Chapter 17
CHAPTER 17
“ W ell, it appears that you are at a disadvantage, My Lady,” the Duke drawled, whisking her queen off the board before sitting back in his chair, gazing at her with a satisfied expression on his face. “The last of your garments. If you please.”
Maddie trembled beneath the jacket he had placed around her shoulders. Her stays were long gone, taken along with another one of her bishops. And now, her one and only queen was gone as well.
She really should have thought this through more carefully when she agreed to this dangerous game.
Her heart was pounding so hard that it was all that she could hear in the quiet room. If she removed her chemise—the very last garment that covered her skin, apart from his jacket—then she would be entirely naked before him.
Run . Get up and run out that door as quickly as your feet can carry you!
She took a deep breath, trying to stay levelheaded. She couldn’t just obey the instinct to flee and scurry through the dark hallways clutching her clothing, looking like this. She would have to painstakingly dress before she did anything.
Anyone might see her in this state of undress, and then she would be in the midst of a scandal… and she was here expressly to get her list back, so she wouldn’t be embroiled in scandal.
The Duke coughed. “My Lady?” He picked up her queen, waving it in the air as if it were a trophy. “I am waiting.”
Maddie glared at him. She was very irritated with him, but also so very aroused by the game they had been playing. The game within a game. Seeing his arousal as she shed her undergarments, one by one, was intoxicating. For the first time, she realized the small power she held over him. But it was more than that—she wanted to see his admiration as her body was slowly revealed to him, to hear his sharp intake of breath, to witness the fire darkening his eyes.
The air was thick with sensual tension. She looked at the queen in his hand. She could barely breathe.
“Very well,” she said, standing up, shrugging his jacket off her shoulders. “I agreed to your terms. And I am a woman of my word.”
She looked him straight in the eye as she shimmied out of her chemise, squaring her shoulders, tossing back her hair, which had fallen loose.
Let him look.
She heard his sharp intake of breath again. The hand still holding her defeated queen gripped the chess piece tighter, his fingers wrapping around it so tightly that his knuckles turned white.
“Oh, yes,” he breathed, his eyes feasting on her body. “You are even more glorious than I imagined. And I have been imagining how you would look like a lot . It’s been all I can think about.”
Maddie felt her nipples stiffen at his words, the longing within them, as he kept gazing at her. She knew she should be ashamed of herself, standing entirely nude before this man. In her wildest dreams, she had never anticipated their dangerous game would go so far.
Quickly, he stood up, crossing the short distance between them. His face contorted with desire. Her senses leaped to life once more. It took all her strength to remain standing before him, to not let herself fall limp into his arms.
He reached out, twisting her hair into his fingers, bringing her face towards his. He was breathing heavily.
“I hope you understand now that you are mine,” he murmured in an anguished whisper. “That your glorious body belongs to me and only me.”
She couldn’t reply. Her voice seemed to have vanished entirely. Her eyes were locked on his as if by a magnetic force. She couldn’t have looked away even if she wanted to.
She sucked in a breath sharply as his head bent, seeking one of her nipples, his fingers tightening in her hair. She felt the sudden warm wetness of his tongue, flickering like a snake, teasing her nipple. A shuddering bolt of desire snaked through her body as he kept suckling, pulling at her, gently at first and then so frantically that she felt like he was going to devour her entirely.
She didn’t know how long they stood there like that, his mouth suckling her nipple, before she felt his arms around her, lowering her to the floor, laying her out in front of the fire so that her hair spilled around her like a halo on the rug.
He was above her, gazing down at her, his eyes narrowed in arousal. His face was flushed. She held her breath as he dipped his head again, assuming that he was seeking her nipple once more, wanting it so badly that she felt as if a firestorm was raging inside her.
But he didn’t linger at her breasts. She felt his mouth trail kisses down her stomach—hot kisses that felt like a brand. His hands trailed lower, gripping her derriere and squeezing it, before slowly opening her legs. To her shock, his head was venturing lower still, to the mound of her dark curls, nipping and kissing her flesh.
Maddie cried out in shocked alarm as she felt his tongue probe her tender, moist flesh. He buried his face between her legs. Her back arched upwards like a cat. Her hands gripped the rug beneath her, her fingers clawing at it helplessly as his tongue flickered against her most intimate place.
She gave a strangled gasp. It felt so amazing, so powerful, that she could barely stand it. And when he started suckling her folds, just like he suckled her nipple, she truly felt as if she might faint right away.
Her head tossed from side to side, and she drew a hand to her mouth, biting hard, to keep herself from screaming with stunned delight. What sweet madness was this? Was it decent?
She had never, ever heard of such a thing!
But the shocked, almost incoherent ramble of her mind was dismissed entirely as sensation started to overwhelm her. She felt as if she were climbing a very high tree, every branch bringing her ever so closer to the top, which she couldn’t see. She felt sweat break out over her entire body. Her body was bucking now, straining against him, yearning for a release that she couldn’t name.
Vaguely, she felt his hands gripping her tighter still as he suckled harder. Suddenly, she swung towards that far-off, high branch, straining and sweating…
It crashed over her, so hard that it was like a thousand stars exploding simultaneously in the sky.
