Daring and the Duke EPB

by MacLean, Sarah

Especially here.

  She sat back, not touching, but staring, long and smooth and hard like stone, rising up from a shadowed thatch of dark brown hair.

  “Fuck,” he whispered, and it wasn’t a curse. It was a prayer.

  With difficulty, she drew her attention away from him and met his eyes. “More.”

  One of his brows rose at the word, and he released his grip on the arm of the chair to reach for her, to cup her face and hold her gaze, the fire in his own impossible to deny. “You like it.”

  She returned her attention to her prize. “I do.”

  “I can see it. I can see you want it.” He paused, his hips shifting, barely moving. “Christ, Grace . . .”

  “Ask for it,” she whispered. “Tell me what you like.”

  “Your touch,” he said. “Let me feel—” His hips jerked the moment she gave him what he wanted, her fingers on his hot skin, and he swore again, the wicked words like gunshot in the quiet room. “Yes. Fuck. Yes. I’ve waited forever for you to touch me like this.”

  “Like this?” she asked, growing bolder.

  He lifted his hips toward her, his fingers sliding deeper into her hair. “God, yes. Like that.”

  “But not just this,” she said, moving, gripping him. Sliding her hand from the thick base of him to the beautiful head, topped with a single drop of liquid. She repeated the movement, and he groaned. “This, too.”

  “All of it,” he said, his voice like sex.

  “Show me,” she whispered.

  His hand was on hers, instantly, and the image—his big, rough hand surrounding hers as he taught her to give him pleasure—was pure need. He tightened their grip. Moved his hips.

  Another drop of liquid.

  “Don’t be gentle,” he said, the words coming like gravel on stone. “I don’t want it. I want you to—” He bit back the end of the sentence, and she would have done anything to hear it.

  “What?” she prompted, her mouth watering at the heat of him. At the portrait they made. “What do you want?”

  “I want you to take from me,” he said. “I want you to know that whatever you want, whatever you need, I can provide it. I will provide it.”

  The words were almost too much to bear, and Grace leaned forward, her lips coming to their hands, pressing kisses along his bruised knuckles, and he froze at the caress, refusing to move, his breath coming ragged. She lifted her lips and looked at him, the want in his eyes impossible to ignore. “Will you provide me this?”

  He closed his eyes, his jaw clenching as his free hand came to her hair. He whispered her name low and dark and wonderful. “Are you—”

  She was sure. “I am your queen,” she whispered to the back of his hand, giving herself up to the fantasy. Willing him to do the same. “Let me have this.”

  He released her hand.

  Free, she stroked him again, reveling in the smooth size of him—hers to do with as she wished. She worked him, spreading his trousers wide and reaching inside to find the heavy sac within, taking it in hand with a gentle firmness that had him thrusting up off the chair. Another wicked curse. Another droplet.

  Too much to resist. She whispered his name and licked over the tip of him, her tongue barely there, just enough to taste the salty sweetness of him. His hands shot to her hair, but landed like feathers, cradling her with care—even as she felt his whole body straining to keep him from taking her. From pressing into her mouth and taking the pleasure she offered.

  The pleasure she wanted.

  The pleasure he had turned over into her keeping. She reveled in it, and in the power he had given her, and a small part of her wanted to test him—to see how far she could push him until he lost control.

  But the other part of her wanted to lose control with him.

  “Look at me,” he whispered. She did, instantly, and one of his thumbs came to her lower lip, stroking over it. “You don’t have to—”

  She stopped the words. “Does it ache?”

  He exhaled a heavy breath. “More than you can imagine. Or maybe you can imagine it. You ache, too, don’t you, love?”

  She did, and she did not deny it. “I do.”

  “Let me take care of you,” he said, low and lush like a promise. “Let me strip you bare and spread your legs and lick you until you scream. Let me taste you again. Christ, I’ve been thinking about the taste of you for days.” His thumb stroked again, setting her lip on fire. “Let me ease that ache, where you are hot and wet for me.”

