She shook her head, a wry smile lifting the side of her mouth. “I daresay we will have a time of it.”
I hope so.
The words popped into his head. Fanciful, even as he thought them.
There was no doubt Lady Pipworth was a strange creature and would madden him to no end. That her contrary nature would be hard to control.
But her smile when she was laughing. The way her look twinkled, stolen bits of the sun sparkling in the green of her eyes.
Fanciful.
And fanciful had no purpose.
{ Chapter 7 }
Adalia sat in the enormous bed, small in an uppermost corner, the line of her right leg even with the edge of the mattress. Her new husband had asked her to wait for him here once she was ready.
So there she sat, every minute becoming more and more overwhelmed by the width of the bed. Curious when she had entered the duke’s chambers by their adjoining door, she had stretched herself long on the bed in both directions. Lying either way, from the tips of her toes to the tips of her fingers, she could not touch edge to edge.
Why anyone would need a bed so big flummoxed her. Not sure what to do with the size of it, she had curled up tiny against the mahogany headboard, the cerulean coverlet pulled up past her chest. Right by the edge, for she didn’t want to have to awkwardly crawl out of the middle of the bed once they were done.
It had been long—too long—since she had entered his chamber. She ran a forefinger under the high neck of her white cotton nightgown, wondering if she had misheard her husband. Maybe he had wanted her to wait in her room to consummate their marriage.
Her look flickered around the spacious chamber. Two wingback chairs and an ottoman by the fireplace. One bureau of rosewood-inlaid walnut with a simple design. Heavy blue silk draperies along the outside wall of windows. A side table with two full decanters—one of amber liquid, the other of red—and two glasses atop. This bed. A bedside table on each side. That was the extent of the furnishings in the room. Only the necessities.
She jumped as a doorknob across the room suddenly creaked a half turn—from the entrance she assumed led to his dressing chamber.
The door opened, and the duke walked into the room.
Her breath caught. Bare skin, with just a sheet wrapped around his waist. She hadn’t been prepared for the sight of him. His full, wide chest she had not just imagined—it truly existed, and was even more sculpted than had been hinted at under his clothes. Lean cords of muscle ran along his stomach, disappearing beneath the white sheet tight to his skin.
She swallowed, but quickly realized her mouth had gone completely dry and she had nothing to swallow.
He stopped in the middle of the room the moment he spied her in the bed. “There you are. You are ridiculously small in that bed.”
“I feel ridiculously small in this bed.”
He nodded, his face a blank.
Blank, just as it had been the entire day. Just as it had been throughout the wedding ceremony. Blank.
She sneaked a fortifying breath, forcing a bright smile to her face. “Your Grace, before we move on to. . .” Her words petered out on her dry tongue as she looked to her lap.
“What is it you would like to ask?”
She glanced up at him, surprised he had moved a few steps toward her. His bare skin grew even more commanding the closer he came. Her eyes dove again to her lap, her fingers picking at the blue coverlet. “You knew Theo, so you also know how casual he was—with everyone. He called you Dell, didn’t he? I remembered only a few days ago of a friend he spoke of called Dell—was that you?”
His brow furrowed. “Yes, that was I.”
“He concocted that nickname on his own, didn’t he? No one else has ever called you that?”
“Correct. You know your brother well.”
“Yes, and I miss it—him—he had a charm that let him do anything.” Adalia drew air in deep, her chest rising high. “I miss the warmth of it, all my brothers. And I have a request.”
“Yes?”
She lifted her eyes from her busy fingers to meet his look. “Now that we have wed, will you please call me Adalia? Or Ada? I do not care which. My brothers always used it—or some variation—depending on how annoyed they were with me at the time.”
He scratched the back of his neck. “I do not know—”
“Please?” Her fingers curled into the coverlet. “I will continue to address you as Your Grace, if you wish it. But my name. It hurts my heart that I have not heard it with the low rumble of a man’s voice in two years, and I miss it.”
“Yes, I will do so.” His hand fell from the back of his neck. “But I have no name for you to call me in reciprocation. Theodore called me Dell, though I never turned to it.”
A frown set into her face. “There is none?”
“None that I would answer to.”
“Your given name? Toren? I heard it during the ceremony.”
He shrugged. “Aside from your brother, no one has ever called me anything other than Your Grace.”
“No one?”
He shook his head. His brow had stayed creased, and she could tell he struggled to understand this need of hers. But if she was to take to bed with this man, she wanted something—anything—that could bridge the blankness in his eyes, no matter how factitious.
She slanted her head to the side, imploring. “Please, can I try Toren? If I say it often enough, maybe it will eventually bend your ear.”
“Possibly.”
Her eyebrows arched in question.
“Yes. If you wish it, then I bow to your needs.”
“Thank you.”
He gave her a quick nod, his eyes running over the lump of her body under the covers. “I am too early? I expected you to be ready. Shall I come back?”
“Yes—no—I mean I am ready.” Her eyes dropped to his bare chest. Flustered by the expanse of his skin, she slipped her gaze down to her hands as she rubbed the coverlet draped over her legs. “Is there something wrong with me?”
