The Duchess Hunt

by Jennifer Haymore

  “Both of them are illegitimate as well.”

  “No,” Simon said, his tone confident. “That is impossible.”

  “They’re not of your mother’s blood, mind. They are the product of your father and his mistress, Fiona Atwood. Your mother sent Fiona to France, then she paid dear for Fiona to hand over Markus the moment he was born. After Theodore, your mother had had enough. She gave Fiona a great deal of money to disappear and never show her face in London – or to the duke – again.”

  “You cannot know this.”

  “Oh, but I can.” Stanley gave him a thin smile. “You see, lovely Fiona wasn’t exclusively the Duke of Trent’s mistress. When he wasn’t busy with her, you see, he shared her with me.”

  “Oh, God,” Simon muttered. Was there no limit to the lascivious, dangerous games his parents’ generation had played?

  Stanley still held on to that smile that was more of a grimace. “I comforted that woman as her belly increased from another man’s seed, and I held her after her sons were taken from her. I know where to find her. If you really wanted proof, I can tell you where she is.”

  Theo and Mark’s mother. No, it simply didn’t connect properly in Simon’s head. Their mother was his mother – the woman who’d been missing for over a month. The woman who’d raised them all.

  Simon gave Stanley an unbelieving sneer. “Don’t tell me Esme is illegitimate, too.”

  “Oh, I do believe she is. She has none of your father’s features and looks nothing like you, after all. Not to mention the fact that your father was already deathly ill when she was conceived. It would have taken some grand heroics on your mother’s part to encourage the duke to rise to the occasion, as it were.” Stanley gave a dry chuckle. “That is only conjecture, however. I have no proof of your sister’s illegitimacy. However, I do hold proof that all three of your ‘legitimate’ brothers are, in fact, bastards.” He paused, that small smile curling his lips again. “How does that information sit with you, Trent?”

  “Not well.” Simon felt dizzy – as though the world had somehow tilted off its axis, and he was trying desperately to right it.

  “I thought not.”

  Again, Simon gripped the carved wooden armrests of his chair. “So. What compels you to tell me all these” – lies, they must be lies – “things, Stanley?”

  “It would be tragic to the Hawkins family if the truth came out, wouldn’t it?” Stanley said softly. “Devastating to your three brothers, who have enjoyed the status of lordship since their births. Especially my own offspring, Lord Lukas. He would lose his position as your heir” – he snapped his fingers – “in the blink of an eye. And the scandal —” Stanley shook his head, giving out a low whistle from between his teeth.

  Simon stared at him.

  “Therefore, Trent, I do believe it would be in your best interests to propose to my daughter. It is the only way to protect your family name. To keep Lukas as your heir. To maintain Theodore’s and Markus’s positions in society and to assure their – very bright, I’m told – futures as respected members of the aristocracy.”

  “Because if I do not marry Miss Stanley,” Simon said, his voice so low even he could barely hear it, “you will inform the world that my brothers are by-blows.”

  Stanley’s smile showed a row of tobacco-and-tea-stained teeth. “Indeed. I’ll include my suspicions about your sister for good measure. Everyone will believe, for everyone still remembers your parents’ – how shall I put it? – vigorous tastes. However, if they do not, I am in possession of my proof. There’s no doubt your three brothers will be ruined, and your sister will be eyed with suspicion for the remainder of her days.”

  “I should like to see that proof you claim to possess.”

  “And so you shall,” Stanley told him graciously. He rose from his chair. “I do realize you are likely reeling from all that I have said, Trent. Therefore, I shall give you some time to absorb the truth. Think carefully on all I have told you. I shall come to this house next week at the same time, and then I shall expect my answer. I do heartily encourage you to choose marrying my beautiful, innocent, and worthy daughter over a lifetime of scandal and debasement for your brothers and sister.” He strode to the door. “Good day.”

  And without another word, Stanley exited from the room, leaving a stunned Simon staring after him.

