Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Dorian Voss stood, paintbrush in hand, at an easel set up on the far side of the room, wearing an untidy and paint-smeared shirt, open deep at the neck to reveal a sprinkling of dark hair on his chest. The chamber around him was a blaze of candelabras and mirrors to light his canvas.
“Rose!” he exclaimed, laying down a palette and looking at her in consternation. “What are you doing here?”
“Oh!” Rose yelped, all her awful suspicions drained away in an instant, along with her courage, leaving her feeling foolish and alone, only a naive intruder in the Duke of Ravenhill’s private painting studio. “I thought…I thought….”
Her cheeks were burning with embarrassment, very much not wanting to admit what she had thought at all.
“What did you think?” Dorian asked, coming over to take the candle from her unsteady hand and place it on a table. “Is something wrong? Are you ill?”
“Why did you run away as soon as we got back?” Rose blurted out, posing questions which she felt were natural and blameless, even if he did not choose to answer them. “I worried that you were offended. Was it something to do with me? Or my family? Or your family?”
“Dear Rose,” the duke said, with one of his infuriatingly charming smiles. “A woman as sweet as you could never offend. Go to bed now and we shall eat breakfast together in the morning and talk as much as you wish.”
He took her hand, kissed it politely, as though they were at a ball, then patted it and released it. While his mouth was smiling, Dorian’s dark eyes were absent. Part of him was not in the room with Rose, she sensed. This charm was only a deflection, a game.
Well, Rose did not want to play that game and was not to be so easily dismissed tonight. She followed him when he returned to his easel and looked at his canvas. The painting was not yet well formed, but she thought it was a night scene and he had been blocking in a moonlit sky and some trees.
Despite its early stage of development, and lack of central focus, there was already a restlessness to the images being conjured. It was as though something was already lurking in the darkness he had painted, waiting for its chance to emerge.
“Where is that?” she breathed. “What are you painting?”
“A place that exists only in my imagination,” Dorian answered, his jaw tight.
“It seems so dark and wild,” Rose remarked, reaching out a hand as though she would touch the wet paint.
When the duke caught hold of Rose’s fingers this time, it felt different, and he did not immediately let go. It was an instinctive gesture on both sides rather than a planned one and something almost tangible flowed between them, just as it had done in the library.
“You must go to bed, Rose,” he said gruffly, dropping her hand and looking at the picture. “You must go now.”
Rose did not want to go. She did not want to leave Dorian, sensing that in some way, despite his words, he also wished her to stay. But how should she refuse his direct request?
“I can’t go to bed,” she faltered, playing for time. “Mabel is gone to bed and I find I cannot unhook my dress.”
Dorian blinked, then took Rose by the shoulders and spun her around.
All too familiar with female garments, his fingers worked deftly on the fastenings, the light brushing of his fingertips and warm breath on her hair thrilling her.
Too soon for Rose’s liking, she was released and spun again in the direction of the door.
“There,” he said quietly. “You can manage the rest. Goodnight, Rose.”
Back at his easel, the Duke of Ravenhill took up the paintbrush again and returned to the canvas, seeming to quickly forget Rose was even there. The room was all fire and shadow amid the blaze of candles and mirrors, and the duke’s sculpted face was an inscrutable work of art in itself.
“What do you even want from me, Dorian?!” Rose suddenly threw at him with a loud sob. “I’m meant to be your wife and these are meant to be my rooms. You cannot keep pushing me away. I don’t want to go.”
“Rose, you cannot stay here any longer,” the duke said, his voice now obviously strained. “You must listen to me.”
Rose closed her eyes, feeling embarrassed and silly. She had made a fool of herself tonight from start to finish. No wonder Dorian was losing patience. When she opened her eyes, however, she did not see impatience, nor anger.
The duke’s gaze was dark, hungry and much present in the room this time.
There was no doubt that he saw Rose and that she had his complete attention.
Putting down both paintbrush and palette, he came to stand in front of her again so that Rose could smell both oil paint and the mingled cologne and heat of his skin through the half open shirt.
