Chapter 13
Thirteen
Ross,
I have missed our joint ventures involving the widows of the Ton. I confess, I would have never expected Lady Drake to be among the ladies of our particular set, and I find the notion of a debauched Lady Drake beyond my ability to refuse.
With much anticipation,
Astley
—A response from Simon Benjamin Clark, Earl of Astley, to Nashford Xavier Harding, Duke of Ross, accepting his invitation to join him at Lady Phoebe Drake’s Comfort Ball and House Party, January 1811
N ash stood in front of his bedroom door, his hand resting on the cool handle. Music played and laughter rang up the staircase. It wasn’t a large house party, but the guests were the type to sink well into their cups and enjoy the evening’s entertainment.
He gazed down at his hand firmly wrapped around the handle now, his knuckles white. If he entered, there was no going back. Lady Drake held the key to protecting the Blair girls’ future respectability or potential path to ruination. If the Duchess of Nithesdale bore the dukedom’s heir, doors would open to her sisters despite their parents’ nullified marriage, and the unscrupulous men of the Ton would swamp Caerlaverock for a taste of the financial pie.
The voice of his own father rang through his thoughts. You will never be accepted in the House of Lords or society once I denounce you . The old Duke had held those words over Nash’s head the last few years of his life. Making Nash jump to his every whim to save his mother’s reputation.
He rolled his neck, loosening the tension. He let out a breath before he turned the handle and walked through the door. The room was darkened except for the light emanating from the embers in the fireplace. A chill mingled with the tension in the air, and he could have sworn he heard a slight intake of breath coming from his bed. He closed the door and turned the key, locking them inside—together—before he placed the key in the pocket of his waistcoat.
“I wasn’t certain you would be here,” he admitted.
“I wasn’t certain I would come.”
“And now that you’re here, do you wish to stay?” This would be by her hand, not his. He stared at her, lounging on his bed. Her gown was gone, but her corset tempted him to undo the laces with his teeth. The bounds of his desire knew no end as her scent reached him, lavender and mint—what a deliciously erotic fragrance to stir his need. His cock twitched and he marveled how much he ached for her.
“Do you?” Her voice shook with uncertainty.
“A man could never say no to a night with you in his arms.” He found that statement disturbingly true. He wanted this woman like no other. He seemed to come alive in her presence, at least when they were alone. His cock stirred and his hands itched to grab her, stroke her, make her come apart in his arms once more. Gone was the apprehension he’d felt before entering the room. The only thing that kept him from pouncing on her, and making her his, was her acquiescence.
His eyes finally adjusted to the dim lighting and he was able to see her gown lying across the foot of the bed. Her stockings and low-heeled slippers placed neatly to one side, almost completely hidden from view. The woman who stirred the embers of his lust lay on the bed in only her corset and chemise. Nash strode to the chair next to the armoire and took off his tailcoat before sitting down to remove his boots and stockings. He never let his eyes stray from the vision on the bed as he stood up and removed his waistcoat.
“You left your drawers in the garden. Would you like them back?”
“I thought them lost forever.”
He gave her a wicked smile. “I should keep them as a reminder of your screams.”
“If that is what you desire.”
“I desire much more than that.” He caught a glimpse of her tongue swiping a path across her bottom lip and his cock stood at attention, waiting and wanting. He grabbed his manhood through his clothing and brought her attention to where he needed it most. “Is this what you desire?”
The white of her eyes flashed in the light. A moment of shock or hunger, he couldn’t say, until she leaned up on her elbows, turned to her side, and propped her head on one hand as she gazed at him. Her other hand ran down the side of her breast, her waist, her hip. Her bare foot created tiny circles on the coverlet as she bent her knee and exposed more of her shapely legs. “I find myself incapable of saying anything but yes to a night in your bed.”
He paused for a moment, wondering at her words. Was she incapable because she was lust driven, or something else? She pushed up and leaned forward, the expanse of her creamy white breasts filling his line of vision, and all his doubts disappeared. He was on her in a moment, pushing her back into the mattress, devouring those plump lips that tasted like brandy and mint and everything feminine. His knee automatically separated her legs demanding she open for him. A whimper rose from her throat enticing him beyond his control.
He pulled away and her lips followed him as if she couldn’t bear for him to stop.
“I must see all of you. No barriers between us tonight,” he demanded. His hands traveled to her corset where the laces were tightly bound and nearly undid him as he struggled to free her. When the laces finally slipped loose, he pulled the garment from her body and threw it across the room, not caring if the damned thing landed in the fire. Her chemise was next, and he marveled at the woman in front of him. She looked up at him and for a moment he hesitated, his mind at war with the heat coursing through his veins.
