Chapter Twelve
Stay here with him.
Fable had a dozen questions in her head, like; With him, how? As a servant–as she’d agreed to, as a girlfriend, a wife? Her heart thudded in her chest.
Did he mean as a wife?
I’m almost fully certain that I love you, Miss Ramsey.
Did he love her? Would he defy his sister? Or try to make Fable his mistress while he took another woman as his wife? She quickly erased that question.
She’d rather return to the alleys and shelters of New York City than be his mistress.
He’d invited her to stay with him.
Did he intend to protect her from the sword-wielding warrior who was hunting her down, probably at this very moment?
She wanted to ask him, but Lady Prudence had much to say while the men brushed off their breeches.
“Miss Ramsey, I would never believe it, and I saw it with my own eyes.
You took them both down.
Lord Sudbury…”
she took a moment to steady her breath… “a giant of a man, and my brother, a famed warrior, untouched by any heart.
You could easily kill them both if you wanted to.”
“I don’t want to,”
Fable assured her.
“And neither of them came at me with a sword.
The self-defense I know does no good if a sword is slashing down upon me.”
She thought of the time-traveler.
He was here in 1718 and he’d followed her to Colchester.
She was sure it was his voice she heard that night in the rain.
She couldn’t fight him and his sword off.
The duke’s sister looked as if she was considering Fable’s words.
Fable just basically gave up her defense.
She had to be close to her attacker to defend herself against him.
Now the men knew, so that if she ever had any intentions of hurting them, she’d fail.
Lady Prudence gave the earl and the ink-covered duke one last amused look, before she returned her attention to Fable before she left.
“We’ll speak about this again.
Come, Simon.”
Fable nodded.
That was a good beginning.
She turned to share a smile with Ben and Lord Sudbury as he caught up with his lady in three steps of his long legs.
“Fable?”
She turned to the duke when they were alone.
She fell captivated by the stark contrast of his black hair and eyes against his pale complexion and white uniform.
She shouldn’t let herself be swayed by someone’s physical frame.
“I’ll teach you to defend yourself against a sword.”
She sucked in a little gulp of air.
How about being swayed by the way his lips looked while he spoke words that broke down her defenses? She wanted to ask him what about after that? How long did he intend to let her stay?
She closed her eyes.
Nothing ever lasted.
She moved to leave him and change into her gown.
He reached for her hand to stop her.
“Lady, you put me on my back twice and now you make me risk a third time when I reach for you?”
She smiled.
She loved this open, caring side of him.
She turned to face him.
“So, what is it, Duke? Do you love me?”
When he lowered his chin to his chest and laughed, she wanted to step into his arms and kiss him for all time, no matter what the future held, if this was all temporary–she wanted to kiss him and hear him tell her that it was forever–even if it was a lie.
“Yes,”
he told her and nodded.
“I love you.”
His voice…no, no, his words…she didn’t know.
It all made her blood warm and her bones tremble.
Should she tell him she loved him? What did she know of love?
“Ben–”
He pulled her against him and dipped his mouth to hers.
His lips and tongue gently coaxed her lips open.
His arms closed tighter, pressing her against him.
She could feel his breath, hear him breathing her in.
His strength covered her, consumed her.
Nothing in her life ever made her feel so safe.
She fit into the hollows and hills of his lean body as if she was born to be there. And, oh, but he smelled good, like dew covered grass and a hint of sandalwood. He filled her senses and tempted her to give up her defenses and go all in with him.
But wouldn’t it be worse to have it all with him and then lose it?
Could she step away from the delectable cushion of his lips while they caressed her and molded to her? Could she stop the tremor he caused along her spine, the promises she wanted to cry out? She would never leave him or cause him harm.
I love you, Ben.
I love you.
I’ll always love you.
Even if she lost it all later, she wanted this with him–whatever it was–now.
She ran her fingers through his raven hair and traced her fingertips down his jaw, exploring him, knowing him.
Was he real? Oh, please, God, please, let him be real.
He slid his hand down her back and ran his palm over the curve of her backside.
“Did I tell you how pleasing you look in this uniform?”
Having never been held and kissed so passionately before, she wasn’t really sure what else to do…so she followed his lead, noting that his ass was almost as hard as the rest of him.
“You look pleasing too.”
He tilted back his head and laughed, then zeroed in his gaze on hers.
“You’re bold and scandalous,”
he accused with a curious arch of his brow.