  It was creeping onto midnight when he came to her that night. Rain pelted against the window, and the chill in the air had seeped through the spaces in the window frame. In her warm flannel nightgown, Sarah sat in her chair reading a novel, but she could hardly focus on the words laid out on the open page in front of her.

  She was worried he wouldn’t come – she hadn’t seen him all afternoon – and so when she heard the door handle creak, she breathed out a long breath of relief even as her body tensed in anticipation of his touch.

  “I missed you today.” She set her book aside and rose to greet him as he entered and closed the door behind him, intending to wrap her arms around his solid body in greeting and to simply breathe him in.

  But she stopped short when she looked at the thunderously dark expression on his face.

  “What is it? Has there been some new information about the duchess?” Two days after they’d recovered Binnie’s body, Simon had hired an investigator. Almost a week had gone by, and so far, the man had found nothing.

  Simon stood in the center of her room, his arms limp at his sides. He bent his head, closing his eyes. “No. Still no word.”

  “What, then?” she breathed.

  He looked up at her then, his expression stark, his green eyes shining. “Come here,” he said gruffly.

  She did, and he drew her tight against him.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” he murmured into her hair. “I just want to be with you.”

  She reached up to trail her fingers through the silky strands of hair at his nape. “All right.” She knew he’d tell her what was bothering him eventually.

  His body shuddered against hers, and she gripped him more tightly. “It’s all right. You don’t need to tell me.”

  “Sarah,” he whispered. He pressed his lips to hers, grinding against her mouth, a complete possession that would have ruined her for any other man, had she not already been ruined. She wanted all of it, accepted all of it until every nerve in her body sang with his possession.

  With fumbling fingers, he worked the buttons of her nightgown, but she slipped out of his grip, stepped back, and pulled up the nightgown over her head and tossed it away.

  She wore nothing underneath. Her breath caught as she raised her chin to look at him, his eyes devouring her with feral hunger. “Damn. You’re so beautiful.”

  She blinked at the curse – Simon rarely ever cursed – and the strange juxtaposition of the word with the compliment. But otherwise, she didn’t move or speak.

  Holding her gaze, he removed his own clothes, starting with his shirt, baring his pale, muscled torso, and then working the buttons on the falls of his breeches before sitting on the edge of her bed to pull them completely off.

  Sarah’s breaths shortened, quickened. He was completely, utterly bare.

  Her gaze slowly traveled down from his eyes, caressing his face, grazing his powerful shoulders, sliding over the tight, small, masculine nipples that made him shudder when she touched them. Past his rippling abdomen, over his trim, narrow hips.

  Male beauty personified.

  And there was his organ, jutting out from between his legs, its skin darker than the rest of him. Long and thick. He shifted under her perusal of it, and her gaze snapped back up to his face. A smile tilted one side of his lips, and she bit down on her lower lip as heat burned in her cheeks.

  “I’ve never seen… Well, besides the Laocoön,” she stammered out. “And yours… it’s bigger. Longer. And darker.”

  “Laocoön is fighting for his life,” Simon said softly. “I’d wager the sculptor decided he probably wouldn’t be aroused at that moment.�
�

  “Right. Yes. Of course not.”

  His smile grew, deepening that dimple in his chin. “Come here.”

  She sat next to him on the edge of the bed. He wrapped a hand around her neck, drawing her in for another kiss, this one soft and seductive, caressing and stroking her with his lips and tongue until she sighed with pleasure into his mouth. His hand traveled from her neck down her shoulder and arm until he took hold of her hand and moved it over his member.

  The heat of him made her draw in a quick intake of breath. He pressed his hand over her fingers so she curled them around him, then he moved up and down so that she was stroking him.

  Steely hardness wrapped in velvet heat.

  “Simon,” she whispered.

  He drew away from her lips and let her hand still over him. “What is it, love?”

  Her breath caught, as it always did when he called her “love.” She looked up at him. “I want to be yours,” she whispered. “In every way. Tonight. Please.”

