Chapter 28
The port seared a path to his stomach. Hawk exhaled and pushed the glass away.
If only liquor could scour the day from him.
He had forgotten how it was to spend the dinner in silence, listening to the shuffling footmen and the rasp of his own lungs.
Wherever she was, there was noise—voices and laughter and music…
Soon, she would carry that to another man’s house.
The Duke of Leighton would be responsible for dealing with her comedic whirlwind. Let him. He was done.
The image of her hurt look flashed through his mind, making his chest ache. Didn’t she know it was for her own good? Damn it all to hell.
Her hurt would pass, and she would thank him. He repeated it like soldiers chanted hymns before battle. He clutched the bottle, refilled his glass, and drank in one swallow.
He had emptied half a bottle of port when the door creaked open. Why look up if he knew it was her?
He dragged his gaze up. A mistake. In the trenches, that gesture meant a bullet to the skull.
It felt the same now. Celeste stood before him, dressed in a flimsy tulle concoction that should be banished, hair loose…
untamed, defiant, too damn beautiful. A gut-punching wave of want rendered him speechless.
God help me, not now.
The chair scraped against the wood as he stood. “You will return to your room.”
His pulse juddered in his throat. She had to leave. Before he forgot himself.
Face flushed, she lifted her chin. “Or what? You will sell me to the highest bidder?” Her voice stung like a lash across his skin.
No one challenged him. Not after the hellish afternoon he had passed. Not ever.
“Or I will tan your hide like the spoiled child you are.”
She marched closer. “So you keep threatening me. I dare you to touch my flesh and send me away. Oh, no, but then the duke won’t accept a bride with your markings on her skin.”
“I forbid you to speak like a—”
“A real woman? I’m not a girl, Alexander. I have feelings and desires, and I—”
“You’re acting like a child—sneaking about half-dressed, with no thought for your reputation.”
She flinched, her gaze blurred with unshed tears.
“Leave. Now.”
She spun as if struck. A dull thud followed. When she shifted aside, a book lay on the floor.
Hawk stooped, raised it. “What is this?”
The Merchant of Venus. What was she doing with it? If she were dangerous armed with Shakespeare, she would be deadly with such erotic ammunition.
“Is this where your desires come from?”
She glided closer, catching her lip between her teeth. She ought to be contrite, ashamed. Instead, she laid her hand on the leather cover.
The room was silent except for the slow tick of the mantel clock. Lilac clung faintly in the air, threading through the richer notes of port and smoke.
“There’s a mistress who… touches herself. While her lover watches.”
A current jolted up his spine, flooding low. She couldn’t know what she was saying. His cock strained, unyielding as iron.
He closed the distance, breath ragged as after a charge. There was no snow in his veins—dammit. The moment his fingers seized her wrist, a jolt tore through him—anger, desire, the wild need he’d denied too long.
Firelight flickered in her promise-colored eyes, and for once, he wanted more than to stand guardian, more than to watch like some bloody godfather. He drew her close. Her breath hitched against him—but she didn’t pull away.
“You can play games with puppy suitors, let them crawl at your feet—but I am Alexander de Warenne. And if I will it, not a soul in this kingdom would dare stand between us. Not one.”
He braced one hand on the wall beside her head, the other tilting her chin until she had no choice but to meet his stare.
His thumb skimmed her mouth, then mapped the line of her throat, halting at the frantic beat beneath.
He lowered his mouth until it hovered a breath from hers, his stubble rasping her cheek.
He was closing the distance, poised to claim her. She flattened her palm to his chest, right over the violent thud of his heart.
Hawk stilled.
It wasn’t an army that barred him. It was her. Only her. Her touch was delicate, but it pinned him more surely than a regiment of bayonets.
She didn’t speak. And in the silence, the air thickened between them—dense, suffocating, alive.
Her hand slid lower, gliding over the rigid plane of his chest, down his stomach, and then fell limp at her side.
“I surrender, Alexander,” she whispered.
“You play a dangerous game. You don’t even know the rules.”
She caressed his cheek. “Then show me.”
The last of his restraint shattered. His lips crushed hers, hard, desperate, his kiss tasting of port and hunger and nights of denial. He drove her into the bookshelves, tomes rattling as his weight caged her, his body crushing her softness. She yielded instantly, melting into him.
His hands roved—anchoring her waist, spanning her ribs, climbing until he caught the swell of her breast through thin fabric. She gasped into him, and he drank the sound, deepening the kiss until they were nothing but lips and tongue and heat.
Her knees buckled. He caught her, one rough hand yanking up the hem of her camisole, baring hot skin, the other clamping her thigh. With a guttural sound, he hooked her leg high around his hip, fitting her against him.
He swallowed her whole. Surrender, once given, could never be taken back.
