Lingefelt, Karen - Wagered to the Duke (BookStrand Publishing Romance)

by Karen Lingefelt

  “What?” His voice sounded unnaturally high-pitched as he said that, and he hoped to God it was from disbelief and not because she’d crushed his testicles with her knee, which he feared she’d done.

  “Perhaps I’d thought at first that you did have a sinister, ulterior motive for watching me.”

  Her voice was soft and seductive, the voice of a siren luring him to his doom—though judging from the anguish between his thighs, he felt as if he’d already crashed groin-first into sharp, jagged rocks.

  Tears smarted his eyes. Oh God, what had she done to him? “Is that why you may have just smashed the ducal jewels?” There, that didn’t sound so high-pitched now. It must have been the disbelief that she’d do such a thing out of some petty retribution.

  “No, that was an accident. Where precisely did I put my knee?”

  “Surely you know,” he growled through his teeth. “There.”

  “Perhaps you could show me? Take my hand and place it over the spot where I hurt you.”

  Good God. “You really don’t know where you hurt me, do you?”

  She fumbled around for his hand, picking it up and holding it in hers. He loved the feel of her slim fingers entwined with his, for her warm, soft palm curved into his as if their hands fit perfectly together.

  He wondered if they would fit perfectly together in other ways. After his testicles recovered, of course.

  “Please show me where it hurts.” Her voice was now a gentle, soothing whisper.

  “Why?” he whispered back.

  “So I can make it feel better.”

  This was too good to be true. And when something was too good to be true…“How?”

  “I can stroke the sore spot and make it feel better.”

  Ah, yes. When something was too good to be true, it was usually a trap.

  “Or I can kiss it and make it feel better.”

  He must have fallen asleep already and was now dreaming. She couldn’t really be saying these things!

  “Or I can put a cold compress on it.”

  If indeed he’d been asleep, those words blasted him wide awake. “Don’t do that!”

  “Well?” Now she held his hand against her chest—between her breasts, if he wasn’t mistaken—and she brushed her fingers down his forearm to his elbow then back up again.

  He closed his eyes and sighed, savoring the light teasing of her fingertips up and down his arm. He’d never dreamed that a mere touch on the arm could be so delightfully erotic. It all but eased the pain in his groin.

  “I truly didn’t mean to hurt you, Nathan,” she murmured. “Won’t you please tell me where you’re in pain?”

  “What you’re doing right now is just fine,” he assured her.

  “Do you mean it was your arm that I hurt with my knee?”

  How tempting to tell her the truth! But something told him if he did that, and guided her hand or even her lips to where her knee had really been, that she’d only inflict further agony on him, thinking that he still meant to take advantage of her, even though he didn’t think he could if he wanted to now.

  At least not tonight. Still, he enjoyed what she was doing. So he replied, “Yes, it was my arm.”

  “I’m sorry,” she murmured and brushed her lips over his skin, from his wrist down to the inside of his elbow, planting little kisses all the way.

  It was like being nibbled by a butterfly.

  Then he felt something else. Something tickling and grazing his arm. Something that was neither her fingers nor her lips. He reached up to brush it, and to his amazement it felt like hair.

  Thick, loose strands of wavy, silken hair.

  He wove his fingers into it, letting it slip and spill over the back of his hand as he glided it to the nape of her neck. Now his hand was covered by a waterfall of honey. “You unbraided your hair,” he whispered. “Why?”

  “So you could do what you’re doing,” she murmured. “You said you wished to do it.”

  She was granting his wish. Would any of those debutantes in London do that? He didn’t care anymore. Right now, he cared only about her. He slid his hand from her nape and with his fingers traced the outline of her jaw, cupping his hand on the side of her throat. “You know, this is the sort of thing Driscoll should have done to his bride this evening.”

  She laughed softly. “You certainly don’t hear me screaming.”

  He fingered the collar of her borrowed shirt, wishing he could pull it over her head and explore her from head to toe. “I did promise to tell you what happens between husbands and wives who are the exact opposite of the Driscolls.”

  “So you did.” She bent over him, and now he felt curtains of her hair dangling into his face. “But I think I’d like you to show me instead.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Kate couldn’t believe she’d just said that. Just as she still couldn’t believe what he’d said after she finished braiding her hair.

  “I said your hair is beautiful. I almost wish you hadn’t braided it. I love seeing it down, flowing all over your shoulders and back. But I suppose it’s just as well you did plait it, otherwise I might have been tempted to spend all night running my fingers through it, finding out for myself if it feels as silky as it looks.”

  He’d also confessed to admiring her legs.

  No one had ever admired any part of her before. Oh, they admired her ability to play the pianoforte. They admired her fine embroidery.

  But not much else.

  Until Nathan, a duke she could never hope to have, came along and turned her head, opened her eyes…and touched her heart.

  Now she wanted him to touch her everywhere else. She’d unbraided her hair not only to grant his wish to run his hands through it, but because she longed for someone to stroke her, caress her, and maybe even love her.

  Did that mean she was looking for love? If so, she was bound to be disappointed.

  But what if she’d already found it?