  She’d asked him before. He’d come to her whenever he could – three times in the past week. They’d kissed, they’d caressed. He’d worked her like an instrument, plucking the strings until her body hummed and pulsed, until her nerves sang and finally she reached pinnacles she’d never known were possible. They had been the happiest nights of her life, and that happiness had overflowed into her daytime activities so much that Esme had commented on her “glow.”

  But he hadn’t taken this final step, and she didn’t understand why. He hadn’t allowed her to give him the same pleasure. She wanted to. She’d wanted to that first night, and her desire had increased every night since.

  He leaned forward until his forehead touched hers. He cupped her face in his hands. “Sarah —” His voice broke as his breath whispered over her lips. “What if I told you that tonight was the last night I could come to you? The last night we could be together? Would you still offer me this gift?”

  She hesitated, giving serious consideration to his words.

  That day would come, she knew. The day this happiness – this perfection – would end. The day he could no longer be her lover. Even her friend. The day she’d be reduced to a simple servant in his eyes.

  She couldn’t harbor illusions of forever. She was soaking up this time with him into her skin, and she would make it sustain her when she was lonely later on. There was no other choice.

  “I would still offer it,” she said quietly.

  “Why?”

  “Because…” She reached up to stroke his cheek, rough from a day’s growth of beard. “It is something I want you to have.” Because if he took her virginity, he’d have it forever. “And it’s not only that. It’s for selfish reasons, too. Simply put, I want you.”

  She wanted to know what it was like to be loved completely. By Simon. There would be no one else.

  He gave a low groan, but then he asked, “No regrets?”

  “Never,” she whispered. No matter what happened, that was the truth.

  He laid her on the bed, and his green eyes sparkled in the sparse light from the one lamp flickering on the other side of the room.

  “Then we won’t think about what tomorrow might bring. Tonight belongs to us.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Simon’s touch was electric. It snapped over every inch of her body until she was a trembling mass of sensitive nerve endings.

  “I want to please you,” she protested.

  “This pleases me.” He worked his fingers inside her, feathering over that part of her that made her gasp with pleasure. His mouth seemed to be everywhere at once. On her lips. On her breasts. Caressing her neck, her stomach, her hips and thighs. Stroking her in tandem with his fingers between her legs.

  “Watching you,” he said. “Seeing your pleasure.” Stroke. Kiss. Caress. “That pleases me.”

  And, not expecting that flush of ecstasy to overtake her so quickly, she came. He’d told her that was what it was, that pleasure undulating through her body, originating at her core and spreading outward to all her extremities. Her body shuddered, and his fingers slid through an increased slickness between her legs.

  “I feel it when you come, Sarah. I feel your body’s release. I feel your pleasure. That pleases me.”

  He stroked her until she squirmed, until her sated tissues were too sensitive for his touch, and then he finally drew away to lie beside her and pull her against him until their bodies were pressed against each other, skin to skin from her toes to her lips, and with every breath she nuzzled against him, inhaling his cedar-and-spice scent.

  She might be sated, but he wasn’t. He was tense and warm, his manhood hard and heavy against her thigh.

  “What do you call it?”

  “What do I call what?” he rumbled into her hair.

  “This.” She reached between their bodies, skimming it with her fingertips. “Do you call it your manhood? Your member? I don’t believe I know of any other terms used to describe it.”

  He chuckled against her. “There are many. What would you prefer? The clinical penis, the erudite phallus?”

  “Oh, right. I suppose I might have heard those two words, too, once or twice,” she mused.

  “Then there are the euphemisms. Rod. Blade. Sword. Horn. Knocker.”

  She gave a soft snort, and her body lurched with a laugh. “Knocker?”

  “My schoolmates at Cambridge used that one often.”

  “I suppose I can see where that came from. It tends to… knock… on certain doors, after all.”

  “It does.” He chuckled into the softness of her hair. “And to think – I hadn’t even come to rolling-pin yet.”

  “No!” Her body shook with mirth.

