Chapter 10
Dorian dragged a hand through his hair. If she was as prudish as he suspected she was, he’d probably shocked her half to death by the words brimming on the tip of his tongue.
What proper lady could accept his dark, insatiable appetites, or his irritability and devilish temper?
What sweet little virgin could put up with that?
It took a certain combination of emotions to spur Dorian to drink—and seeing Ellie in those strips of nothing had not only sent a lightning bolt of lust through him, but it had also made him consider the very thing he shouldn’t; namely, the wedding night; the night he had assured Ellie she would pass untouched.
Now, all he could think was of her body, slick with a sheen of sweat, her hair tousled on the pillow, and her eyes rife with lust.
“Where the bloody hell is that bottle of wine?” He muttered to himself, tugging the cupboard in his rooms open. “I am sure I’d placed it in here… somewhere.”
He found a bottle of American peach brandy and decided it was better than nothing. Shucking his jacket, plucking off his cufflinks and nearly ripping the cravat away, Dorian poured the whole snifter glass and swallowed it in one gulp.
His erection, that randy beast, was already peaking with interest. He was no stranger to lustful thoughts, but what was foreign to him was wanting to keep Ellie pure, even while every other sense begged him to rip those slivers of nothing from her body and plant his mouth all over her skin.
He swelled with pent-up need. His length was harder than a fire iron— Christ, from just a glimpse of Ellie in her unmentionables.
Throwing back a mouthful, he savored the burn. It was probably not the best thing to get foxed on the eve of his wedding, nor was it any way proper to go seek bed company for his last night as a free man.
He eyed the door.
Judging from the throbbing state of his erection, he wouldn’t need more than five minutes at most. Despite years of honing his control to prioritize his ambition before his sexual needs, these past five months had been the longest time he’d gone without sex for as long as he could recall.
Maybe releasing his aching erection would satiate him.
He lay back and undid the fall of his trousers; he couldn’t recall the last time he’d pleasured himself—why stay alone when he was spoiled for choice with company?
If he closed his eyes, he could almost imagine Evelina’s slender white fingers circling him. He could almost see her widened eyes and feel her nervous breath skittering out of her parted lips as his lips trailed down her belly.
“Dorian… Dorian, God…”
“—What is wrong with you?” a sharp voice, a sharp female voice jarred him out of the reverie he was in, and when he realized that Evelina’s voice was not in his mind, but in his ear, he calmly covered himself.
“Please,” he reached for his drink, his drawl sarcastic. “Enter at your leisure. Make yourself comfortable, why don’t you?”
Evelina was covered from head to toe; she had added layers to make up for the ones he had seen her without. “What in heaven's name is wrong with you? W-why would you do something like that? To come in while I was n-n-naked. Do you not have a shred of decency about you?”
“No,” Dorian took a full mouthful. “I cannot say I have been accused of that.”
“Clearly,” she flung her hands up in frustration. “I am at a loss as to why I have agreed to this sham marriage at all, knowing that I may be a candidate for bedlam at the end of it.”
He snorted. “If you haven’t lost your head before, why would you now?”
“My aunt and uncle were a fraction as frustrating as you are,” she huffed.
“In the balance of things, I have the upper hand on frustration here,” Dorian drawled dryly, still feeling himself throb under his flap.
She rolled her eyes. “What on earth are you talking about now?”
He threw his head back and laughed, unable to find another reaction. She was so innocent, so pure; a part of him felt tainted just being in her vicinity. And why in God’s name did he think she was adorable when he knew, for a fact, that she was the most frustrating female he’d ever met?
“If I tell you, you will collapse,” he said, reaching for the bottle and splashing another drink into the glass.
“You are drinking?” She didn’t hide her disapproval. “Why would you imbibe at this critical juncture?”
“I can hold my spirits,” he said curtly.
She turned mutinous. Crossing her arms over her chest, she glared. “Tell me why you barged into my room like a troglodyte.”
“No.”
“Try me.”
He was on his feet in the next breath, advanced quickly, and had her back pressed against the wall. He planted both palms on either side of her shoulders, trapping her. In the next instant, after a frantic gleam of his eyes… his lips were upon hers.
Like the ripple in the air before a thunderstorm, charged awareness crackled over her, lifting gooseflesh from her skin and the soft hairs on the back of her neck.
His kiss—her third with him—was a shock and a revelation at once. In the steamy darkness, his hard, firm lips ignited a dormant need. Ellie felt paralyzed.
Everything around her faded, but he ground her; his scent, his body, his pressing closeness. The butterflies swarming in her belly were beating up a storm under her breastbone.
“Open for me,” he whispered. “Let me in.”
Somewhere in the far recesses of her mind, she realized that her lips were clamped shut. Senses spinning, she obeyed his order, and his tongue plunged boldly inside.
His kiss swept over her like an inferno, sucking the air from her lungs; in some distant part of her mind, she knew she ought to be struggling, protesting… but the protest died.
Curiosity and craving rolled into one, and an intrinsic yearning surged from the deepest recesses of her being. Instinct took over, all thoughts abandoning her, save one.
More.
A desperate moan escaped her, and he swallowed the sound.