  As she clutched his hand against her thudding heart, with nothing between them but the thin fabric of his shirt, she thought of lifting the shirt and pulling it over her head, leaving her naked but still protected by the dark.

  His smooth, warm baritone slid into her delightfully wicked thoughts. “You have no idea how much I long to show you. But…”

  Here it came. The rejection Kate had known for most of her life. Behind the spectacles—even though she wasn’t wearing them at the moment—and under the tangled fall of thick hair, beneath her borrowed man’s shirt, she was still a plain spinster better suited to be the governess of some desperate, old widower, not the bride of a young and dashing duke who could have any beauty he chose.

  She let go of his hand and dropped his arm. She could still taste the saltiness of his skin from where she’d kissed him from his wrist to the inside of his elbow. Plain and wanton.

  Still toying with her hair, he continued, “But I’m afraid I may need the rest of the night to recover from your lethal knee.”

  Kate now had some very strong suspicions about where exactly she’d put her knee, and that it wasn’t on his arm. “I apologize again for that. It truly was an accident.”

  “I know.”

  “I can’t see a thing in the dark, so how could I know precisely where I put my knee?”

  “You couldn’t,” he assured her. “But as I said, it’s probably just as well.”

  “Why? And by the way, I think I know where I really crushed you. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  A pause, and then, his tone rueful, he said, “Because you offered to stroke me and even kiss me where it hurt to make it feel better. And I thought if I told you the truth about where I really hurt that you would—well, maybe you would hurt me even more.”

  She couldn’t help laughing. “Why would I do that?”

  Now he sounded quite sheepish. “Well, I was afraid you might think I was bamming you about where I really hurt, that I was only claiming injured man parts to get you to touch me there so one thing might lead t
o another and then I could do what all men want to do, which is to take advantage of you.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. No man wants to take advantage of me. Not even you.” A sharp pain suddenly pierced her heart, and tears stung her eyes as she flopped down on the mattress next to him.

  “Are you complaining because I can’t take advantage of you?”

  No, she was complaining because he wouldn’t. Because no man would. Why else would he tell such a lame fib about his injury?

  “Katherine, I’m a man. I’m human. I wouldn’t be either if I didn’t want you.”

  “Then you must be the only man—and human—on the face of the earth.”

  There was a long pause before he said, “Perhaps that means I’m the only man for you.”

  Skepticism rippled through her. “You can’t be.”

  “Why not?”

  “Do you expect me to believe the only reason I’m still a spinster at the decrepit, old age of twenty-eight is because there can only be one man for me, and I never found him until just a few days ago?”

  “That could very well be the reason. Why don’t you believe it?”

  “Do you? Surely you don’t think I could be the only woman for you? You, the Duke of Loring, now Britain’s most eligible bachelor, who can have his pick of eligible ladies…as long as they’re all gathered at a ball.”

  Silence. Long, ominous, frosty-cold silence.

  “That’s what I thought,” she muttered. “Good night.”

  “Maybe there’s someone else,” he said. “Someone in London, who’s waiting to find the only woman for him, and that woman happens to be you.”

  “But why, after so many years? Why, when most women I know are married well before they get to be my age?”

  “Who knows why. But I think it’s important for you to know that while I do want you, I don’t want to take advantage of you. There’s a difference. If there’s someone else out there for you, I don’t want to ruin you for that person.”

  “On the other hand, if you were that person…”

  “Then it wouldn’t matter. But I don’t know if I’m that person. And you just said you don’t believe I am.”

  “Because if you compromised me, you’d have to marry me, wouldn’t you?”

  “Others might argue you’ve already been compromised.”

  But not Nathan, and thus far a marriage offer was not forthcoming.

  “At my age, I really don’t think I’ll ever get married,” she said. “And I certainly don’t expect you to offer for me, and not just because it’s the honorable thing. I want to be loved.”

  He sighed heavily. “As I said before, we all want to marry for love. But most people don’t marry for love. They marry for convenience. For position. For money. Or in the case of Mr. Driscoll, because his wife is such a buxom beauty. But no one I know ever marries for love. Who do you know?”

  She pondered. “My brother and his wife married for love. So did her two brothers. I thought my parents had married for love, but it turned out my father was unfaithful to my mother. He died in the bed of another woman.”

  “Hm, no wonder you were so distraught by what you heard next door this evening.”

  “That’s not why I was distraught. I honestly thought he was hurting her.”

  “He probably was.”

  “Well? Then what was I to do? How could I ignore it, the way everyone else was? She truly sounded as if she was suffering.”

  “And she would probably agree with you, but as I explained to you before, her suffering, such as it was, was only temporary, and partly the result of not being prepared for what would happen. That, and Driscoll knows nothing about arousing and pleasing a woman.”

  Kate felt a strange but pleasurable quiver below her belly as he said those last words.

  For a long moment she stared wide-eyed into the darkness, ruminating, and then she licked her lips, took a deep breath, and asked, “But you know how to arouse and please a woman?”

  “I rather like to think I do. Tell me, what exactly did you hear? These walls are awfully thin. Did you happen to hear anything besides her screaming?”

