Duke of Lust (Sinful Dukes #3)

Chapter 18

CHAPTER 18

“ T en shillings, did you say?” Annabelle asked the hired cab driver as she took out her purse and counted the money carefully in the darkness. “There. You must check it too. The moon is behind a cloud and I cannot see the coins properly in this light.”

“There’s only nine shillings there, Madam,” the driver said quickly, whether he had counted them or not.

“Oh, dear. Let me find another.”

Scrabbling again in her purse for the right coins, she did not hear anyone approaching until a man’s voice suddenly sounded right beside the coach, authoritative and somewhat displeased.

“Here’s your money, Sir, and another few coins for your trouble. Travel quickly back to London tonight. I shall see the lady safe now.”

“Why, thank you, Sir. Very kind of you, I must say. Much appreciated indeed.”

While the cab driver was obsequious over Frederick, Annabelle had not particularly liked the man, having sensed from the moment she got into his vehicle that he intended to cheat her, and that there was likely nothing she could do about it.

Any cabman must guess that a young lady wrapped up in a black cloak, sneaking about the streets on the outskirts of London at night must have something to hide.

The door of the carriage clicked open and Frederick was there beside it, holding out his arm expectantly. While his features in the darkness looked more forbidding than friendly, Annabelle was only relieved to see him. While determined to sneak out and visit Heartwick Hall, she had been terrified at every moment of her night’s adventure since she tiptoed past Stephen’s bedroom door. Now, however, she was safe.

“Come,” he said and helped her down, making a quiet but definite shushing noise when she attempted to speak. “Later.”

It was not until the hired coach had rattled away back down the drive that Frederick spun Annabelle around and took hold of her by the shoulders.

“Annabelle, what on earth are you playing at? Does Stephen know where you are? What are you doing here?”

“I had to see you Frederick,” she told him. “There was no one else I could talk to, and certainly no one who can understand. I just had to come here.”

“Oh Annabelle,” he sighed, the moon now reappearing and casting his handsome features in silvery light that exposed the concern and of his expression. “It is extremely dangerous for you to go out alone at night like this. Anything could have happened to you. That cab driver swindling you was the best of the possible option.”

“Stephen thinks I’m asleep in bed, Frederick, and no one else knows I’m here.”

“Except that cab driver. Does he know your name? Did he pick you up at Colborne House? What if he seeks to blackmail you?”

“No, he knows nothing, except that I wished to come here. I sneaked out and walked along the road towards the city. That took me an hour, and the cab another hour, I think.”

“How are we going to get you back and what if…”

“Oh, will you please stop asking me questions, Frederick,” Annabelle burst out now, her heart overfull and her nerves strained. “Can’t you just…”

Lost for words but not actions, Annabelle stood on her toes and pressed her lips to Frederick’s mouth. It shut him up like magic, the hands that had been crossly laid on her shoulders sliding down her back and pulling her in closer so that he could return the kiss more fully.

“One more question,” he said breathlessly, after some moments had passed, caressing her cheek between his kisses. “Are you alright, Annabelle? You must tell me what is going on.”

“Later. Now, I just need you to kiss me, Frederick,” Annabelle pleaded and pressed herself into him as he complied.

Back in Frederick’s embrace under the stars at Heartwick Hall, Annabelle could feel the weight of the world falling away and its influence quickly being replaced by the rushing of blood in her veins and pulsing of desire in all her most sensitive places.

“We can’t stay here on the driveway, and you can’t come inside,” Frederick observed the next time he raised his head.

The sound of a horse nickering caught Annabelle’s attention and she turned slightly in Frederick’s arms to see Thunder standing there beside the drive, fully saddled.

“You were out riding at this time of night?” she asked with astonishment.

“It’s no stranger than you riding about the country in hired cabs, is it?” he returned with a smile. “Now, let us move. I know where to take you, but you must get up on Thunder.”

