as the victor, I am entitled to your complete cooperation for the remainder of the day, I both insist you cease referring to my idiocy and eat another tart.”
A slow smile curved her lips, and he could not stymie the answering slide of heat in his veins. “I shall save referring to your idiocy for tomorrow.”
A laugh tore from him. “How generous. Now, eat the bloody tart before it melts all over my fingers and I am a sticky mess.”
“As you wish, husband, since I am at your mercy.” She obliged then, opening her lips to nibble lightly at the shell of the pastry. His cock twitched as he watched, as much from her words as from her actions. How was the sight of a woman taking a bite of dessert so erotic? He had not imagined he would ever find it so.
Then again, he had not imagined, even days ago, when he had been facing his impending nuptials, any of the maelstrom of sensations buffeting him now. He had dreaded their union, hated the notion of another marriage when the first one had ruined him, had imagined Boadicea unsuitable for him in every sense other than base physical attraction. And yet…
He felt lighter than he had in… Hell, in as long as he could recall. How incredible that it was owed to the woman seated opposite him with such elegant perfection, her purple riding habit contrasting her pale skin, the jaunty hat she had worn earlier removed to allow her fiery curls to glint in the sun.
His chest filled. His heart thumped. Never had he shared such a simple, pleasurable afternoon with Millicent, even before her madness. He could not help but notice the disparity between the two women. It was an irony that perhaps only he appreciated that neither one of his marriages had been his wish but fostered instead by varying forms of duty.
With Millicent, it had been that their families—her lineage older and more prestigious than the Marlow line—wished to align. The match had been well-received by all. His father had pressed, and Spencer had consented, and he had been young and so bloody naïve when he had welcomed his young and green bride to Boswell Manor. Spencer had been twenty-five, Millicent scarcely twenty. Within five years, both his father and Millicent had already been consigned to the grave.
“You are frowning,” Boadicea observed, trailing her fingertips in a whisper of a touch over his brows.
He swallowed, realizing that he had frozen, still holding out the remainder of the tart. He offered it to her for another bite, watching as her white teeth sank into the meringue center, her tongue licking a bit of chocolate from her lower lip. She missed a trace in the corner of her mouth, and without hesitation, he used his thumb to wipe it away, bringing it back to his waiting tongue.
Sweet. So bloody sweet. But he wanted more.
“Spencer,” she whispered, her hands cupping his jaw. Her eyes sparkled with a depth of emotion that stole his breath. That told him she felt the pull between them every bit as strongly as he did.
To hell with the tart. He tossed the remainder of it over his shoulder, and where it landed he did not give a damn. His hands went to her waist, hauling her to him so that she straddled his lap, skirts pooling around them. Her soft thighs and the irresistible heat from her sweet cunny branded him through his riding breeches.
Fuck, she was wet for him, soaking into the layers of fabric separating them. How grateful he was for the split in her drawers, for the heat and seduction of her. For her beautiful mouth, her floral scent, her curves, her husky voice saying his name, for her body moving over his.
“Kiss me,” he ordered, his palms seeking more of her, gliding over the small of her back, finding her shoulders. Luncheon had been pleasant, but this was what he hungered for most: her. His wife. Boadicea. The only woman capable of making him burn with outrage and hunger all at once.
“Boadicea,” he urged when she still denied him. She stroked his jaw instead of aligning her lips to his, caressing him with a wonder that touched him in a way he had no longer imagined possible. “Please.”
“Spencer.” She removed his hat, laying it on the blanket at his side, her fingers plunging into his hair. He forgot about wanting her mouth on his, forgot about desiring her surrender.
Instead, he took her in as if it were the first time he was seeing her: oval face, delicate brows, locks swept into a Grecian braid. Freckles on the bridge of her nose. High cheekbones. The most kissable mouth he had ever seen. The beauty mark that drove him to distraction. By God, she was more gorgeous than he had even comprehended before, and her beauty burned from within. She glowed. She was so much more than he had expected, more than he had ever dared imagine.
