One Summer of Surrender

by Jess Michaels

  She shrugged and broke eye contact with him at last, looking instead toward the fire across the room. “He left me with nothing.”

  He. Of course she meant her husband, the Duke of Kirkford. The man she had left him for, thrown him over for, all those years ago. The mention of him sent a shockwave of fresh pain through Lucien’s body. Fresher than he’d allowed himself to believe when he’d spent so much time ignoring it and denying it.

  “Do you want me to feel sorry for you?” he spat out, his voice as hard as diamonds.

  She slowly returned her gaze to him. “No. I would never expect that. You asked me a question and those are the facts.”

  He drew in a few deep breaths. “And so because he left you destitute, you are turning to…to…”

  He couldn’t even say it.

  She nodded. “I’m looking for a protector.”

  He paced away, his blood boiling even hotter at her simple answer and her calm demeanor as she gave it.

  “You’re a duchess.” He strode over to the fire and pressed a fist against the mantel. “A lady.”

  “Many ladies do the same, either because they are forced by circumstance or because they wish an affiliation. And that is why I turned to Vivien. She is said to be good at providing discreet help in such matters.”

  He spun on her, glaring at her. “Oh, well, as long as it is discreet, Your Grace.”

  Her eyes suddenly lit up with a flash of anger and he was torn back in time to a girl with red braids. He had tugged them and she had spun on him with the same rage on her face and given him a set-down. He had dreamed of her for the first time that night, boyish dreams where he stole a kiss.

  He forced himself back to the present as Elise took a long step toward him, her hands gripped at her sides and her shoulders shaking. “You are here, aren’t you? I assume you were looking for a tumble. So don’t you dare judge me, Lucien.”

  She had said his name. It was the first time he’d heard it from her lips in three long years and it washed over him and turned him inside out. He found himself moving on her again, one step, two, three, and her eyes widened, and yet she didn’t move, just as she hadn’t the first time he did this a few moments before.

  He crowded into her space and tried to tell himself he was making an attempt to frighten some sense in to her. It was a lie and he didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything except the fact that he was so close to her he could feel the warmth of her skin pulsing out, reaching for him.

  He lifted his hands and closed them around her upper arms. The first time he’d touched her in so long. She caught her breath and slowly her gaze moved his hands. His did the same and they stared together at his big, darker fingers around her pale, soft skin.

  Need coursed through him, more powerful than anger or hate or anything else he had ever felt. And he couldn’t deny it. He couldn’t deny her and her power over him even after everything she’d done, everything she’d broken.

  He leaned in and pressed his mouth to hers. He expected her to remain cold, or even to turn away, but instead she made a muffled little cry in the back of her throat and opened her lips.

  And he was lost. He drove his tongue into her wet heat and stroked hers as he yanked her closer, into his arms, molding her body to his. She pulled her arms loose from his grip and wrapped them around his neck, whimpering as she lifted against him like she could find a way to get closer even though they were flattened together in an embrace.

  He tilted his head, making his kiss deeper and tasting sherry on her tongue, probably to help her with her courage in coming here. He tasted sweetness that was only Elise and had only ever been Elise. He hadn’t realized how much he missed that taste and now he drowned in it, losing all ability to control the kiss or himself.

  She didn’t seem to care. She thrust her tongue against his in equal desperation and need, sucking him in, meeting him halfway, her body grinding against his with longing that matched his own.

  He staggered backward, keeping her in his arms as he fell into a seated position on the black velvet settee. She straddled his lap, her gown tangling around her legs as she dug her fingers into his hair and pressed herself hard against him.

  He wasn’t going to stop this. That thought ripped through his mind, tearing past all the high emotion. This was going to happen, right here in Vivien’s parlor, on a night when he’d come looking for a woman so he would forget the very one writhing on his lap.

  This was so much better.

  He kept kissing her even as he gripped a hand at the hem of her skirt and began to bunch it, shoving it up the length of her long legs and revealing pretty stitched stockings. He stroked his fingers over the satiny smoothness and knew that his arousal was probably eminently obvious to her. His cock was pressing against her thigh and it wasn’t subtle.

  She broke the kiss at last and stared down at him, green eyes wide and slightly off focus. “Is this real?” she whispered as he let his hand span the side of her thigh.

  “I hope so,” he growled. “But do you want it?”

  She nodded immediately. “More than anything.”

  There was nothing else to say. As she shifted to accommodate him, he shoved her skirt up and around her hips and gasped. She was utterly bare from the waist down, save for those stockings. He lifted his gaze and her cheeks brightened with color as she turned her face away.

  Of course she would wear nothing beneath her gown. She was here to seduce a lover. And she was, though not the one she had likely thought she would end up with.

  He shoved aside the brutal jealousy at that thought and let his hand brush over her hip, then down and around to stroke over her sex. She sucked in a breath through her teeth and shut her eyes as he trailed his fingers over her entrance. She was wet already. Slick with need, and his cock actually twitched as he stretched her open slightly and found her clitoris. He pressed a thumb to her and she jolted with a soft cry.

