Her Deceptive Duke (Wicked Husbands Book 4)

by Scarlett Scott

  And then she was coming undone. Her body had tightened into a knot, and she exploded into a sea of stars, delicious pleasure washing over her as she kissed him, sucked his tongue, her inner muscles clamping down on his cock. He drove inside her as the shudders of her climax roared through her.

  Just when she thought she could not stand a moment more, he stiffened, plowing deeper still, and tore his mouth from hers. With an exclamation that was part curse, part her name, he lost himself inside her, his seed filling her in a hot, wet spurt. Acting on instinct, she tipped her hips, wanting as much of him as she could have.

  Kit collapsed on her, his breathing heavy, his body heavier, but it was a welcome weight. She hugged him to her, their hearts thumping in tandem into each other’s chests.

  I love this man, she thought to herself. God, how I love this man.

  Even if he did not return her love, she could no longer hope the feelings she had for him would lessen, and she knew that now. Knew it all the way to the marrow of her bones. Daisy had been right—love did not scatter into the wind like a handful of dead autumn leaves. It was permanent and true and strong, evergreen.

  “I was wrong,” he whispered to her, disrupting her mind’s tumultuous meanderings. “You have always been mine. Not just from this moment forward, not just from the day of our wedding, but always. You have always been meant for me, Georgie. Always.”

  Her foolish, foolish heart cried out inside her.

  Yes, it wanted to say. I am yours. Always. I love you.

  Stupid, stupid heart.

  She could not, would not, say any of those things, for she still did not trust him. Her heart was his to break.

  So instead, she pressed a kiss to his high cheekbone, relishing the rasp of his whiskers against her lips, and issued a challenge. “I am mine, Christopher Anthony Harcourt. Claim me if you dare.”

  he tension in the carriage was so thick that Georgie swore she could cut it with a knife and spear it with a fork.

  Their conveyance swayed through the streets of London. She had been ensconced in the city long enough now—a year’s time, in fact—and she had grown accustomed to the scents (sometimes unpleasant), the noise (always disturbing given the quiet of the farm on which she was raised), and the traffic (not as loud and brash as New York City’s). But this was only the second occasion upon which she had traveled in an enclosed carriage with her husband.

  They sat opposite each other, and though she tried with all her might to focus her gaze on anything but him, he was all she saw. Handsome in his evening finery, his dark hair brushing his collar, his jaw cleanly shaven, he looked the part of elegant duke to the manor born. She was acutely aware of her crude upbringing, though she was dressed in one of her finest Worth evening gowns of embroidered silk and satin, bedecked with lace and pearls, and wearing a small fortune in diamonds at her ears and throat.

  His gaze clashed with hers, a small smile kicking up the corners of his mouth as he caught her staring. “Do I pass muster, darling?”

  Darling. She shivered, for she liked that endearment on his lips far too much. Georgiana took a deep, calming inhalation, forcing herself to be cool and impervious. “You look well enough.”

  “Only well enough? That cannot be conceived a compliment, wife.” The curve of his lips turned wicked. “You did not find fault with my appearance earlier.”

  No, she had not. Nor did she now. He was the most alluring scoundrel alive, and that was the problem. He had yet to make her any promises or earn her trust. And she was terrified that she had made a mistake in allowing intimacy between them.

  For it had not been just the once.

  They had dozed in each other’s arms following their fiery coupling earlier that day. When they woke, Kit lured her to the oversized tub in the duchess’s apartments, where they shared a long, warm bath. He had washed her everywhere, his touch so reverent that she had not been able to resist making love with him a second time in her big, comfortable high tester. He had been gentle and sweet, bringing her to the pinnacle twice with his mouth alone before taking her again.

  Only their looming dinner engagement had sent her from his arms. With distance and a few hours to herself, she had begun to realize how perilously near she had come to confessing her love to him. And as her lady’s maid put the finishing touches on her toilette, she had vowed that she would be sterner with him this evening. She would resist him. Reconnoiter and decide what her strategy ought to be.

