Exiled Duke: An Exile Novel

by K. J. Jackson

  Upward his hands moved, his fingers now above her chemise and grazing her skin again and again.

  Damn him for buying her this dress—and two more to try on—she didn’t think she could live through this torture more than once. This one would have to do no matter how it fit on her.

  Strider cleared his throat as he tied off the laces just below the base of her neck. She thought he was done, about to move away when the tip of his forefinger landed on her spine with the gentlest touch, moving upward along the bumps until it disappeared into the base of her hair.

  “This. You’re so…tight. Rigid. Your muscles. Your bones. You are like this almost always, like you’ve never relaxed on a chaise lounge and stared out the window. How do you stand it?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Strider.” She refused to turn her head to him. If it was time for him to be rude, then he could speak to the back of her head.

  “You do know.” His finger started to trail back down her spine, moving slower this time and sending shivers along her skin. “It’s the exact way you were when I found you bloodying your palm. And I told you I never wanted to see it again. Not just the blood, the stiffness as well. You turn into granite so easily—in the blink of my eye. And then you stay that way.”

  Her chest lifted in a sudden breath and she hated herself for it. No emotion. It was the only way she was going to survive being in Strider’s presence for the next few days. Good thing she was an expert at not feeling a thing. “How I am is none of your concern. It wasn’t yesterday and it isn’t today.”

  “Except it is—at least for today it is. When you’re like this, it’s off-putting.” His fingertip reached the top seam of the dress, stilling. “This family—your family—they will wonder what is wrong with you if you approach them like this.”

  She spun on the ball of her foot to him, instant indignation burning her cheeks. “What’s wrong with me? I realize you have no partiality for me, but don’t presume that you will know what my family will think of me. I am polite and quiet and deferential to everyone in the room. I make myself into nothing so no one will oppose my presence. How do you even think they could possibly object to me?”

  Both of his hands motioned up and down her body. “Do you not even see yourself right now, Pen? You’re a beautiful woman. You’re the farthest thing from hideous and you always have been.”

  He grabbed her shoulders and shifted her across the floor, spinning her so she stood in front of the cheval mirror in the corner of the room. “Just look. Beautiful. Beautiful, but cold. That is why they will object. A mousey woman can get away with the stiffness—it’s just shyness. But not a beautiful woman. Rigid coldness in someone like you will find you cut so quickly by them it will make your head spin. Beauty needs warmth to make it—to make the person—real. You go in there like stone and they will judge you on so many levels you don’t even understand.”

  “Beautiful?” The word croaked out of her throat.

  “Yes, dammit. Beautiful, but cold.”

  “But I don’t know how else to be.” She stared at her reflection. The cut of the dress across her chest sent the gentle swell of her breasts upward—skin that never saw air except when she was changing or bathing. The lavender brought out the pink in her cheeks and set off her blond hair. Her eyes looked to be almost a golden green. She looked acceptable. Strider said beautiful—but that was too much. Pretty, maybe. But he was right. Her arms were stiff sticks dangling from the flounce of the short sleeves. Her shoulders back and high. The whole of her body rigid and not moving with the dress—moving under it—no matter that it was tight to her curves. And if what he was saying was true, even pretty wouldn’t do.

  She shook her head, looking at him in the mirror. “Why did you even get me this dress—at least the black hides me. Hides my body. Draws all the attention away from my face. I can be dowdy and rigid and it won’t matter.”

  She stepped away from him and the mirror, aiming for the changing screen and the security of her black dress. Stupid to think she could dress up like one of them and just as easily become one of them.

  “No.” His hand clamped onto her upper arm, halting her motion. “The dress stays, Pen.”

  She whipped around to him, her arms flying up in the air. “Then what do you propose I do?”

  “It’s what I propose to do.”

  “What?”

  “Uncoil you.”

  “Uncoil me?” Her head snapped back, her forehead scrunching. “What does that mean?”

  “Your muscles need to go limp so you will know what the slightest relaxation truly is before we meet them. Then you’ll draw upon that memory when we are there.”

  “And just how do you propose to uncoil me?”

  He leaned forward and both of his hands slid along the sides of her neck, his breath hot on her cheek. “With this.”

  He moved slightly to the left, his lips meeting hers. Not angry and raw like they were yesterday. Soft. Slow. Drinking in the essence of her. But still demanding, still wanting everything she was. She recognized it because it was impossible to deny that she wanted the exact same from him.

  “Stop your mind, Pen—just feel. Feel my mouth on yours. My fingers on your skin.”

  His lips parted, his tongue moving inward to taste her, and it drew a ragged mewl from her throat. Before she could stop herself, she was kissing him back, her tongue tangling with his as the stiffness along her jawline evaporated.

  Prickles spread across her skin when his left hand moved to the back of her neck, his fingers threading up into her hair. The kiss deepened as his right hand dropped downward, his thumb grazing across her breast. The touch sent her nipple to harden—foreign, what the simplest stroke of his finger could do to her body. She leaned into his hand, wanting more, and she could feel him smile against her.

  His face dropped, leaving her mouth, and for an instant she almost yanked his head upward, wanting more. Wanting more of him. But then his mouth landed on her neck, his tongue trailing swirls along her skin and sending shivers to scatter about the top of her head.