  He leaned up, finding the soft column of her graceful neck, and began to kiss there as he stroked her, stroked her, teasing her pleasure from her until she was jerking against him with a wild rhythm. She was on the edge now, ready for release, and that’s when he pulled away.

  Her eyes fluttered open and she glanced down at him with wild, wide eyes. Eyes that dilated when he moved his hand to the flap of his trousers and opened them, releasing his hard cock into the space between them.

  She licked her lips and he nearly spent right then and there. He took a few long breaths as she locked eyes with him. Slowly she reached out and wrapped her fingers around him. He gripped his own fingers into the settee cushion as she stroked over him once, twice, three times. Then she shifted up on her knees and positioned herself over him.

  He felt her heat and then her slickness wrapped around him. He slid into her one inch after another as both of them let out a long, shuddering sigh. As he filled her completely, he realized this was like coming back to a home he’d thought he’d lost.

  He didn’t want to feel that way, but there it was, and he stared up into Elise’s beautiful face, taut with pleasure and tension, and he knew in his heart that he had been waiting for her, waiting for this, for three long years. Now he was here, and he lifted his hips up into her as she shuddered in pleasure.

  She rocked against him, meeting his driving rhythm as she ground down over him hard and steady. He cupped her hips, moving her against him as he lifted his mouth to her throat again.

  As she took him, Elise began to make soft moans. Her rocking motion grew erratic and her face twisted with pleasure. She was close to release and he lifted his fingers up to cup the back of her head and tilt her face toward his. She opened her eyes and met his stare, her hair falling around them as her mouth contorted and she let out a shaky cry of release. Her body tightened around his, milking him, drawing his own pleasure to mix with hers. He lifted her aside and grunted as he spent away from her and then collapsed back on the settee, his breath coming hard and his heart poun
ding not just with release, but relief.

  But as that same heart rate slowed and the ability to have rational thought returned, he let his gaze slide back to Elise, who was curled up next to him on the settee, her hair tangled around her face, her dress still hitched around her hips.

  Need, want, relief aside, Stenfax realized what he had just done. The thing he’d vowed never to do again. He’d just let Elise have the upper hand over him. He’d just revealed a piece of himself to her.

  And that was an utter mistake.

  Chapter Three

  One a warm summer night very much like this one three years before, Elise had stood before this man and given herself to him. Not since that night had she felt such passion and desire and utter pleasure. Certainly not with her husband, who she had never found or even sought pleasure with. Not even with her own hand, when she feverishly tried to reach the same heights she recalled with Lucien.

  Now her body thrummed with pleasure and peace, like this was where she had been meant to be all along. And in truth, it was. What she had done, how she had turned away from Lucien, it never should have happened. This was where she belonged. He was where she belonged.

  She smiled up at him and he met her gaze cautiously. When she saw the hardness of his expression, the anger and the hate still bubbling below the surface, her peaceful feeling faded into numbness. In that moment, she saw nothing had truly changed between them. And why would it? Lucien didn’t understand what she’d done, he never would.

  Even if she could explain it to him, he’d never forgive her. Trying to find those words seemed futile, they would only cause more pain for them both.

  For him, this night hadn’t been about reunion or repair, but something else. As if to prove it, he shoved to his feet and began to fix himself. He turned to the chair and caught up his jacket, flinging it over his shoulders without looking at her.

  “That was a mistake.” His tone was so harsh that it felt like a physical strike.

  She closed her eyes and drew in a few long breaths so her own voice would be calm when she said, “I see.”

  He froze in his motions as she got to her feet and let her gown fall back over her half-naked body. She reached down and began gathering up the pins that had fallen from her hair and then moved to a mirror across the room to fix it. She could almost see the tracks of his fingers through her locks, and God, how she wished she could keep them there as proof that he had wanted her.

  “You shouldn’t do this,” he said softly, his tone much gentler than it had been.

  She looked at him through the reflection in the mirror rather than facing him. That was too hard in this moment, she didn’t want to give him too much. She already had.

  “I understand that you feel that way,” she said.

  His eyes narrowed. “But you’ll do it regardless”

  She nodded once. “I will. You don’t have a right to tell me what to do, Lucien. Not anymore.”

  His jaw stiffened at those words and he straightened even taller. “No,” he growled. “I suppose I don’t. Good luck, Elise.”

  She flinched. That was the first time he’d said her name in what felt like forever, and it was said with such anger.

  “Goodbye,” she whispered.

  He shook his head as he strode to the door and closed it none too gently behind him. When he was gone, she bent forward, gasping for breath as she gripped the table before her.

  For years he had avoided seeing her. She knew that was true. She’d heard all about the lengths he went to in order to do just that. She’d never fought it, never tried to subvert him, because she knew in her heart that seeing him was going to be too painful.

  Tonight, she realized she was right. It was too painful. She had never stopped loving Lucien, not for one moment. She loved him still, even though all his love for her was long gone, destroyed by a choice he thought she’d made. A choice she had made that was worse than anything else she’d ever done in her entire life.

  She straightened and looked at herself in the mirror. She could almost see his fingerprints on her skin, almost still feel his breath against her body, his mouth on her mouth. Those sensations would fade, of course, and she would miss them as desperately as she missed him.