  “Yes.”

  “Are there more?” Her fingertips stroked over his silky flesh, and he shuddered against her.

  “Ah, so many more. There are the more vulgar terms. Rump-splitter. Prick.”

  She made a small squeak, pressing her head into his shoulder.

  “But perhaps we should start with the term I most frequently use. That organ which you are currently driving mad with your teasing is called a ‘cock.’”

  She looked up at him, confusion drawing her brows together. “Like… a chicken?”

  His chuckle turned into a laugh. “There is a cock that is a male chicken, and there is the cock between my legs. But I assure you, there is little resemblance between the two.”

  “How very odd.” A smile twitched her lips. “I shall never look at a cock the same way again. Although, I must agree, I cannot see any resemblance between the two. One has a bright red cowl and is feathery and noisy in the mornings, and one —”

  His kiss cut off her words. He held her in a cocoon of warmth and strength, his arms around her, his leg hooked over hers, his cock nestled against her mound.

  She held him tight, rubbing against him, watching the lines of tension on his face deepen. His self-control was powerful, but she could tell from those little lines that he’d put it to the test in the last few days.

  No more. Not if she had her say.

  “Take me,” she whispered to him, and then she bit down gently on his earlobe.

  He turned her to her back and moved so that he hovered above her. His body slid over hers, his heat stroking the dip of her pressed-together legs.

  “This will hurt.” His voice had changed, turned gruff and scratchy. He gazed down at her with eyes sparkling emerald green. “You know I don’t want to hurt you.”

  And that was exactly what made it all right. “Yes,” she whispered. “I know.”

  He nuzzled her hair, his lips skimming along her hairline above her ear. “My body is telling me that I must take you hard. Possess you completely. Make you mine in every way. Mark you.”

  She groaned aloud at that thought. She wanted that, too. She wanted to lose herself completely to his lovemaking. She wanted to feel possessed by him, consumed by him, and she wanted the marks to show it.

  “But I can’t. That w
ill hurt you even more. I must take it slow. And you must tell me to stop if it becomes too much.”

  “Never,” she promised him. She slid her legs out from under him and wrapped them over the backs of his thighs in a blatant invitation.

  “Sarah,” he said brokenly. Then, balancing himself on one arm, he reached down to guide himself into her. His fingers touched her first, and sensation shot through her, for her flesh was still sensitive from her earlier orgasm. She trembled, and he stopped. His lids, which had been lowered, rose so that he was looking into her eyes again.

  He didn’t speak, and neither did she. Instead, she arched into him, telling him it was all right, begging him to continue. And then she felt it. The broad tip of his cock pressing into her.

  It didn’t hurt in the beginning. But then, as he inched into her, he seemed to grow bigger and longer, too big, and an instant of panic rushed through her, a sharp fear that he would tear her open from the inside out.

  He sensed it. He pulled away, breathing hard now, and the terror receded. Again, she met his eyes. No, that feeling of panic had been wrong. Her body was meant for his. She knew that. Again, she arched into him.

  He tried once more, pushing in slowly. It didn’t hurt so much this time. He was solid and steely over her, but he was trembling. Sweat beaded over his brow. And she knew that it was torturing him to go slow.

  He wasn’t fully inside her, but he was retreating again, pulling away. She was sore, but she’d survive. The panic was gone. It had been groundless, in any case – no woman had ever died from losing her virginity to the man she loved.

  “No,” she whispered. At the same time, her hands slid down his muscled back to the top of his buttocks. She pressed him into her as she arched her pelvis up, wanting all of him.

  And he surged into her. The wave of pain crested, and she let out a small cry. But then it broke and receded, leaving a dull ache in its wake.

  She gasped. She’d never felt so full, like he touched all of her, inside her body and out, all at the same time.

  Locked together. As one. A deep shudder of pleasure ran through her body. “Oh, Simon,” she whispered. And suddenly she was on the verge of tears. She couldn’t begin to comprehend why.