Chapter 10
CHAPTER 10
M arina was a weak, weak woman. She'd had a plan, she tried to tell herself as the duke—as Percy—skimmed his fingertips along the sliver of collarbone that was revealed by her high-necked nightdress and dressing gown.
She was going to stay away from him, keep her head down, make it through the rest of this party without incident or scandal, and, when Martin asked why things had never progressed with the duke, shrug helplessly and attempt to put this infuriating chapter behind her.
She was going to be sensible.
Except… Right now, it felt eminently unsensible to keep her distance from him. No, more than that—it seemed impossible.
Because, Lord, it gutted her, that question. When was the last time someone took care of you? Marina couldn't remember. She'd had a nanny as a child, of course, but certainly it couldn't have been that long? Except perhaps it had been. After all, her parents had always been more invested in their own interests and dramas than they had been in their daughters, and then her father had all but vanished, and her mother had become a ghost…
However long it had been, the temptation to let Percy take care of her—in whatever, likely seductive, form that was going to take—was nearly irresistible. What was the harm, after all? He said they wouldn't be caught and, somehow, she'd come to trust him, to believe in him. Didn't she deserve one adventure, one reckless moment of indulgence, before she inevitably succumbed to the pressure from her cousin and lived a life of duty?
She wanted to give in. She mustn't. But oh, how she longed to. She could not resist.
Still, she gave it one more attempt, just as he pressed a gentle, lingering kiss to her cheek, which made her words come out much more breathily than she'd intended.
"Percy," she said, feeling a thrill at the intimacy of using his given name. "We shouldn't."
He drew back, just enough so he could look her in the eye.
"Tell me you don't want it," he said seriously. "Not that we shouldn't, or that it isn't wise, or that there's risk. Tell me that you don't want it, and I'm gone. I won't bother you again. We'll spend the rest of the party as polite acquaintances and then go our separate ways, forget anything ever happened. Just tell me that you don't want it."
She should just say it. What was the small lie, if it got him to do all the things, as she'd been trying to explain to him, that needed to be done? She just had to say the words.
She couldn't.
Marina kissed him instead.
For half a second, during which Percy gave a surprised, happy little grunt, Marina retained control of the kiss. Then Percy's arms came around her, one around her back and one under her bottom, quite literally sweeping her off her feet. Marina gasped, a shocked peal of laughter hiding in the sound, and threw her arms around his neck. Percy's tongue touched her lower lip, and Marina clutched herself to him tighter, opening her mouth wider to grant him admission. She wanted him closer, deeper.
Marina was so lost in the pleasure of kissing him—in the bold strokes of his lips against hers, the improbably strong band of his arm around her back, the soft silk of his hair between her fingers—that she didn't even realize that Percy had been moving until he set her down on the edge of her bed.
"What--?" she asked, breaking off with a gasp and a sigh as Percy pressed his mouth back to hers. When he pulled back, he was smiling, but there was something glinting in his eyes that made Marina shudder with anticipation.
"Let me take care of you, Marina. Will you?"
Marina was not the most strictly proper of all young women. She read novels, she regularly talked back to her cousin, and she'd overheard the maids gossiping frequently enough to know that "marital relations" very frequently happened outside of the bonds of holy matrimony. Yet she was still a gently bred young lady and knew not the details of what happened between men and women.
She wanted to know. And the way Percy was looking at her made her think he was going to tell her— show her. All she had to do was say yes.
"Yes," she said. Her voice sounded high pitched and breathy.
Percy didn't seem to notice or mind, however. He smiled down at her.
"That's my girl," he said, which made Marina shiver a little. He pressed a kiss to the pulse point at the side of her neck, which made her shiver even more. She hadn't known that part of her could be so sensitive.
"My brave and bold Marina," he murmured, pressing little kisses up along her jawline. In Marina's life, bold had almost always been a criticism; here, now, from him, it felt like highest praise.
"You are so terribly lovely, did you know that?" His hands were at her waist, slipping loose the tie of her dressing gown. "Even when you're frowning." Percy let out a husky chuckle, the puff of air coasting across the sensitive shell of Marina's ear. "Maybe even especially when you're frowning." His nose grazed against her temple.
He was barely even touching her now and yet Marina felt as though her skin were on fire. "Don't be ridiculous," she managed to pant out.
"Ridiculous?" said Percy. He sounded amused, but also a bit breathless as well. "You have made me ridiculous, I'm afraid. When you abandoned me in that garden, I nearly threw a fit, like a child. What power you have."
Marina couldn't suppress her smile. How good that felt, to think of herself as having power.
Percy spread the sides of her dressing gown, then smoothed his hand down the soft fabric of her nightgown. Even with that thin layer still separating them, Marina gasped at the sensation. Percy ran his fingers around the curve of her breast, and Marina arched up into his touch, then grazed a thumb across her nipple, which made her see stars.
"Oh," she said, unable to hold back that faint sound of surprise. This was like kissing but so, so much more. "That's nice."
Percy chuckled, not unkindly. "You flatter me, my lovely. Shall we make it nicer?"