Annabelle gave a squeak of fright at this suggestion but Frederick ignored it and she found herself lifted onto the horse’s saddle by his strong arms, too nervous to resist.

“That’s it, you’ll need to ride astride,” he laughed, arranging her legs and taking the opportunity to stroke her skin through the silk of her stockings.

“You’ll be leading Thunder, won’t you?” Annabelle quavered, scared of being up at such a height on a powerful horse despite her new confidence on smaller, less spirited animals.

“I’ll do better than that,” Frederick said and vaulted up behind Annabelle taking up the reins and urging her forward in the saddle to settle her body between his thighs. “Thunder is strong enough to carry both of us.”

At Frederick’s signal, Thunder walked off the drive and away toward the woodland and Annabel sank back thankfully into the security of Frederick’s body.

“You excite me so much, Annabelle,” Frederick murmured to her in acknowledgment of the bulge of his stiff organ at her back, a fact that could not be hidden or denied. “Sometimes I cannot control my response to you.”

His lips were right beside her ear as he spoke these words and he finished them with a kiss to her neck. Annabelle felt no fear or trepidation now, only longing, her desire spiked further by her indecent posture on the horse, legs spread wide and skirts halfway up her legs, one of Frederick’s hands reaching down briefly to caress her thigh as he spoke.

“I like to feel your excitement,” she breathed in reply, speaking only the truth. “I like the way your body feels, the way you smell, the way you kiss me.”

When she turned her head to look at Frederick, he captured her mouth again with his and then gently bit her lower lip for a moment before releasing her.

“Annabelle, you are so tempting that I simply want to eat you.”

Given what she already knew he could accomplish with that knowing and sensitive mouth, Annabelle shivered with pleasure and lust at his words, hoping that they signaled his intention to do exactly that.

A few minutes later they arrived at the edge of the woods and what appeared to be a small fire smoldering beside some items of human and horse equipment, including a nosebag, a bottle of something and a bag which was presumably Frederick’s. His cloak was there too, lying on a large log.

Lifting Annabelle down and kissing her again as he did so, Frederick paused only to stoked up the fire and then spread his cloak on the ground. Thunder had instantly lost interest in the humans once they were off his back and walked away to graze on the half spilled nosebag.

With his next kiss, Frederick drew Annabelle down onto the ground with him and did not stop until she was beginning to whimper with need. His building of her desire seemed as deliberate as his actions in stoking the campfire. Surely he would not stop at kisses tonight – she could not bear it if he did.

“Do you have any idea of what I dream of doing with you in moonlight, Annabelle?” Frederick asked her, showing no signs yet of stopping anything.

His hands had already unfastened her cloak and were working at the fastenings of her neckline.

“This?” she suggested with a moan as he dropped kisses on the upper slopes of her breasts.

“More than that,” he breathed, kissing lower as his hands began to push down the loosened fabric of her dress. “Far, far more. I dream of thrusting myself deep inside your body and enjoying the embrace of your tight little slit that gets so slippery for me. I dream of how your hidden lips will caress my manhood softly and wetly just as the lips of your mouth caress my tongue in our kisses…”

“Oh Frederick,” Annabelle whimpered, impossibly aroused by these erotic taunts and the images they conjured up alongside the feelings his hands and lips were provoking. Her own hands had untucked his shirt and found the hot, lightly furred skin of his torso beneath, the drum of his heartbeat setting a compelling rhythm for her senses.

“I dream of kissing and suckling your breasts even while I am filling your womb with my seed,” he declared roughly, baring her breasts entirely in the moonlight and then covering them with his hands. “All that should be your future husband’s, I dream of claiming for my own.”

Again, Annabelle could only utter his name and press into his touch, knowing that if he did exactly as he said, she could offer no resistance at all. She wanted him so badly now that all consequences seemed to belong in another less concrete world.

This one was the real world, the world where Frederick was kissing and fondling the pale globes of her bosom, sending surges of delight through her belly to spark between her thighs. No theoretical husband could make her feel these sensations, Annabelle felt sure. It seemed to her that they could only flow from Frederick’s touch.

