Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Your Grace! We’d nearly given you up.” Mrs. Fletcher was at the top of the steps with a lamp before the carriage had stopped moving. “There’s a supper gone cold this hour and more. Shall I have it put back on the fire?”
“Yes, please,” said Diana. “Thank you.”
They ate late in a small room, the two of them, and Diana found she was ravenous and had not known it; neither of them said much, and it was not uncomfortable in the least.
They returned to the room, and soon she sat on the edge of the bed in her nightgown, her hands folded in her lap.
He came in and sat down beside her, and he had changed too, and the mattress dipped and tilted her a fraction toward him the way it always did.
Diana cleared her throat.
“I wished to thank you,” she said. “For today. For — all of it.”
“Do not.”
“Your Grace—”
“I have not done anything yet.” He said it without looking at her. “The child is still in that house. When she is out of it you may thank me, and I shall accept.”
Diana turned that over.
He does that, she thought. He does not take credit he has not earned, and he does not pretend to modesty he does not feel.
She had spent her whole life among people who said what a moment required. Her father, who called her ungrateful and meant I am ashamed. Octavia, who said my dear girl and meant get out of my house. And here was this man, who said what he meant, in the fewest possible words, and let it stand.
She liked it. She liked it enormously, and the discovery was not entirely welcome.
She cleared her throat again.
“Shall we go to bed, then?”
“This is the third night, Duchess.”
Her heart missed.
She did not look at him. She looked at her own hands and found that they had gone quite still, the way a rabbit goes still.
He shifted nearer. She felt the whole warm length of him come closer without so much as a sound.
“Are you ready, wife?”
Diana swallowed. Slowly, she nodded.
He came closer still. She felt the bed give, and she went back onto her elbows, and then onto the pillow, and her heart was going so hard now that she could feel it in her throat, and he came over her, unhurried, one hand set down beside her shoulder.
He was smiling.
“The last time I kissed you,” he said, “did you like it?”
Diana’s face went hot.
Do not answer that. But her body had already answered it. It came back at once, the hunger of it, his teeth on her lip and his hand at her throat and the shameless way she had come apart in his hands and clutched at his shirt and made a sound she had not known she could make.
“Did you?” he said.
Slowly, she nodded.
“Shall we do it again?”
He drew closer still, the mattress dipping beneath his weight until the length of his body hovered over hers like a promise.
Diana did not resist. How could she, when every inch of her skin seemed to yearn toward him?
His hand cupped her cheek with a gentleness that stole her breath, and then his mouth claimed hers.
It was a press that deepened as his tongue swept along the seam of her lips.
She parted for him on a trembling sigh, welcoming the intimate invasion.
Oh, how I have missed this. The thought rose unbidden, flooding her with heat.
The memory of their last kiss had haunted her.
It was rough and consuming, leaving her shattered and restless in the dark.
But this… this was different. Tender yet insistent, a savoring that made her blood sing.
Her hands rose of their own accord to clutch at his shoulders, the fine linen of his shirt warm beneath her palms. She wanted more.
She wanted him, his strength, his certainty, the way he saw through every polite facade she had ever worn.
The realization sent a fresh wave of lust curling in her belly, shameful and exhilarating all at once.
He lowered her to the bed as he kissed her, his tongue stroking deep into her mouth with mastery, tasting, claiming. She went willingly, her elbows giving way until her back met the cool linens, her nightgown twisting about her legs. Her heart thundered so fiercely she feared he must feel it.
“Do you want me to please you, Duchess?” he murmured against her lips, the words a velvet rumble that vibrated through her very core.
Diana swallowed hard, her throat suddenly dry. Desire warred with the remnants of maidenly modesty, but the ache between her thighs won. “Yes,” she whispered at last.
A slow smile curved his mouth, the one that made her knees weak even when she stood. He began to loosen the ties of her nightgown with deft fingers, drawing the delicate fabric down over her shoulders, baring her to the cool night air and his heated gaze.
“Duchess,” he said softly, that smile deepening, “you must speak. Always.”
“Yes,” she breathed again, the admission sending a fresh pulse of heat through her.
He kissed her once more, thorough and possessive, and his warm hands began their exploration.