  But now she was in a carriage with him, uncomfortably close, and she could smell his spicy male scent. And he was looking at her in a way that suggested he knew what she looked like naked. Because he did.

  She flushed, all too aware of the new tenderness between her thighs, along with the ache that told her she wanted more. “It is incredibly unkind of you to allude to such a thing when we are about to arrive at the Duke and Duchess of Trent’s home. Have you no manners?”

  “I thought we established that I haven’t.” He winked.

  Georgiana did not know what to do with a Duke of Leeds who was lighthearted. “Do you have something in your eye, husband?”

  His lips twitched. “No. Do you have a bee in your petticoats? For it certainly seems as if we have traded places and you are now possessed of my darkness whilst I have snared your light. Bloody hell, before we know it I will be charming all the rats of London and leading them to our door.”

  His amusement did nothing to assuage her pique. “I do not have a bee in my petticoats, thank you. Nor have I ever brought any rats to Leeds House, so the comparison is all wrong.”

  “Yet.” He was still smiling, the knave.

  She found herself captivated once more by his mouth, recalling the way it moved over hers. Remembering every glorious second of it pleasuring her elsewhere. “I beg your pardon?”

  “You have not brought rats to Leeds House yet,” he elaborated. “Given your weeping heart for beasts, I would not be surprised if you attempted to drag a horse and cart into the drawing room. Or a group of hedgehogs or even a bloody skunk.”

  “An array,” she grumbled, still nettled by his good cheer. “The proper term for a gathering of hedgehogs is an array.”

  “Georgie.”

  There it was again, his ridiculous pet name for her, sliding into her heart and making her weak. She stared at her hands clenched in her skirts. Anything to avoid looking at that gorgeous mouth and those twinkling eyes. “Why must you insist upon calling me that?”

  “It is your name, is it not?”

  “It is a condensing of my name.” Her fingers tightened, and she didn’t care if her skirts were wrinkled when she arrived at dinner. “Just like Lady. Must you go about renaming everyone?”

  “Only those I care for.”

  His quiet words had her lifting her eyes back to him. The teasing light had fled from his gaze, and there was not a hint of a smile on his sensual mouth. He appeared serious. A swift rush of warmth coursed through her. “You care for Lady?” she asked, for she could not yet find it in her to ask him directly how he felt about her.

  He raised a brow. “The feline likes me, and I find that a rather endearing trait. But if I’m being honest, it is you that I care about the most.”

  She swallowed. It was not a declaration of love. Nor was it a promise. But it was something more than he had ever offered her before. “Me?”

  His expression grew intense, his eyes never wavering from hers. “You, Georgie.”

  Oh.

  Georgiana searched her mind for something to say, but he had completely robbed it of the ability to think with his unexpected admission. Here was her chance to tell him she cared for him as well, and yet she was terrified that if she opened her mouth, she would announce that she had fallen hopelessly, ludicrously in love with him.

  And so she said nothing.

  He leaned across the space between them, planting his large hands on her waist and sliding her to the edge of the Morocco leather of the bench. Her gloved hands flitted to his shoul
ders, and she could not help but admire their breadth and strength, even with so many layers between them.

  “Where are you?” he asked suddenly, startling her.

  She had not expected such a query. “Right here, of course.”

  He shook his head slowly, and their faces were so close together that their noses nearly brushed. His breath heated her lips in a precursor to the kiss she wanted more than anything else. “You are lost somewhere in that mind of yours, fretting. I can tell by the way your right brow crinkles just here.” His index finger, gloved as well, traced over her forehead. “It happens whenever you are deep in thought.”

  It did? She frowned at him, warmed despite her every inclination to keep him at a distance. The surly, arrogant Duke of Leeds had noticed a crinkle on her brow. He admitted to caring for Lady. For Georgiana herself.

  “Tell me,” he ordered when she continued to hesitate, and though it was a command, tender concern underscored his tone.