And she was his. How was it possible?
Hope burst open inside him, like a rose going into full bloom. Hope that he could one day resurrect the pieces of himself he had lost. That he could be the man Boadicea deserved. That his fits would cease, that he would never again wake trembling from the maws of a demonic nightmare, that he could be…her husband. A man she could love.
The enormity of his thoughts shook him. Could he ever be that man? He was afraid to look inside himself, to find the answer, to wonder whether or not, in spite of all he had endured, a part of him still believed love could exist after all. The enormity of it all threatened to cleave him in two.
So instead, he turned to what he did know: the need that sparked between them with an unquenchable flame. Desire, pleasure, was what he knew without doubt he could give her. Was all he could ever promise.
One of his hands sank into her hair, the other cupped the side of her face, and he looked at her, mesmerized. Not just by her beauty, which was undeniable, but by her. “Have you any idea how gorgeous you are?” he rasped, watching his fingers trail over her jaw, his thumb caress her cheekbone. She was warm, alive, more exquisite and responsive than he deserved.
More of everything than he deserved.
“So lovely.” He lowered his lips to her throat. Here, she tasted as sweet as she smelled. He trailed his mouth over the tense cord, nibbled the side of her neck where her pulse hammered furiously. He kissed below her ear. And then he found the secret spot that was so responsive to his touch, that silken hollow that smelled like lily of the valley and longed for his tongue. He licked.
She moaned his name. “Spencer.”
Dear God, all he needed was his name on her lips, and he was about to spend. This wouldn’t do. He shifted beneath her, easing the pressure of her warm, wet flesh over his straining cockstand. He bit her earlobe, ran his tongue over it to quell the sting. She clutched him tighter, and an answering need burned within him.
“You still have not kissed me,” he said into her ear.
“Mmm.” Her voice, low and husky, sparked a fresh onslaught of hunger inside him. “You ought to know I do not do well with acceding to the wills of others.”
He smiled, his lips grazing the delicate whorl before him. When she shivered, he pressed his advantage, blowing lightly over it and catching the top curvature of cartilage between his teeth. “What if it is your will as well?”
She rubbed her cheek against his, much like a cat, as though she wished to brand her imprint upon his skin, or perhaps vice versa. “My will is at war. Part of me wants to kiss you, but part of me wants to deny you.”
“Deny me and deny yourself, minx.” He moved her once more, settled her back over his burgeoning rod, canted his hips into hers.
She arched against him and scooted her rounded bum nearer, so that his entire length pressed her seam. “Tell me something, Spencer, and I will kiss you as you wish.”
Her teasing heightened his arousal. Ever since he had first laid eyes upon her, she had driven
him to distraction. And rather than feeling sated after their heated bouts of lovemaking, he only craved her more. Everything she did, everything she said, every movement, every breath, amplified a hundredfold in him. Her eyes, her scent, her lips. That beauty mark. Good God.
But still, he had won their race. He would not forget, regardless of how warm and wet her pussy was through the slit of her drawers.
He raised his head and gazed down at her, absorbing the sight of her, flushed and lovely, her hair glinting in the late summer sunlight. Her irises, at the center of those forget-me-not orbs, were dark and large, betraying her arousal every bit as much as her body did wherever they came into contact.
“The race, princess,” he said. “I won, and it was agreed that the loser must do whatever the victor wishes for the remainder of the day. I distinctly recall you saying you found the stakes acceptable.”
She blinked. “Your victory is suspect. You were already assured of it when you set the terms of the race.”
He raised a brow, enjoying their banter and the glorious brightness of the day. He couldn’t recall ever feeling so unfettered. “Never say you are a poor loser, Duchess.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I am no such thing, Duke. I will gladly meet your terms on one condition.”
Clever of her, but he was having none of it. He shook his head slowly. “No conditions. Our terms were clear.”
