Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
“ L ucien—” Her protest was cut off by his mouth crashing against hers.
This was nothing like their heated kiss in the hallway, nor the desperate one in the parlor. This was a thousand tense moments, stacked against one another, all culminating into this one, searing kiss.
And Edwina, Heaven help her, she fell into it. She lost herself as his lips moved against hers, as they coaxed her mouth open, and as his tongue swept past her lower lip to tangle with hers.
A small noise caught in her throat, barely making it past, with the way he was kissing her. Lucien looked so resentfully at everything, yet the way he held her in these moments… It was as if she was breakable and strong at the same time. As if he knew only he would be her undoing.
His lips moved lower, lavishing attention on the corner of her mouth, the curve of her chin, her neck, and the neckline of her dress. His eyes met hers in the dim light of the carriage as he pushed down the capped sleeves of her gown to press a kiss to her shoulder.
There was an untamed wildness to how he moved over her with his tongue and teeth, roaming where he pleased. Edwina wanted to do nothing but lean back and let him do what he wished. Whatever he gave her, she would take so, so willingly.
“Your body is a gift in itself,” he murmured, sliding a hand up her calf as he kneeled before her on the floor of the carriage.
Edwina’s face flushed, her eyes widening at the thought of why he might be there, what he intended to do.
“It is something that contains so much pleasure I have yet to coax out of you.”
His hands continued their journey up her legs, his palms brushing her knees and then her thighs. Her dress was bunched up around her hips, terribly obscene, and she couldn’t help but let out a soft moan as he pressed kisses to the sides of her knee, as well as the other one, and then trailed more kisses down the inside of her thigh.
She was already trembling by the time he moved higher, his face almost flush with her heat.
“I intend to taste you,” Lucien told her, and her face burned. “I intend to make you cry out until this carriage is shaking, and then, when you think you have withstood all you can, I am going to take you to my chamber and show you what true possession feels like.”
Edwina could only gaze back at him, nodding as though in a trance, too overwhelmed by the promised pleasure to form words.
But Lucien only kissed her hip. “Tell me you agree to this with words, darling.”
Darling .
The heat growing between her legs only became more insistent, and she made a pitiful noise. “Yes,” she said, sounding exasperated in her impatience. “Yes, I agree. To—To this. To it all.”
“You complained about being my possession,” he reminded her, teasing her with words right as he teased her folds with his hand. She stifled a gasp and lifted her hips automatically. “Yet you want it now?”
“Please.” Her voice was a soft sigh, escaping her on a wave of need. “Please, Lucien, I-I need you.”
“What do you need most?” he purred. “My tongue, my fingers, or my cock?”
“All,” she gasped, her hips seeking the pressure of his hand, which he had drawn away. “All of you.”
He grinned up at her, the smile pure wickedness, as he moved closer to that aching bud between her legs. “Your greed pleases me.”
And then his lips were there, closing around that bud at the apex of her sex. Edwina cried out, the sound wild and loud, and she clamped a hand over her mouth, lest anybody outside hear her.
Lucien buried himself deeper in the folds of her dress and carefully guided her legs over his shoulders, and the obscenity of their positions sent more dizzying heat through Edwina.
“Lucien,” she moaned breathily.
He didn’t pull back to respond; he only continued pleasuring her, his tongue swirling in circles that had her unspooling beneath his firm grip on her thighs. Her hips bucked, seeking more of it, but he lightly slapped her—a silent warning.
It settled into Edwina, and she shuddered. Her husband was in control of her pleasure, and for a woman who had always been fiercely independent and the one to take care of others, she found it heavenly to think that she could relinquish all of that.
In the carriage, all that mattered was how safe her pleasure was with Lucien.
His kisses moved to her inner thighs, keeping her teetering on the precipice of release. Edwina half-feared that moment when she would fall, wondering how shattering her climax might be this time after weakening her greatly in the hallway and making her writhe on his fingers.
Lucien’s voice was quiet as he pulled back. “I have never been a man to honor my greed, but oh, you, Edwina… you make me wish to take, and take, over and over. To wring climaxes from you that would make you scream out loud and wake up the entire countryside. I wish to have you in my bed, my arms, at every chance. So, when it concerns my greed and you, then yes, I admit that I am a greedy man.”
