by Mary Balogh
Her hands lay palm-down on the mattress.
He cupped her chin with one hand and kissed her as his hand moved downward, between her breasts, over her flat stomach, over the mound below, and between her legs. She was warm and moist there. He found her opening and pressed two fingers a little way inside her.
“Mmm.” That deep sound in her throat again.
He rolled on top of her, spread her legs wide with his own, slid his hands beneath her to hold her firm, found the opening again, and thrust his full length deep into her.
There was the shock of heat, wetness, tight muscles, soft woman.
He imposed control on his breathing, on his bodily reactions. The time of greatest enjoyment had come—at last—and he would not rush its conclusion, even with the encouragement she had given and his own driving need. He held still and noticed the almost rigid tension of her body only gradually relaxing. He waited for her.
The Duchess of Dunbarton.
Hannah.
He had a sudden mental image of her as he had seen her in the park that afternoon when he had been with Stephen and Monty.
Her arms wrapped loosely about his waist. Her legs lifted from the bed one at a time to twine about his. Heat radiated from her.
He lifted his head and looked down into her face.
Her eyes were in shadow. Her lower lip was caught between her teeth.
“The finish line is in sight,” he murmured, “though it is still some distance off.”
She had nothing to say. Her eyes closed, and he felt her clench hard about him.
He withdrew from her, heard her wordless murmur of protest, and pressed inward hard and deep again. And he repeated the motion until the rhythm matched his heartbeat and his whole being seemed immersed in the wet heat at the heart of her.
She was exquisite.
It was exquisite.
But it—the sex—could not be enjoyed without the awareness of who was giving him such pleasure. And she was clever to the end. Instead of the skilled moves he had expected—and had thought he wanted—she lay open and receptive and almost passive.
He had steeled himself for long endurance during foreplay and had been reprieved—though he would have enjoyed every moment of it if she had not reprieved him. He used the unexpended energy and control on the real play, the intercourse, the sex with the woman who would be his mistress for the next few months.
He played long and hard and deep in her until thought was gone and only the pounding pleasure-pain of thrust and withdrawal remained, and the woman’s open receptiveness.
Hannah’s receptiveness.
She was hot and slick with sweat and the juices of sex. Her breathing was labored.
And then even endurance went, and the ache of physical need broke the bonds of his control. His hands went beneath her again and held her while he plunged faster and harder and then pressed deeper than deep and held and … released into her. Spilled into her.
He felt all the tension drain from his body as he relaxed down onto her. She had her head turned on his shoulder, her face away from him. She held him with her arms and legs—and he felt her gradually relax with him.
He drew free of her, felt the coolness of the air against his damp body, and reached down to pull the bedcovers up over them. He turned his head to look at her. Her hair was damp and in a riot of curls. Her eyes were blue again in the candlelight and were gazing back into his.
“I was quite right about you,” she said.
“Is that good?” he asked her. “Or is it bad?”
“To be perfectly honest,” she said, “I was not right. You are far better than I expected, Mr. Huxtable.”
“Constantine,” he said. “Con to most people.”
“I shall always call you Constantine,” she said. “Why shorten a perfectly wonderful name? And you have passed the audition with flying colors. You have the part for a lengthy spell.”
Lengthy?
“Until the summer, that is,” she said. “Until I go home to Kent to stay and you go to wherever it is you live in Gloucestershire.”
“How do you know,” he said, “that you have passed the audition?”
She raised her eyebrows.
“Don’t be foolish, Constantine,” she said.
And it struck him that he was not certain she had climaxed with him. She certainly had not done so before or after him.
Had she? Climaxed, that was?
And what did it mean if she had not? That he had failed her? Her words indicated quite the contrary. That for her even sex was a matter of power and control, then? Oh, and some enjoyment too. She had certainly enjoyed herself.
He would prefer to know, though, that she had enjoyed herself to completion. He would not ask her, however.
“I shall put you to the test again later,” he said. “For now you have exhausted me, Duchess, and I need to recoup my strength.”
“Hannah,” she said. “My name is Hannah.”
“Yes, I know,” he said, rolling onto his back and setting the back of one hand over his eyes. “Duchess.”
He was not going to get too close to her. Which was a somewhat absurd thought under the circumstances.
He was not going to get emotionally close.
She was not going to control him.
That was something that was not going to happen.
He really was exhausted. Pleasantly so. He stretched luxuriously beneath the covers. He could feel her body heat along his right side. He could smell her—a mingling of expensive perfume and sweat. An erotically pleasant smell.
He drifted off to sleep.
And woke up an indeterminate amount of time later to find the bed empty beside him, the curtains drawn back from the window, and the Duchess of Dunbarton, clothed only in his white shirt and her white-blond hair, sitting on the wide window ledge, her legs drawn up before her, her arms wrapped about herself, gazing out through the window.
