Chapter 11
Chapter eleven
In Which Wanton is Bent, Stretched, and Shouts at Heaven (With Feeling)
One moment, she was draped across his lap. The next, the world tilted. Strong arms slid beneath her thighs and shoulders, and with effortless command, he lifted her. She barely had time to blink before she was upright—planted firmly on trembling legs.
His gaze raked over her like armor-stripping fire, and she could feel his restraint, his devastating hunger—coursing across her skin like a storm front. It wrapped around her, curled low in her belly, and sent a sharp thrill between her thighs. Her pulse kicked up wildly. Her thoughts scattered.
Observation: the subject appears to be radiating unholy ducal heat. Recommend containment. Or further exposure.
He seized her hips and bent her over the hammam’s heated slab, folding her forward like a lamb being arranged for sacrifice.
Her palms landed with a wet slap. Her breasts flattened against the marble—heat licking her nipples. Her breath hitched. Her thighs clenched. She wasn't even sure in which direction her bones had fled.
By all that was scandalous, this was not in the spa brochure!
The Duke's body came flush behind hers, heat meeting heat, his bare chest brushing her spine, breath searing against the nape of her neck. Her knees almost betrayed her again, but before she could melt into a post-symphonic puddle, he caught her hips.
And then—oh. His penis—thick, hard, and unmistakably ready—slipped between her folds. Not pushing in. Just gliding, spreading slickness as if conducting some obscene topographical survey of her most sensitive terrain.
Wanton whimpered. What was he about? "Are you… studying my angles, Your Grace? Is this part of some preparatory…flesh geometry?"
He didn't answer. Just rocked forward. Enough for her to feel the ridge of him press and slide, spreading her open with nothing but teasing threat and devastating promise.
A low, dark laugh spilled against her ear—rich as honey, thick as sin. "Are you wet for me, Wanton?"
She raked her nails against the tiles. Wet was a polite Regency understatement.
She huffed. "Any more moisture, Your Grace, and we’d need a gondola and an oar.
He growled—a sound that vibrated against her spine.
“Then prepare yourself, my Wanton Wallflower.” His palm slid around to grip her slick inner thigh. “Your body’s about to make waves. And I intend to drown in every last ripple.”
She barely had time to brace. He thrust—hard, deep, and devastating. (Attention to the Oxford comma in the last clause. Not important? Well, some people believe in proper punctuation!)
The Duke growled like a man about to conquer new territory. Wanton trembled under his advances. If this was colonization, she would surrender her provinces immediately! And possibly sign a treaty with her ankles behind her ears.
She cried out, her body jolting forward from the sheer force. Her breasts dragged across the marble—nipples scraped, nerves aflame. He filled her entirely, to the root, and her inner muscles fluttered in helpless welcome.
Hypothesis: this angle would allow for maximum depth and emotional compromise. Subject might not survive.
“Good heavens, Your Grace, I think I just saw Saint Peter!”
His laugh turned into a snarl. He didn’t give her time to adjust. Didn’t whisper sweet words or pause to savor her first gasp.
His rhythm was a campaign of utter ruin—brutal, relentless, and wholly unsuited to delicate ladies of poetic constitution.
Each thrust stole the breath from her lungs like a bandit in the night, forcing her mouth open in gasping, gloriously unladylike sobs.
Her body rocked beneath him, a symphony of sweat, steam, and positively indecent craving.
And then he spanked her. Mid-thrust. A sharp, hot slap across her already thoroughly punished backside.
She gasped from the fierce, exquisite way it made her clutch around him, her body tightening in helpless, greedy response.
Another smack.
Another spiraling rush of pleasure.
Her knees folded like a debutante’s resolve at a midnight ball. Her breath caught and stuttered, escaping in a breathless, desperate whimper of surrender, her body trembling, undone, and absolutely unwilling to stop.
She was unraveling, limbs reduced to syllabub, pulse a pounding drumbeat of make it stop never. Her body was no longer hers. It belonged to sensation. She was but a wilting wallflower clinging to the marble, a fainting heroine with absolutely no exit strategy.