“But I cannot do these things to you, because you are Annabelle, and I will not hurt you,” Frederick continued now, with something like a groan. “Still there are other pleasures, are there not?”

Finally, a hand that had been caressing her gartered thigh a moment earlier, moved slowly upward and tangled playfully in the curls at her Mount of Venus.

Annabelle gave an involuntary jerk at this contact, making Frederick smile despite the roughening of his own breathing and voice.

“You want me to touch you there, Annabelle?”

“Yes, oh God, yes…” she moaned before her mouth was covered again by his and the sounds she made in response to his gentle fingering swallowed by his kisses.

He relented from his sweet torment this time only to kiss his way down her body, tasting the tips of her breasts and her navel with his tongue on the way.

Annabelle was entirely lost by the time his mouth found her salty folds and the swollen bud of pleasure within. It took very little time before she gasped and cried out as wave after wave of pleasure flowed through her, radiating out from deep inside her body.

Frederick remained kneeling between her thighs, gazing with utter lust and fascination at her excited body while the firelight danced on them both.

“Please let me look at you a little longer,” he said hoarsely as she tried to sit up. “I may never see you like this again, Annabelle.”

She nodded slightly, propping herself up only slightly on her elbows and exquisitely conscious of the breeze over her naked breasts and the indecency of exposing her lower body to Frederick at such close quarters, with her skirts upped around her waist.

At last, he leaned forward and kissed her again with a sigh.

“I wish I could do that for you, Frederick. I wish I could give you something of the same pleasure that you give me. You look almost in pain.”

“I will not take you,” he said fiercely. “Not like this, in a way that could cause us both such shame and disgrace. It would turn something natural into the obscenity that the rest of the world would heap upon all sensual experience.”

“Is there really no other way?” Annabelle asked innocently, knowing only the most simple facts of human reproduction and able to deduce more only from her experiences with Frederick. “Can I not touch you with my hands and my mouth as you touch me?”

“I cannot ask you to do that,” Frederick said immediately but could hide the flush of excitement that her proposal caused him to feel.

“Why not?” she pressed, reaching out and laying a hand over his swollen groin before he could stop her. “Is it not possible? Is there something I do not understand about a man’s body? Would you not enjoy it if I touched you? Or can that cause a woman to get with child too?”

For once, it was Frederick who seemed lost for words.

“I cannot ask you,” he repeated, shaking his head as though groping for some other answer he had forgotten.

“You have not asked me,” Annabelle said, kneeling up and kissing Frederick, her hand now feeling the full shape of his shaft through the fabric of his trousers. “I have asked you because I want to touch you.”

“You’re not like any other woman I’ve ever met, Annabelle,” he marveled and then kissed her passionately.

“Does that feel good?” she asked, squeezing his groin cautiously, and then did it again as he nodded.

With uncertain fingers, Annabelle directed her attention to the waistband of Frederick’s trousers, fumbling a little more than Frederick did with her clothing but finally loosening his garments enough to reach inside and feel the smooth, eager heat of his organ with her bare hand.

“Oh,” she gasped, blushing a little at the thought of what she was now holding, even as the throbbing of its length called forth pulsing from between her own thighs. “It is even larger than I imagined, Frederick.”

“You do not have to do this,” he reminded her through gritted teeth even while the look of growing ecstasy on his features steeled her determination.

“I like how it feels,” Annabelle assured him, pushing the fabric of trousers and undershorts away now entirely and bringing his manhood into her view for the first time.

Annabelle had never seen an adult man fully naked, and certainly not one in a state of arousal. The sight of Frederick’s physical excitement aroused her curiosity in tandem with her desire, each of them spurring her on.

She explored his shaft with both hands, discovering and uncovering the swollen head at its tip and the mysterious hair-covered balls that lay at the base. Instinctively, she handled them more lightly, drawing encouraging groans of appreciation from Frederick.

