What a Difference a Duke Makes

by Lenora Bell

  The sun slid under the dark water.

  Sounds of the sea still roaring in his mind. Desire for Mari eddying through his body. Desire and something else. A nameless emotion, welling like water under sand, eroding his defenses.

  She slipped her hand into his and the simple gesture completely undid him.

  All of his fine resolutions imploded. Codes of conduct?

  Highly overrated.

  If he were a controlled, regimented gentleman with a precise, perfectly ordered life, he might escort her back to her chamber. But he wasn’t controlled or perfect. He was riddled with flaws.

  Flung into pieces like an exploded engine.

  Not even caring if the servants saw, he clasped his arms around her slender body, pulling her so close he could feel her heart beating through thin, gauzy muslin.

  Her lips opened to him, her tongue meeting his.

  She stood on tiptoes and locked her soft arms around his neck. Without breaking the kiss, he lifted her, one arm crooked under her knees, the other around her back, and carried her down the hallway, not stopping until they reached his chambers.

  He kicked open the door, then kicked it closed again when they were inside.

  Her tongue danced inside his mouth, quick and nimble, composing frenzied poetry. Need pounding through him like surf.

  Claim her. Make her yours.

  Up against the wall now. Next to the balcony door, which stood ajar. A breeze ruffled her skirts, cooling the sweat from his face.

  Shift her body around him. Her thighs around his hips. His lips leaving her mouth but only to find her breast.

  Feeling for her bodice, dragging it down.

  Small, upturned breasts with ruddy nipples, straining over the boning of her corset.

  He dipped his head and traced the contours of her breast with his tongue, spiraling closer and closer to the nipple until she moaned and her head fell back.

  His lips closed around her nipple, suckling the taut peak.

  Her fingers fumbled with his coat buttons. He lifted her arms, wrapping them more firmly around his neck, bracing her against the wall, and then he shrugged out of his coat and flung it aside.

  He groaned, burying his head in her neck, cupping her round bottom through the fabric of her gown.

  She framed his face with her hands, sought his eyes. “I need you,” she said fiercely. “I want you.” She lifted her hips, seeking his cock.

  The friction was pure bliss and pure torture.

  “Mari,” he groaned. “You want this? You want this as much I do?” He had to ask one more time.

  “You’re thickheaded, aren’t you? Yes. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. Listen to me, Edgar.” She caught his head between her palms. “All my life I’ve hid my true feelings and desires beneath a stifling cloak of obedience and silence. I’m through with it. Do you hear me? I want you to make love to me.”

  Her words soaked through his mind until he was saturated with the need to believe that nothing mattered beyond this night, that being with her was inevitable, and he’d known this moment would happen from the first moment he laid eyes on her.

  She wanted this. He wanted this.

  The sea had washed into his mind, swept away years of denial and suffering. They would find so much pleasure tonight. It was waiting for them, around the corner. Only a few buttons and one scarlet bow away.

  Outside, beyond the door, stars gathered to watch.

  “Edgar?”

  He lifted his head from her breast. “Yes?” He stilled. She was going to tell him to stop.

  He prepared to release her.

  “Put me down,” she said.

  He nodded. Gritted his teeth. Slid her to the floor. It was better this way. He’d lost control.

  It had been madness.

  “That’s better,” she said. “Now I can do this.” Her fingers closed around the flap of his breeches, cupping his cock.

  “A duke in the hand is worth two in the bush,” she said, with a wicked grin.

  Edgar appeared to be choking to death.

  Mari relinquished her grip on his tool, and thumped him on the back instead.

  “In the b-bush,” he sputtered. “Mari.” He rumpled her hair with his hand. “You’re going to be the death of me.” His grin slipped away.

  “All good things in all good time,” he said gently. “We should wait.”

  “Yes, but, what’s well begun, is half done,” she replied with an arch smile.

  “Oh?” His smile returned, tilting his sensual lips upward. “And fortune favors the bold, does it not?”

  “Precisely. And . . . and the early bird catches the worm.”

  “The worm?” His eyebrows shot upward.

  “Did I say worm? I meant the python.”

  “That’s better,” he growled. “Now, right and forward, Perkins. No dawdling.” He made a spinning motion with his finger.

  He wanted her to . . . turn around?

  She turned her back to him.

  “I’ve been wanting to untie one of your bows since I saw you bending over to read the titles of the books in my library.”

  She sucked in her breath. He wanted her to bend.

  She walked to the bed and bent forward, offering her backside to him. “If you wish a thing to be done, you’d better do it yourself, Your Grace.”

  She glanced back over her shoulder, loving the fierceness of the desire in his eyes.

  Within seconds, he was behind her, and the scarlet sash was a heap on the floor.

  He unbuttoned her white gown and slid it down her body, helping her step out of it, until it lay in a froth of white at their feet.

  The over-chemise. Then her stays. Until all she wore was a thin cotton shift.

  He shaped his palms over her buttocks. “A thing of beauty is a joy forever.”

  He lifted her hips and the hard, pressing length of him slid against her core, nudging her thighs apart. His fingers closed around her waist.

  Her breathing came faster. She wanted to see him as well. Feel him.

