Chapter 8 #2
“I am the daughter of an earl. My title is Lady. Just as I have addressed you by your title, kindly do me the same courtesy.”
She whirled, choosing the left and walking as quickly as she could.
“Damnation, titles can go hang!” Damien shouted. “I will call you whatever I damn well please!”
“Then, you will be speaking to empty space because I will not be there!” Maria called back.
He followed, and she hustled around another turn.
Suddenly, there was nothing but empty air beneath her feet.
In the dim light that seemed to prevail throughout the house, a staircase had been concealed.
She cried out in alarm, her balance wavering and an apparently infinite blackness yawning before her.
The cane fell from her hand to clatter down the stairs.
Then Maria was beyond the point of no return, her balance deserting her. She fell.
An iron grip held her. She was wrenched upright with two strong arms about her waist. Her body thudded into the rigid, stone-like frame of the duke, and her breath caught in her chest. He had moved faster than she could have imagined to catch her. Now, he held her, his face inches from hers.
Their eyes locked. His embrace was the only thing protecting her from the dark gulf behind her. She realized that she felt safe. Her hands came to rest on his arms, and she felt the outline of the leather beneath his shirt, covering the upper half of his left arm and his chest.
“You must take care in this house until you learn its layout,” he said. “I do not like bright light. You must become used to shadow.”
“I am not coming to live here!” Maria gasped.
She felt disgusted with herself because she wanted to. The feel of a man’s body pressed against her was enough to turn her head and make her core clench with unfamiliar need
He is just so different from the Marquess of Landsdowne. To any gentleman of the ton, for that matter. So powerful. So masculine. So… stop it!
“You will,” he said, his words ringing ominously. “You can bring your boy, but you will be solely responsible for him.”
Maria gaped for a moment before she recalled her self-control. Damien had said that she might bring Gilbert to live with them, and that was all that really mattered. She had achieved her primary goal, and she needed to focus on that.
“Kindly unhand me,” she whispered.
“I saved you from a nasty fall,” the duke said without relinquishing his grip.
“And I am grateful. If your house was not so infernally dark, I would not have needed to be saved. Unhand me!”
He smiled. He had the impudence and the arrogance to smile at her.
He is laughing at me! How dare he! I should tell him to take his offer of marriage and do something with it that I do not have the language to express!
She pushed against his chest and then slapped him across the face.
The smile vanished, but so did the balance that held them both on the precipice of the staircase.
The duke grunted and shifted his footing as Maria pushed against him.
She felt herself falling, reached out for a banister, but found only empty air.
Once again, the duke was her savior. As they both fell, he twisted, pulling her savagely against his body, one hand cradling her head, the other planted in the small of her back.
As the world spun, she heard him grunt again as he took the impact of the fall, including her body weight pressing down on him.
They began to roll, but he somehow arrested the movement, sliding down the remaining stairs with a series of hard thumps which Maria barely felt, shielded as she was by the duke’s body. They came to a rest at the bottom. Maria lay full length atop the duke, who wheezed from lack of breath.
“Accept before I change my mind,” he growled. You are a bloody danger to be around.”
Maria found herself laughing. A dam within her broke, unleashing tension that had been building since the confrontation with her father.
She could not stop, feeling the strength flow from her like water.
A gentle hand stroked her hair, and she let her head fall to his chest. Tears rode the laughter. Hysteria was not far behind.
She tried to apologize. Tried to ask if the duke was injured. Tried to lift herself from him. But all were beyond her. His strength was a safe harbor, a siren call that enticed her to relinquish her own. Give herself up and be protected.
“You are well and unhurt,” he said softly. “All will be well.”
Finally, Maria lifted her head. He had never been so close.
His pale face was handsome, rugged and rough as granite.
Suddenly, there was no longer a gap between them.
Damien’s lips lunged for and captured hers.
Maria’s body tensed; she braced her hands against his chest. But the touch of his lips was awakening.
The house fled from her awareness. The situation she was in faded to memory. A story, no more.
Maria’s world became one of pure sensation.
His lips were warm, his hands strong and rough.
His body was hard. She was being embraced by Michelangelo’s David, except the duke felt more of a perfect specimen of masculinity than that effeminate creation.
Pulses of heat ran through Maria, emerging from the core of her being and reaching her fingers and toes.
Reaching the ends of her hair and the tip of her nose.
The kiss began as rough and passionate. It became fevered and wanting. His tongue pressed against her lips, and Maria reflexively gasped. Then, his tongue was in her mouth, and her mind whirled. She struggled to form any coherent thought, as previously unknown sensations seized and consumed her.
Maria groaned into his mouth, as he took control of the kiss. She was like a piece of driftwood caught in a tempest, subject to his movements as he ravaged her mouth.
Damien’s hands were tight on her body as though he tried to feel the nakedness beneath her clothes with his fingertips. Maria felt a surge of desire, like a flow of fire along her veins.
The scent of Albany—of orange blossoms and lavender—and something deep and undeniably masculine threatened to overwhelm her. Even the taste of him was strong, coffee and cinnamon, and she observed from a strange sort of mental distance that he was overcoming her.
She entwined her fingers in his hair, clutching at him and bringing forth a grunt of pain. It was a badge of honor, and it sent her into deliriums of pleasure. The duke’s ardor became obvious. It was an insistence that pressed against Maria’s loins and shocked her back to reality.
She pushed against his chest with both hands, breaking away from the kiss. Her body ached to have his lips once more against hers, but her mind begged her to cease such foolishness.
“No, this must not happen!” she gasped.
He lifted his head to kiss her again, but stopped with a groan of pain. Damien put a hand to the back of his head.
“Damnation!” he hissed.
Maria clambered from him, straightening her dress and trying to forget the alluring feel of his body against hers. She had the irrational urge to pull him to her and enact the whole scene again.
“Are you hurt? Shall I send for a servant?” she asked.
“I am, and you should not. I bumped my head. On each and every step. I did not realize how much it hurt until I tried to move.”
He got to his feet.
Maria inwardly winced, her mind still addled with a persistent, aching want for him. “I did say that I was sorry.”
“And then blamed my house for your clumsiness.”
“I can barely see my hand in front of my face!”
“You exaggerate.”
Maria bit back a reply, pressing her lips tight together and folding her arms.
I need him. More than he needs me unless there is something going on here that I do not know about.
He put out a hand.
“Do we have an agreement?”
She took his hand, shivering inside at the feel of irresistible strength as his hand engulfed hers. He squeezed, just enough.
“There is one more matter,” she said, “this is to be a marriage of convenience. There will be no… falling down the stairs.”
The duke’s eyes went to where they had been lying. The corner of his mouth twitched.
“I have a request of my own. No more titles. I dislike it. I am Damien, as I told you before, and you are Maria.”
“Yes, Damien.”
Speaking his name felt like….an intimacy. Yes! That was what she had felt when she had spoken his name before the other members of the Corset Chronicles!
I must be careful. This man is attractive. He is also infuriating, arrogant, and a brute. I will not allow myself to be seduced.