When Annabelle lowered her head and kissed his shaft, he gave a deeper groan, one of his hands tangling in her disordered hair, although whether to stop her or guide her, she did not know. Uncertainly, Annabelle ran her tongue along the impressive organ and when Frederick seemed to surge towards her, she opened her mouth and drew the head of his manhood inside, suckling on it lightly.

The hand that was not in her hair, now reached down and found one of her naked breasts, this instinctive caress seeming to signal that whatever she was doing was right. For some minutes, she continued to experiment with drawing Frederick into her mouth and working out how her lips and tongue could stroke him and what reaction she was drawing.

Frederick’s breath was audibly growing more ragged with her ministrations and his hand tightening in her hair.

At last, he pulled away from her abruptly.

“No more,” he panted. “I do not want you to continue like that. Not this time. Not until you understand what will happen."

“But I want to give that pleasure to you,” Annabelle protested, gazing longingly at his manhood. “Let me, please.”

“I have another idea,” Frederick said abruptly, with a glint in his eye and then pushed Annabelle onto her back and parted her legs.

Although she cooperated, her mind was thrown into a tumult. Was he going to deflower her after all? Had she pushed him too far? Resigned to it, and even desiring it now, Annabelle moaned involuntarily when she felt his shaft rubbing against her wet folds.

She whimpered slightly as Frederick’s weight pressed against her, equally stirred at the thought of his size and the thrills of pleasure that passed through her when the head of his organ repeatedly touched the sensitive bud within her womanhood.

Still, he made no move to enter her and Annabelle vaguely wondered if something was wrong, or there was something she was meant to do first. Frederick’s face however, told her that everything was right, filled as it was with semi-restrained lust and enjoyment.

“So beautifully wet, Annabelle,” he whispered to her. “Now close your thighs tightly so that I am caught between them. Oh, yes, like that. There. Yes…”

Frederick began to move slowly and rhythmically, rubbing his shaft against Annabelle’s slippery folds and warm rounded thighs with deeply voiced sounds of enjoyment. She could feel herself growing ever softer and wetter with the strange new stimulation, her own little cries accompanying his until he stiffened and held her very closely.

Annabelle felt his manhood throbbing forcefully in a final paroxysm that made her smile in triumph even though it was his and not hers.

With a final sigh, Frederick released her and rolled to one side, Annabelle now perceiving a new wetness on her thighs and mount as his movement left her bared once more to the elements.

Even after his climax, Frederick’s eyes glinted with lust as they kissed her lips and roamed over her body and Annabelle gloried in it, looking down at herself too to see what it was he saw and desired.

In the firelight, she looked curiously at the pearls of milky liquid now streaking her golden-red pubic fur and dampening the skin of her thighs. As her fingers reached down to touch it, Frederick’s own reached out to join them.

“It is my seed,” he explained, “drawn safely from me outside your body. I did not want to take you by surprise by spurting that into your mouth without warning and I was too excited to explain anything.”

“But you liked what I did?” Annabelle checked. “It seemed that you did.”

“Liked it? Annabelle, you are extraordinary. Let me show you how it felt.”

His fingers again took up their stations in her folds and completed the second circuit of excitement that had paused for Annabelle with his own conclusion.

They lay in the darkness together for a long time as the fire burned down to embers again, in a a salty, sticky disarray of kisses, erotic remarks and laughter. It was only when a pale gray band on the horizon presaged the fading of the stars that the atmosphere grew more serious, as though they knew that reality would return with the sun.

“So, are you going to tell me what brought you here, Annabelle?” Frederick asked her as they began to adjust their clothing.

Her heart dropped as she remembered something that she had put entirely from her mind since she arrived at Heartwick Hall.

“Oswald Quince asked me to marry him yesterday,” she said.

“And did you accept?”

“I told him that I must think about it. Lord Darrington wants a civilized arrangement, Frederick, not a love match. He has promised me freedom, respect and companionship as well as title and fortune. I wanted to talk to you before I made any decision, Frederick. There is no one else I can ask about something like this.”