  “Are you still clothed?” she asked, attempting to twist around to see him. “That’s hardly fair.” He loosened his grip on her waist and she turned around, rising to stand before him.

  She tugged his shirt from the waist of his breeches impatiently. He raised his arms, shimmying free of his shirt.

  Greedily, she drank in the sight of his naked body.

  Her reaction was instantaneous, a melting between her thighs, a recognition that this was what she wanted.

  His frame of steel, stretched over with taut skin and ridged muscles. Dark hair dusting his chest, leading her eyes down his taut stomach, ridged with muscles, into the fall of his breeches.

  She’d said she wanted to touch him and it was true.

  All of him.

  “Now your breeches,” she commanded.

  He slid his breeches off, kicking free of them. He wore nothing beneath.

  He was naked. Gloriously naked, his sex standing tall above a patch of dark hair.

  He stood with his legs apart and hands at his sides. He let her look her fill, a smile playing across his lips. “Do you like what you see?” he asked, ringing his sex with his fist, offering it to her.

  She nodded, dry-mouthed. He was stiff with desire. Hard for her.

  “Share and share alike,” he said, glancing pointedly at her shift.

  Bravely, with the last of her courage, she pulled her shift over her head and stood before him, naked as the day she was born.

  The chill in the room gave her gooseflesh and tightened the peaks of her breasts.

  She resisted the urge to cover her mound with her hands.

  He swallowed, his Adam’s apple working visibly. “So beautiful.”

  The raw emotion on his face told her that he spoke the truth.

  When he closed the distance between them, his sex led the way, bobbing eagerly. She almost smiled from nervousness, almost, but then the hot, hard length of him slid agains
t her belly as he took her lips in a searing kiss.

  He laid her gently onto his bed, working his fingers into her hair, removing the last of her hairpins, the gentle prickling sensation on her scalp tingling through her whole body.

  Madness in her thoughts, in her heart.

  Joy as well—strange joy bubbling up from her heart.

  This body she’d thought of as an island, never to be touched by another, never to know love. This body had surprised her.

  And his body was a revelation. She ran her hand down his firm, ridged belly, closing her fingers around his staff, testing the weight of him in her hand.

  “Mari,” he groaned, bucking against her palm.

  “You’re beautiful,” she whispered. “Your body was forged by hammer and steel.”

  His hands cupped her breasts. “And you’re a goddess, with soft, supple breasts like . . .”

  “Yes?” she prompted.

  “I’m trying to think of a good fruit analogy but your hand is . . . curled around my . . . cock.”

  Such a naughty word, cock.

  “Smaller than melons and bigger than grapes,” she said. “I’m thinking oranges? Maybe peaches?”

  “I’m . . . not thinking at all. Damn,” he groaned. “Yes. Like that. Squeeze it harder as you get to the base.”

  “Like that?”

  “Just like that.”

  She could become addicted to having this much power over him.

  “I want you to do something for me, Edgar,” she said. “Breathe. Deep and steady.”

  He smiled, realizing she was repeating his own words, and then the smile fell away and his stomach muscles visibly clenched, rippling with effort.

  His fingers clutched her shoulders.

  “Mari,” he groaned, pulsing in her hand.

  He lifted himself over her, supported by his strong arms, positioning himself between her thighs. Instinctively, she lifted her leg and wrapped her thigh around his waist.

  He moaned into her lips as he kissed her, his cock jutting between them, the head of him pressing her belly button, the base of him sliding against her sensitive flesh.

  No sound except the meeting of their bodies.

  The sea still roaring in her ears.

  A mindless need building. She knew enough to understand that he was holding back from entering her. That he wanted to be inside her, that everything in his nature must be begging him to take her, to slide inside, but he was holding back.

  It pleased her, this holding back. This iron control of his.

  It made her feel safe, and cared for.

  Because, if she were being honest, this was all a bit frightening. She’d turned to her proverbs because she thought they made her sound worldly and experienced.

  When really, she’d never felt anything like this before. Never even could have imagined anything as elemental as this.

  In the novels she’d read, this . . . rawness . . . was only delicately hinted at. The duke always had a rigid jawline, and the lady always had melting eyes, but there’d certainly been no discussion of this.

  This wetness between her thighs, and the slickness of sweat between her breasts.

  His sweat and her sweat mingling.

  The grimace—half pleasure and half pain—on his dear, handsome face.

  The control cording his neck, clenching his jaw. He kissed her neck. Her shoulders. Her breasts. “I’m going to map each one of your freckles, Mari.”

  “That could take years,” she gasped.

  He slid lower and kissed the freckles on her belly. Then he licked her.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “I like these freckles on your belly, they’re delicious.” He licked her again. “I love how you have freckles everywhere. Do you perhaps have some . . . here?” He kissed her inner thigh.

  “I don’t know!”

  “You don’t know? Let me examine. I think there’s another one just . . . here.”

  Tasting more. Her inner thighs. Higher, until she tensed and tried to evade his kiss. He was kissing her . . . there. Delving into her with his tongue.

  Good gracious. She tensed her muscles. Should she stop him? What did it taste like? Was this . . . done?

