She stepped away from him. He followed, his eyes smoldering with dark intent. Her heart was pounding in her breast. She bumped up against the library door. He raised his hand. His leather-encased fingers traced the contours of her jaw.
“What sort of beast do you suppose I am at heart?” he inquired softly. “A Caligula? A Bluebeard who murdered his wives? If you continue to spread these rumors of my bestial desires, there will be no one left in London for me to ravish.”
Sweet mercy. His voice awakened the most ancient of all desires. She felt her body, her whole being, tense in expectation; whether she led or followed him into the library, she was unsure.
She only knew that once the door closed, he began to undress her, button by button, hook by hook, in the room where an hour or so ago she had sat in warm gratitude with his family.
“What if someone comes in?” she whispered, staring into the fire as he kissed her bare shoulder, then her breasts and her back, until she sank down upon the sofa, holding up what she could of her unhooked dress, shift, and simple corset.
“I have a lock on all my doors,” he answered with a hesitant smile.
“Your grace has the advantage,” she whispered.
“I don’t think so.”
“And do you think a locked door will allay her ladyship’s suspicions?”
“Indeed,” he said calmly, undoing his coat and then cravat, “it will not.”
“Then?”
He raised his brow. “I spent an entire afternoon collecting broadsheets and newspapers to protect your reputation.”
“Only to ruin me a few hours later?”
He smiled again. “I hoped that you could save me.”
She settled into the farthest corner of the sofa. The fire felt pleasant on her bare arms and breasts, although there was enough heat in his gaze to keep her warm for the rest of the night.
He sat down beside her, leaning forward to kiss her before she could catch her breath. Her throat closed. It felt natural to surrender, to stop fighting the temptation that tingled through her veins.
“I need you,” he whispered as his lips teased hers. “I need your comfort so very desperately. Don’t deny me, Harriet. I don’t want another woman. I think you know that. Maybe meeting you was the only reason I had to come to London.”
She stared up into his starkly beautiful face. “His grace has taken leave of his senses,” she said softly.
“No, he hasn’t. He’s being sensible for once.”
He stroked his hand over the curve of her shoulder, and Harriet let herself drift into a shimmering darkness. Her heart quickened in expectation, and a pleasant warmth weighed down her body. The next thing she knew he was cupping her breasts in his palms, trapping the hard tips between his fingers.
She drew a breath, her inner muscles tightening in anticipation. She stirred. It seemed an effort to even speak, and then her voice came out slurred.
“Men want women like me all the time. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“But I’m not like the others. I thought you knew that, too.”
“Perhaps I did.”
She closed her eyes as his body, large and breathtakingly male, overshadowed hers. His hand dipped in subtle degrees into the delta of her sex, and she whimpered, forgetting to breathe as his fingers parted her folds. She shivered, remembering how he had caressed her the night he brought her home. He had shown restraint in the carriage. But now he needed her. And she did him. His touch had promised secret pleasures. Her body moistened and ached to offer itself to him in return.
“I’ve never trusted anyone like this,” she whispered.
“Trust that whatever happens between us, you will not suffer for it.”
“So promises the demon of the world.”
“Am I a demon because I need you?” he whispered in a low voice. “Am I at fault because I look at you and cannot think?” He lowered his head to her breasts, his mouth seducing her will. “Too much or more?”
She sifted her fingers through his silky hair.
“More.”
He exhaled, repositioning his lower body.
His erection throbbed inside his trousers. He could find his soul in her tonight. He could pet and tease her into a hundred little deaths. But even then he would be at her mercy.
“You’re still a virgin?”
She nodded, lifting her arm to shield her eyes. “It wouldn’t matter,” he said quickly. “Harriet, whatever you are or have been is all that I desire.”
“The same old story,” she murmured in rue, “but so prettily told.”
He could reassure her otherwise. He could offer an oath to bind his word. But for this moment her delicately sculpted body invited seduction. His proof would come in due time.
Now. Now.
He groaned as she pressed against his hand in a slow, instinctual rhythm. That was it. He would tempt her beyond what either of them could endure. “Not too much at once,” he said thickly, working her faster, harder now.
She moaned, her body vulnerable as she neared her peak, her nipples dark and prominent. He clenched his teeth. Blood rushed to his groin at the thought of burying himself in her pulsing sweetness. Suddenly she gripped his wrist. Her spine arched. He had her now. He nudged her knees farther apart and dropped his head, fastening his mouth on her taut bud at the moment he sensed she would break. Her body convulsed.
He gave her no time to recover before he stood and unbuttoned his trousers. “I can’t wait,” he whispered, gently pushing her breasts together to form a cleft for his cock. “Hold yourself for me like this.”
She lifted her luminous eyes to his. Her gaze smoldered with acceptance, a willingness to please. Slowly, he slid his shaft between the pocket of her plump breasts, his shoulders flexing in anticipation. His hips pumped up and down in a mimicry of what he truly wanted. For now her warm flesh welcomed him, and he would find relief or never know a moment’s rest again.