  He shifted his right hand upward for a breath before finding the edge of her dress, and he slid his thumb behind it. Downward his thumb drifted. Finding her nipple, he circled it, toying with it for long seconds before he squeezed it.

  She gasped at the touch—near to pain—but truly only sending fire down into her core.

  “You liked that?” he asked, his lips never leaving her skin.

  She couldn’t answer, only nod as her head fell back, giving him better access to her chest.

  He chuckled, moving downward, his lips searing her skin on every spot they travelled. Downward. Farther. Until her breast was bared and his lips found her nipple. The fleeting curiosity of how her dress, stays and chemise had bunched down so easily flickered away as soon as it appeared.

  She had to grip onto his shoulders to keep herself upright as his tongue twisted about the nub, making it strain for him. His right hand dipped down, pulling up her skirt, his fingers finding skin. His palm trailed upward along her outer thigh as his thumb traced a line on the front of her thigh. Her skirts went higher and higher until his thumb swung inward and he swiped along the skin of her inner thigh. The shock of the touch made her core tighten with a searing heat she couldn’t describe.

  Couldn’t describe and didn’t understand.

  When she didn’t understand something, it was sin—evil. It always was. All she had ever been taught by the Flagtons.

  With a strangled breath, she pulled away from him. Pulled away even as her grip on his shoulders tightened. “This is wrong, Strider. So wrong.”

  He lifted his head to her, the warm brown of his eyes boring into her. “Does it feel wrong, Pen?”

  She gave the slightest shake of her head. “No…but…”

  He stood straighter, staring down at her as his hand lifted and he dragged his thumb across her swollen lower lip. “What the hell did they do to your mind? To your soul? This i
sn’t going to send you to hell—the exact opposite, if I do it right.”

  “Do what right?”

  He leaned in, his eyes locked on her as his forehead brushed against hers, the heat of his breath twisting with her exhale. “Do you trust me?”

  “I always have.”

  “Do you want this? Want what I can show you? Without listening to what years of preaching on sin and damnation have done to your soul? You wanted more out of life, Pen, and I can give you that. What do you want?”

  What did she want? There was only one answer to that. An answer that hadn’t changed in years. “I—I want you.”

  His mouth crashed into hers as his hands went to her back, pulling loose the laces along the spine of her dress faster than he had tied it. He slid it off her body, then deftly loosened her stays and peeled down her chemise before the kiss broke between them.

  He pulled away for a moment even as his stare stayed locked on her, and he yanked off his coat and waistcoat and then dragged his lawn shirt over his head.

  Her breath left her.

  His bare chest—a sight like she’d never seen. The strands of muscles rolling upward to his wide shoulders. The white ridges of scars dotting his skin—far too many. Scars she despised for how they must have made him suffer. The angle of his torso as it narrowed into a sleek line down to the waistband of his trousers. The way his skin shifted over muscles—a layer of silk slipping over iron rods.

  His half-naked body took all attention away from the fact that she was standing in front of him in the nude except for her stockings and boots.

  Her gaze moved upward and she found his face. His lips were slightly ajar, his breath shallow as though he was beyond thirst. The brown in his eyes had darkened, his look moving along her body, devouring her just with his gaze.

  Just before embarrassment reared and her hands moved to shield herself, he cut forward, grabbing her about the waist and lifting her as his lips locked onto hers.

  Carrying her across the room with his left arm long across her back, his right hand captured the side of her face, tilting her head for better access to her mouth. Deeper into her he searched, drawing raw moans from deep in her lungs.

  He set her onto the bed, her legs draping over the edge, and he hovered above her, his lips not leaving hers. She grabbed the sides of him, his skin hot, like always, under her touch. Moving along the cords of his muscles, feeling them twitch under her touch.

  Fascinating—it wasn’t just her that felt indescribable spikes with every brush of a finger across skin.

  He shifted above her, and his mouth left hers. Downward, swipes of his tongue sizzling against her skin. His mouth met her left breast and he attacked. Pulling, teasing the bud into a hard point and then his teeth took over, raking the nub ever so slightly, testing the pressure. What made her arch into him. What made her gasp.

  He rolled her nipple between his teeth a touch harder and she both arched and gasped, her reaction exasperated by the fact that he’d just slid two fingers into her—the pressure deep inside of her giving answer to the wanton spikes that spread down from her breast.

  He chuckled into her chest as his thumb found her nubbin hidden within her folds and he started slow circles around it.

  Circles that drew everything he was doing to her breast into a boiling cauldron between her legs.

  He shifted his body downward and before she could react, his tongue had parted her folds, slicking along the nubbin. Around and around his tongue and finger played, pulling—teasing—the pressure in her core building higher and higher until she feared she might shatter.

  For as much as her body reacted to him—for as much as her body demand he continue what he was doing—she was sure death was next.

  Death was the only thing that could quell the torture consuming her body. Her body which she could no longer control.

  With her hands gripping the coverlet on either side of her, a scream left her mouth and a sudden semblance of sanity entered her mind. She looked down. Her left leg draped over his shoulder, the heel of her boot dug into his back. Her right leg bent upward. She couldn’t be more open to him—more vulnerable.

