“I want you to touch yourself while I come.”
A pure thrill rocketed through him, something like gratitude as well as want.
And need. That, too.
He took himself in hand, never so hard. Never so hot. Never so fucking needy. And he stroked himself in time to her movements, the pleasure of her taste on his lips, the vision of her moving against him, and his own hand making the experience unbearably good.
Her fingers tightened in his hair.
Her thighs trembled.
And, with the filthiest curse he’d ever heard, she found her climax, shouting his name to the dark room as he worked her with hands and mouth and tongue until all she knew was pleasure.
As she came down from her pleasure, his tongue gentling, his fingers stilling as she pulsed against him, she pulled him up to her, his name hoarse on her lips, eager for more.
Eager for all of it.
He lifted his head after the last ripple of pleasure coursed through her, and he moved to lie beside her, wanting to do nothing but hold her, to press kisses to her temple and urge her to sleep.
But Grace had other plans, immediately reversing their positions and climbing atop him, pushing him to the bed. “You didn’t come,” she whispered, giving him a long, lingering kiss that threatened his sanity for the way she lapped at his lips, the taste of her still there.
He shook his head. “I didn’t want to,” he said. “It was for you.”
“Mmm,” she said, low and sinful, leaning down to kiss him again. “Would you like me to tell you what I want next?”
If he hadn’t already been hard as iron, the lazy, satisfied question, and the soft weight of her against him, would have ensured it. “Very much.”
She ground her hips against him once, twice, until he groaned, and then she sat back on his thighs, and took him in hand. He sucked in a breath at her touch, her stroking fingers sure and strong. “I want this. I want you.”
“Everything you want,” he said, every muscle straining to keep from pulling her to him, rolling her to the bed and taking control.
She seemed to know it, her touch shifting to stroke up his arms and down his chest, ending, once more, at the hard, straining length of him. She moved, rubbing against him again, both of them exhaling harshly as he knocked against the center of her pleasure.
“I like that,” she said.
“Mmm,” he replied. “I like you.”
She looked up at him, her eyes glittering with pleasure. “Do you?”
How could she even doubt it? He lifted a hand to her face, capturing her cheek and holding her gaze. “So much,” he said. He took a deep breath, memorizing this moment. “I searched for you for so long, thinking it would be the same when I found you. Thinking you would be the girl I’d loved.”
Her throat worked at the words. “And instead, I found you, beautiful, yes, and bold. But strong and powerful—fucking glorious. You’re glorious, Grace.”
The words struck her and she took a deep breath, her chin lifting just enough for him to see her response. Pride. Satisfaction.
“I see you,” he said.
“I dreamed of this,” she replied, softly, the confession searing through him. “Of you returning. And finding me. And wanting me.”
He shook his head. “You cannot believe I would ever not want you.”
“I am not the girl you loved anymore.”
You can never have her back.
The words she’d hurled at him that night a year ago. The words that had broken him. The words that had reset him. “No,” he said. “You are not. You are more. You are the woman I love.”
She breathed in the words, her hands coming to his chest as her eyes filled with unshed tears. He reached up to pull her down to him, to kiss her again.
When he pulled away, he whispered, “You don’t have to say anything. But I could not stay silent any longer. I love you. Not the girl you were. Not the woman I thought I would find. You. Now. Here.” He tilted his head toward the windows overlooking the Garden. “Out there on the rooftops and below in the Rookery.”
Her hands came to his face, and she kissed him again, long and lush, until they were both panting with pleasure.
He pulled away from her again. “Do you remember what I said to you that night in my gardens? Do you remember what I called you?”
A soft, secret smile played over her lips. “You called me a queen.”
He nodded. “And I, your throne.”
Fire lit in her eyes. “I like that.”
He growled, low in his chest. “I do, too, love.”
They came together again, his hand between them, parting her folds as she lifted herself, the tip of him settling at the opening of her, hot and wet and perfect. No. No heirs. “Wait . . .”
She stilled, understanding. She shook her head. “We don’t have to wait. There is no possibility of pregnancy.” And then he, too, understood. There were ways to prevent the inevitable, and Grace was a grown woman who would know well how to use them.
She lowered herself a quarter inch. A half. Just enough for him to lose his mind as she sighed in his ear. “That feels—”
“Like heaven,” he grunted.
She smiled down at him, “Do you think we can make it better?”
He gave a little huff of laughter. “I can think of several things we can try.”
“Is this one of them?” she asked, coyly, and she lowered herself onto his straining cock, hot and glorious, slow and perfect, and the sensation threatened to ruin him.
“It’s the best of them,” he grunted, willing himself still as she lifted herself a touch and returned to her place, lower, taking more of him.
“God, it’s so—”
He waited, watching her, knowing that it might be uncomfortable. Not wanting to hurt her, and desperately wanting to fuck her.
“Full,” she whispered, and the word, all sin and sex, made him even harder. She felt it, her eyes flying to his. “You like that.”
“Hah,” he said, unable to find proper words for a moment. “Yes. I like it.”