  Enough so that she answered him as best she could. “Everyone has left me, Kit. My mother, my Uncle George, my father, you. I am tired of being the one who is left behind. I cannot bear it again.”

  “That is another reason for all the animals, isn’t it?” His touch grazed her cheekbone before settling on her jaw, his thumb gently stroking.

  She hated that he could see through her, straight to the heart of her. That he could understand her so well, better, perhaps than she even understood herself. Her husband had depths she had not imagined, and it was bemusing and endearing all at once. “The animals need me.”

  Before Kit, she had never bothered to examine the driving need within her to collect strays. It was simply something she had done since her mother’s death. And in all the years since, she had never stopped.

  “I am sorry for our wedding day. I was an unfeeling cad, and for that I will be eternally in your debt.” His lips met hers in a kiss that was somehow different than the rest.

  But she heard what he did not say just as much as what he had, and she leaned her head back, breaking the kiss. “You are planning to return to New York City, aren’t you?”

  His gaze became shuttered. “Georgie, I am not at liberty to discuss the specifics of what happened. But I do need to find out who betrayed me and why.”

  She shoved at his shoulders, her heart going cold. “You said yourself that you no longer have a mission, and yet you will return there and put yourself in danger. For what reason, Kit? If you are no longer a spy, why can you not tell me the truth? I am your wife. You owe me that much, if nothing else.”

  “To clear my goddamn name,” he bit out, and once more he was the Leeds she recognized. Cold and hard, bitter and angry. “You wished to know why I returned here, wounded and unexpected? Here is the truth, then. An unidentified informant fed me inaccurate information. I wound up at an abandoned factory where I was ambushed. I escaped by climbing out a second story window with a gunshot wound to the hip and nearly fell to my demise on the pavement below. By the time I made it back to the hovel where I was staying, I had almost bled to death. My landlord found me and took me to a sawbones. When I regained consciousness, an agent from Home Office was at my bedside, informing me that I was being removed from service for betraying my brothers at arms by revealing classified information to enemies of the Crown. That betrayal—that lie—has been my driving force ever since. I will not stop until I uncover who was behind it.”

  She didn’t want to hear more, for the very idea of Kit being ambushed and wounded, let alone climbing through a window, was enough to make her want to retch. And he would willingly place himself within such danger again. Someone wanted him dead, and it chilled her, made her mouth go dry and the hackles rise on her neck.

  But here at last was the closest she could get to gaining a true confession from him. “It is exactly as Ludlow said, then.”

  “Do not bring that man into this,” Kit gritted. “He has no place in any dialogue between you and I.”

  “Sometimes I trust him more than I trust you,” she said on a rush, her anger with him getting the better of her. It was small of her perhaps, but she wanted to needle him.

  The moment she spoke the words, she wished she could recall them. For they hung heavy in the air, and they altered the atmosphere of the carriage. Any hint of teasing had long since left her husband’s taut expression. His eyes no longer glinted with mirth, but burned instead with rage.

  “Tell me that again at your peril, madam,” he warned, his tone going frigid as he released her and slid back against his squab.

  She felt his withdrawal and the loss of his touch like a blow, but she continued on the path she had barreled down, for anger was far more comfortable than unrequited love could ever be. “What will you do to me if I do not keep quiet, Leeds? Will you thrash me? Lock me in my chamber? And what precisely is it that you do not wish to hear? That Ludlow has been a steadfast presence at my side for the entire half a year you abandoned me and left me to rot in London? That he has been a friend to me and a source of solace? That he has treated me far better than you, my supposed husband, ever has?”

  “Fucking hell, your supposed husband?” His last words almost quivered in the air with their visceral outrage.

  She made a show of straightening the fall of her silken skirts, avoiding his gaze all the while. “You do not mean to suggest you have ever been a true husband to me?”

  “Need I remind you of what happened earlier today, madam?” His tone was dark. “I am as true a husband to you as I can be in every sense of the definition.”