“Listen to me, Rose. I’m trying to send you from this room, not because I don’t want you, but because I do. I want you. Very, very much.”
He took a deep breath, his final words having caught in his throat in a soft growl that made Rose’s stomach contract with excitement.
“Then why…”
“Shhh,” Dorian said and put a finger on her lips before pulling back abruptly as though Rose had burned him. “I am stirred tonight, Rose. If I take you, I don’t think I can be gentle, and I don’t want to frighten you.”
“I am not afraid of you, Dorian,” Rose whispered. “I am only afraid…”
Pulling her unresisting form into his arms, the duke kissed her passionately. A sound of pure desire came from Rose’s throat as he drew the dress down to her waist, tore open the petticoat beneath and then covered her breasts with warm hands.
While the fabric of her gown was manhandled, ripping under Dorian’s questing fingers as he loosened the waist strings and pushed the whole lot to the floor, his touch on Rose’s flesh was not at all violent, only hungry and firm.
The duke’s hands roamed her curves knowingly and freely, stroking, caressing and squeezing while his lips took kiss after kiss from Rose’s panting lips.
Rose’s own hands sought Dorian’s skin under his shirt, pulling at it with frustrated noises.
He shrugged it away and then seized Rose to him again as though he feared she would escape him, when all she wanted in the world was his touch.
Naked except for her stockings and garters, Rose felt no cold, only the external heat of Dorian’s skin on hers and the internal heat that made her push herself against him and moan her longing.
Despite the strangeness of the situation, everything felt utterly right, even when Dorian removed his lower garments, confirming that the illustrations in those books had indeed been anatomically correct…
That manly shaft pressed against Rose as they embraced now, a throbbing, eager presence that could not be ignored. Dorian’s breathing deepened and grew even more ragged as Rose touched him there with curious hands, the pulsing of his organ making something inside her throb in sympathy.
With a hungry growl, Dorian scooped Rose into his arms and carried her to a couch in the shadows. How animal he seemed in the burning darkness of this room! But then, that was exactly how Rose felt too, like some wild creature driven only by the instincts of the body.
She only whimpered with pleasure as Dorian knelt beside the couch and covered her body with open-mouthed kisses, teeth grazing her neck, her breasts, her belly and then her thighs.
When Dorian’s hands pushed her thighs apart for his mouth to kiss the damp fur of her mound, Rose made another sound that communicated her surprise and confusion.
His answering growl this time was both reassuring and erotic, telling Rose that this act was right, it was good and he knew what he was doing.
Instinctively trusting him, Rose opened herself to the flickering and then stroking of Dorian’s tongue.
As with his fingers on a previous occasion, the first contact was exploratory and then a slow, purposeful rhythm was established.
The waves that swept Rose towards the peak after some minutes of such attention were powerful and inevitable, drawing a fierce cry of ecstasy from her core.
As it subsided, Dorian was already covering Rose’s body in further kisses, accentuating the final rills and spasms that passed through her trembling form.
When Dorian’s mouth found Rose’s again, it was tangy with the salt of her excitement, and his forehead was damp with sweat.
Now he was on the couch with her, beside her, that hard, strong shaft pressing ever more insistently against her hip.
Dorian’s fingers found and stroked the lips of Rose’s womanhood again, and she caught at his shoulders as two of them slid inside her.
“Ohhhh!” Rose heard herself cry out, aroused and confused all over again, at this exploration, the former sensation overtaking the latter with Dorian’s next kisses.
Until Dorian, she’d had no idea that a man could caress inside a woman too. When her husband withdrew his hand and rolled on top of her, Rose now guessed what would happen next. The thought both bewildered and thrilled her.
Even after reading those books, Rose could not quite believe such a thing was possible. Yet the head of Dorian’s shaft was pushing exactly at the place where his fingers had found such easy entrance. His dark eyes held hers as he parted her slippery flesh and penetrated right to the hilt.
Rose wriggled and squirmed at the strange sensations of stretching fullness and physical desperation while Dorian grunted with some intense pleasure of his own in this utterly animal embrace.
Speechless, Rose wanted to plead for something but could not say what.
Did she want him to take it out? God, please no…