Fortunately—very fortunately—the candles had all burned themselves out. She would have made a very interesting window ornament to anyone glancing up from the street below, even clad in his shirt.
The fact that the candles had burned out, of course, meant that he must have slept most of the night. Though he could see when he gazed into the corner that the tapers were still fairly long.
She had had the good sense to snuff them, then, before taking up her place in the window.
“Anything interesting going on out there?” he asked, linking his hands behind his head.
She turned her head to look at him.
“No, nothing at all,” she said. “Just as there is not in here.”
Well. He had walked straight into that one.
Chapter 6
THERE WAS JUST empty night out there, Hannah saw when she parted the curtains and gazed out. There were no carriages, no pedestrians, no light in the windows of the houses opposite, except perhaps one flickering in a downstairs window about six houses down. She had blown out the candles in this room before looking out.
She closed the curtains and stood for a few moments at the foot of the bed. Constantine was fast asleep, one arm draped over his eyes. He was breathing deeply and evenly. One of his knees was raised and making a small tent of the bedcovers. She could see him quite clearly even in the darkness.
She wondered if he would sleep all night and smiled slightly. He had said she had exhausted him, and she was not surprised. He had run his marathon after all.
She was really very sore indeed. It was not an altogether unpleasant sensation.
She shivered in the night air and looked around for her gown. She could see it in a dark heap on the floor under her stays, no doubt horribly creased. And she could see the lighter outline of his shirt. She bent and picked it up and held it to her face for a moment. It smelled of his cologne and of him.
She pulled it on over her head, pushed her arms through the sleeves, and hugged it about herself. Goodness, but he was large. She approved of his largeness.
S
he considered climbing back into bed beneath the covers and curling up beside him, warming herself with his body heat. But she did not want to sleep with him. There was a certain loss of control in slumber. One never knew what one might say when asleep or when one first awoke, before one was fully conscious and aware. Or what one might feel in those unguarded hours.
She went back to the window, parted the curtains again with the backs of her hands, and looked at the sill. It was not exactly a window seat, but it was wide enough nevertheless. She pulled the curtains right back and sat on the sill, pulling her feet up onto it, wrapping her arms about herself for warmth. She rested the side of her head against the glass.
All was quiet. And dark. And peaceful.
She could still hear his deep breathing. It was a strangely comforting sound. Another human being was close.
She was not sorry. She was never sorry for anything she did, especially as she rarely acted out of impulse. All was planned and controlled in her life—as she liked it.
The only thing you can neither plan nor control, my dearest love, the duke had once told her, is love itself. When you find it, you must yield to it. But only if it is the one and only true passion of your life. Never if it is anything less than that, or life will consume you.
But how am I to know? she had asked him.
You will know. It was the only answer he had been willing to give.
She was a little afraid that she would never know love. Not that kind of love, anyway. Not the all-consuming, once-in-a-lifetime kind of which the duke had spoken—from personal experience. It surely did not happen to everyone. Maybe not to many people at all. Maybe not to her.
She had loved him. She shivered and hugged herself more tightly. Sometimes she thought she had never loved anyone else in her life but him. But that was surely not true, and there were degrees of love. She loved Barbara.
No, she was not sorry for tonight.
And she was not feeling guilty. There was no reason in the world why she should not be here with her lover, in his bedchamber, having just had marital relations with him. Except that they had not been marital, had they? Her vocabulary was really quite puritanical at times. She must do something about that. She was free and unattached, and so was he. They might have relations as often as they chose without feeling guilt.
She ought to have noticed that she could no longer hear his breathing. His voice took her by surprise.
“Anything interesting going on out there?” he asked.
She turned her head to look at him, but her eyes had adjusted to the slightly lighter darkness of the outdoors and all she could see for the moment was a dark silhouette.
“No, nothing at all,” she said. “Just as there is not in here.”
“Are you complaining, Duchess,” he asked, “because I used up so much energy that I had to sleep?”
“And are you looking for another compliment, Constantine?” she asked in return. “I believe I have already told you that you far exceeded my expectations.”
He had thrown back the covers and was getting out of bed. He bent down to rummage among the heap of their clothing, and pulled on first his drawers, and then his pantaloons. He turned his back to her, and she heard the clink of glass against glass. He came toward her carrying two glasses of wine. He handed her one and stood with one bare shoulder propped against the window frame. He looked long and lean and virile.
All of which attributes Hannah viewed with open approval as she sipped from her glass. She could not possibly have chosen a more perfect male specimen if she had tried. He was even more splendid without his clothes—and even half clothed—than with. With many people clothes disguised a multitude of imperfections.
And he had exceeded her expectations.
Foolishly, given the fact of her soreness, she started to throb down there even thinking about how large and hard and very satisfactory he had been.
He crossed one leg carelessly over the other and drained his glass before setting it down on the end of the windowsill and crossing his arms over his chest.
“You are terribly beautiful,” she said.