As if sensing his hesitation, she reached for the buttons on the falls of his breeches. He watched as her fingers fumbled and his cock sprang into view. He was large and thick for her; he grew harder and harder as her mouth formed a perfect little o . In that moment, he didn’t want to hold back the animal inside him. He wanted to thrust deep inside her pretty pink lips and fuck her mouth until she gagged.
“You’re … You’re so …”
“Trust me. I’m nothing you can’t handle, Is—” He bit down on his cheek. “Take me in your mouth,” he demanded.
She looked up at him in shock, as if she’d never heard of such a thing. It had to be a ruse, a very good ruse he refused to acknowledge. He didn’t back down but waited.
Her tongue rang across her lips and his cock twitched with anticipation. He needed her to give in, heed his command, and when she did, his need nearly unmanned him as her lips drew closer, ever so slowly.
Torturing. Teasing, she licked her lips a second time and he couldn’t stop himself from threading his fingers through her hair and moving his cock closer, probing her lips with its head. Her tongue touched his tip, and he groaned with satisfaction and frustration. He wanted more, so much more. He needed to fuck her. She was a witch, driving his body to the brink of madness, only to withdraw and make him wonder if the moment had been real.
This need was very real. His cock was as hard as forged steel, and her unhurried tentative pace was killing him.
She swirled her wet, velvety tongue around his head, gathering momentum as her warm mouth surrounded his tip and her eyes closed, a moan escaping her lips as if she felt as much pleasure in the act as he did. It should be his eyes closing in ecstasy, but there was something so beautiful about her hair glimmering in the firelight. Her breasts on full display with her dusty nipples taunting him with their tight buds. He cupped them as she swallowed more of him, her hand coming up to grab the base of his cock as if she wanted to control how deeply he fucked her mouth. He pinched her nipples letting her know that he was in charge, not her, and she moaned once more. An erotic sound of satisfaction that sent vibrations of bliss traveling through his body in sweet torment.
He grabbed her hand, guiding her to stroke him from the base to the tip in rhythm with her mouth, marveling at the way her small delicate fingers barely wrapped around his girth. Then he did the same with her head, pushing her to take more and more of him. In and out, out and in, until he felt the back of her throat and he wanted to spill his seed instantly.
“Fuck.” He pulled out and pushed her back against the mattress, pausing only long enough to determine he hadn’t hurt her with his impatient desire to be inside her. He kissed her harshly, roughly thrusting his tongue in her mouth the way he wanted to push his cock inside her, and she responded in kind. Wild and wanton, she pulled his shirt over his head and he momentarily pulled away to be rid of the barrier.
It was more than he could stand. Intimate. Sensual. Arousing. His chest pressed against her soft, pert breasts, the pure exquisite feel of her body under his. He wanted to taste her, consume her, he simply had to have her. His cock needed to be inside her, stretching and stroking her sex. He found her entrance wet and wanting, heat emanating from her core. He pushed inside, her cunny so hot and tight around the head of his cock he was desperate to be all the way inside. She gasped as he bit her neck and grabbed her thigh to wrap her leg around his waist as he thrust all the way in.
Two sensations hit him at once. Pure euphoria at the way her body sheathed him, and utter confusion at the squeal of pain, not pleasure, forced from her lips. He’d never felt a woman’s body so snug around his own. He was large, yes, but this was something utterly different. There was no room for him to move, to swivel his hips and hit that spot he knew she possessed. The spot he’d found in the garden as his finger slipped inside her. He pulled up and saw the pain on her face as he ran his hand along her thigh, attempting to soothe and caress her into feeling the same exhilaration he felt.
And that’s when he realized it. She was untouched before him. The woman he’d wanted from the moment he caught sight of her a month-and-a-half ago. The woman he thought had been despoiled by Nithesdale and Lady Drake. The woman he recognized in Lady Drake’s Garden as Iseabail Hancock, Duchess of Nithesdale. The woman he knew was in his bed the moment he opened the door to his room.
“Fuck.” He started to pull out, but she grasped his buttocks and pulled him tightly against her body. Driving him deeper, his cock loving every goddamned bit of her.
“Don’t,” she whispered.
“Don’t what? Fuck you? Cuckold a man I looked up to?”
She winced with pain, but he didn’t believe it to be from anything but his words. And he knew his words hurt her in a way his body couldn’t. Again.
“I can’t do this.”
“Please,” she begged.
“Iseabail—”
“How? How did you know that it was me?”
“How could I not know it was you? Do you take me for a fool?”
“No, but it was dark.”
“I held you in my arms in your garden. I would know your body anywhere.” It was true.
It didn’t take her scar, or the differences in their shoes, their shape, or their age. He would know this woman if he were blindfolded.
“Yet you came here to be with Phoebe.”
“I came to the party to get information about your sisters from Lady Drake anyway I could, but the moment I saw you in the garden, I recognized you for the woman you are. The woman I desire more than any other, but this is wrong. Nithesdale was like a father to me.”