  His eyes. His hooded eyes staring up at her, haunting her even as he tortured her with his finger, his tongue.

  Terrifying. What he was doing to her. How her body was reacting to him. What the core of her was so desperate for.

  As he lifted his head from her, his fingers kept a steady pace along her nubbin, slipping down and into her, then withdrawing and circling again. “I can see you’re there, Pen. Your body wants it but is fighting it.”

  She reached down and grabbed his forearms, attempting to pull him upward along her body. “Strider, I don’t—I can’t.”

  His arms were rock solid against her, his fingers increasing the pace as he moved up her body, his shins straddling her on the bed as he hovered above her. To her own mortification, her left leg slipped downward and stayed locked around his back.

  “You can do this, just let it go, Pen. Let your body go.”

  “Strider—I—”

  “You said you trust me. This is when you need to prove it.”

  Hell. She did trust him. She’d always trusted him above all others. Even if at this very second she was rethinking a lifetime of trusting him.

  She nodded.

  The deep rumble of his words floated down to her ears. “Then let your body go. Give it over to me.”

  “Yes.” The one word left her breathless, giving him permission to drag her so far into the darkness—or light—she would never recover. And she didn’t care. This was Strider. He would protect her. Protect her from hell itself, if necessary.

  His hand between her legs stroked her slowly for one minute—torture beyond comprehension—and his mouth dipped, capturing her right breast. His teeth clamped onto her nipple, tugging at it as his fingers slid into her, his thumb frenzied along her nubbin. Each one of her gasps spurred him faster—the nonsensical words that begged him with every breath to finish this. To give her whatever it was her body craved—needed.

  “Come for me, Pen. Come for me.” His tongue rolled around her nipple, his teeth clamping harder as his thumb swiped sharply over the hard nubbin he’d been working.

  Her body unfurled, shocks radiating out of her core, pouring from where his fingers still slid along her. One tormenting jolt after another, taking all sight and sound from her.

  Long seconds it took before she could focus again and she found him lingering above her, staring at her, watching her soul explode under him. The carnal look on his face took away what little breath she could force into her lungs.

  Her left hand went up to his face. “There is more to this. I…what…what about you?”

  “Don’t worry about me.”

  “Don’t make me go against my nature, Strider.” Her left fingers trailed down along his throat. “These veins along your neck—you look like you’re going to explode into a thousand pieces.”

  He grabbed her wrist, pressing it down into the bed by her head. “Don’t touch me right now, Pen. It’s all I can take just having your naked body under me.”

  Her right hand slid down between them, touching the rock hard bulge in the front of his trousers. What should scare her only seemed natural. “What if I touched you? Would that help?”

  Before she could blink, he grabbed her right hand, yanking it up to hold it onto the bed by her head. “Stop touching me.”

  Completely captive. Completely at his mercy.

  When she knew in that moment it was her that needed to provide mercy.

  The long muscles in her stomach clenching, she forced her torso upward against his clamps on her arms until her lips could touch him, her tongue slipping out to taste his skin. “Then I can set my lips to your body just as you had to me.”

  The tip of her tongue swiped across his breastbone and dragged downward. He tasted so good. Satisfying something on her tongue that she’d never knew she missed. “Don’t make me stop, Strider
. Please, don’t.”

  She pulled against his clamps around her wrists.

  One of his fingers pulled back. Two. Three. Her right arm free.

  She took full advantage, her palm landing on his chest, then moving downward along the muscles, the scars. Streaks of rough white ridges marring his skin. Downward.

  Her hand moved over his trousers, grabbing the hard swell. He groaned—ferocious and tormented.

  He set her left hand free.

  Both hands of her own will again, she shifted toward the edge of the bed underneath him, her fingers quick to work the fall front of his trousers. Freeing him to the air.

  For one long breath, her heart stopped. This. His member long and straining just above her. The ridges along it. The head.

  What was she supposed to do with it?

  Touch it, first of all, she imagined. Touch it just the same as he had touched her.

  Her hand wrapped around his shaft, up and down, the skin of it so smooth. The tip of it straining so hard, she craned her neck so she could reach it. Her lips touched it. Then around it. Taking all of it into her mouth. Her tongue curled around the smooth skin, fighting it, muscle against muscle. She pulled her head back and he groaned.

  She took him in again. Back and forth, the raw rumbles from his chest guiding her as to how fast she should go. Faster. Faster.

  Until his groan turned into a growl. A beast exploding. Every one of his muscles around her shook in agony. She tasted it in her mouth. The salt of it. Of him. It didn’t scare her—whatever it was, it was right.

  His body still vibrating in waves, Strider grabbed her, flipping them over as he dragged her upward, clutching her body to his. So tight, she thought her ribs might crack.

  He held her like he never wanted to let her go. Something she hadn’t felt in seventeen years. Real arms around her. Safe. Warm.

  But it could just be a mirage.

  For how little she knew about sex, she knew Strider dealt in a different world than her. One where this was commonplace. And this…this could very well change nothing between them. He wanted to help her. She needed a release.