“Will you do whatever I do?”
When she laughed merrily, still in his arms, he leaned down and kissed her again.
When he withdrew, his gaze as hooded as hers, she leaned up on the tips of her toes, curled her arms around his neck, tilted her head, and kissed him.
Finally, with a deep little growl, he released her.
“Go, change into your gown,”
he ground out.
“I’ll wait here and change when you’re done.”
What happened? Was something wrong? “Ben–”
“Fable, my…protective cup is beginning to pain me.”
She threw her hands to her mouth, stared at him for a second, and then burst into laughter.
A second after that, they were laughing together.
Fable didn’t think anything of the duke’s odd behavior.
To her, there was nothing odd about him.
He was a stern captain at times, but he was also compassionate and lighthearted at other times.
Like everyone else, he wasn't the same all the time.
Nothing odd about that.
His Grace the Duke of Colchester was perfect.
But the two guardsmen entering the fencing room to practice–soldiers who had fought under the captain of the King’s Royal Army and knew him well, were quite stunned to see their captain laughing.
#
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”
Though he kept his tone low from where he was sitting opposite of her on the floor of his study, the duke’s strong voice reverberated through Fable’s blood.
“You try.”
He held the book of poems by William Shakespeare and pointed to the words.
“Shhhhh-ahh-lll.”
She nodded, remembering the next, one-lettered word.
“Shall I…”
“Very good,”
he whispered through a smile and pointed to the next word.
“Cc-omm-ppp–”
She couldn’t help but smile at the way his lips pursed to pronounce the p sound.
She wanted to kiss again.
– “aa-rrrre. Compare.”
She repeated the word then fixed her gaze on his face in the soft light of the hearthfire and the dozen or so candles lit inside his study.
There was furniture; a desk and chair, two larger, mahogany chairs with carved legs and arms, and upholstered in velvet, and an uncomfortable looking sofa.
She liked sitting on the floor with him.
He was slouchy and flexible, and incredibly sensual.
Twice, she had to stop herself from climbing into his lap and kissing him.
“Good,”
he encouraged.
“So, shall I compare thee–”
his Adam's Apple jumped up and down and his meaningful gaze poured into her– “to a summer’s day?”
She blushed, suddenly feeling like he was no longer reading.
“Thou art more lovely and more temperate,”
he continued and slid closer to her.
She smiled at him, emboldening him closer still.
She thought…hoped he was moving in to kiss her, but though, at one point, he was teasingly close enough to do it, he only skirted around her to sit behind her, his back against the wall, his breath against her nape.
He sat close, his long legs spread out on either side of her, and held the open book before her.
“Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,”
he recited against her ear.
“And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.”
“Too short a date,”
she repeated.
“That’s very sad.
Summer is only here for a short time.”
He put the book down and closed his arms around her from behind.
“But it returns,”
he pointed out, resting his chin on her shoulder.
She smiled, liking his optimistic outlook.
She didn’t remind him that one must get through the winter to welcome summer again.
She leaned her back against his chest and felt his heart beating against her ribs.
She sighed, sounding more like Desdemona when she purred in the sun.
“Let’s enjoy the summer while it's here.”
He was quiet for a little while, just sitting with her, holding her.
What was he thinking about? Was he as happy and content as she? She covered his hands that were folded on her belly.
“Fable.”
She closed her eyes and drank in the way her name sounded on his lips. “Hmm?”
“Do you intend on returning to your century?”
She opened her eyes.
Is this what had made him quiet? He didn’t let her go when she turned to face him.
“I don’t intend on it. No.”
Looking into his eyes while they searched around in the darkness of–as they say–the windows of his soul, she knew she would be happy to stay with him until her last breath.
She hoped he saw it burning like a blazing fire within her.
When his features relaxed into a warm smile, she knew he did.
“How come you never ask me about the future…or the man chasing me?”
“You were homeless.
The future sounds no different than today.
As for the man chasing you, the thought of him enrages me.
But I haven’t forgotten him.
After years of patrolling, my men know the people of the city, as well as some of the surrounding countryside of Colchester.
They are searching for a stranger traveling alone, fitting the description you gave me.
The people of the city are also reporting anyone suspicious to my men. Is there anything else you want to tell me about him? You said he appeared out of nowhere? Tell me about that.”
She had to shake her head a little to clear it from the spell he’d put her under with the lull of his deep, soft voice, his lips pouting around some words and dancing over others.