Tilting her head back, and then the kiss caught fire. Senses aflame, she felt the hot, invading thrust of his tongue, and she answered naturally with a parry of her own—as unsophisticated as it was.
A low growl rumbled from him, he might not even care.
Their tongues twisted and twined, the slippery slide releasing a rush through her skin, pulling pinpricks of pleasure spreading through her body.
Hunger for something she could not quite place came roaring to life inside her, and the feeling was astonishing.
He lifted her against the wall, and she felt his thigh boldly insinuating between her legs. Her neck arched as his lips moved over and down her cheek to titillate her throat, licking her tender skin and working his way down to her pulse point.
Her woman’s place was throbbing, aching, shockingly wet, and the heat of that thickly muscled ridge between her legs burned through the layers of her petticoats. He groaned, and she slid her fingers into his thick hair, holding him in place so he could suckle.
“Does that answer your question?” The raw hunger in his voice mesmerized her as he stepped away to sweep the glass from the table.
His back was turned to her, the muscles of his shoulders flexing as he threw the rest of the drink down. Ellie was glad the wall was at her back as she doubted she could stand firmly—certainly not after that.
“We need to be at the church tomorrow at nine,” he called over his shoulder. “We cannot afford to be late.”
The air of confusion amongst the crème-de-le-crème of ton and members of the Royal Family—who had been invited, of course—seated in St George’s Chapel, almost made Dorian smile.
When one was a Duke, getting the best of the best was a given.
All of them had come in their finery, filling the pews with a sort of obsessed curiosity.
None of the guests knew why they were there, as was the intention of his vaguely worded invitation, especially the two sets of guests he wanted to perturb the most.
Sterling was seated in the front row, the gold buttons of his blue waistcoat stood stark against his charcoal grey trousers.
Behind him were the Langfords—Evelina’s aunt and uncle stood out like a sore thumb.
It did not help that the lady wore a plumed headdress, the peacock feathers reaching up a foot high.
Not even Nathan or Drake seemed to have an idea about what was happening—good.
“You do know he is going to put a target on your back for this,” Roderick said while he fixed Dorian’s suit.
“Adding to the other targets already on my back?” Dorian scoffed, tugging his jacket. “To this day, he’s done nothing.”
“But with this,” his valet nodded. “You want him to.”
“If nothing before had pushed him, this will,” Dorian murmured. “I need him to make mistakes.”
After much deliberation, he’d asked Roderick to escort Evelina down the aisle, and when he saw the organist take her place, he’d nodded to his valet.
“Let the show begin.”
“And the cards fall how they may.” Roderick ducked out of the nook and headed down the corridor that skirted the main room and took him to the back of the church.
An organ began playing a hymn, filling the massive dome with beautiful wedding music, which was his cue to turn and step out of the room and head to the altar.
When the guests realized that they were attending a wedding, the whole atmosphere changed.
The cathedral doors opened, and he spotted Evelina on Roderick’s arm; the thick veil that cascaded over her hid her face well. He held back a preemptive smile when she came to stand before him.
The gown hugged her like a glove, the silk shimmered like a diamond under the soft light; god, she looked exquisite. Dorian’s breath hitched in his throat; she was a stunning female, a creature of moonlight and water, too beautiful to be real.
He dimly heard frantic whispers from the guests, he could guess they were all speculating who they thought was under that veil.
His hearing turned selective and only heard the few orders that made sense to him; when he heard to remove the veil, he did so gently, fingering the fine lace, before bringing it up and over. The moment her face was revealed, gasps, raging from horrified to shocked and aghast, ran through the room.
Cold, unadulterated fury rippled over Sterling’s face, and Nathan’s mouth dropped. Dorian didn’t spare a look at the Langfords, but his gut told him they were not pleased.
Evelina’s lashes swept up, and he found himself immobile, her lustrous, wavy hair threaded with gilded leaves, her complexion as dewy as a snowdrop at dawn.
She lifted her chin, facing him, and she gave him the strangest of looks. There was a bit of a dare to that look, as if she was still waiting to see if he would truly go on with this.
He let his gaze wander down to her tart lips. Lips which had been far sweeter to the taste than he’d expected. When she’d visited him in his quarters last night, it had sparked a flame in him that he had long thought buried.
Despite the onlooking peers and the bishop waiting to wed them, he remembered the taste of her, the innocence, the wetness, the passion.
And he wanted to kiss her again. No. Not wanted. Needed. He hungered for her like a man who had not eaten in days. Bloody hell, it was going to be hell living in the same house with her, keeping her at a distance. But keep her at a distance, he would.
“The ring, Your Grace,” the bishop asked.
Dorian reached for his ring. The slate, unadorned gold ring Evelina had just placed on his hand winked in the sunlight. The ring he produced had a bracket like a lily’s plume, the centerpiece a faceted diamond.
“I, Dorian Alexander Beaumont, do take thee, Evelina Rosalind Frampton, to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness or in health, to love and to cherish …”
He slid it on her finger. “…And now that I have at last found you, woe to anyone who tries to take you from me.”
She whispered, “Isn’t the vow till death do us part, according to God's holy ordinance; thereto I plight thee my troth?”
“That too,” he held her hand tight.
The bishop placed both of his hands upon theirs together. “Those whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder. I pronounce you husband and wife.”