At his elongated silence, she glanced up.
He stared at her, eating her appearance, calculating. “No. I assumed you would be wearing less clothing.”
Her look jerked downward to her chest. The top of the fat white row of ruffles on her nightgown scratched the bottom of her chin. Less clothing? This was what she always wore in bed. “This is not right?”
He shrugged. “It is not wrong. But why are you wearing it?”
She looked up to him. “I have always worn this during intimacy.”
“You have?”
“Yes.”
“Over your whole body?”
She shrugged, her finger slipping under her collar to scratch the back of her neck, which was quickly becoming heated. She hadn’t been prepared to actually discuss what they were about to do. “Well, the bottom is pulled up under the sheets, of course.”
He nodded. “I understand.”
He didn’t move, standing rooted to the spot in the middle of the room, steps away from the bed. He stood and stared at her. The stare that pierced her.
It only made the flush along the back of her neck drift upward, filling the tips of her ears.
“So. . .” Her eyebrows lifted at him in question when she could stand the silence no more.
As if jabbed in the gut, he suddenly gave himself a slight shake and took three steps toward her. His long strides swallowed the remaining distance, and he stopped by the edge of the bed. His scent wafted to her nose with the movement—cedar and leather with hints of cinnamon and spiced liqueur—as if he were made of the earth, drew his strength from it.
He cleared his throat. “May I be direct, Adalia?”
“Yes.”
“Are you a virgin?”
“No. Of course not.” Her cheeks flamed red, her arms lifting to tighten around her belly. “I was married. We consummated the vows. Lord Pipworth attempted to bring me with child three times.”
Toren’s eyes narrowed. “You on
ly copulated three times? I know the answer, but tell me again how long you were married?”
“Eighteen months.”
He visibly winced. “Was sex . . . unenjoyable, difficult?”
“No. Neither. It was not anything after the first time. It was just”—her eyes flew to the fire burning in the hearth as she searched for the right word—“there. My husband much preferred his mistress. He remarked upon it every time.” She looked up to Toren’s face. The tiniest flicker of something flashed in his brown eyes, so fast Adalia barely noticed it, much less was able to determine what it meant.
He took another step toward the head of the bed, his thigh brushing the side of her leg through the coverlet. His gaze had gone hard, pinning her. “May I be direct again, Adalia?”
She hesitated. She hadn’t cared for his first questions in the bedroom, and she doubted she wanted any more of his directness. Her lips drew inward with a shallow breath, but she lifted her look to him, meeting his brown eyes. “Yes. Please do so.”
“I need something very different than your late husband.”
“Oh. What?”
“I need you naked.” His words were even, the depth of his voice rolling around her, factual. “I know exactly what my body needs in this act to come to completion, and it needs you naked. It needs you climaxing around me. Your body contracting, tightening in waves, surrounding my cock.”
She gasped, her hand flattening the fat ruffles onto her chest. Those words—demands she had never imagined coming from his mouth. Demands she had never imagined would be directed at her.
“You . . . ah . . . you need me to . . . climax?” She had to force the last word out of her arid mouth. For all that her friends had lauded such things, her own pleasure had never been part of sex for her. Never.
“I do, Adalia.” Toren’s fingers flickered at his side, almost as if he wanted to touch her leg for the mere pleasure of it. But he didn’t. He wouldn’t. That would be an emotion—a want—and Toren did only what was needed. She already knew that of him. “I need you naked, standing in front of me. I need to be able to learn what your body responds to for that to happen. Where to touch you. How fast. How hard. It is very difficult to discern anything under mounds of heavy cloth.”
Her look fell to the bump on the coverlet where her toes pointed up. “So you would like me to strip?”
“Yes. And stand from the bed. It is not particularly cold in the room. We can stand by the fire if you would like.”
Adalia attempted to swallow again. No. Heat was not her problem at the moment. Heat was flowing from her, every pore, looking for escape, pooling in areas on her body that had never quite felt like this with her husband.
Correction. Her late husband. She was in the room with her new husband, and she needed to remember that fact. She had to do what was necessary.
Trying to quell the shaking in her fingers, she folded back the coverlet from her lap. He stepped away from the bed to give her space, and she swung her legs down and dropped to her toes.
Silently, she turned her back to him and pulled her hair forward over her shoulder.
Without being requested, he loosened the weave of ribbon that held her nightgown tight to her neck, unthreading it down her back between her shoulder blades.
The fine hairs on her arms spiked as he tugged the fabric downward, letting it slip to the floor. Her body tensed as the nightgown puddled around her bare feet.
Toren settled his warm hands on her shoulders and spun her in place.
Before she was forced to turn fully to him, Adalia let her eyelids slip closed.
As he faced her, his hands repositioned themselves on her shoulders, his thumbs settling lightly into the swooping dips behind her collarbone. He stopped her movement, the silence heavy in the room as her shuffling feet stilled.
