he was late.
Sebastian paced as he waited for Daisy to join him for dinner. He pulled out his watch to find that only a bloody minute had passed since he’d last checked. Damn it, she had him in an uproar. His mind was as jumbled as a field after battle and every bit as dark and desolate.
Her tardiness was not the only sin he could lay at her door. She was making him go mad, goddamn it. Mad with guilt, mad with frustration, mad with self-disgust, and worst of all, mad with lust.
His need for her was like a pulsing, raging beast inside him that wanted to spring free of its cage and devour her in a single, voracious bite. What was it about Daisy Vanreid that made him want to lick and kiss and nibble, to plunder and grind and fuck until he filled her with his seed?
The thought was enough to make him stiff as a fire log, even dressed for dinner and irritated, stalking the polished parquet as he awaited her. He willed his lust to cool. Counted his steps. One, two… ten… fifteen. Stared at the portrait of the Third Duke of Trent, sometime Lord Privy Seal. Thought about how much of a blessing it was that men were no longer required to wear wigs in the name of fashion. Recalled what Paris had looked like after the siege, its citizens reduced to eating rats, buildings turned to rubble, dead bodies everywhere.
Twenty-two… twenty-nine… thirty-four.
It wasn’t working, goddamn it.
Nothing could distract him from her. From what he’d done. From what he wanted to do and what he’d almost done. Jesus, he’d nearly taken her. On his desk. In his study. Knowing she was suspected of treason. Knowing Carlisle intended to see her cast into a prison. Everything in him had been calling for him to turn her around, lift her skirts, and slide home. It was appalling to realize just how well and truly depraved he’d become over his years serving the Crown.
What the hell was the matter with him?
And Daisy? She’d been kind. Sweet, actually. Genuine, too. Like him, she wore many roles and showed a host of different faces to the people around her. But she had been giving and true. He’d heard too clearly the unadulterated sympathy in her voice when he’d revealed he had no living family remaining save himself. Had felt the comfort in her gentle hands, her embrace.
Bloody, bloody hell.
Sympathy was the last thing he wanted from her. What he wanted more than anything was her body beneath his. Taking him, shuddering against him, relishing his claim upon her. He did not want to like her. Did not want to be troubled by the fact that for a woman who had suffered brutal abuse at the hands of her father, she was quick with compassion and concern. That he was manipulating her, deceiving her, and she could be an innocent. That nothing—no amount of conscience or reasoning—lessened how much he wanted to claim her. Even if it was wrong. Even if it was pretense. Even if everything between them was a lie carefully crafted to betray her and make her vulnerable.
None of it made a whit of sense.
Just as it made no sense that here he was, pacing the hall like a caged tiger, waiting for her, when he very well could have gone to have a glass of whisky and had Giles call him when she finally deigned to join him for dinner.
At long last, she appeared at the top of the staircase, beginning her graceful descent as though she wasn’t—he consulted his watch again—thirty-three minutes late. When he glanced back up at her, his mouth went dry and a hunger that had nothing to do with dinner and everything to do with her slammed straight into his chest.
Her gown was purple brocade with full, tiered skirts that were pinned with flowers and trimmed with lace. Her ivory shoulders were mouthwateringly bare above small, delicate sleeves. But the most arresting feature of her gown was the ribbon that crisscrossed over a bodice that hugged her ripe bosom and trim waist to perfection. The ribbon tied into a pretty bow just between her breasts.
He had never wanted to untie a ribbon more in his life than he did now as he wordlessly drank in the sight of the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. His woman, and he felt that possession of her in his bones as though it was just as right and natural and necessary as his own blood. Some devil in him, some wild impulse, wanted to keep her.
Forever.
What the bloody hell?
He frowned, feeling like a volley of cannon had exploded in his head. “You’re late,” he barked out, his voice a tad more sharp than he’d intended.
She faltered on the last step, losing her balance and pitching forward. Like a child drawn to a sweet, he’d already stalked to the base of the stairs, his body subconsciously seeking proximity. When she fell, it was directly into his arms. He caught her, soft and warm and bergamot-scented and unbearably fucking lovely.
Her golden curls brushed his jaw.
“Sebastian.” She sounded breathless.
Her small hands splayed against his chest, twin brands through three layers of cloth. When she would have taken a step back, he held her firm. He told himself it was so that he could ascertain she was steady on her feet. The truth of it was that he wanted to hold her. He craved her. Had to have her.
“Dinner was set for half an hour ago.” Some churlish part of him, that part at war with himself, forced him to issue the cool admonishment. He could have said so many other things. Told her how blindingly lovely she looked, for instance. Demanded she spin on her heel and return to her chamber so he could strip her out of the gown she’d just spent half the evening donning.