  She couldn’t help smiling. “At one point she scolded him for mistaking her for a wet nurse.”

  A high-pitched snicker hooted from the other side of the bed.

  “And then he said…oh lud, I can’t say the rest of it.” To her own surprise, she actually started giggling.

  “They’re not just for dispensing milk, you know. Men love them.”

  Heat shimmered over her, but she didn’t know if it was from the blanket or from her own burgeoning desire. She thought of feeling his lips on the now tingling tips of her breasts.

  “Men love to touch them…and stroke them…and cup them in their hands,” Nathan murmured. “They love to suckle on their very tips. What do you think about that?”

  She couldn’t bear the heat any longer. She pushed back the covers.

  But what did she think about that? “I think it sounds intriguing. Do you need your man parts to show me that?”

  “Not at all. I only need my mouth and hands. Do you want me to show you?”

  She pulled up the shirt, bunching it around her neck. “Please.”

  He rolled over to his side and slid a warm hand under and over and along the sides of her breasts, as if trying to ascertain their shape simply by his touch. Something—a fingertip, perhaps—feathered across one of her nipples, teasing it in a light circular motion.

  “I’ll wager he didn’t do this,” Nathan whispered. “I can feel it getting harder just under my fingertip.” He removed the finger and Kate whimpered in protest. “He probably didn’t lick his finger before touching it again.” Once more he brushed his fingertip, now wet, across the pebbled nub, and lightning streaked through her from her breasts to her groin, still covered by the blanket.

  “It makes you want more, doesn’t it, Katherine?”

  “Oh, yes,” she gasped, arching her back in invitation for more.

  Rough wetness grazed one nipple and then another, swirling around them. He must have been laving them with his tongue. She felt in the dark, and somewhere over her breasts she felt his thick, silky hair. She thrust both hands into it just as his lips closed around one of her aching nipples.

  If this was what prompted Mrs. Driscoll to accuse her husband of treating her like a wet nurse, then the woman was a fool. No one had ever told Kate what to expect, either—because there’d never been an occasion for her to expect anything.

  She certainly hadn’t expected pleasure so intense that she found herself aching for more in other places. Those other places that Mr. Driscoll had wanted to explore.

  Those other places that Nathan was approaching with his hand that slid down her rib cage and over her belly, stopping only at the blanket that still covered everything below her hips.

  He finally lifted his head from her breasts. “You haven’t made the slightest protest.”

  “That’s because I have naught to protest.”

  “Naught at all? Do you know if Mrs. Driscoll protested anything else?”

  “He wanted to see her. All of her. I assume neither had blown out a candle.”

  “Would you like me to see you? All of you?”

  She trembled at the thought of him seeing her naked. “Well, I’ve already seen all of you. But I’ve already blown out the candle for the night, so perhaps you could see me in the morning.”

  “Of course, you already know I don’t need to actually see you to arouse you and pleasure you.” She sensed his head just above hers. “You do feel pleasure from what I’m doing, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” she barely whispered.

  “And you do feel aroused, longing for more, don’t you?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said in breathy delight. “I do want more.”

  The words were barely out of her mouth when his lips covered hers, and this time, she eagerly sought his tongue with her own. His hand cupped her breast again, squeezing it
gently as she tasted the whisky he’d been drinking earlier in the evening. She twined her arms over his shoulders and pulled him down on top of her, sighing into his mouth as she reveled in the hard warmth of his naked chest pressed against her own, the roughness of his tongue stroking hers.

  His hand glided over her belly again, heading straight for where she now ached the most. He broke the kiss, his lips still hovering only a hairsbreadth away from hers as he whispered, “Would you like to know what happens next?”

  “Perhaps you should show me. Don’t tell me.”

  “Are you sure?” His fingers toyed with the edge of the blanket. “You might appreciate the warning if you don’t know what to expect.”

  She smiled. “Well, thanks to what I heard next door, it just so happens I do have some idea of what to expect.”

  “I don’t suppose you’d like to impart what you heard?”

  Not until this moment had she realized it was possible to hear a smile, because she was quite sure she heard one in his voice.

  “What he said was so awful that not only did Mrs. Driscoll say how embarrassed she was, but even I was embarrassed for her.”

  “Surely you don’t think it’s that dreadful? Why, if you only knew of the pleasure…”

  She didn’t. “Just don’t say what he said.”

  “But how do I know what he said unless you tell me?”

  “Oh, it was something about finding a cat curled up on the roof of a cottage, only it fell through a hole in the thatch, so he had to go after it. I don’t know.”

  Nathan drew in a long, sharply audible breath before collapsing into gales of laughter.

  “Lord Byron he’s not,” Kate added petulantly.

  Nathan could barely speak, but somehow he managed to rasp out, “I think even I’m embarrassed.”

  “You sound as if you’re feeling better now.”

  He sobered somewhat. “I’m still feeling a trifle sore, and I truly don’t want to do anything to hurt you.”

  “Then it does hurt? She did do a lot of screaming, and at one point he said something about trying to break something. What did he break?”