It was strange how a man so cold and reserved, so utterly in control of himself, could be undone by this. By her .
The power surged through Edwina as she sought more pleasure from his mouth.
“As much as I want to wring every last climax from you,” he murmured, his mouth brushing the inside of her thigh and the curve of her knee, “I do not want you exhausted by the time I take you to my chambers. But do not mistake me for a man who will leave you wanting, Edwina. I will see you thoroughly satisfied soon enough.”
Edwina flushed with embarrassment, knowing he was recalling her weakened state the first time he had brought her to such a height. “I can handle it.”
“Can you?” Lucien smirked at her as his thumb slowly slid over her bundle of nerves.
Edwina quivered, letting out a moan. A bolt of heat shot to her core. Her legs were already trembling when Lucien lowered them.
“Let me take you to my bed. Let me show you how we might spend every waking minute if it pleases you.”
There was a wicked glint in his eyes, and she laughed breathlessly.
“Every waking minute? The fiercely in-control Duke of Stormhold would abandon his dukedom to make love to his wife?”
Lucien’s eyes darkened as he leaned in, grinding his hips against hers. She could feel how affected he was by pleasuring her, and that realization, when she had not even touched him, made her shiver.
“With you, Edwina, I barely control myself.”
Hand in his, they crossed the threshold of Lucien’s room. Edwina had not been in there since her attempt to seduce him on their wedding night. Back then, she was awkward, fumbling. But now, as his mouth crashed against hers, hungry and insistent, she felt anything but.
Lucien’s hands were already gliding up the skirt of her dress, bunching up the fabric, as if he yearned to slide into her fully right there and then while standing in the center of his room.
But he pulled back, his breathing already ragged. His eyes were heavy and dark with need. “I will go slow. I will ensure that you are not hurt, Edwina, and?—”
“Lucien.” Her voice was bolder than it had ever been before when it concerned matters of the marriage bed. “Allow yourself to lose control. Let yourself loosen the grip you have on it.” She closed the gap between them, tilting her head back so she could meet his eyes. “Meet with me beneath the sheets as husband and wife. Unleash yourself.”
Lucien’s throat bobbed around a swallow. Slowly, he nodded, and she smiled indulgently at him—until her wrists were pinned behind her back and he pressed himself against hers.
“Brace yourself on the bed, and allow me to bare you fully,” he commanded, his voice low.
Edwina’s breath caught. A flare of nerves zapped through her as she nodded, her heart pounding in her chest.
But before she could move, Lucien kissed her neck, his tongue gliding over her heated skin. He groaned, the sound reverberating through her neck, and she pressed herself further against him.
His chambers were wide, lit dimly by the moonlight beyond the large window, and she could only imagine all of the places he might take her—the desk, perhaps the window. Perhaps she would be pressed against the wall or the door, with a hand over her mouth to keep her quiet.
Edwina shivered before she moved to the bedpost on trembling legs. Putting both hands in front of her, she braced herself so her backside was presented to him, hidden beneath the layers of her dress.
The growl that her husband let out as she arched her back, trying to entice him closer, went straight to her core. And then his hands were on her hips, sliding up to the laces on the back of her dress. Slowly, almost tenderly, he undid them, loosening the dress’s tight hold on her.
When the cold, night air finally kissed her spine, quickly followed by Lucien’s warm mouth, Edwina found herself aching.
“The thought of—” She broke off as she felt the light drag of teeth over her shoulder blade.
Lucien kissed the back of her shoulder. “Hm?”
It took her a second to gather her distracted thoughts. “The thought of you baring me… while you yourself are not naked should not excite me as much as it does.”
“It is about power,” he told her, his knuckles brushing down her lower back, venturing just far enough that her thighs clenched in anticipation before he pushed the sleeves of her dress down her arms.
He found more excuses to touch her, to feel her skin beneath his hands, and she felt inebriated by it.
“It is about vulnerability, and the illusion that I am more in command simply because I am clothed.”
The dress finally slid down her frame, leaving her in her corset. Lucien’s fingers were already loosening the knots until her breasts were freed, and he leaned forward. His hands cupped her breasts from behind, his mouth at her earlobe.
