Chapter Forty-Three
Even as the duke strode to her, she ran to the duke.
Their bodies met, and it wasn’t enough. Her hands on the duke’s chest, the duke’s gloved hands on her bare upper arms. The duke pushed one of Celine’s long gloves down and desperately kissed the inside of her elbow. She curled her arm around the duke’s head.
The duke began kissing her chest—passionate, gasping kisses down to the edge of her bodice, as though seeking the soft dream of her breasts. The duke gave a tug and she stepped away.
“If you take any part of me out of this dress it’s not going back in,” she said. “Let me—”
She pushed the duke back against the door and then sank slowly to her knees, all the mirrors and silver on her skirt tinkling as it settled around her. Like a princess curtseying before her sovereign: profane and needy.
“My love,” the duke breathed. “My own.” Behind a fall of hair her eyes were blown, the sharp, devastating angles of her face flushed. The god of Celine’s universe, undone. The duke cupped Celine’s face and brushed a gentle thumb over her cheek.
Celine closed her eyes and shuddered. The ecstasy of being touched by this woman.
The duke swore and began to unbutton her breeches, but Celine batted her hand away and took over.
The truth was, she would let the duke strip her naked and carry her through the ballroom afterwards so everyone could see her ruined, let the consequences be what they may.
The truth was, she wanted this; she needed to get her mouth on the duke again more than she needed to breathe.
She fumbled the buttons, her hands trembling. She had left resistance behind, and desire overwhelmed her.
When at last the fall of the breeches gave way, she pressed greedily forward, and when her mouth met fat, slick flesh, she groaned long and low through her chest. She took the duke into her mouth. At last, at last.
Hands closed around her head, warm and strong.
Her mouth was full and her tongue—that cocksure sensualist—met wet with wet, slick with slick, caressing and caressed. She moaned and pushed in closer, opening her mouth wider, taking more.
The duke’s hands moved insistently up her neck, around her head, holding Celine to her. The duke sank back against the door, her legs falling wider apart. Cursing, crooning, shaking.
The duke’s heavy arousal covered Celine’s tongue, her mouth. Even as she had the duke in her mouth, she wanted it again, and again, and again, an unrelenting physical ache that wouldn’t be satisfied by anything but this.
“Celine,” the duke said. “Celine.”
It scraped over her skin, the duke’s unarmed voice. Surprise, and pain, and a lifetime of unanswered desire.
Saying her name.
Saying it over and over like she was summoning her. Binding her.
Like she would never, ever let her go.
She kept her mouth on the duke even after the duke came—Celine, Celine—giving deep, possessive kisses. The duke had to push her head aside to dislodge her.
The duke slid down the door and came to rest sitting on the floor.
It brought their faces even with one another, and for once, Celine just looked at her.
For as long as she liked. She watched her irises slowly contract so that her eyes became pearlescent again.
Watched her sober, her thinking mind returning, and all of it turned on her.
She felt a fearful premonition that in this naked moment, the duke would ask the direct question.
But the duke came slowly forward and, never breaking eye contact, lifted Celine’s chin and licked it. Broad, hot sweeps of the duke’s tongue cleaning her chin, encompassing her greedy lips.
When the kiss came, it was soft, but somehow annihilating. As though the duke had held herself separate from Celine for as long as she possibly could and, with grim endurance, even past it. As though she could no longer be separate.
Neither of them closed their eyes. Celine met and held the duke’s gaze—glanced off and came back—as they made the intimate attempt to merge. Something deep within her began to unwind.
The duke pulled back with a gasp, then brought her forehead to Celine’s again. “I need to make you come,” she growled, “and then I need to make you my wife.” Celine said nothing.
The duke stood and buttoned her breeches, then put out her hand. “We’re going home. Now.”
“We can’t go home,” Celine said, scandalised. “I’m the guest of honour at the Demi Lux.”
Tall, autocratic, and flushed with arousal, the duke glowered down at her. “You can go willingly,” the duke said, “or you can go over my shoulder. I will not wait another minute to have you.”
She couldn’t see a way around it. She didn’t want a way around it.
“Then perhaps the excitement has made me faint,” she said with a conspiratorial wink, yelping when the duke scooped her up off the floor.
Her heart beat and swooned, and she snuggled contentedly into the duke’s arms, closing her eyes as though unconscious.
“Don’t say anything about my engagement,” she murmured.
It was the last, necessary precaution. “It will only spawn a thousand questions that will delay our departure.”
The duke gathered her close and pressed a searing kiss to her mouth. “Not a word of our engagement shall pass my lips,” the duke swore, “until tomorrow.”
Celine didn’t correct her.