  She knew without bothering to look that he wore his customary scowl. Should she not be relieved to have put some much-needed distance between them so that she could recover from this sudden intensity? Why, then, did she feel only hollow instead?

  “That was an aberration,” she denied, keeping her tone as cool as she could manage when inside she was beset by the tumult of every conceivable emotion. “One that ought not to be repeated.”

  Longing, fear, desire, love, yearning, and confusion collided in her, clashing and crashing and banging with the fervor and violence of a summer thunderstorm. Lord, she was a mess. Succumbing to his seduction had tied her up in knots, leaving her with a hopeless tangle. With a heart that hungered for him even more.

  Hush, heart. You will only land us in more trouble than you already have, she admonished.

  A growl sounded from the opposite bench of the carriage, and just as suddenly as he had retreated from her, Kit’s hands were once more on her waist, hauling her toward him. His handsome face hovered before her, his jaw rigid. “It was not a bloody aberration,” he rasped, holding her captive with his brilliant gaze. “You know it as well as I. And it will happen again and again and again. Do you know why, Georgie?”

  She could only shake her head, spellbound by the barely leashed heat of him. By the power and the smoldering concentration he exuded. “No.”

  “Because you’re mine.” One by one, with slow and deliberate intent, he removed each of his gloves, discarding them onto the Morocco leather at his side. And then he pulled her nearer, her skirts billowing around them as he caught them in his fists and dragged them upward, taking her petticoats along. Air kissed her stocking-clad ankles and calves. “Deny it all you like, but it won’t make it any less true.”

  “You’re crushing my gown,” she protested, vexed with herself at how breathless she sounded.

  “To hell with your gown.” A wicked smile curved his lips for a fleeting moment. “If I had my way, it would be in shreds on the floor right now, and you’d be riding me.”

  His shocking words sent an arrow of desire quivering straight to the heart of her. A pulsing ache of need bloomed and radiated throughout her body until she felt at once as if she were wound as tight as a spring and as if she would come apart at the slightest provocation. A whisper of his breath on her lips, a glancing touch, a knowing look.

  “You are indecent,” she said, but her admonition held none of the sting she�
�d intended to infuse within it. And instead of escaping from his hold as she could so easily do, she listed forward until their lips brushed. It was inexorable, the pull between them. The way she wanted him. The depth of her love for him, which seemed to have taken on a life of its own.

  And she could not resist. Could not hold on to her resentment, frustration, and fears when he looked at her as he had, as though she lit a fire that burned bright enough inside him to stave off a thousand winters.

  He consumed her mouth, and one of his hands released its fistful of skirts to skim along her knee. Higher still, his caress traveled, to her inner thigh. His tongue was in her mouth, and he did not need to cajole her into parting her legs for him. She signed into his kiss, allowing her thighs to fall open, and it was the most natural, delicious thing in the world when his fingers swiped over her seam.

  Kit tipped his head back, breaking the kiss, his eyes hard and hungry on hers. “You are mine everywhere, Georgie.” He pressed his lips to her temple. “Here.” Then her ear. “Here.” He kissed down her jaw. “Here and here and here.” That magical mouth found its way to her throat, where he muttered into her skin, “And here as well.”

  He dragged his lips over her daring décolletage, which was deeper than most of her gowns, and far more revealing, but showed her bosom to splendid advantage. She had worn it with him in mind, of course. She arched her back when he kissed over the curved expanse of her left breast.

  He stopped directly above her wildly thumping heart. “Definitely here,” he murmured into her skin.

  What had happened to her ability to resist him? For her need to muddle through her complicated feelings and guard her heart? He kissed the stiff fabric of her bodice directly above a nipple that was painfully tight and begging for his mouth beneath her corset. “We must not forget here. I do adore your nipples, Georgie. I could suck them until you spend.” His teeth worked over her bodice, exactly where she longed for him most aside from one other place…