This was the moment. This was the moment when he would grunt. Scrunch his face. Close his eyes. Not open them during the act. Pretend she was someone else. Not look at her until he was done and he could remove himself from her.
She braced herself.
She had suffered this before. She could again.
“You are beautiful, Adalia.”
Her eyes flew open. She had not been prepared for the comment.
A slight smile had carved into his face. “I realize what I said about beauty last night. It serves no purpose. But this—your body—there is a definite need for it in this world.”
She stared up at him. Traces of the blank look still etched his face, but his eyes—his eyes continued to take in her body, appreciating, almost admiring. But no. That could not be for her.
Her look fell to his chest. No. Not for her body—breasts too small, nothing on her backside to grip, no cushion along her midsection—she had heard her faults over and over from her late husband.
Her arms lifted, ready to hide what she could from his gaze.
His hands snapped down and wrapped around her wrists to still her movement. “Whatever truth you are hearing in your head at the moment is not the truth I see before me, Adalia.”
She looked up, meeting his eyes. “I—you don’t know—how do you presume to guess at what I am thinking?”
“I can see you creating argument against my words. I could recognize that look of yours in our second meeting. I know it is in your contrary nature to argue with me, but on this I will not hear it.”
He moved a step closer, the bare skin of his chest almost touching her nipples. “I am not your late husband. And whatever he thought of you, that was his business, not mine. And it is no longer yours. Your body is beautiful, Adalia. And that is the only truth you need now believe.”
His gaze locked on hers, and she could not form the smallest word on her tongue. She nodded, realizing that she needed to breathe. She needed air in her chest.
His grip on her wrists released, his hands going to her shoulders again as he began to steer her backward across the room. “Come, by the fire. I need the light.”
He stopped them by the hearth, the heat of the flames wrapped her body. She glanced back to her nightgown piled on the wooden floorboards, both wishing for its comforting cover and glad to be free of the suffocation of it.
She closed her eyes. This was what her husband needed. He had been direct. So she would strive to give it to him.
Toren moved around her, and she heard the feet of a chair scrape along the floor behind her.
“Adalia, this chair.”
He waited to speak again until she opened her eyes and looked over her shoulder at the chair he had shifted behind her. He had angled it so the arm of the chair was behind her backside.
“The chair is here for support should you need it.”
She looked up at his face as he stepped in front of her again. The expressionless cast of his brown eyes had returned.
“May I touch your body?” The words were low, seductive, belying his blank look.
She nodded.
The tips of his fingers, delicate, almost like a feather, traced the line of her collarbone, dipping down to her breasts. He bent, his lips languidly following the path of his fingers across her skin.
Before Adalia could fully take in the sensation of his lips, of the warmth spreading across her skin, her nipple slipped into his mouth.
Her knees buckled. Throwing her hands back, she caught herself on the arm of the chair before she fell, not that she imagined Toren would have let her slip. His hands wrapped around her waist, holding her body to him as his tongue, his lips, enveloped her nipple. Her skin went taut, her nipple hardening as he tugged, his teeth raking over the delicate skin.
He pulled away slightly, still clutching her body, as he slipped down to his knees. “That. You liked that?”
“Yes.” The word came out much stronger than she’d imagined her airless lungs could manage.
He nodded, the tip of his nose brushing along her skin. “Good.”
Moving downward, his lips went lazy, tasting her skin as his dipped down past her rib cage. He
r stomach drew inward with a gasp, the caress both tantalizing and tickling.
“You are ticklish.”
The tips of her fingers dug into the arm of the chair as the slight stubble on his chin dragged across the delicate skin near her hip bone. “Yes. I always have been.”
“It is good to know.” He murmured the words without pulling away, the wet heat of them sparking her skin to life in an entirely new way.
“Do you like it?”
“Yes.” The word was not nearly as strong this time, as her body had begun to respond in foreign ways. Pangs shooting from deep inside her belly downward. The folds between her legs starting to throb, pulsate. This—this she had never felt with her late husband. Never anything of the kind.
Toren dipped backward, resting on his heels for a moment as he took in her body. The blank look was gone. His brown eyes had turned ravenous—but with an odd glimmer of control about them.
It lasted a moment before he moved forward, setting his fingers on the tips of her toes. Circling, the pads of his thumbs moved upward along her calves, and his lips met the long bone of her shin, nipping at the skin. His fingers dove around her legs to the delicate area behind her knees. A gasp, and her knees buckled again, her hold on the chair slipping.
He smiled into her skin.
“Ticklish here as well.” A statement, not a question. Not that she could have answered.
He moved up her thighs, his tongue carving a line to her inner thigh.
“This. Do you enjoy this, Adalia?”
She swallowed, desperate for words to form between gasping breaths. “It . . . it makes me . . . makes me want you to not stop . . . Go higher.”
A chuckle left him, hot, steaming onto her skin.
Heaven help her. This was what her friends had talked about. Relentless pounding in the folds between her legs, shoots of need deep inside of her that begged, angry, to be taken hold of and battled into submission.
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