“Your knowledge that you had the faster mount was not.” She pouted.
Here was a side of his wife he had yet to learn. She did not lose well. He found it rather endearing. “Darling, I can assure you that our mounts were evenly matched. I employed no deceptions. I daresay your heart was not in it. Victory was almost yours, but in the end, I raced past you.”
“Yes,” she said, her voice solemn, her gaze slipping to his mouth. “You did.”
“A kiss is all I require.” He grinned. “At the moment.”
She pressed a quick, chaste kiss to his lips, so hurried in her movements that he couldn’t even respond. “There you are, debt settled.”
He raised a brow. “Not that sort of kiss.”
She raised one in return. “You did not specify. Next time, do take care to elaborate on your wishes, husband.” She rocked against him then, clutching his shoulders, and he lost his bloody breath at the impact of her grinding on his painfully erect cock.
Bloody. Hell.
He gritted his jaw, attempting to control the commanding hunger coursing through him and doing everything in his power to tamp down the vicious need to tear open his trousers, free his cock, and guide her down upon it. To sheathe himself inside her, where he belonged. The need to be inside her nearly undid him.
He clenched his teeth. “Kiss me.”
She rocked again. “Answer me.”
A battle of wills. She did not play fair, and he shouldn’t be surprised, really. He had known from the start that Boadicea Harrington was a wily thing, a termagant, a rebel, every bit of her in her namesake’s mold. She was sent to conquer. Bold, beautiful, unrelenting.
His.
He kissed her throat, sank his hand into the hair at her nape. He felt her inhalation against his lips, her pounding pulse. “What is your question, darling?” he asked into her silken skin.
The landscape seemed to pulse with vitality all around them, glinting with bright possibility. A kaleidoscope of rays and green leaves surrounded them, summer’s revival on full display, the redolent scent of hay and grass and flower, the whisper of a breeze in the trees. The sun was warm, golden, beating upon his back. Her skin was warmer still, scented with her sweet perfume. Their bodies were intertwined, her skirts billowing about them on the blanket, her thighs bracketing his.
He stilled, waiting, heart beating in competition with hers. What did she want to know? What did she want to hear? He hoped it had nothing to do with the past, for he could not—would not—allow it to intrude upon them now. Nothing could shatter this fantasy in which he pretended he was an ordinary man, that madness and death had never scarred him. That he was a husband hopelessly in his wife’s thrall, newly wed and free to lose himself in her.
How he wished all that was true.
But it wasn’t.
It was fantasy bound to be dismantled.
For the moment, however, he could convince himself. He could forget everything, everyone, every black moment of his past, just by her responsive curves merging with his hard planes. Just with her earnest gaze on his. Just with her, so that it seemed that they were the only two people in all the world.
“Your question,” he asked again, for she had seemed to come undone, her body thrusting against his, riding him, bringing him to the edge of reason.
“The book.” Her eyes were bright, insistent. “Tell me what you read.”
Hell. Thoughts of the book did not bode well for his longevity. He had not been wrong with his initial estimation of it, not entirely. Yes, it was bawdy. Yes, it was also forbidden. The obscenity laws barred literature of its sort from being printed. But the devil of it was, that the more he had read, the more he had wanted to read. He had not been able to put the thing down. Each page he turned, he could not help but think of Boadicea eagerly scanning the page, reading the same wanton words as he.
And he had wondered, God how he had wondered. Had the stories aroused her? Shocked her? Had she read the letter from Lady Lovelorn to her friend Lady Pearl about their adventures in finishing school? The mere thought of Boadicea reading such licentious words made him go hard as a marble bust.
He held her gaze, unwavering. “All of it.”
Her mouth fell open in a perfectly formed ‘o’ of surprise before she gathered herself and schooled her features back into a semblance of order. “All of it?”
He continued his regard. “All of it.”
Her lips pursed. “The birching?”
“The birching,” he confirmed.