His tongue teased, peeking out from in between his pearly teeth and shapely lips.
He knew it lured and tempted, and he liked it.
She could see it in his eyes.
She could see everything in his eyes.
“I…”
She pulled herself together and began again.
“I had been trying to get some sleep and the street started shaking like an earthquake was happening.
Everything looked wavy for a second or two, and then he was there.
Just like that.”
“You were trying to sleep on the street?”
“What? Yes, that’s where I slept every night, Ben.
Though I believed one day I’d get my own place.”
“A place with fifty-seven rooms,”
he said and traced his finger over her temple to her jaw.
“Fifty-seven?”
she asked with a quiet laugh.
“I didn’t see them all on Stephen’s tour.
But besides that, I didn’t mean this house.”
His smile faded.
“Why not?”
“What do you mean ‘why not?’ This isn’t my house.”
“If you live here, is it not your house?”
She laughed again and half-turned so that she leaned more into the crook of his left shoulder than against his chest.
She did this because she couldn’t think straight while looking at him when he spoke.
She wasn’t used to this kind of attention from this kind of man.
“Whether I’m here as a guest or a servant,”
she said, snuggling against him, “it doesn’t make this my house.”
“Living here as my wife would.”
Her heart flipped into her throat.
She tilted her head and looked at him.
“Ben, marriage is pretty serious.
We’ve known each other for such a short time–”
“What do I care about time?”
He pulled her in to face him again.
“You make me forget who I was and question who I want to be.
I only know that while I find out, I want you with me, at my side.
You’ve awakened me, Fable.
I’ve never felt for anyone what I feel for you.
I’ll never feel it toward anyone else.
My heart is lost to you, so what do I care how long I’ve known you? I want to keep knowing you for the rest of my life.”
She didn’t know how to react to those kinds of words.
Her eyes burned and she did nothing to stop her tears from forming.
“Do you mean that?”
He nodded, staring into her eyes.
“It’s hard for me to believe someone’s words,”
she told him.
“No matter how nice they are to hear.”
“I know.”
He tightened his tender hold and lowered his face to hers.
“Believe this.”
It was almost a plea as his eyes dipped to her mouth and his lips parted.
His kiss was tender, curious, and meaningful enough to make her tears fall.
He withdrew, hovering over her and spread his thumbs under her eyes to wipe her tears.
He waited until she wrapped her arms around his neck and then he returned to kissing her.
The more his lips molded to her, caressed her, the more steamy her thoughts were becoming.
Her body responded.
Her breasts felt full. Her nipples were tightening, and something burned below her navel and made her want to move her legs.
Her position between his thighs made it easy to feel him getting hard.
Her first instinct was to get up and run! She knew about sex and what it entailed.
Many nights, as she lay awake in the park with her mother, she heard others doing ‘it’.
‘It’ usually included a drunken guy in a minute round of humping the woman beneath him before he came and it was over.
She’d often heard her mother’s girlfriends talking about it.
Would it be like that with her duke?
If his long, slow and sensual kisses were any indication, the answer was a resounding no.
When he bent over her, arching her back so he could kiss her throat, she was tempted to spread her legs and climb on him.
What would he think of her if she did it?
He kept kissing her, getting harder beneath her.
She was glad she’d only worn her nightdress and chemise to bed and moved up over him, fitting him against her warm niche.
The instant he felt it, he turned his body over hers, pinning her to the floor.
His mouth had grown hungry–or had it always been hungry and he’d contained it, having no time for such trivial things as love?
She smiled against his teeth, knowing by the tender heat in his gaze and the passion in his kiss what he felt for her.
She couldn’t help but rub herself over him.
It felt instinctual, and primal, irresistibly good.
She thought she might lose herself just from touching him.His fingers left an indelible brand everywhere they traveled over her, undressing her.
When she lay beneath him in nothing but her thin chemise, she wondered with trembling bones if she was really going to do this with him?
She helped him pull his night shirt over his head, then ran her palms down the sinewy muscles in his arms.
He was offering himself to her, and she was doing the same, so grateful for so many past decisions not to use her body to get what she needed.
As she had guessed, he moved and kissed, and touched with slow, deliberate ease.
She could have stopped him at any time, but she didn’t want to stop.
She wanted to devour him–be devoured by him.
She raked her fingernails softly across his flat abdomen and felt him respond between her legs.