“But,” he continued, “all you need to do is feel , Edwina, and you shall find out that I am every bit as vulnerable as you are.”
His rough growl, combined with how he distractedly toyed with her nipples, as well as the thick length she could feel against the back of her thigh, had utterly undone her. Lucien’s hands were gentle at first, grasping and palming her breasts, drawing circles around her nipples, pinching the thick, puckered skin.
Edwina moaned, her head hanging down, her backside pressing further against his arousal.
“I need it,” she gasped. “I have—I have been patient.”
“You have,” he agreed, stroking a hand down her spine, going further until he could cup her buttcheeks.
He kneaded her flesh, his hands guiding her as though he was already inside her, rocking her back and forth. Edwina was already delirious with the phantom pleasure, able to feel every inch that was promised to her that night.
“And I have not.”
She let out a laugh, breathless and wanting. “Then have me. You’re stalling, husband.”
“My wife still has her honor,” he murmured. “I will not rush our first night together, no matter how wild the sight of you naked makes me.”
Edwina let out a keening sound, almost reduced to begging, wondering if that was his idea all along. To have her beg for pleasure, to have her let go of every shred of self-control she had held onto tightly, to set her pride aside and succumb?—
Two digits slid into her without warning, and she gasped, her body tightening. But Lucien’s other hand was still there, stroking her lower back.
“Relax, my Duchess,” he murmured. “Let me prepare you. I believe you shall need it, or would you like a reminder of my endowment?”
“Heavens,” Edwina moaned as he pushed his clothed arousal right against her, rutting against the apex of her thighs.
“Do you think you would be ready enough to take me without preparation?” he taunted her, laughing quietly.
He kissed the back of her neck as his fingers began sliding in and out of her, fast but gentle. She gasped and moaned as bolts of pleasure shot through her. Her thighs trembled from holding herself upright, from arching just so, and she could only lean forward, wantonly taking what he gave her.
“I asked you a question,” he reminded her with a hard thrust.
Edwina cried out, her legs spreading further. All she could focus on was that building heat in her core.
“I do not!” she moaned. “I do not think myself able to take it yet.”
“Is that because you enjoy my fingers too much?” he teased, spreading his fingers apart to stretch her further.
Edwina choked on another moan, desperate. The heat rolling through her body felt almost unbearable, and yet it was intoxicating. There was a fullness inside her that she could not imagine getting any more satisfying, and yet it would.
Based on the feel of Lucien’s length, it would.
She could sense him moving behind her, no longer rutting against the apex of her thighs. She felt him free his length, almost ready to enter her.
“How will you take me?” she asked.
“Ah, what a question,” he purred. “How would you like it, Edwina? Do you wish to look at me as I make love to you, and I shall have you on your back? Do you wish to have your backside raised in the air as I take my fill of your heat? Perhaps you prefer to sit in my lap, as you did in the parlor.”
She could hardly think properly, not while his fingers slid in and out of her, agonizingly slow yet deliciously attentive.
When she did not answer, Lucien curled his fingers inside her. “Answer me.”
Edwina could only moan, pressing back against him, her words and thoughts ceasing to exist. “I-I do not know!”
“I wish for you to choose,” he reiterated.
Suddenly, she had the thought of sitting astride him, looking down on him as he gazed up at her. The thought lingered, curling through her in a warm sensation, as surely as his fingers did.
“I wish,” she gasped, as he did not slow his ministrations. “I wish to be lowered onto you, to sit in your lap and be taken in that way.”
Lucien’s fingers slowly came to a stop before he pulled them out. When she turned her head to look at him, he was already making quick work of the buttons and fastenings on his clothes and taking them off.
There would be moments when she could indulge in the vulnerability of having him take her while he remained clothed.
“I would have kept myself dressed,” he said, noting how she watched each new bared inch of him. “But I recall just how glorious those sharp nails of yours felt, and I would be doing myself a disservice if I did not experience that pleasurable pain again.”
“Oh.”
Realization struck Edwina for a moment. She had not thought that he may have enjoyed that. Just as she had enjoyed being pinned and restrained by him. She thought of the way he had slapped her thigh lightly in the carriage, how it had sent a spark of pleasure through her.
