Chapter Fourteen
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“Have you got the Dukes?” she asked.
He patted his pocket. “It’s time we got some sleep.”
“Yes. Yes, I daresay you’re right.” She retrieved her pocket memorandum and her pencil from the floor, and he took the lamp, and they were on their way upstairs. He walked her to her room and, well. He was weak. He went inside with her.
Her maid came into the anteroom when they entered. Without looking at her maid, Magdalene said, “I do not require assistance tonight.”
The servant looked between him and her mistress, then curtseyed. “Yes, ma’am.”
When they were alone, he said, “May I stay?”
“Please.”
Yes. She said yes, and he wasn’t about to wait for anything to bring them to their senses. He took her hand and led her to the bedroom. The moment he shut the door behind them and secured the lock, he led her to the bedchamber.
He sat on the edge of the mattress and pulled her between his spread legs. He kissed her again, and it was as satisfying as the first time. He wasn’t a rake kissing a woman he hoped to seduce, or a courtesan he’d paid, or his mistress.
She had a ribbon in her hair, and he removed that. “So soft in my fingers,” he whispered.
She let out a breath. He stripped her off, buttons undone, hooks unfastened, ribbons untied, garters removed. He was greedy to see her, intent on touches that would make her moan and soften against him, and that would convince her there was no other man in the world who could please her.
She was a tall woman, her height in her legs, slender but in no way delicate. He drew his hands down her body, from her shoulders to her waist, then up until he covered her breasts. “Oh, Magdalene, you are so very beautiful. Don’t. Don’t shake your head like that. You are.”
“Don’t try to flatter me about my looks. I cannot possibly believe you.”
“Somehow, you’ve got a wrong impression of me.”
She took a step back, but he leaned into the space between them and grabbed her fingers. She stopped, head tilted just so.
“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t ask me to leave.” That was selfish, and he was ashamed for putting himself before her. “Forgive me. Forgive me. If you don’t want me here, I’ll go.” He sat up, or attempted to, but she threw her arms around him and pulled him back to her. “You’re sure?”
“I am,” she whispered.
He slid his hands down her body. “Whatever you want from me, you shall have it.”
“You.”
He kissed her collarbone and then the ridge of her cheek. “Suppose, my dearest heart, that we discover we can be friends as well as lovers?”
“Suppose we discover the opposite?”
He shrugged. “There are former lovers of mine with whom I maintain friendships to this day.”
“How many?”
He turned onto his side and brought her hand in to kiss the tips of her fingers. “I love you,” he said over the voice in his head screaming that he’d just made a fatal mistake. “I love you and want you, and if you never return my love, then so be it. I’d rather you reject me than live my life never having told you of my feelings.”
“Daunt,” she whispered. “Don’t say such things. Don’t tell me lies, not even pretty ones.”
He met her gaze straight on. He slid his hand down her stomach, over her belly, to her mons. “A bed this time. Come to bed with me. Let me kiss you everywhere. Caress you everywhere. Later, if you tell me we cannot be lovers, I shall take my disappointment elsewhere.”
“Oh,” she said when his fingers delved.
“You’re wet,” he whispered. “I want to make you wetter yet.” He slid his other hand the length of her spine. “Shall I? May I try?”
“Yes,” she said on a breath. “Yes, please.”
He laid her on the mattress and stretched himself over her and kissed his way from her shoulders to her breasts, and there came a moment when she surrendered to her body. Yes, yes, Lord yes, but he wanted this. He took her nipple into his mouth, and he did love the shape of her, the taste of her. He loved that small sigh, and then her gasp and the moan that came. He continued downward to the apex of her thighs and set himself to kissing her there, licking, stroking with his tongue, absorbing the taste of her and her reaction. With his free hand, he stroked the inside of her thigh, pushing enough to make room for him.
She came without reserve, shuddering, calling out, and then she sat up and worked at the buttons of his waistcoat. “Help me,” she said.
“With pleasure.” Before long, his clothes were off, and he splayed himself over her, and she ran her hands down his back. He fell into the siren call of arousal, and he pushed aside all this uncertainty about their future. She had agreed to this, they were in bed, and she was touching him, and Lord, but her fingers were clever. That slide of a finger over his nipple, the softness of her, the press of her mouth to his skin.
Her hands wandered over him, and he lay back while she continued to touch him. She took pleasure from him, adored him with her mouth, her hands, and fingers, and he was nearly beyond enduring any of it. At last, though, he put his arms around her shoulders and held her while they kissed, and she’d learned something of him, for this was better than before.
“Please, Daunt,” she whispered.
“Yes, my love?” He turned them over so that she was on her back and he between her legs.
“Put your beautiful prick inside me.”
“I am yours to command.”
She pressed her head back and laughed. “Oh, yes, my very own viscount to see to my pleasure. Yes. Now.”
The curve of her mouth drew him in the way it always had. Whenever she smiled, he wanted to be the object of her pleasure and desire. He pushed up on his hands and adjusted himself, allowing the anticipation to fill him.
She slid her hands down to his low back and arched against him, and he pressed in, in, and in, and she was warm and soft inside, and this was Magdalene, whom he had loved and admired for too many years to count. She met his thrusts, the roll of his hips, and pressed against him as if she could not get enough.
He quickly reached the point where all that mattered was the quest for their mutual pleasure. She came first, calling his name, “Daunt, yes,” and finishing with an incoherent cry.
He was close, so close. The base of his spine quivered and he withdrew, and she held him close, pressing herself against him so that his cock was between them while he spent.