No one had ever touched her with such intent.
His palms skimmed over the swell of her breasts, cupping their weight, and she arched into him despite herself.
When his fingers found her nipples and squeezed, rolling them with exquisite care, a groan escaped him, sending a bolt of pure lust straight to her core.
“Does it hurt?” he asked, his voice husky.
She nodded, biting her lip at the sharp pleasure-pain that only heightened her longing.
He bent his head and caught her earlobe between his teeth, nipping gently. She winced, a soft gasp fleeing her.
“Speak,” he commanded, the word warm against her skin.
“It hurts, Your Grace,” she gasped, though the hurt was a delicious one, feeding the fire building within her.
“Then let us do something that will not.”
He shifted fully above her, his dark eyes gleaming with something primal beneath the ducal restraint.
Trembling with a mixture of nerves and desperate want, Diana parted her legs.
She did not resist. How could she, when her body betrayed her so completely, wet and aching for his touch?
Their eyes met in the lamplight, and the intensity of his gaze made her feel both exposed and cherished.
He slid his middle finger into his own mouth, wetting it thoroughly, then leaned over her and traced the same finger across her parted lips.
She opened for him instinctively; he slipped it inside, letting her taste the salt and heat of him before withdrawing it.
She shook with wondering desire, her pulse a frantic drumbeat.
That finger lowered until it found the aching warmth between her thighs and pressed inward. She was dripping, so shamefully, wondrously wet, that it slid deep with ease. Diana threw her head back against the pillow, a broken cry escaping her as pleasure sparked through her veins.
He caught her chin gently, drawing her gaze back to his. “I want to see you, Duchess,” he said softly, the words laced with command and something almost tender.
His fingers began to move with strokes that made her hips jerk and squirm beneath him, chasing the exquisite friction. “Oh… oh,” she gasped, helpless against the rising tide. Lust consumed her now, a fierce, unfamiliar hunger that made her want to beg, to pull him closer, to surrender everything.
“You sound so good, Duchess,” he murmured, approval roughening his voice.
He leaned in and captured her mouth once more.
She moaned into the kiss, her tongue meeting his with growing boldness as his fingers continued their wicked rhythm.
Then he added a second finger, stretching her, filling her so completely that stars burst behind her eyelids.
She had not known or could never have imagined any sensation this strong could emanate from between her legs.
It was overwhelming, a deep, throbbing pleasure that built and built until she feared she might shatter.
Her thighs fell wider apart, welcoming him deeper still.
She clung to his shoulders, nails digging into the fabric there, her body covered in a fine sheen of sweat.
“Oh—oh, good God,” she cried, the words torn from her.
He watched her face with rapt intensity, his fingers thrusting deeper, curling against some hidden, devastating spot within her. “Do you like it?”
The wave crested without mercy. She moaned wildly, her body clenching around his hand. “Yes, Your Grace—I like it, Your Grace—I—I—oh!”
Pleasure crashed over her in bright, shattering pulses.
Her body slackened and then jerked hard against him, every muscle taut with ecstasy as she rode the storm he had unleashed.
He kept thrusting gently through it all, drawing out every tremor, every gasp, until she lay spent and trembling beneath him.
At last he withdrew his fingers, leaving her strangely bereft.
Diana fell back fully against the pillows, chest heaving, her mind awhirl with wonder and lingering lust. He rose from the bed with that same composed grace, adjusting his clothing as though the encounter had not affected him at all.
Yet as he turned toward the door, her gaze dropped, and there, unmistakable even in the low light, was the rigid bulge straining against his nightshirt.
The sight sent a fresh, illicit thrill through her.
“I shall leave the Duchess to clean up,” he said, his voice steady, though his eyes still burned with unspoken promises. “I have work to attend to.”
He paused only long enough to glance back at her, once, with a look that made her heart stutter, then stepped out and closed the door softly behind him.
Alone once more, Diana pressed a hand to her racing heart, the echoes of pleasure still rippling through her limbs.
She wanted him. Not merely his touch, his honesty, the way he unraveled her so effortlessly.
The thought both terrified and thrilled her as she lay in the quiet dark, already longing for the next night.