Perhaps she did understand, after all.
“Yes,” he purred. “ Oh .”
With that, he tore off his shirt and threw it on the floor, leaving himself as naked as she was.
Edwina straightened, her eyes roving over him. Biting her lip, she took in the beard that had scratched between her thighs, the thick throat that sloped into broad shoulders, the lines of hard muscle rippling down his torso, and the arms that she wished to dig her fingernails into, to see just how well he might take everything she threw at him in the intimacy of his chambers.
And then her eyes fell on his thighs, thicker than her own but corded with muscle, and the length hanging between them. He stood at full mast, and Edwina’s throat went dry. He was thick there, too, as she should have expected. A pearly liquid she had not seen before beaded on the tip.
Her face reddened as she lifted her gaze to his, finding a smirk on his face. “You are…” She swallowed. “You are aroused.”
“As are you.”
“You were pleasuring me,” she countered feebly, her head spinning. “I… I did nothing in return, and yet?—”
“Some men derive great pleasure from seeing their wives satisfied,” he said, taking hold of her hips. “I am such a man. Your noises, your reactions… they’re almost as great as release itself.”
“You are… you are big ,” she whispered, wondering how he might fit inside her and whether she could truly take him.
But Lucien only laughed under his breath and pulled her down with him. Surprised, Edwina let out a cry, only to find her thighs parted on either side of his hips, his length nestled against her stomach. Her core clenched, aching to be filled, knowing what she would soon have.
“And you shall take me,” he murmured, pulling her face to his.
He kissed her, and she could not help but groan against his lips, leaning into him. Her hips rose, trying to seek some sort of relief despite the attention she had been showered with. She moaned softly into his mouth as his hard, hot length prodded her entrance.
Her knees pressed into the rug beneath them, the chenille soft beneath her skin. Like this, she felt in control, and the knowledge that the Duke simply held her hips and allowed her to have this moment made something well up in her chest that she filed away for later.
“I shall guide you,” he told her, his mouth against hers, “but let your body guide you as well. Let it claim what it wants.”
“I want you,” she whispered, catching his lower lip between her teeth, sucking her way back into his mouth so her tongue met his.
It was a feverish kiss as her hips rolled faster. Each jerk against him got harder, more demanding, as she sought to lower herself onto him.
And then the tip of his length caught just inside her folds. Edwina gasped sharply even at that first, small joining. Lucien groaned into her mouth as her core fluttered, not knowing what to do with such a thing.
“More,” she demanded, trying to buck down.
“Slowly,” Lucien grunted, slapping her backside.
Edwina jolted, a broken moan slipping free. But she heeded his words and slowly let him slide inside her. She keened, her sounds rising in pitch, ragged and desperate, until he was finally seated within her.
And when he was, she exhaled sharply, moaning as she fell against his chest. Her hands gripped his shoulders, her nails digging into his skin.
“Heavens,” Edwina moaned, her body shuddering at the fullness, the pleasure wracking her.
She thought he had filled her so fully that she might feel him from the outside, but she could not. Yet, it seemed impossible not to.
Lucien took her chin and pulled back her face while his other hand remained firmly on her hip.
“You are wonderful,” he rasped, and his length twitched inside her. Edwina’s core clenched around him, and she saw pleasure ripple over his face. “And I fear I cannot draw this out.”
“We do not need to worry about drawing it out,” Edwina assured him, her voice thick with need. “Not when we have all night. Every day, as much as we please.”
Lucien growled, pulling her flush against him. He lifted her, slipped both hands beneath her backside so he could pull out of her, and then thrust back in. It was sharp, and she gasped as his length hit the deepest part of her again. And he didn’t stop this time, not to let her adjust or even catch her breath.
“Hold on to the bedframe,” he instructed, and she turned her gaze to the frame he sat against. “Or, better yet, hold on to me. Grip me as tightly as you need, for I will not go slow any longer, Edwina. I am—I am an unraveled man, and I cannot keep myself?—”
“Then do not,” she said quickly, meeting his gaze. “I asked you to unleash yourself on me, and I meant it.”