As much as Marina loved that he kept asking for her permission, kept ensuring that he was not taking without regard for her views on the matter, she also could barely spare the breath to answer. "Please," she managed, a note of desperation in the word.
She scarcely knew what was happening to her, was the thing. The kissing had made her warm and slightly giddy—but Marina knew about kissing. Didn't romantic novels always end with a kiss? But this, whatever Percy was managing to do to her now, was that sensation times a thousand, times a million, times all the stars in the universe.
Not only that, but he scarcely needed to touch her to turn her into this gasping, insensible version of herself. His hands ghosted over her breasts, her sides, her hips, teasing and leaving tingling patterns in their wake.
It built and built and built in her, this heat, except even as it grew—and it was most definitely growing larger, growing and growing by the second—it made something in her feel emptier, more cavernous.
When Percy's hands drifted down to her covered thighs, thumbs pressing ever so slightly into the crease where Marina's legs met her body, she could have cried.
Perhaps this meant she was a wanton. She did not care in the least. Wantonness was, apparently, vastly underrated.
"Percy," she whined when he stalled his movements. She didn't know what it was that she wanted—that she needed —but she was certain that he did. So why was he stalling in giving it to her? " Please ," she said. "I need you."
" Fuck ," he muttered under his breath. The coarse, ungentlemanly word sent a thrill of excitement through Marina. She'd affected Percy so deeply that all decorum had left him. She was not the only one driven to distraction over the places where their bodies met.
She shivered as he began to bunch up her nightgown in his hands. The cotton that had previously felt so soft now rasped deliciously against her sensitized skin. It felt so good, but was going so slowly, and Marina felt like a coiled spring. "Percy," she said. "Percy, Percy."
And he was speaking back, voice low. "Christ, Marina," he said, and his hand left her leg for a moment to wipe over his face in such a flatteringly dumbstruck expression that Marina had to admit it was worth the momentary loss of his touch.
"God, you're lovely. If only you knew what you do to me. I need to touch you—taste you."
And then he dropped to his knees.
If Marina had felt more in control of her body—which was to say, if she felt as though she were made of her normal flesh and blood, as opposed to the current thousands of tiny zaps of energy that were held together by this cavernous want —she would have sat up very quickly to see what Percy was doing. She was curious, after all. This was her very first illicit liaison.
As it was, however, she had only just struggled to prop up on her elbows when Percy pressed his mouth to her. The sensation caused Marina to instantly drop back to her supine position, the back of one hand pressed over her own mouth to stifle the sound of her shock and pleasure.
"Oh God," she whispered when she could force air into her lungs. For Percy was kissing her— there —and it should have been alarmingly intimate, but it wasn't. It was wonderfully intimate. "Oh my God, Percy."
He moaned against her, and Marina didn't know which felt better, the sensation this sent ricocheting through her most sensitive parts or the knowledge that he was enjoying this, too. Blissfully, she didn't have to choose. She was able to luxuriate in the feeling of his lips and tongue against her, relish the press of his fingers into her hips, tight enough to make the sensation palpable while remaining just this side of uncomfortable.
The want in Marina had grown so large that she didn't know how she managed to contain it. It felt bigger than she was, incomprehensibly so. Marina writhed under Percy's touch, searching for some sort of outlet for this strange, encompassing, magnificent energy.
And then Percy put his mouth on that small, sensitive spot at the apex of her sex, and with just a few movements of his tongue, Marina was gone. It felt like a shattering, the waves of pleasure coursing through her, like she was breaking and coming back together again. She somehow managed to gather the sense to clasp her hands against her mouth to muffle the low cry that escaped from her throat as her whole body shook with her release.
When the ringing in her ears finally faded, Marina's hands were trembling, and Percy was murmuring soft words to her as he smoothed the cool fabric of her nightdress back down over her legs.
"That's it, beauty, you've done so well. So lovely when you fall apart. Lay back, sweet girl, you're all right."
Marina half wanted to make a quip about how sweet and sentimental he was being for a man who, by his own admission, was only looking for a brief fling, but found she lacked the energy to do more than offer a sated mumble and reach a hand out to Percy, whose silhouette was in shadow.
She meant to reach for him, to pull him in close to her somehow, but he took her hand and pressed a slow, lingering kiss to the backs of her knuckles.
"Go to sleep, love," he said, releasing her hand and helping her slide further into the bed.
"What about you?" Marina murmured, though she didn't resist his prodding towards her pillows. She didn't know how she knew this, but she was certain that Percy hadn't experienced the same cataclysmic release that she'd enjoyed, though the almost smugly pleased expression on his face certainly confirmed that he did not regret their actions in the least.
"Never doubt that I just enjoyed myself immensely," Percy said with a soft chuckle. "Besides, I fear I've quite exhausted you. That's quite enough for tonight, I think."
Marina mumbled something, though she wasn't sure, through the wave of exhaustion that suddenly overwhelmed her, whether it was affirmation or argument. The languor that had followed her crisis was rapidly transforming into the ragged pull of slumber.
By the time Percy slipped out the door, she was already fast asleep.