“I want you. Not the Duke of Leighton. Don’t send me away.”
He kissed the side of her face, took her earlobe between his teeth, grazed the seams of her lips. Branded every inch of fair skin with his mouth. “He will be good to you, he will make you happy. He is young, titled, well-liked—”
“He is not you.”
Impossible. Hawk could only hold her long enough to let her go.
Air tore through his lungs, his body strung too tight. The book was still between them.
Hawk returned it to her hands. “What did you imagine, Celeste? Did you touch yourself? Did you wish for me?”
He brushed her lips. Her skin burned softly beneath his calloused palms. The book trembled in her grasp.
If she longed for soft verses and tender vows, let her learn her mistake.
He would give her the truth of him—ruthless, consuming, merciless—and she would recoil.
Better she hate him for honesty than cling to the fantasy of a gentle youth he could never be.
He hoisted her onto his desk, scattering papers and quills to the floor. She gasped, skirts spilling over the edge, hands scrambling for balance. Hawk’s heart battered his ribs.
“Read to me,” he said, his voice rougher than he intended, but he didn’t care.
She had torn his order to shreds, slipping past every defense, tainting every hour with the torment of her nearness. Now she would feel the fire she stoked in him.
He dragged his chair close, placing himself directly before her. From here, her legs draped over the desk like an offering. Close enough to breathe her fever, close enough to watch her chest stutter and rise.
She opened the book. Her lashes lowered, then fluttered up again. “Her heart raced as her fingers drifted slowly along the edge of her bodice, teasing the lace—”
Hawk tugged the silk of her camisole up her thighs, baring smooth skin inch by inch. She gasped, the book wobbling in her grip.
Hawk’s mouth curved. “Don’t stop.”
“She slipped her hand beneath the folds of her gown, fingers gliding knowingly into damp softness—”
Hawk ran his rough hand up her calf, savoring the silk of her skin. Her words faltered, air catching on the syllables. He followed the curve of her leg upward, her knee trembling, until he opened her thighs and claimed the space between them.
The words she had been reading were not fit to pass her lips—but her body’s response to his touch, her trembling surrender, was sanctity and sin in the same breath.
Hawk set his mouth to the tender skin of her inner thigh, laying damp kisses up its length.
“She moaned as her fingers circled the bud of pleasure—”
Celeste’s cheeks reddened. “This does not seem right. A heroine does not make such sounds.”
Moaning was too tame. Hawk wanted to make her scream.
He smiled against her thigh, drunk on her voice, and pushed aside the last slip of silk.
A crown of red curls flamed against her pale skin.
He lowered his lips, reverent, letting the ringlets tickle his mouth.
Her inhale fractured, her hips surging between retreat and plea.
“Little Tulle,” he murmured against her.
His hands climbed higher, spreading her. His chest seized, and he dipped lower, tongue sweeping her sex. The taste hit, salt and honey and woman. His woman.
Her gasp shivered through him. He tasted her again, slower, his hands keeping her open as he savored the wetness pooling for him.
“Soft sighs escaped as pleasure unfurled slowly—”
He mapped every ridge, every trembling hollow, catching each gasp she tried to smother.
Her voice faltered, but she clung to the words as if they were rope in a storm.
He clamped her knees, opening them wider, needing her bared, surrendered.
Patience had been his armor, now it shattered.
He feasted, tongue relentless, until she was wet against his jaw.
The book thudded to the floor, forgotten.
“Please,” she whispered.
He drove harder, tongue plunging deep, mimicking what he ached to do with his cock. Her gasp broke into a sob, her hips surging helplessly against his face. He thrust deeper still, filled her with his tongue, drank the heat pouring for him alone.
He pulled back, rough with urgency, and slid his tongue up until he found the tight bud at her apex.
He circled once, savoring the tremor that jolted her body—then sealed his mouth over it and drew hard.
She arched off the desk, her body bowing as though strung on wires.
Her release crashed over her, hot and flooding against him, her cries spilling into the dark while he drank her rapture like a man starved.
Hawk raised his head at last, breath tearing through him, her taste still burning on his tongue. He braced for the recoil, for the horror in her eyes when she understood what he had done.
Her soft moans had drained into soft breathing. The fire judged him with its slow creep.
She did not shrink. She slid from the desk into his lap, arms winding around his neck as if she belonged there. He caught her without thinking, stunned by her heat against him.
“Do you realize now?” His voice rasped. “I’m not what you want—I—”
She brushed her cheek against his heart and yawned. “I love you.”
The words hit harder than any cannonade.
He buried his mouth in her hair and drew her in.
He had meant to show her he was no gentle prince, no soft refuge.
Instead, his arms closed of their own accord.
He was unmade—kneeling in every way that mattered, undone by her taste, conquered by her confession.
No campaign had ever taken him so completely.