His grip on her backside tightened. He pulled her up, and she let herself go with the movement. He dropped her back down, and his length burrowed deep inside her. Edwina gasped, heat shuddering over and over through her gut.
Up and down, she was guided over his length, and she gasped out her pleasure. It was like nothing she had ever felt before, and perhaps even the combination of his fingers and tongue could not compare to how he felt inside her.
Fully seated inside her, joined in the most intimate of ways.
One of her hands on his shoulder slid higher, her fingernails scratching their way into his hair. The auburn strands tangled in her fingers, and she used them as purchase to fall into the rhythm Lucien set for them. He let out a low, guttural groan as he thrust into her hard, burying every intoxicating inch of his length inside her over and over.
Edwina was a mess in his lap, reduced to a body that was all but limp, moans falling freely from her mouth as she dragged her hands over him—down his neck, over his shoulders, down his back.
A pressure grew between her legs as her husband thrust into her harder and harder. It spread through her core, into her lower abdomen, and she gasped, knowing it was the same growing pressure from that night in the hallway.
Her climax.
“Lucien,” she cried out, melting in his arms.
Still, he held her, gripping every curve she possessed as if she were light as a feather. His hands roved from her backside down to her thighs, slipping between her legs to toy with that bundle of nerves as he had earlier.
Edwina’s body jerked, and she cried out, knowing she could not hold on for a moment longer.
“Oh, Heavens, Lucien ,” she moaned. “I am—it is near.”
She quickly had one of his hands pressed to her lower abdomen, and she realized that she was rocking herself wildly on him, having taken over but not recalling when she did. Lucien merely gazed at her with hooded eyes, as if she was his undoing as much as he was hers.
“Climax for me, Edwina,” he gritted out.
He trailed his hand up her chest, thumbing her nipples and pinching them. She choked on another cry.
“Please,” she keened. “ More , more, please. I am so very near?—”
Lucien growled, slamming her down onto his length, and she felt him twitch deep inside her as if, he too, was close.
“Finish with me,” he ground out, his jaw clenched. “Give me your pleasure, as mine is yours, Edwina.”
“Please,” she sobbed, not knowing what she was begging for any longer.
She rose and fell wildly atop him, her thighs pressed to his, wetness soaking them both. And then, with one last thrust, that wave of pleasure crested and crashed over her, pulling her under a blissful undertow. A scream tore from her throat as her face contorted in bliss.
Through it all, through every jerk of her hips as her body began to give out on her, Lucien continued to thrust into her as he found his release. When he climaxed, it was with a muffled groan into her shoulder, his teeth grazing her skin. She felt his seed spill into her, heightening her pleasure.
When they both were over the edge, Edwina felt her husband almost tenderly brush a sweat-dampened strand of hair back from her forehead.
“Is this how it always feels?” she whispered, falling into his embrace.
“Intense and intoxicating?” he asked. “When one has found the person that one’s body longs for, I believe it is meant to always be like this.”
Edwina tried not to read deeper into his words. Perhaps he had a different experience before, but she could not help but smile as she curled up into his chest. With ease, he lifted her in his arms and carried her to his bed.
Laughing softly, Edwina collapsed on the sheets in a boneless heap, drowsiness already overtaking her. But a swipe of something cool and damp between her legs had her lifting her head. Lucien glanced at her as he pulled back a towel and discarded it in his bathing chamber. He came back to her side and quirked an eyebrow.
“You did not think your husband would leave you unattended, did you?”
“I did not think at all,” she admitted.
“We can bathe tomorrow if you wish, but for now, I wish to tend to you.”
He slipped into the bed next to her, and she found herself melting against him. Their intimacy had shifted something between them, something growing and tentative. Edwina thought about mentioning it, but then she kept the words trapped within her.
Instead, she whispered, “I feel as though I will become the greedy one.”
“I do not think that is possible,” Lucien murmured. “Not when I have finally had you now. I do not think I could ever get enough.”
“Then we will see who shall be the greediest,” she teased.
Lucien was already on top of her, his arms braced on either side of her. “Is that a challenge, wife?”
“Perhaps. It is not yet sunrise, and I believe you promised?—”
She could barely speak before he was kissing her again.
Slowly, his length hardened once more as she arched into him, seeking to pull him back inside her.