Chapter 3
At first, Lucy wasn’t sure that she’d heard the duke correctly. This standoffish man seemed to have been possessed by a spirit that had rendered him something of a rake.
A gentleman didn’t stand this way — towering, intimidating.
For a moment, genuine fear flickered through her.
She was alone with a man who could overpower her if he chose.
But then she looked at his face and saw the uncertainty in his eyes, the tightness around his mouth that suggested he was far more uncomfortable than she was.
This wasn’t a rake’s confidence. This was a desperate man playing a role.
“What are you waiting for? Hoping to discover a hidden truth?” he bellowed.
Lucy had spent a sleepless night considering her options.
The engagement was inevitable; Mrs. Easterling had made that clear.
So the question wasn’t whether she’d marry the duke, but what kind of marriage it would be.
If he truly was a cold, officious bore, she’d be miserable.
But if there was passion beneath that rigid exterior…
. She’d read enough to know that physical pleasure could make even a loveless marriage bearable.
Time to find out what type of husband fate had handed her.
She glanced at what seemed to be the outline of his person in his pantaloons; the tailoring skimming his slim hips and suggesting a hint of his manhood.
Lucy had always been curious to a fault.
It was what had driven her to forbidden books, to midnight explorations of locked libraries, to studying subjects deemed inappropriate for ladies.
And now, curiosity warred with self-preservation.
The duke was clearly trying to alarm her.
The question was: would she let him? Or would she finally get answers to questions she’d pondered for years?
Her mouth watered. Here, in this most unlikely of places, in this most unlikely of situations, was a wonderful opportunity to assuage her thirst for knowledge and see a man at last. A bare man, in all his glory.
His hand had been warm against her cheek.
She’d never been touched so intimately before.
It should have frightened her. And it did frighten her!
But beneath the fear was something else.
A flutter in her stomach. A flush of heat.
It was what her books had described. Desire.
And apparently, her traitorous body desired this ill-tempered duke.
And if this encounter sent him into an apoplexy and he, say, expired on the spot or fled in his carriage instead of dragging her into a disastrous marriage, she would be delighted.
So she set a hand to the front of his falls, right on the silver buttons he’d wanted her to polish.
It was a bold move, possibly a stupid one.
If he truly was the kind of man who’d force himself on her, she’d just invited him to pounce.
But Lucy had always trusted her instincts.
And her instincts said this duke was all bluster.
She was rather more adept at divesting a man of his pantaloons than she’d expected. His falls came down most efficiently, and she discovered the next stage of her trials: his smallclothes.
She’d seen illustrations of them before, in those French plates kept in locked drawers, and once, memorably, in a copy of The Blushes of Belinda; OR, An Account of Certain Errors Committed After Tea that a fellow young lady had smuggled to a house party.
At last, knowledge of a real manhood was but inches away.
Her hands trembled slightly. Years of wondering, imagining, reading.
Now the moment was here. She gently tugged at the fabric to pull it down.
The anatomical drawings had been detailed, but Lucy realized now that ink on paper couldn’t capture the reality of warm skin and responsive flesh.
“Oh, what, oh!” cried Cockesbrayne, his hand coming to the top of her head as if to steady himself on her seated form.
“Fear not, Your Grace,” she said, watching his undergarments slip lower with rapt attention. “I’ll polish your silver.”
He began to speak, but when the head of his definitely interested cock emerged from the waistband, he let out something resembling a whine.
Lucy patted his thigh. “There now, I’ll look after it,” she said, leaning forward to study the thing more closely.
He had a lovely cock, from what she could tell. It resembled the artistic sketches in the pornographic plates she had studied; the head flushed deep pink, a bead of moisture at the tip. If she wasn’t mistaken, this was the only part of His Grace that was in any way agreeable!
Although the hand in her hair certainly had some appeal. The touch was firm but not rough, guiding but not forcing. When he pressed her incrementally forward, Lucy took the hint and gave the head of the duke’s cock a sweet kiss.
“Oh dear,” he moaned, his hand tightening in her fashionable hairstyle. The sound was vulnerable, almost helpless. Lucy felt a rush of tenderness she hadn’t expected. This supposedly domineering duke was trembling under her power.
Lucy shimmied his smalls down further, revealing his full length and neat nest of hair at the base. She laid the backs of her fingers on his shaft and petted it admiringly. The skin was velvety and hot.
“Miss Ninepence!” he gasped, as if he didn’t experience such ministrations on all days including Sunday. He was a duke, after all, and Lucy doubted that the ladies of the town would deny a man with coin his release! Even one as disagreeable as Cockesbrayne.
Yet Lucy felt a surge of power. She — mere Miss Ninepence of Manchester — had reduced a duke to gasping. This was heady indeed.
Lucy released him, fascinated by the way his foreskin moved over the head when she slid it. But when she brought it up and down experimentally, the duke groaned and grasped her hair, gently guiding her mouth back to him.
“Do you want to be a duchess, Miss Ninepence?” he asked, his voice raspy. The poor man would need some honey in his tea, she thought.