“Oh!” she cried, unable to stop herself, before biting hard on her hand again, to stop herself from screaming aloud.
Her body twisted, shuddering violently, as sweet release coursed through her. It seemed to last forever. In her delirium, she never wanted it to end…
She blinked rapidly. She was descending back to earth. Her hips fell to the ground. His tongue flickered against her again, lazily this time, drawing out the last tremors of her release.
Maddie sighed, her eyelids closing in that delicious aftermath that she well remembered from the night before in his lair. She felt the warmth from the fire against her hot skin. She wanted to curl up and just drift off into a languorous sleep…
She sighed again, feeling his body slide upwards, taking her in his arms so that her back was pressed against his chest. It felt good to rest against him like this. It felt so right being in his arms that she couldn’t imagine it any other way. She was on the verge of drifting off when she felt his hot breath on her skin.
“Happy?” he whispered in her ear.
She couldn’t resist twisting in his arms, her hand snaking through his hair, staring at his face. Oh, how handsome he was. The most handsome man she had ever seen.
“What did you just do to me?” she breathed, her face flushing with color. “Is it decent?”
He laughed, looking delighted. “If it were, would you enjoy it half as much?”
She flushed harder. It was just like him to answer her in such a cryptic fashion. She knew she should probably feel ashamed, but she didn’t. For how could something that gave such strong pleasure be shameful?
I want to do this all the time with him.
The thought came like a lightning bolt to her mind. For some reason, it disturbed her even more than the shocking act he had just performed on her. She started wriggling out of his arms, getting to her feet.
“I need to dress,” she whispered. “I need to go back to my chambers.”
He sighed heavily but didn’t protest, getting to his feet as well.
She slipped on her gown, before scrambling around, gathering her undergarments. She wouldn’t bother trying to get back into them—she could carry them to her room, and she was just going to slip on her nightgown once she was there, anyway. There was no point getting fully dressed again. She would just have to be very careful that she wasn’t seen…
She gasped as he abruptly snatched the garments out of her hands, hiding them behind his back.
“What are you doing?” she hissed. “Give them back!”
He laughed, shaking his head. “No, I will not,” he said, his eyes still smoldering with desire, as well as mirth. “I expect that you will appear exactly as you are now tomorrow morning at the breakfast table.”
“What?” she stammered.
A wicked smile appeared on his face. “So that we can cross two things off that list of yours,” he whispered. “ Learn How To Play Chess was the first we accomplished tonight. And tomorrow morning, we can cross off Walk Around Without Undergarments as well.”
Maddie blushed fiercely. She had forgotten that she had put that on the list.
“It is in your best interest to do so,” he continued in a mock thoughtful tone. “After all, the more that we cross off that list of yours, the closer you are to getting it back.”
She sighed crossly. “Very well! But you must agree to give them back to me as soon as breakfast is over. Otherwise, my lady’s maid will be sure to notice they are missing.”
“Agreed,” he said, his smile widening. He reached out, taking her hand, raising it slowly to his mouth as his eyes pinned her to the spot. “Until tomorrow, My Lady.”
Maddie felt a shudder of pure delight. As she slipped out of the study, closing the door softly behind her, her heart was racing again. He was keeping her on her toes, even if it felt like she was about to fall off a ledge, most of the time.
She made it to her chambers without incident, slipping off her gown and into her nightgown. She was so tired that she didn’t even bother hanging the gown in her wardrobe, just leaving it in a heap on the floor, before crawling into bed. It had been a very long night.
But even though she was exhausted, sleep eluded her. She tossed and turned, pondering the events of the night. It seemed like days ago that she had danced with him, but it was only a few short hours.
So much had happened since then. The scandalous game of chess. The shocking thing he had done to her afterwards, lying in front of the fire, and the earth-shattering release that had swept through her, raging like a wildfire…
Slowly, she sat up in her bed, staring into the darkness, barely able to breathe. There was no doubt of it in her mind any longer.
She was falling in love with the rake who was probably destined to become her sister’s husband.
She gasped. She knew it was ludicrous to feel this way about him. He didn’t even care about her. He had never expressed that he cared about her—not once. And even if he had, there was no future in it, anyway. There couldn’t be. Their mothers were hell-bent on a match between the Duke and Augusta.
It was intolerable. It was impossible. And yet… it was true.
It wasn’t just that he evoked that wild tempest within her that she hadn’t even known existed. It was that she felt she was truly alive with him, in a way that she hadn’t been before. As if she had been walking through her life like a somnambulist before meeting him.
As if she had been waiting for him.
Maddie felt a single tear trickle down her cheek. Her feelings were pointless. Even if he were available to marry her, and actually cared about her enough to commit to her, he was a rake. Could he remain faithful to one woman for the rest of his life? She doubted it.
But it was all useless speculation. He didn’t care about her, and he was going to be maneuvered into marrying her sister, whether he liked it or not. And whether Augusta liked it or not.
Her sister was strangely resigned to the possibility of it, even if she didn’t really want the union. She was at the end of her tether, dealing with their mother. And Maddie could never hurt her sister.
At least I will always have these memories . They will be enough. They simply must be enough… for I will not get anything else.