The push and pull inside him was like a gong. Had to have her. Couldn’t have her. Shouldn’t. Wouldn’t. Needed to. Longed. Damn it, when had this mission become so complicated? The first moment he’d ever laid eyes on the dazzling, complex goddess that was Daisy Vanreid. That was precisely when.
She tilted her head back, considering him with that signature, intense regard of hers. A frown creased her brows, the only imperfection on her face, and he wanted to smooth it with his lips. “Forgive me for keeping you waiting. It took rather a great deal of… persuasion on the part of the footmen sent to my father’s house. By the time my gowns arrived, it was already quite late.”
Her voice, dulcet and warm, slid through him like honey to the senses. By God, looking and smelling and sounding as she did, he could forgive her anything. Even treason, whispered an insidious voice inside his mind.
Conscience? The devil? He didn’t know.
He forced himself to clear his suddenly thick throat and form a response. “Dinner is served at eight here. Now that you’ve the fripperies you required, I trust your tardiness won’t happen again.”
Her expression shifted, her smile disappearing. He felt the loss of that sunshine as viscerally as a tooth extraction. He was being a cad. He knew it. But damn it, he’d never before been so torn between duty and what he felt. He wasn’t meant to have feelings. He was bloody well meant to feel nothing. At. All.
“Since my tardiness has so disturbed your good humor, perhaps you ought to release me so that we may attend dinner without further delay.” Her tone was tart. The depths of her eyes sparkled with something indefinable.
She was fierce. And right. Jesus, he was still holding her in his arms as if he couldn’t bear to release her. He hadn’t let her go. That was how perfect she fit, how much the beast inside him needed to keep her there.
He set her away from him as though she were made of flame rather than the most tempting feminine flesh he’d ever touched. “Of course. I wished to be certain you were steady on your feet.”
The look she gave him was knowing. “Yes, naturally. Thank you for ascertaining my… stability.”
What could he say to such cheek? He would dearly like to put her stability in peril once more by sweeping her off to the nearest chamber, lifting her skirts, and running his hand up her thigh to the slit in her drawers. He’d stroke her pearl until she cried out for him, slide his fingers inside to test her tight sheath and ready her for his cock.
Dear God, the fire in him was burning out of control. Had she poisoned his afternoon tea? He swallowed. Bowed to her with a formal precision that was the antithesis of the raw crudity roiling inside him. “Allow me to escort you to dinner, Duchess?”
She took his proffered arm. “I thought you’d never ask, Duke. Dinner is to be served at eight, you know.”
Though she appeared as poised and regal as any lady born to play the role of duchess, there was an unmistakable tinge of laughter in her voice. She mocked him. The daring of the woman would never cease to astonish him. As he led her to the dining room, he realized, quite belatedly and much to his consternation, that he too was smiling.
Mad it was, then.
The descent had begun.
Daisy barely tasted the potage aux choux. The soup course was savory yet sweet, unutterably delicious even though she didn’t take more than five full spoons to her lips before nodding to one of the footmen in attendance to whisk it away. Her eyes were only for the man seated opposite her.
Sebastian. Duke. Husband.
He was all of those things and yet he remained, more than any of those descriptors, an enigma. A man she could not quite understand, but one to whom she was drawn with the madness of a child staring into the sun. Such folly could only lead to a bad end. Blindness? A headache? Worse?
It didn’t matter. She wasn’t hungry for soup.
She was hungry for him.
For his hands on her, for the way he held her, as if she was as necessary to him as air. Such gentle strength in that touch. Not an ounce of anger, not even when he waged a silent battle within his mind. He couldn’t hide himself from her as well as he imagined he could.
Silence stretched, awkward and interminable, as the next course was laid before them. Salmon à la Chantilly—a fine piece of fish smothered in decadent sauce. Daisy forked a bite but didn’t bring it to her lips. For most of the meal thus far, Sebastian had studiously avoided her gaze.
Conversely, she couldn’t seem to keep her eyes from him. Strange how she had never before noted how tempting the cords of his neck were. An errant impulse to set her lips to him there, absorb his pulse, to taste his skin, struck her. He glanced up from his dinner at that moment and their stares clashed. Awareness sizzled between them even as she flushed at being caught gawping at him as if she’d never before seen a man in the flesh.
“Are my manners remiss?” he asked in a teasing tone, his earlier ice melted.
Her cheeks flamed hotter. She longed to press her palms to them. “Forgive me. I’ve never been adept at silence.”
That much, at least, was true, though she’d been ogling him merely for the pleasure it gave her. No need to tell him that, however. She’d already made a fool of herself.
A half smile curved his lips. She felt its sensual effects in a swell of desire that flooded her as sudden as sunshine filling a darkened room. “How reassuring. I thought perhaps I had béchamel on my chin.”