  He lifted his head. “Stop thinking, Mari.” He dove back to his task, spreading her thighs wider.

  She stopped thinking. Just rode the sensation building in her belly. Allowed herself to feel and to be. When her crisis arrived it rose swiftly, without warning, breaking inside her like a wave.

  She buried her fingers in his hair, holding his head in place, riding his tongue. Riding the sensation that spiraled outward into her belly, her thighs, her mind . . . and her heart.

  A tidal pool of emotion, seeping through her mind.

  She loved him. She wanted to join with him.

  “Take me,” she said. “I need you.”

  He used his knee to part her legs, to position them wide.

  The hard, hot feeling of his cock parting her flesh, notching home between her thighs.

  “I’ll go slowly. Mari, breathe please. You’re so tense.”

  She inhaled and he entered her, slowly, stretching a passage, finding his way in the dark, into her.

  “Edgar.” A whisper. A prayer.

  A kiss in answer, full and satisfying.

  Her saltwater and honey on his tongue.

  Her voice in his ears, asking him to take her.

  The need drove him forward, guided his cock. Best to enter her now, after her orgasm, while pleasure still flowed through her body.

  Make it good for her, even though it was her first time.

  Her first time. A sliver of guilt wedged in his mind.

  “Stop thinking, Edgar,” she said, pulling his lips down and kissing him.

  He pushed inside, halfway now, nearly there. Using every scrap of control he could muster.

  “Does it hurt?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll stop.”

  “No.” Fists on his shoulders, fingers in his hair, pulling him back. “No, don’t stop now. Please move another inch, Your Grace.”

  He did. And then another, until he was entirely buried in her tight, wet heat.

  He stilled, listening to her breathing. Feeling her inner muscles pulsing around him. The most beautiful feeling in the world. He could explode right now. Just from the feeling of being inside her.

  “Edgar?” Her voice held a question. “It might be . . . too much. I want it, I do. It’s wonderful, but like this, you’re so heavy . . .”

  He tensed. It was too much. He was hurting her. He pulled away from her.

  “No, don’t leave me,” she cried, holding his shoulders. “Is there another way?”

  Ah, he understood now. He rolled over, staying inside her, until she was on top.

  He set her knees on either side of his hips. “You move, Mari. When you’re ready. Find the rhythm that you like the best. I’ll stay right here, inside you.”

  He wanted to stay there forever.

  She nodded. Bit her lip, her eyes shadowed.

  “You set the pace,” he said. “You’re in control. I’m at your pleasure, Mari. I’m yours.”

  Long waves of hair brushed against his chest as she began to move, tentatively at first, easing herself back and forth.

  It was torture. Pure and simple torture not to move. Not to thrust.

  He gritted his teeth. “Yes, that’s the way of it,” he gasped. “Take your time.”

  What he wanted to say was, ride me. Ride me like a racehorse.

  Instead, he let her experiment, only moving with her gently, following her movements.

  “Oh,” she said, a note of discovery. “That’s . . . nice.” She rocked back and forth, finding her pleasure.

  He rubbed his thumb across her sensitive core. “How about now?”

  “I think . . .” She braced her palms on his chest. “I think it’s going to . . . work.”

  Praise be, she began to move again.
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  He moved with her, thrusting gently, inside her liquid warmth, the heat of her gripping him.

  He wasn’t going to last much longer.

  Not when he could see her breasts bouncing jauntily above him.

  Her hair brushing against his nipples. Her face, focused in concentration, as she discovered lovemaking for the first time.

  He was her first lover. The thought sank into his mind like a setting sun, suffusing his body with wonder as his orgasm built, ready to burst.

  She rode him harder, faster.

  He stilled her by holding her hips. Lifting her, he reversed their position, laying her on her back and bracing himself over her on his forearms.

  He pushed inside again.

  She moaned, low and guttural.

  “Wrap your legs around me,” he said.

  She followed his instructions, her thighs closing around his hips, heels on his lower back. They moved together, her hips rising to meet his thrusts.

  He didn’t know if she could come again but he couldn’t last any longer. One more deep, ecstatic thrust and he slid out of her, pumping himself with his fist, spilling his seed over her belly.

  “Mari,” he groaned into her hair, sinking on top of her. “So. Good.”

  Her hands soothed his back.

  She kissed his neck. He lay, mindless, on top of her. He was crushing her.

  He rolled away and gathered her into his arms, placing her head against his chest.

  She nestled into him.

  Outside the sea still swept against the shore.

  Here, in this room, he’d just experienced the best lovemaking of his life. He felt grateful, satiated, and something new, something he’d never felt before.

  Not some giddy, heedless, selfish emotion.

  A steady, abiding, rock-solid feeling of caring. For this woman. For everything she’d given him. Shown him.

  What did it mean? Now that he’d broken all of his rules, what had he become?

  What would they become . . . together?

  Chapter 28

  She awoke from a dream of having his arms around her, to find that his arms were around her, blanketing her, keeping her warm from the night air.

  They’d left the balcony door open.

  She rolled out from under his heavy arm. Shivering, she walked across the room on bare feet and closed the door. She went to the washroom and relieved herself. Washed away the soreness between her legs.