His mind wandered into blackness. He heard light rain pattering against the windows. He bore the scent of her on his mouth. He stared down at her, his breathing suspended. Soon. She looked so beautiful. His body could not last another minute. Close. He felt the end approach, elude him. Another thrust. She whispered his name. Closer. Not inside her. He had spared her violation. Enough for now.
His body jerked. The force of his climax surprised him, a pulsing heat and energy that he could not control. He groaned. In blind instinct he brought his discarded cravat to her throat, then to her breasts and her hands, wiping away the evidence of his spent desire from her skin.
“Harriet.” Sanity returned one breath at a time. He sat beside her and stared into the dying fire. She rose to dress. He pulled her back, his hand tightening over hers. Even now his body could not be trusted. Even now he felt both a hunger and deep contentment in her company.
“Oh, duke,” she whispered in a wistful voice. “I never knew… well.”
From the corner of his eye he saw her tuck away a few tendrils of her hair and glance about the room, as if to reassure herself all was in order.
“What sort of wife,” he asked carefully, refastening his cuffs, “do you advise a man like me to marry?”
He dared not look up. He felt her temper flare halfway across the room.
“Perhaps one,” she replied, “who doesn’t mind your devilish moods or meeting your private needs while discussing the woman of your dreams.”
He smiled. “Go to bed, Harriet. Sleep well tonight. And”-he sighed-“thank you for keeping me company.”
For a time after she left, he stood in the firelight and reflected upon what he would have to do. As he turned toward his desk, he noticed the purse of coins Harriet had dropped on the carpet and the book that she had encouraged him to read. He picked up the well-worn volume and placed it on the bookshelf behind his desk. He wondered what in such a macabre story held fascination for Harriet. Perhaps if he studied it, he would learn why she was not afraid of him.
Chapter Twenty-four
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Beneath whose looks did my reviving soul Riper in truth and virtuous daring grow?
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
To Harriet
The sunlight stung her eyes. She lifted her arm to her face and thought of Griffin, surprised she hadn’t dreamed of him again during the night. She rolled over, wondering how she would be able to look at him without thinking of what they had done. And where she had left the purse that had been so rudely given her last night.
An irate voice from outside the door blasted her right out of bed. “Are you still asleep, Harriet? I’ve been calling you for ages. We are supposed to spend the day shopping with Lady Dalrymple, and I cannot find my hat.”
“Coming,” she muttered. “Hold on to your garters, madam.”
She dressed and left her room at the precise moment the duke emerged from his. She nodded uncertainly, examining his elegant serge-lined cape and buff trousers with a suspicious eye. And just when he appeared to be on the verge of breaking the silence between them, a maidservant came clumping up the stairs with her ladyship’s morning tea.
“Good luck to you on your shopping expedition,” he murmured as he hastened to escape.
“And the same-” No. She would not wish him luck searching for a wife. “Will his grace be home in time for supper?” she called after him in a piqued voice.
He glanced back with a wry grin. “I think I might.”
She bit her lip. She shouldn’t give him any further encouragement. It was clear that he would break her heart. She ran impulsively to the top of the stairs, wanting to hail curses on whatever courtship he might enter in the course of the afternoon. But it wasn’t her place.
Lady Powlis, recognizing no such limitations, stuck her head out of her door. “Remind my nephew that he has promised to play noughts and crosses with me tonight.”
“Her ladyship-”
He paused at the front door, so indecently handsome that it grieved her to look at him. “I heard quite clearly.”
“Fine, then,” Harriet said, suddenly infuriated with herself. “We shall expect you home at-a decent hour.”
It rained for three days straight. The duke spent long hours in his library, and while Harriet sensed that he was up to something, she could not feel regret for the night he had tutored her in pleasure. She wondered what he’d been like before his brother’s death. From what Lady Powlis had revealed, he had not always been the man who fascinated and frustrated Harriet in equal measures. But she was pleased that he never mentioned another woman when he came home in the afternoon for tea or again at night when he sat with her and his aunt for the obligatory hour.
And then one evening over her nightly brandy, while Harriet was pretending to read, Lady Powlis said quite out of the blue, “You will never get married at this rate, Griffin. And I am longing to go home.”
He looked up unexpectedly at Harriet, with an intensity that gripped her in both horror and hope.
That night she was so restless that she left her bed and wandered about the house. In the old days she could steal like air through a room. She could see like a cat in the dark and sense when a person was about to wake up and wonder whether the servants had remembered to lock all the doors.
She’d once stuffed an entire silver service into her gown and walked from Grosvenor Square back to St. Giles like a knight in stolen armor. Fortunately she hadn’t been forced to run from the peelers or fend off a street predator with a knife or fork before she reached home.
She had depended on her instincts in those days. But life had been uncomplicated when only survival counted. She hadn’t cared what anyone thought of her. And she had never walked into a man’s library alone and stood before him in a thin muslin nightrail that offered no protection at all from the desire in his eyes.
“Is something the matter?” he asked, rising from his desk.
“I can’t sleep.”
“Then-”
“And I can’t eat.”
“Or read,” he said in resignation.
“Or pay attention to anything your aunt tells me.”
“Or to the hand of cards you are dealt at the club.”