“Terribly?” She could see him raise his eyebrows. “I inspire terror in you?”
She drank some more.
“You are often referred to as the devil,” she said. “You must know that. It is a little terrifying to have run a half marathon with the devil himself.”
“And survived,” he said.
“Oh, I will always survive,” she said. “And I thrive on terror—for I am never terrified, you know.”
“No,” he said. “I don’t suppose you are.”
They gazed silently out at the street for a few moments while she finished her wine. He took the empty glass from her and set it down beside his.
“Your brother, the earl,” she said. “Was he your only sibling?”
“The only surviving one,” he said. “The eldest and the youngest—the only ones tough enough to live through childhood. And then Jon died when he was sixteen.”
“Why?” she asked. “What was the cause of his death?”
“He should have died four or five years sooner than he did,” he said, “according to the physicians. He always looked different from other people—in facial features and physique, I mean. My father always called him an imbecile. So did most other people. But he was not. His mind moved slowly, it is true, but he was by no means stupid. Quite the opposite. And he was love.”
Hannah sat very still, hugging the shirt to herself. He was gazing out the window as if he had forgotten her for the moment.
“Not loving,” he said, “though he was that too. He was love itself—a love that was free and unconditional and total. And he died. I had him four years longer than I was supposed to have him.”
It was the nighttime and the darkness that made him talk so openly, Hannah suspected, and the fact that he had just been sleeping and had not yet fully armored himself with his usual defenses. She had been right not to sleep herself.
“You loved him dearly,” she said softly.
His eyes rested on her. They looked very black.
“I also hated him,” he said. “He had everything that ought to have been mine.”
“Except health,” she said.
“Except health,” he agreed. “And wisdom. He loved even me. Especially me.”
Hannah shivered again, and he reached down with both hands, clasped her upper arms, and lifted her off the sill just as if she weighed nothing at all. He wrapped his arms tightly about her as soon as her feet touched the floor, crushing her to him, and his mouth came down, open and hard, on her own.
Any attempt to struggle would be pointless, Hannah thought in the first startled moment, and it was always best not to indulge in a fight one could not win anyway. Not that she would not fight if this were something she really, really did not want, but—
Well, it was easier to stop thinking. And enjoy. For she did want it. And him.
She stepped closer until her bare feet touched his, wrapped her arms about him, and kissed him back with hot fervor. There was something different about this kiss. It was not the same game they had played earlier, before lying down on his bed. There was something more … real about this. More raw.
She stopped thinking.
And then his shirt was off over her head and his lower garments were on the floor again, and they were on the bed once more, tangled together, rolling together, first one on top and then the other, hands and mouths everywhere, even teeth, and this was indeed no game.
This was raw passion.
And she was giving as good as she got.
This was …
She should put an end to it, Hannah thought. She should say no and he would stop. She knew he would. She was not at all afraid. Not that she needed to be afraid. He was her lover. She had chosen him for just this. But—
He was on top of her, thrusting her legs wide, and she was a moment or two late saying no. Indeed, she never did say it.
He
plunged inside her.
It felt like a dagger being stabbed into a raw wound.
She flinched, gasped, tried to relax, and …
And he was gone.
At least, he was not gone exactly. He was out of her body, but he was still on the bed beside her, propped on one elbow, looming over her. She was very glad she had snuffed the candles. Not that the darkness gave much cover from eyes that had become accustomed to it.
“What?” he asked.
She reached up one hand and ran the tip of her forefinger down the center of his chest.
“What indeed?” she said.
“I hurt you?” he asked.
“It was time to stop,” she said. “Once is quite enough for one night, Constantine. I must be getting home. You must not expect that I will spend all night with you now that we are lovers. That would be tedious.”
“You were not a virgin, were you?” he asked.
It was a question asked in jest, of course. But she took just a little too long to answer, and when she did, it was with haughtily raised eyebrows, the full effect of which was probably lost in the darkness.
“You were a virgin?” It was not a joke this time. It was not even really a question.
She was thirty years old. There had been no barrier left. There had been no blood. But she had still been a virgin in every way that counted.
“Is there a law against virginity?” she asked him. “I have never chosen to take a lover until now, Constantine, when I chose you. I thought you would be superior, and you are. Not that I have anyone with whom to compare you, it is true, but only a fool would wonder if perhaps you are only mediocre.”
“You were married,” he said, “for ten years.”
“To an elderly gentleman who was really not interested in that aspect of our marital relationship,” she said. “Which was just as well because I was not interested in it either. I married him for other reasons.”
“You became a duchess,” he said, supplying the only reasons there could possibly be, “and a wealthy one.”
“Positively rolling in riches,” she agreed. “And I am unlikely ever to acquire that ghastly title of dowager duchess as the current duke will almost certainly never marry. He has a mistress and ten children, ranging in age from eighteen to two, but he took her out of a brothel and will not, of course, marry her.”