  The filthy words rioted through her, hot temptation as he pulsed in her hand. She was all those things—hot and wet and aching. She pressed her thighs together to ease the sensation and only served to enhance it.

  “You want it, too,” he whispered, as though he had sensed what she’d done. “You want me there, between your legs. At your hot core.”

  She did. She wanted that—God, how she wanted that. But not now.

  She opened her mouth and sucked the tip of his thumb into her mouth, her tongue slowly stroking over it once, twice. Giving him a taste of what she intended to come. He swore again, the curse sending pleasure coursing through her, pooling at the heavy, aching spot at the center of her.

  She released him and smiled, pure satisfaction. “I want this more.”

  The words hit him like a weapon, and he leaned down, tilting her face up to his, stealing her mouth in a wild, wanton kiss that stole her breath before he pulled back and whispered, “When you are done, I’m taking what I want.”

  She nodded. “I shall allow it.”

  One side of his mouth lifted in stunning masculine amusement. “Queen is right.” And then he sat back again, letting his head hit the chair once more.

  “Tell me what you want.” Not question. Command.

  “Suck me.” The command was rough and sweet, just as everything that had led to it. His fingers tightened in her hair, firmer now. “Go on.”

  She parted her lips and took him slowly, learning the size and feel of him. The hard steel of him. The taste of him. The way he held himself perfectly still as she delivered his pleasure. As she took her own, her hand still wrapped around him, stroking.

  Grace had spent years running a sex club, making certain that every woman’s desire was met to exacting specifications, and in all those years, she’d considered her own, of course—but she’d never once imagined the pure revelation that came from this act. From giving a man the kind of pleasure that threatened his sanity.

  And one’s own.

  Because in her lifetime, Grace had never experienced such pleasure or such immense desire for her partner’s pleasure. But now, as she licked and sucked and drew him deep, reveling in his taste and his strength, she was driven by a singular purpose. To give him release. To make him come. To taste it. To know that she was the one who had drawn it from him.

  She’d never felt so powerful.

  She worked over him, finding the precise speed that made him mad, the precise sensations, the precise spots that drove him wild, loving the sounds he made, and the half sentences he spoke, and the blasphemy he whispered, and the way he said her name like a prayer. And then his hands tightened in her hair and he gasped, “Grace. I’m going to . . . I cannot stop . . .”

  Don’t you dare stop, she thought to herself—to him. She sucked a touch deeper, moved a touch faster, feeling him grow against her, the head of him pulsing. Give it to me.

  Mine.

  His fingers tightened and he growled a wicked curse, and Grace drank in her power as he called her name to the room and gave himself over to her and to his release. She stayed with him, until he returned to himself, his body relaxing into the chair for the first time since he’d sat. His hands lifting her hair up off her shoulders, the cool air of the room running over the hot skin on the back of her neck.

  It was her turn to groan, because it did not soothe, that air—instead, it set her nerves on fire, and the ache she’d held at bay while controlling his pleasure was enhanced and now turned too impossible to ignore.


  He knew it, and he leaned down, and he said those words that had tempted her from the start.

  “What do you need?”

  You. I need you.

  No. She couldn’t say that. It gave away too much.

  “I—” She couldn’t find the words, the hot ache in her too much. “I need—” She looked up at him. “Please.”

  Instantly, he was moving, lifting her, pulling her back into his lap, not caring about his bruises or his bandages—not caring about anything but taking her mouth and cupping the place between her legs, sliding one glorious hand to where she needed him. He broke the wild kiss. “I know,” he whispered, a hot promise at her ear. “Here.”

  “Yes,” she whispered back, as he stole the sound with his lips, spreading her wide until she was straddling him, even as she reached for the falls of her own trousers, yanking at them. She fumbled and he was there, unbuttoning them deftly, the magnificent man, even as she realized she had a different problem. She broke the kiss. “Boots.”