He tugged on the laces of his night breeches and yanked them down.
His cock sprang forth like a trumpet announcing this was indeed a man.
Fable closed her eyes and waited for him to stick it in her.
When nothing happened, she opened her eyes.
He was watching her.
“Am I rushing you? If you’re not ready–”
“I’m ready.”
She coiled her arms around his neck and pulled him down to kiss him.
He splayed his palm on the ground then worked her chemise up over her bare belly with his free hand.
He paused for an instant and traced his fingertips over her belly before pushing the chemise up further, over the twin mounds of her breasts, her head, her hands.
Freeing her, he leaned down and tasted her nipple with a few licks first, then gently kneaded her and sucked until she cried out.
She knew she wanted him inside her.
It was almost too shocking for her to consider.
Sex.
Finally, after twenty-six years of holding on to the only thing that was hers, she offered it up to him.
“Don’t doubt me, Fable,”
he commanded in a husky voice.
“I’m going to marry you.”
So many twenty-first century men would think nothing of saying that if it meant they’d get sex.
But she believed Ben was saying it to reassure her.
He wouldn’t leave her when they were done.
She meant something to him.
What they were about to do meant something to him.
“I don’t doubt you,”
she vowed.
His eyes drank in every inch of her face then came to rest on her gaze as he lowered his head to kiss her.
No longer was his kiss patient, curious.
Now he was hungry, and the hunger wanted to be satisfied.
He nibbled her bottom lip and drank her in as if she were an elixir he needed to live.
His deft, broad fingers moved between them and unlaced her drawers.
She yanked them off the rest of the way and kicked them aside.
His naked body covered her like a blanket.
“Do you want to move to the bed?”
She shook her head.
Something about being on the floor felt feral, like his kiss, his teeth, his tongue.
He licked a trail down her chin to her throat and kissed the curve of her jaw, the small hollow between her neck and chest.
Every touch set more of her on fire.
She tunneled her fingers through his hair, over the width of his shoulders.
The heat of his mouth made her legs spread wider.
Nestled between her legs, he moved with sensuous steadiness, rubbing the length of his desire over her, using the heat and heaviness of it to coax her to open further.
“Lady,”
he whispered against her ear, “have I told you that I love you?
She smiled, gazing into his eyes.
She hoped he saw all that she felt for him.
“Your eyes tell me everytime you look at me, Your Grace.”
“Then I shall always look at you,”
he promised and used his knees to spread her wide.
He kept his promise as he gently pushed his way into her.
But then when the searing pain waxed and she broke their gaze and cried out into his shoulder, she felt him sink into her.
Not just inside her, but everywhere.
Had he fallen asleep? “Ben?”
When he lifted himself up on his elbows, he looked like something completely different than a doe-eyed duke with the elegance of a prince.
His eyes appeared darker, glassy, as if he–
“Are you crying?”
“Not anymore,”
he said, looking down at her.
He moved himself deeper into her.
She ran her hands down his back and fought through the pain.
“Tell me why you were crying.
Don’t hide anything from me.”
He stared into her eyes and she understood what he was telling her.
“I was overcome with feelings for you,”
he confessed tenderly while he broke through completely.
He stopped moving, giving her time to relax.
She was thankful for it.
“Have I told you that I love you?”
she asked softly and began moving under him.
He closed his eyes and bit his lip then opened them with a smile on her.
“Your kiss has told me.”
She laughed softly and then found herself shockingly smiling at how he was making her feel.
When he stretched upward above her and he panted like some wounded beast, Fable watched him release himself full-force into her.
For an instant, pure, unadulterated delight swept through her, and her eyes opened wider and the blood drained from her face.
“What is it?”
he asked, falling onto his back.
“What if I get pregnant?”
“So?”
he chuckled.
“It won’t be the last time.”
“Ben.”
She gave him a little pinch in the side.
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
“I don’t know how to be a mother.
I had a terrible role model.
I don’t know anything about babies.”
“I think you and I were meant to learn to do things together,”
he let her know, leaning over to give her a reassuring kiss.
She smiled.
That was a nice way to look at it.
But– “What about your sister?”
“She’ll come around,”
he told her.
“Let’s not speak of this now, hmm?”
He silenced her with a kiss that sizzled her nerve-endings.
“Let’s not speak of anything at all,”
she purred and straddled him.
She giggled at her own boldness, then leaned down and kissed the lips that were waiting for her.