She kissed him again, rocking into him, until she found her seat and he met her sigh of pleasure with a groan of his own. And then she said, “You like it when I tell you how full you make me.”
He couldn’t stop himself from thrusting into her, just barely, just enough to make him mad with the tease of it. “I do.”
“Shall I tell you more? Shall I tell you how hard you are? How you stretch me beyond imagining, until I cannot remember what it was like to not have you inside me? Shall I tell you how it feels, knowing that it is you there, Ewan?”
It was murder. She was destroying him.
And then she leaned down to his ear and said, “You, finally, where you belong.”
His control snapped. His arms came around her and he flipped her onto her back in the bed, the sound of her delighted laughter the only thing that penetrated the haze of his desire. He met her sparkling eyes. “You think this funny?”
“I think this perfect,” she said.
He kissed the words from her lips. “I wager I can make it more perfect.”
She lifted her hips, teasing him. “Prove it.”
And he did, moving, finally, starting with slow, shallow thrusts, until she was arching up to him, and he was suckling her nipples and her fingers were in his hair and she was begging him for more. He was happy to give her more, moving deeper, faster, with more power, until she was sighing his name and matching him, thrust for thrust, deep and smooth and then faster, until he was gritting his teeth to keep from spending.
Not without her. Never without her, ever again.
Not now that he knew what with her was like.
She was a siren, writhing beneath him, her wild curls spread over the bed like silken fire, and he was consumed with his love for her, this woman who had more strength and power and brilliant beauty than anyone he’d ever known.
And now, she was his.
As he thrust, she slid a h
and down between them, and he made room for her to find her pleasure again, her fingers working the heart of her need as he thrust into her.
He leaned down to kiss her again. “Does that feel good, love? Your hands and my cock, together?”
“Mmm,” she said, too distracted by her search for release. And then her eyes flew open, and he knew she was there.
“Ewan,” she gasped.
“With me,” he commanded. “Look at me as you take it. I want to watch.”
She did, her enormous brown eyes on his as she fell into pleasure. Watching her proved his undoing. He followed her over the edge, shouting her name to the room even as he did all he could to draw her orgasm out, refusing to stop, refusing to slow, until she was spent.
And only then, when she fell back into the cushions, boneless, did he stop, turning as he returned to her side, pulling her with him until she was draped over his body, her soft skin pink with pleasure and her silken hair cloaking them both, their breaths coming in the same harsh staccato.
They lay there in silence for long minutes as their heartbeats slowed, her body loose and languid on his, as he traced idle patterns over her impossibly soft skin, marveling at the way the evening had twisted and turned, and landed them here, together, in sated peace.
Had he ever felt like this? A pure sense of satisfaction? As though nothing that had come before or would come in the future mattered, because in this singular moment, there was perfection.
He should have known it would be like this.
Grace, whom he’d always thought of as a missing piece, now so much more.
He stroked a hand down the bare skin of her back and she took a deep breath, the rise and fall of her breasts against his chest sending a low hum of awareness through him.
“I love you,” he whispered to her, wanting to say it again, now, in this perfect moment.
She lifted her head at the words, her gaze searching his, finding whatever she was looking for, because she pressed a kiss to his chest, and then tucked herself back into the crook of his arm, as though she might never leave.
He tightened his arm around her, urging her to stay.
And then she asked for the thing he had known she would ask from the moment he’d woken up in the dark in this very building a year earlier.
Then, he’d been unprepared to answer it.
Now, he was ready.
No masks.
“What happened that night?”
Chapter Twenty-Three
He didn’t answer immediately.
In fact, for a moment, she thought he might not answer at all. Or perhaps he hadn’t heard her, as nothing changed after she asked the question—he did not loosen his grip on her, nor did his breath quicken, nor did the slow, steady beat of his heart increase beneath her ear.
Finally, he replied, the words a low rumble between them. “I have asked myself that question a thousand times.”
She did not lift her head, knowing that whatever was about to happen between them would change everything. Afraid that the truth would make it worse.
“And so?”
Grace listened to his breath, slow and even, for a long stretch, willing herself to be patient, as though her whole world weren’t in chaos at the idea that she might be in love with this man who had been her enemy for so long.
Over the years, she had imagined a dozen answers to the question. More. When they’d first escaped, she and Devil and Whit had spent hours trying to understand his betrayal. What had happened? What had turned him against them, so near to when they were planning to leave?
Devil, angry and bitter, had always believed Ewan had simply decided that the money and power was too good to pass up. He’d been the old duke’s choice for heir from the start, hadn’t he? Why throw his lot in with them, empty bellies and empty pockets on the dark, dank streets of the Rookery?
They’d likely die before they grew old.
Whit had been more empathetic. She could still remember him wincing as she wrapped her petticoats around his broken ribs, even then arguing that Ewan had always been the one with the longest game. There’s a reason, Whit had said. He didn’t betray us.