“He married me on his deathbed to give me a future, but he said it was up to me to get with child.”
“I’m the last person he would want to bury his seed inside you.”
“You are the very person he wanted me to seek out.”
He shook his head unsure of what to do. He knew what his body wanted, craved even, but this was insanity. He had never spilled his seed in a woman. Ever. Not once in his twenty-eight years had he allowed himself to potentially leave a bastard. He was not his father. “I can’t.”
She moved under him, flexing and tightening her sheath—it was beyond torture. It was perfection. The sensual way her fingers dug into his flesh was a completely new sensation for him. He’d never felt this sensation before … of being consumed by the moment. He didn’t want to stop—he wanted to drive into her until he found completion. Never before had his body overruled his thoughts when he was with a woman. He pushed into her, savoring the intoxicating desire she created. He’d had hints of this all-consuming want in the garden at Caerlaverock, had it on the tip of his tongue with her on the bench outside this very home, but nothing compared to being inside her. It was as if he had been searching for this his entire life … and that frightened him.
Had he turned into his father after all? Would he be driven by his cock to seek pleasure like this for the rest of his existence? He would be no better than the other so-called gentlemen of the Ton who left bastards sprinkled all over the country.
His conscience wouldn’t allow him to continue in this game.
He released her thigh and reached for her fingers.
“If you stop, my sisters will die in poverty.” There was a desperation in her voice that he had not sensed before. Her gaze searched his, traveling back and forth between his eyes as if she would see a different answer in each.
“Nithesdale didn’t provide for you?”
“He said you were the solution to my problem.”
He cursed under his breath. “Tell me where your sisters are. I can protect them.”
“No.” Her voice was laced with steel. “If you do not wish to help me save them the way I have been my entire life, then leave.” She dropped her hands from his body and he was instantly cold.
“Iseabail,” he whispered, but despite her body beneath his, the woman who clenched his cock with her passion was gone. Her eyes as vacant as a whore’s, and he could not have felt worse. He had taken away her home, tossed her future to the wind, and now her virtue was despoiled at his hand.
“Iseabail, let me help you.”
She turned her head away to stare at the curtains, and he’d never felt more horrendous in his entire existence. When she lay there without a flicker of emotion on her face, he cursed his stupidity. His mind had lost interest at the sight of her despair, but his cock was harder than ever as it strained for more. He blew out a breath and moved inside her. A gasp escaped her lips and her gaze returned to his.
He stared down at her, memorizing every plane of her face and the glimmer of hope that blossomed in her eyes. It was as if she finally saw a sliver of what her life could be, what it should have been before the former Duke of Ross walked into her father’s life.
He took her lips in a harsh and brutal kiss, uncertain if he was punishing their fathers, Nithesdale, her, or himself. He did not move. He just let her body adjust to his as he ravished her mouth, her neck, her breasts, until she squirmed underneath him, encouraging his movement. Her arousal, wet and hot, choked his engorged cock. He lifted up and looked down at her glorious body. The smooth creamy expanse of skin now marked by the day’s growth of his beard. Her firm, ripe breasts were much smaller than Lady Drake’s, but they were heavenly. Her waist was unfashionably slim yet completely intoxicating. The dusting of silken curls on her mound made him want to lick her until she could take no more.
He wrapped her leg back around his waist then slowly moved in and out. Teaching her the rhythm while gauging her pleasure. He grabbed one of her buttocks and lifted her to meet his body as he came down to fill hers. She gasped and moaned making him grind his teeth in an effort to hold back his release.
He moved his hand to the pearl between her legs and she responded the way he knew she would—wanton with abandon. This was his Iseabail. Not Nithesdale’s. There was no other way to define what was between them. She wasn’t the Duchess of Nithesdale, she was his duchess. At that moment, he cared about nothing else but making her his.
Their passion was outrageous and unprincipled, the way it should be between a man and woman. He had been with seasoned courtesans who had not made him feel … this shamelessly wicked. Iseabail panted, her breath rough and ragged as he caressed and stroked.
“Please. Oh God, Ross, please.”
He held back, denying her the pleasure she desired. “Nash, call me by my Christian name.”
“Nash … Nash.” She sucked in a breath as he circled her point of pleasure and rotated his hips. “Oh … oh!” She screamed her pleasure, her body pulsing around his shaft as he thrust into her with everything he had. Harder and harder as she milked his cock, the sensations so exquisite it nearly pained him. Then he was there, following her over the edge of rapture into oblivion.
Never had anything felt so right as when he collapsed on top of her, his seed deep within her womb, her small frame wrapped within his arms. For the first time in his life, he had experienced his completion inside a woman’s body, something he had sworn he would not do until he was married to his duchess … yet, as far as he was concerned, from the moment he put his cock in her cunny, the banns had been read.
Iseabail was his.