  He nodded, and together they moved with lightning speed, divesting her of boots and trousers until she was bare, except for her corset and coat. He watched her, rapt, as she turned to wriggle out of her coat, leaving her more beautifully bare in an elaborately boned corset, blue the color of the summer sky, with wide straps that covered her shoulders. And when she came back to him, to straddle him once more, the ache was worse and she whispered, desperately, “Do it again. Touch me again.”

  He obeyed instantly, pressing his hand to her, tight. Strong. Steady enough that when she rocked against it, it set her aflame. She reached down to where he touched her, his gaze following her movement, watching as she clasped his wrist and held him steady.

  “Wait, love.” She didn’t want to wait. She had waited long enough. She wanted this. Now. She grunted her disapproval at the words and worked herself against him, pressing him more firmly.

  He groaned a little laugh and said, “Grace.” She looked at him, ready to do battle for her own pleasure. Out of her mind with want. With his free hand, he pulled her in for another kiss, and as his tongue slid deep, one of his fingers parted her folds, finding purchase.

  She gasped at the lick of pleasure, so acute.

  “You may always use me, love,” he rumbled in her ear, his finger sliding against the spot where all her desire seemed to have pooled. “But when you use me, I wish you to use me well.”

  Pleasure rioted through her and she rocked her hips against him, working herself, loving the way he stroked and pressed and moved against her. “Show me,” he whispered, dark and lush. “Show me what you ache for.”

  And then her fingers tangled with his, and she was rocking there, against him, learning the rhythm of her pleasure, teaching it to him, and ultimately ceding it to him, rising up over him, her hands on his shoulders as she panted her need and worked herself against him, knowing she shouldn’t, and not caring as he watched her and moved against her, and guided her into a flood of pleasure, until she was crying out in the quiet room, and he was saying the most sinful things, like harder and faster and take it and yes, love and you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

  As she lowered herself back to his lap, he pressed a kiss to her cheekbone, and another to her temple, and he held her in place as she trembled with the aftershocks of her orgasm—giving her his body and his time and making her wish they would never leave this place.

  When she returned to thought, she stiffened, instantly lifting her weight from him. “Your bandages.”

  “You think I feel pain right now?” He pulled her back into his lap and pressed another kiss to her hair, the caress so natural that it warmed Grace in places she had never been warm.

  She smiled. “I only wish you to feel pleasure.”

  His hand slid down her arm, the touch sending a shiver through her as it changed from lazy to purposeful. “Then we must do that often.”

  Her smile disappeared.

  It couldn’t happen, of course. There was no often between them.

  There was no future between them, because all the space had been filled with the past.

  This had been a mistake.

  She moved to leave his lap, and he grasped her hand. She froze, expecting him to hold her there. He didn’t. But he did hold her, the warmth of his hand in hers a lure and a promise and a temptation that she did not need. She pulled away, hating the feel of her hand sliding from his.

  He didn’t resist. He didn’t pull her back.

  Frustration flared, and Grace knew it was irrational. “I must go.”

  He did not move, watching as she pulled on her trousers, then picked up the items that had dropped to the floor, leaving him the salve and the ice box, and the cloth. Setting the basket of bandages carefully on his table.

  She looked down at him. “I must go.”

  He nodded. Was he not going to stop her?

  She didn’t want him to, did she?

  This made it easier, did it not?

  It did. But it didn’t make it better.

  Swallowing around the knot in her throat, Grace turned away to collect her coat from where she’d tossed it to the floor, interested only in the pleasure he offered, every part of her wanting to stay. Wanting him to ask her to stay.

  And then he did. “How did you get past the servants?”

  Knowing she asked for trouble, Grace turned her head, giving him her profile as she said, “I do, in fact, always travel by rooftop.”

  He stood at that, slow and deliberate, and her heart began to pound. “I wanted to follow you today. Up that wall.”

  She turned to face him. “It’s not as easy as it looks.”