For her part, Lucy was bewitched by the working of a penis and thoughtlessly answered, “Not particularly,” before realizing that so much honesty was perhaps unwise.
Until she heard the man’s offer.
“Very well. I will solve the problem of our forced engagement if…”
She pulled her gaze from his astonishingly handsome cock.
“If you put it in your mouth,” he said, his chest expanding suddenly as he took in a breath. “I’ll do anything, cry off, whatever you want, if you simply—”
Never let it be said that dukes couldn’t be generous! Lucy unhesitatingly leaned forward and slipped the head of his cock between her lips.
Now, this was the part she was unsure about, given that the plates in pornographic books did not move. She looked to the duke for direction.
Not that he was much help right now. He was looking down at her with what seemed like fear on his face, the flesh of one hand clamped in his teeth.
Lucy realized she hadn’t properly assessed the taste. This would only be an informative experience if she kept her wits about her! She moved her tongue against his shaft, then his head, and undertook to swallow as best as possible.
She wasn’t sure that she liked the unfamiliar flavor at first, but when he pushed his hips forward as if by instinct, she found that the musky essence was precisely what this moment needed.
“Oh, Miss Ninepence, you are a marvel,” whispered the duke, seemingly fighting tears.
Lucy paused. Was he actually... emotional? She’d expected physical pleasure to manifest as satisfaction, perhaps pride. But he sounded overwhelmed. Almost vulnerable. She felt an unexpected surge of protectiveness toward this difficult, awkward man.
Given the position in which they found themselves, she thought it best to establish a less formal relationship.
Lucy released him briefly, a string of saliva connecting her lips to his cock. “Do call me Lucy,” she said, then took him back in before he could respond.
The duke made a noise that sounded like choking while also crying. Lucy hoped he wasn’t coming down with an ailment; she didn’t particularly care about his health, but she’d rather not get sick.
“Peter,” he whispered.
When Lucy hummed her understanding, she had no way of knowing what it would set off. Had she known, would she have responded differently?
The vibration traveled through her mouth to his cock, and she felt his whole body tense. But what surprised Lucy more was her own response. There was heat between her thighs, tightness in her belly. Lucy had expected intellectual satisfaction. She hadn’t expected desire.
The duke seemed to go rigid in an instant, his cock sliding further forward into Lucy’s mouth.
The sudden thrust made her gag, throat contracting around him.
She pulled back instinctively, then relaxed her jaw and tried again, finding a depth she could manage.
So this was what the books meant by “accommodating him.”
“Miss Ninepence, Lucy, oh no, I—oh, forgive me—” Peter wailed.
And then Lucy experienced something she’d only ever seen described euphemistically: His Grace released spend into her mouth.
The taste was strange: salty and bitter.
Lucy closed her eyes and sucked, not wanting the man to suffer ill-effects from any pent-up seed he didn’t release.
Part of her was still cataloguing sensations like an excellent student.
But another part felt oddly proud. She’d done this.
She’d brought a duke to completion. The power was intoxicating.
Lucy rather found that she liked this act. Enjoyed causing this stuffy lord to transform simply through the application of her mouth. She should thank him before he executed their plan of forgoing an engagement and marriage.
Peter’s hands had roved through her hair as she worked, pulling pins loose in his pleasure. She didn’t mind; she was too focused on the taste and heat, the sounds he was making.
And then she discovered a problem. When she tried to sit back, a sharp tug at her scalp stopped her. She reached up and felt the issue: in his distraction, Peter had tangled several strands of her hair around the silver buttons on his falls. The loops had tightened as they moved.
Lucy released Lord Cockesbrayne’s manhood from her mouth when she was sure he’d spent his last. “Lord…Peter,” she said, “I’m afraid I ended up snarled. Help me free my hair, won’t you?”
He looked down dazedly and then snapped into action.
“Oh dear,” he said, unwinding her hair with far more care than she’d expected of him.
“This is rather like a spot of drizzling,” he murmured, carefully separating each strand.
“You know, parfilage — removing precious threads from old tapestries. Requires a delicate touch. Mustn’t rush. ”
Lucy might have laughed if her mane weren’t attached to his trousers.
“Do you enjoy—“
Before Lucy could confirm that the duke also enjoyed the fiber arts, the door to the sitting room swung open.
“We heard your exclamation of joy, and I hoped we might celebrate your news,” trilled Mrs. Easterling from the door, a phalanx of servants behind her bearing the tea things.
Lucy’s head jerked back instinctively, but some of her locks were still caught on the buttons.
Her hair pulled painfully when she and Peter tried to move away from each other, making her whimper.
For his part, the duke’s pantaloons were open, his falls down, and his softened cock rested scant inches from Lucy’s mouth. They were well and truly trapped.
One teacup went crashing to the floor as a servant reacted in shock. A footman gasped.
When confronted with this latest scandal, Mrs. Easterling merely slammed the door to the sitting room to limit the number of people who could see Lucy’s disgrace. But the damage was done.
Lucy looked up and met Peter’s eyes. His face had gone pale; his expression stricken. For a moment’s curiosity and pleasure, they’d sealed their fates.
This time, there was simply no way to avoid a trip to the altar.