He’d said it for weeks. Longer, as they disappeared into the Rookery, hiding from the old duke, who they feared would come for them—the only people in the world who knew his plans to steal the dukedom for his line, rather than dying without heir.
And then, one day, Whit had woken with a changed mind and a different heart. A harder one. And from that day on, he’d done everything he could to keep them safe from even a whisper of the dukes of Marwick—young or old.
But Grace, she’d never had the benefit of cold disinterest. She’d never found it. She’d loved him and hated him. Raged at him and wept for him. And wished him back more times than she could count. More times than anyone could count.
And even when she’d closed herself off, she’d never been entirely able to forget him.
So it was impossible for her to find casual interest in his answer now, as they lay naked in her bed—so close to revealing everything to each other.
Especially not when he finally answered. “I would never have hurt you.”
She had no choice but to lift her head at that, meeting his eyes, searching and finding the truth. And still, suspicion flared. Her brow furrowed with the memory of the night.
“I remember it,” she said. “You—”
His whole body tightened at the invocation, and she stopped herself, for a moment considering not saying the rest.
No. If they were to move forward, the truth had to come out.
“You came for me,” she said. “I saw the blade in your hand. I saw the rage on your face.”
“It wasn’t for you,” he said. “I don’t expect you to believe me, but it’s true.”
“Something happened.”
“Yes, something happened,” he said with a humorless laugh. “He made his choice.”
“We always knew it would be you,” she said. “From the start, it was you. Devil and Whit—they were decoys.”
“They were there to train me to be a Marwick,” Ewan said, his gaze on the ceiling. “To remind me of what was important. The title. The line. They were there to train me to be ruthless.”
And he had been, that night.
Or had he?
He gave a little ironic laugh. “He taught them to be ruthless, too. He would be proud of them now.”
“They couldn’t care less about his pride.” She didn’t break stride.
“They never could,” he said, “and that’s why he hated them more than he hated me.” He looked at her. “But he didn’t hate us nearly as much as he was terrified of you.”
Her brow furrowed at the words. “Me,” she said. “What did he think I could do to him? He was a duke, and I was a child. I lived on the estate by his benevolence alone.”
“Don’t you see, Grace, that made you even more terrifying—a mere girl. An orphan who should not have mattered. You should have been easily disposable. But that was not your destiny. Instead, you hated him with fiery passion and cold calculation. You were brilliant and beloved by everyone who met you, even without them knowing the truth . . . that you were the babe baptized duke—” He cut himself off for a moment and then, after consideration, he said, softly, “And you fought alongside us with a fierceness that he could not control.
“From the moment we arrived at the estate, he pitted us against each other. Mind tricks and games and battles of will and physical brutality. And he could not break us. We were three, together. Locked in a battle not to win, but to beat him. And he loathed it, because he could not understand why he could not separate us.”
“You were brothers,” she said, simply. She had spent two years with the trio and twenty with Devil and Whit, and she knew that they’d been forged in the same fire—made as a set.
“No,” he said, his hand stroking over her back. “He lorded over us with the promise of money for our mothers and wealth for ourselves. Foo
d in our bellies and knowledge in our brains. Roofs over our heads. Whatever we wanted, if only we’d fight each other.”
She shook her head. “You never did. Even when he put you in the ring together. You always pulled your punches.” She paused, then, “A lesson you still carry with you. I saw you do it in the Garden the other day.”
He rubbed a hand absently over his jaw, where a bruise still faded. “That was a mistake. If you hadn’t stopped the fight, I might not be here.”
Of course she had stopped the fight. She would never have let him die. “You’d do well to remember that, toff. We fight dirty down here in the mud.”
“I shan’t make the same mistake again.” He paused, watching her carefully, and then he said, “I only ever pulled my punches for you.”
She tilted her head. “What does that mean?”
“The three of us could have easily been broken. Separated. Manipulated,” he said. “It wasn’t blood that kept us together against him. It was you.”
She caught her breath. “We all loved you. Whit and Devil like a sister—each of them willing to protect you without hesitation. And me . . .” He trailed off, and she reached for his hand, threading her fingers through his. “Like you were a part of me.” He sighed. “Christ, you were so brave.”
“No, I wasn’t,” she said, shaking her head. “I was nobody. I was nothing. No one noticed me.”
“You were there, always. You think I don’t remember all the times you rescued me? Us? Blankets in the cold. Food when we were hungry. Light in the dark. You mended us all again and again. And always out of sight.”
“It wasn’t brave,” she said. Yes, she’d done everything she could to help them without the duke discovering her, but, “I never stood up to him. I could have done so much more to keep you all safe. I was proof of his crime. And I never—” She looked away, hating the memories of her time at the house—of the time they’d shared there. “I never stood up to him.”
“Neither did I.”
I did get you out.
The words from the other night, when she’d accused him of chasing them away. Of leaving them behind.
“Except I think perhaps you did.” She watched him for a long moment, her eyes narrowing on him. “I think you stood up to him that night.”
Daring and the Duke EPB Page 28