“Lady Lovelorn’s letters?” she asked next, sliding her warm, wet cove across him again.
His cheekbones felt red as any virgin’s at the mere mentioning of those wicked epistles, and he was decidedly not a bloody virgin. He cleared his throat. “The letters, the groom and Lady Letitia, the French governess who had a fondness for His Lordship’s Priapus. I read the whole bloody thing. I read it because you had read it, and I wanted to see and know what you had seen and read.”
He was aware that he was being crude, but she had pushed him and surely she knew better than anyone how to accept vulgarities. After all, the book he had read was hers before he had taken possession of it. The words he read, the situations he referred to, the unhindered nature of the language, it was all to be expected by Lady Boadicea Harrington.
Strike that, for she was no longer Boadicea Harrington, was she? No indeed, she was Boadicea Bainbridge, his duchess. She was his.
She stayed her torturous moving over him, her eyes going wide. “Oh. I had not yet finished the volume in question, because it was taken from me. Therefore, you are, I daresay, ahead of me in your reading.”
“You still have not kissed me,” he pointed out, rolling his hips beneath her. “You can read the remainder of it when I return it to you. If I return it to you.”
She arched back, rubbing her soft folds over him. “Do you wish me to kiss you, Your Grace? I confess, I have forgotten in our lengthy dialogue. Remind me, won’t you? You are the winner, and I am at your mercy. What would you have me do?”
Saucy wench.
One more twitch of her hips against his, and he almost lost himself, lost sight of what he was about and what he was meant to do. She teased him with such practiced ease, and if he had not known he had taken her maidenhead, he would swear she was a polished flirt.
But she was not a practiced flirt. She was his wife. His outrageous, rebellious, beautiful, daring, fearless duchess. “Give me your mouth,” he told her. “And your pretty little pussy. That is what I want. Take control. Show me what you want, what you desire.”
He did not need to urge
her twice. Her mouth crashed over his, open and wanting. It was a messy kiss, hungry and needy, sudden and demanding. He clamped his arms around her, drawing her nearer, opening to her onslaught. When her tongue slipped inside his mouth, he sucked.
The delicious anticipation that had made each interaction so heady and delicious vanished. They became one, mouths fusing, tongues thrusting, bodies moving. He undid her bodice. She opened his waistcoat and shirt. Her breasts, perfect handfuls topped with hungry nipples that poked into his palms, sprang free. She found the fastening of his trousers. Thank Christ he wasn’t wearing smalls this morning. When her hand closed over his shaft, he nearly came all over her dainty fingers.
His touch traveled beneath her voluminous riding habit, between them, finding the center of her without err. She was pure, molten heat. Smooth and wet. Warm and soft. Everything he wanted. He stroked down her slit, then back up again, found her clitoris engorged and eager. As he played with her, she jerked into him, moaning.
“Yes.” The single word was a hiss, torn from her.
He agreed wholeheartedly. His fingers continued to work the eager flesh between her thighs. Wet, so wet. He could not wait a moment more. He gripped his cock, positioned himself at her entrance, and guided her downward.
He impaled, hot and hard, straight to her core. Her tight channel sucked him deep. He lost his breath. Nothing had ever felt so bloody good, so bloody right. If he never did another thing worthwhile in his life, at least he could remember this moment, when he was ballocks deep inside the most beautiful, maddening, intelligent, and determined woman he had ever met.
The wife he had not wanted.
The wife he could not fathom his life without.
The wife he wanted so much that he ached with it.
Good God, he was losing himself, losing himself in her, and it was as physical as it was metaphorical. She clenched on him, drawing him deeper, a sound of satisfaction rolling from her lips and straight into his mouth. He kissed away the sound, swallowed it down, made it his. He surged forward, one hand splayed on the blanket behind him for leverage, sinking his cock as deep as he could. Her perfect cunny tightened over him, milking him, drawing him into oblivion.
Darling Duke Page 21