  He gave her a half smile. “I believe that.”

  She watched him for a moment and then said, “Instead you left me.”

  “And you came to see me.”

  The echo of his words from earlier. Come see me. She was supposed to have come to see him to tell him what she needed and instead she’d simply come to see him, this man she did not know, so different from all the other hims he’d been. So different, and so much more dangerous.

  “Show me,” he said, interrupting her thoughts.

  She shouldn’t. It was a mistake to spend any more time with him than this. To spend any more time learning him than this.

  She shouldn’t. But she wanted to. She wanted to bring him to the roof and give him a taste of the freedom she had claimed for herself.

  To make a new memory.

  An idea teased through her.

  She crossed the room to his wardrobe in silence, opening it to pull a fine white shirt from inside. Holding it to her chest, she turned back to find him buttoning his trousers, his amber gaze glittering in the candlelight.

  Shamelessly, she watched him work the fastenings, and immediately she missed the ridges and shadows before the buttons were even seated. There were members of 72 Shelton who requested their consorts in full, elaborate dress simply to watch them take the clothes off and put them back on, and though Grace rarely questioned the desires of her clientele, she had never quite understood the pleasure of watching one’s lover disrobe.

  But right now, as his strong arms worked and the muscles of his forearms flexed, her mouth dried, and she found she was coming to see its merits. She could watch him work at his trouser buttons for hours.

  He finished. “Are you going to dress me now?”

  She tossed him the shirt, admiring the speed with which he snatched it from the air before pulling it over his head in a smooth movement that belied what she knew were the protesting aches and twinges in his muscles. There was an intimacy to it, the idea that she’d just held the soft linen that was now sliding over his skin like a caress.

  Once he was wearing the shirt, the tails hanging loose around his narrow hips, he raked his gaze over her, taking in her corset and trousers, his gaze lighting with interest.

  At another time, with another man, she might have been amused by the rapt attention, so soon after they
’d both found release. But here, now, she was not entertained by the desire in his eyes. Instead, she reveled in it.

  He was hers.

  How far would he follow her?

  Tomorrow, day would come, and with it the truth of their past and their present, and the impossibility of their future. But there was tonight, and if coming of age on the streets had taught Grace anything, it was that planning was for business and not for pleasure.

  Decision made, she lifted a candle and extended her hand to him. “Come with me.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  They climbed the dark back stairs to the roof of the Marwick ancestral home as though they were in the wilds of Scotland, miles from the nearest person, and not in Grosvenor Square, where any number of London’s most revered aristocratic families could see them.

  And perhaps Ewan should have cared about that, but he’d never cared about the dukedom and that night . . . all he cared about was Grace.

  Grace, topcoat in one hand and his hand in the other as she led him up, past the second floor, the third, until the stairs grew dark for lack of wall sconces and narrow enough to fit only one person. Once at the top, she turned and pressed herself to the wall, lifting her chin to indicate the door inlaid above their heads. “Go on, then,” she whispered. “Open it.”

  He reached up, surprised to find that his heart was pounding. Hesitated.

  “Nervous, Duke?”

  He met her eyes, the candle between them bathing her face in flickering light, and gave a little self-deprecating laugh. “I don’t know why—it’s not as though we shall find a collection of critical aristocrats on the other side.”

  She grinned. “Ah, but imagine if we did. We’d empty London of smelling salts. Though, to be honest, I’m not sure what they’d be able to critique,” she said as he pushed the door up and open, sending it slamming down on the roof. “My bottom looks superior in these trousers.”

  Leaving him with that incontrovertible fact, Grace climbed up and through the hatch, that same bottom full and beautiful, making him want to pull her back inside, take her to bed, and show her all the ways it was superior—roof be damned.

  But she was already gone, climbing through to the outside and turning back, the silver thread of her corset gleaming in the candlelight as she made a show of looking about. “You are safe. Not a single roving aristocrat with a discerning eye.”