Then, with a snarl and a surge of strength, he grabbed her shoulder and flipped her like she weighed nothing at all.
She landed flat on her back. He gripped her thighs and pushed them open, then folded her legs toward her chest until her knees nearly kissed her ears.
“Duke,” she managed to gasp, looking down at their impossibly tangled limbs, “I should have—oh heavens—stretched.”
His mouth curved into a wicked smile. “I’ll do it for you.”
“Your Grace, that is not how flexibility works!”
Her head tilted back, and she noticed the mirror in the ceiling. From this angle, she had a devastatingly clear view of the Duke’s backside.
Tight. Straining. Carved by centuries of war, punishment, and what must have been morally questionable lunges. The muscles flexed with each thrust—twin crescents of aristocratic wrath. A sculptor would weep. A bishop might faint. Wanton Wallflower nearly wrote a dissertation.
She wanted—oh, wanted—to touch them. To grab him there. For balance. For research. For the sheer principle of tactile inquiry.
How, precisely, did a lady ask to clutch ducal glutes mid-coitus without violating protocol or spontaneous combustion? Did one request a peer-reviewed squeeze?
Before she could pose the question, he thrust.
Hard.
Deep.
An unholy angle of impact that restructured her worldview.
Her shriek echoed off tile. Her vision blanked, her logic disbanded, and her hands—treacherous, scholarly hands—flew down to his backside.
She grabbed him.
Like reins on a wild stallion, her fingers dug into the sculpted perfection of his glutes, desperate for anchorage as he pounded into her like war drums played in iambic pentameter. Her palms sank against taut heat. Her thumbs flexed. Her scientific soul keened with joy.
“Oh Duke!” she sobbed. “You’re not just the most glorious backside in England—you’re the whole continent!”
Field Note: The Duke of Arsbury’s backside is, in fact, a national treasure. Access should require gloves, but she refused.
He groaned.
She was spread. Impaled. Worshipped. Claimed. Her legs trembled in his grip, her breath shattered, her entire being suspended in the unbearable, exquisite tension.
He leaned over her, heavy and unrelenting, pinning her open with the sheer force of his body. And his eyes held hers. Wanton tried to look away.
But he caught her chin and brought her gaze back to his.
“Your Grace,” she gasped, voice wobbling, “it is well documented that prolonged eye contact may induce elevated heart rate, loss of motor control, and—”
“I want to see you,” he cut in, voice low and jagged. “All of you.”
Her breath faltered. A flush crawled up her throat, burning across her chest. There was something unmooring about being held like this—pinned open, trapped beneath that gaze.
He flicked her clit, hard and fast and bold.
Then a devastating press that sent her scrambling for coherence, for oxygen, for some stable law of physics to cling to.
But there were none. Only his body driving into hers, and his fingers stroking her as if she were his private instrument, and he meant to wring every possible note from her.
“Oh lace and logic, for research purposes—ohhh—I must document this—”
“Wanton,” he growled, “shut up and come.”
And oh, she did.
It detonated inside her, a ferocious, unstoppable climax. Her body arched beneath him, back bowing, thighs trembling, muscles locking tight as if trying to imprint him there in her lady bits.
She wrapped around him, her cry spilling out, reverberating off the stone walls like scandal given voice.
His arms trembled as he held her tight, burying himself again and again with desperate, final thrusts, until he roared, wild and uncontained. And came. Pouring into her with a force that made her tremble anew.
He convulsed. Then collapsed—heavy and glorious atop her.
Skin on skin. Heart to heart. Breath to breath.
He pressed a kiss to her cheek, braced himself on trembling forearms, and met her gaze.
“Did I hurt you?”
She smiled against his shoulder, breath still uneven, brain somewhere between bliss and collapse.
“No,” she murmured. “But when it’s time for us to leave... you should probably ask the footmen to bring a stretcher.”