“Lady Darrington,” Frederick said to himself with a smile that was not really a smile and a joking tone that was not funny.

“Don’t tease me, Frederick,” Annabelle pleaded. “I couldn’t bear it, not after the way we touched one another, and not about this. I am so very confused and I really need your advice.”

Frederick took a long, deep breath before he turned to her.

“We are too entangled right now, you and I, aren’t we? We must make ourselves think about this rationally, aside from what we have just experienced.”

“Must we?” Annabelle questioned, somehow disappointed by this logical approach.

“It seems so. Now, you have been aiming to marry in order to be free and independent of your brother. For whatever reason, Oswald Quince is offering you what you seek with no strings attached, not even seeking what a man would normally require from a wife. If you believe in his sincerity, then the bargain he is offering is a good one.”

“Is it?” asked Annabelle uncertainly, realizing that she had not really wanted this to be true.

“It seems unlikely that there are many men who would offer so much entirely on your terms. The only sensible reason to turn him down would be if you did not trust him and expected him to break his end of the bargain. Is that the case?”

“Well no. It seems he is a good man and I expect he would keep his word.”

“That is also my impression. Money and personal liberty you can pin down to some extent in the marriage contract, in any case. Respect, companionship and lack of romantic expectation can’t be legalized in the same way, unfortunately. Does he want an heir?”

“Oswald would be happy enough for the estate to pass to his sister’s children in due course,” Annabelle informed him shortly. “It seems that is the fashion now.”

She ignored Frederick’s frown at this remark and turned away to restore her bodice to modesty.

“He may change his mind on that after you are married,” Frederick warned her.

“He will not,” returned Annabelle with certainty, unwilling to share Oswald’s confidences on the nature of his own love, not even with Frederick.

“Well then,” said Frederick, getting to his feet and sounding rather tired. “It seems that on balance, you must marry the man. It makes perfect sense when we look at the facts in an orderly way.”

“I’m not sure I want to look at them in an orderly way,” Annabelle said crossly.

She felt a growing ache in her heart and increasing anger at Frederick although she could not entirely justify it. She had asked him for advice and he was giving it to her plainly. It would be unfair to rail at him for that, and yet it did anger her.

When Frederick tried to take her back into his arms, she pushed him away.

“I can’t,” she said.

“Very well,” he accepted with another long and tired sigh. “Now, I must see you safely home before Stephen rises from his bed and raises hell.”

The creaking of a garden gate attracted the attention of Lord Emberly as he got up to use the chamber pot. He had followed Annabelle’s example and gone to bed straight after dinner, with the result that he had awoken at dawn.

The hour was still very early, too early even for gardeners, surely. With a frown, he pulled back a corner of the curtain and looked outside into the garden just in time to see a small figure in a black cloak disappearing into the kitchen garden, the hood pulled up too far to see the face or hair.

A maid on a morning errand? Or a maid out on secret assignations and up to no good? He made a mental note to speak to the housekeeper and mention the early wanderer. It would be up to her to discipline the culprit if there were no innocent explanation.

Deciding that he would return to bed and read for an hour, Stephen selected a volume of Spinoza from his bedroom bookshelf, always finding calm and comfort in the philosopher’s thinking on ethics and morality.

Before he had crossed the room back to his bed, his sensitive ears detected the muffled sound of footsteps on a nearby staircase. What on earth was going on this morning, that so many people should be up and about? If there were some significant problem, Stephen expected that he should be told of it.

Opening his bedroom door he was just in time to see a small figure in a black cloak crossing the end of the corridor and moving towards the bedrooms on the opposite side of house. The hood was now down and a mass of red-gold curls tumbled in disarray down the young woman’s back.

Annabelle?! Where had she been at this hour of the morning? What could this peculiar behavior mean?

Struck dumb with surprise and concern, Stephen closed his bedroom door again as quietly as he could and sat down on his bed to think.