  “But that is the past,” she said to her reflection, wishing her voice didn’t tremble. “He is gone and all your wishing doesn’t change a thing. You can’t let this steer you from your course. It is still the only way.”

  Saying the words out loud to herself helped, at least a little, and she finished fixing her hair before she threw her shoulders back and walked from the room. She didn’t dare take a look back at the settee for fear she would burst into tears. She just walked out with as much pride as she could and made her way back into Vivien’s main hall.

  In the hours that had passed since she arrived here, much of the debauchery had ended. There were still couples or groups here and there, drunkenly playing. But most of the couples had either gone to rooms to finish their pleasure or gone home after completing it.

  Stenfax was nowhere to be found. Elise sighed, uncertain if she were happy or sad about that fact. She didn’t have to decide, luckily. Her thoughts were interrupted when one of Vivien’s guards approached her.

  “Miss Vivien would like to see you before you depart, Your Grace.”

  Elise swallowed. Of course Vivien would. The scene she and Stenfax had created tonight would warrant such a request. She wouldn’t be surprised if Vivien would not help her anymore because of it.

  And then all would truly be lost. But perhaps that was what she deserved, after all.

  She followed the man back to the office where she’d first met with Vivien and found the woman sitting at the large desk. When she rose, Elise was surprised to find that Vivien was no longer dressed in her provocative clothing, but in a plain, pretty gown with a modest neckline. She rose as Elise stepped inside.

  “Would you like tea or brandy?” Vivien asked, motioning to both on the sideboard.

  “I’m not certain which will calm me more,” Elise admitted.

  Vivien’s smile was gentle. “Brandy then.”

  She poured it, and she and Elise took the same seats by the fire where they had begun hours before, though it now seemed like days.

  “I am sorry about the misunderstanding earlier,” Vivien said when Elise had taken a sip of the brandy and focused on its burn down her throat.

  Elise shrugged. “I suppose it was a wild coincidence that Lucien would show up here the night I did. Does he come often?”

  “Once he did, but he hasn’t for a long while. He used to show up here to ask for—” Vivien cut herself off. “Well, it doesn’t matter. I understand his tastes a bit better now after seeing you. Why he was so particular back when he came regularly.”

  Elise wrinkled her brow, for she didn’t understand what Vivien was going on about. She certainly didn’t want to hear about Lucien’s conquests. The very idea made her stomach hurt.

  “Will you refuse to help me now?” she asked.

  Vivien’s eyes widened. “You are direct.”

  “I’m too exhausted now to be anything but,” Elise admitted.

  Vivien sat back in her seat, and once again Elise knew she was being judged by the courtesan. “I know the story, of course—everyone knows the story about you two. But I feel like the story isn’t exactly accurate. So help me understand what it is between you and Stenfax before I answer your question.”

  Elise set her glass down. “There is nothing between us,” she whispered, trying not to think of the passion of their joining such a short time before. “He hates me, that’s all that’s left now.”

  “Hmmm,” Vivien murmured. “Hate isn’t what I saw.”

  Elise pursed her lips. Vivien’s words gave her hope and hope was far too dangerous to dare have now. She dropped her gaze. “You are wrong. I threw him over three years ago. As you said, you know that. Everyone knows that. He hates me for it,
that is the only thing I know for certain.”

  Vivien was silent for what felt like an eternity, and then she said, “You threw him over for a higher title and more money.”

  Elise slowly nodded. “Yes.”

  “And it isn’t more complicated than that?”

  Elise jerked her face up and found Vivien watching her very intently. In three years no one had ever asked Elise that question. No one had ever doubted her decision had been based on anything more than simply wanting to be a duchess rather than a countess. Rich rather than financially compromised. No one had ever searched for the truth in the lies she’d been forced to tell.

  But the truth was too dangerous to share.

  “No,” Elise lied.

  “And after tonight, after this thing with Stenfax, do you still want a protector?”

  That question was utterly loaded. Before Stenfax came into the room, Elise had been trying to find a way to make her choice sufferable. She’d been telling herself she might come to like whatever man took her to his bed. That this would be all right.

  Now that dream was dashed. No one would ever be Stenfax. No one would ever come close.

  “I must,” she said, her voice cracking. “Nothing changed tonight.”

  Vivien arched a brow, her incredulous look telling Elise that she didn’t believe her. Elise didn’t believe herself, so she couldn’t blame the observant courtesan. Still, Vivien didn’t argue with her or press for more. She just nodded.

  “I told you I’d help you and I shall,” Vivien said. “Give me a few days and then come back. I’ll have a few gentlemen for you to meet and talk to. Perhaps one of them will catch your eye.”

  Relief cascaded over Elise, tempering some of her harder emotion. Slowly she rose to her feet. “Thank you, Vivien. I appreciate your help.”

  Vivien murmured her response and walked Elise to the foyer and her waiting carriage. But as Elise got inside the vehicle and was taken back to her home, she knew the things she’d said to Vivien were all lies.

  Everything had changed tonight. And yet she could expect nothing from Lucien. She would just have to live with these new memories and place them alongside all the others. It was all she could do.