“Furthermore,” she said, “you, if not the entire Boscastle family, are to blame. I don’t belong here at all. And-”
Her voice broke. He stepped around the desk, nodding as if anything she’d said made the least bit of sense.
“And furthermore,” she whispered, staring into his eyes, “I have decided that because of this I cannot serve another day in your house.”
“This?” he queried softly, taking another step toward her.
Her lips parted. “I’m giving you notice, your grace. And I mean it.”
His gaze flickered over her. “In your nightwear?” He reached out to trace his finger down her throat to the knotted drawstring above her breasts. “And at this ungodly hour? I’m afraid I cannot allow it.”
“Well, you can’t stop me this time.”
“I understand.”
“Then-”
“The situation cannot go on this way,” he said gravely. “I will find another position for you before the end of the week.”
He led her across the room and drew her down onto the carpet. For several moments they knelt, sharing feverish kisses and caressing each other through their clothes. Soon Harriet was clinging to his aroused body with a desperation that she couldn’t hide. It seemed not only natural but essential to offer herself to him. She might have existed for him to pet and stroke and pleasure. His hands roamed down her back and derriere, stealing the strength from her bones. If she could bestir herself from his spell, she would touch him everywhere, too.
“Harriet,” he murmured in his lilting baritone voice that mesmerized her. “Do you know I sit at my desk every night and think of being with you like this?”
She shivered. His fingers found and tenderly probed the vulnerable places of her body. Her head swam in delight. She swayed against his hard chest. She kissed his shoulder, smiling to herself. “I know you’ve kept those lewd pictures on purpose.”
He stroked the crease of her bottom, his fingers descending in a forbidden quest that quickened her blood. When suddenly he leaned over her, she fell back onto the carpet with a moan. He bent over her pliant form. His mouth took hers in a hard kiss that left her breathless and craving more. His unremorseful gaze acknowledged her response. “I don’t need those prints anymore, do I?” he asked, his hand pressing against her mound. “Besides, they hardly did you justice. Why anyone would depict this perfect body with thighs inflated like balloons is past imagining.”
“And I don’t have three of them, either,” she said, indignant at the unfairness of how she had been portrayed for posterity.
He looked utterly blank for a moment. And then an insulting grin lifted the corners of his mouth. “That wasn’t a third thigh, you milkmaid. It was the part of me that’s meant to go inside you.”
She levered up on one elbow, curiosity enabling her to overlook his mockery. Harriet considered herself to be anything but ignorant in the ways of the world. Her half brothers had not bothered to spare her any embarrassment when it came to the differences of their sex. That she had retained her virtue, and a certain modesty concerning earthly affairs, was no minor accomplishment. Had the duke been the devilish rake that gossip would make him, she would never have found him irresistible, let alone considered surrendering her maidenly innocence. It was, in fact, his protective nature and dedication to his aunt and niece that had captured her affection. But it was obvious that he had more experiences in carnality than she had.
And now this issue of what she had erroneously perceived to be her third appendage stirred her prurient interest.
“I don’t believe you,” she whispered hotly, looking him up and down as if challenging his claim.
“Harriet,” he scolded, lifting his hands to her shoulders, “have you ever caught me in a lie?”
“I haven’t caught you at all,” she said, swallowing as she stared up i
nto his eyes.
“But you have.”
She held her breath, aware that he had loosened the cords of her nightdress and unbuttoned the long, modest sleeves. The muslin bodice abraded her aching breasts as he slipped his thumbs beneath the cambric collar. And pulled.
“Griffin.”
She tried to lift her head. Too much effort. His fingers glided over the bare curves and shadowed indentations that he had exposed. For all practical purposes, her body became a map of clamoring aches that awaited his conquest. In resentful admiration, she allowed this exploration to continue. It was, after all, his area of expertise.
As a rank amateur she would be forced to submit to his demands in the foreseeable future. She did not perceive this as a sacrifice. If she applied herself-and she had the sense that she would become a devoted student under his guidance-she’d have him at her mercy, as she was at his, in no time.
Still, for now she was undeniably his to master. She lay with her arm half covering her face. At first she felt too overwhelmed to move. But when he kissed his way between her breasts, sucking at each elongated tip with a finesse that electrified her senses, she could not suppress the natural instincts that urged her to move.
He spread her knees father apart and studied her in absorption. The warmth of the fire, the heat in his eyes, stung her naked flesh. He slid his palms down her thighs, opening her yet wider. His thumb and forefinger gently parted her damp folds. His other hand slid under her hips.
She lifted herself, heeding instinct. She considered closing her eyes, pretending blithe ignorance of whatever acts she allowed him to pursue. But watching his face aroused her beyond what she could admit. Who would have guessed that she could undo the wicked duke? “You came to me tonight,” he said, slowly lifting his head from her belly.
She lowered her hand. She might have said something. His dark smile sent every coherent thought from her brain. She loved this man so much that she was afraid what would happen if he did not return her love. Her family, after all, did have a penchant for hotheadedness. And if she conceived his child, there would be another family to love and worry over. Would he take care of them? What position did he intend to find for her after they had made love?
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