Daisy pressed her lips together, suppressing a smile of her own. How enjoyable it was to banter with him. This relaxed, charismatic side of him—a side he seemed to reserve and reveal only sparingly—made her feel as if all the wine she’d sipped had gone to her head.
What had he said again? Ah, yes. Now she recalled. She quirked a brow at him. “I’m sure you must know that the sauce on the fish course isn’t béchamel at all, Your Grace.”
He flashed her a devastating, full-blown grin. “I’ve never been adept at French cuisine. I daresay that makes us even, buttercup.”
Buttercup.
She liked when he called her that. “My tardiness for dinner and your sauce confusion?”
His gaze searched hers before settling on her lips. “Just so. A fair exchange, no? I’ll forgive you for making me wait for my dinner, and you’ll forgive me for being an ignorant clod.”
“I can think of many ways to describe you, but ‘ignorant clod’ would never be one of them,” she confessed before she could think better of her admission. It wouldn’t do, after all, to allow him too much power. To let him know how easily he affected her.
“Oh?” His stare slid from her mouth, snapping back to her eyes with so much heat that her nipples tightened right there at the table with servants standing sentry and a table of china and cutlery and fine food between them. “Would you care to enlighten me?”
Gorgeous. Alluring. Arrogant. Mysterious. Sensual. Dangerous.
She forced her mind to stop unleashing the torrent of possibilities upon her, none of which she would speak aloud. So many adjectives in the English language could be applied to the singular man before her. If her cheeks had been hot before, they were positively aflame now. The way he looked at her—such frank hunger and barely leashed civility—took her breath.
She settled for a few with less damning connotations. “Distracting and occasionally vexing.”
He laughed then, and it was pleasant and deep. His laughter filled her belly with warmth. She hadn’t heard it before, and she couldn’t shake the impression that he didn’t laugh often. Perhaps she could bring more levity into his world. His eyes crinkled, a heretofore unseen dimple making an appearance in his right cheek. Only the right. She wanted to kiss it.
How silly, and yet her lips longed to learn that groove as much as her heart yearned to make him laugh again. To make him laugh often. Her life had been one of much misery and loneliness, forever trapped beneath someone else’s rule, forever forced to accede to the expectations of her father.
Now, she was free, and she felt that newfound liberation in truth for the first time as she sat there with her uneaten salmon and the man she’d married in a whirlwind laughing across from her. Hope was a delicate, airy thing rising inside her like a hot air balloon.
“I object to vexing,” he said at last, still grinning at her even after his mirth had subsided. A hint of that precious dimple lingered, bracketing his supple lips. “Distracting, however, I will happily own.”
His tone was intimate and sincere. She swallowed, thinking it would be most unwise to fall in love with her husband on the second day of their marriage. “I suppose it depends on one’s definition of the term,” she said tartly to distract herself from how handsome he was and how easily he could woo her when he was charming. “Hangnails are also distracting. As are splinters and headaches.”
He threw back his head and laughed again, the sound rich and uncontained. The dimple had returned in full force and she couldn’t tear her eyes away. “You may not be adept at silence, sweet, but you have a knack for a proper setdown.”
She would never have dared to speak with such abandon before. Life under her father’s strict rule had taught her to hold her tongue and eradicate any hint of audacity or opinion. But she was not beneath her father’s thumb any longer, and she was beginning to appreciate that fact in new ways.
She found herself smiling back at her too-handsome husband. “I was exercising logic, Your Grace. Make of it what you will.”
He sobered, his gaze becoming intense, his expression one of unguarded hunger. “I believe we’ve finished with the fish course,” he announced to the servants without even glancing in their directions. “Bring the next in twenty minutes. Anyone who disturbs us before that time has passed shall be sacked without reference.” His gaze held hers, molten and hungry, rife with meaning.
Daisy felt the full force of that look, beginning with a pulse of need between her thighs and radiating throughout her entire body. Her already hard nipples tightened even more, and she felt a sudden urgency to once again have his mouth upon her there. Sucking. Nipping, perhaps even.
Good heavens. His stare was doing wicked things to her senses and mind both. She tore her gaze away to watch as the servants dutifully departed, closing the door behind them with judicious grace.
They were alone, with twenty minutes to call their own. Perhaps she should have been embarrassed that he had delivered such a blatant edict to the servants. Twenty minutes alone, between courses. His motivation would be obvious to them, of course. One didn’t stop a dinner in medias res. Not unless one’s intentions were scandalous. Impure. Dangerous. Another adjective rattled to the forefront of her mind as she swung her eyes back to her husband in time to watch him unfold his tall, muscled length from his chair.
Delicious.
“Why have you stopped the dinner, Your Grace?” she asked, breathless despite her best intentions. Hadn’t he just shamed her before his servants? Strike that. Before their servants? “I thought your hunger was the reason for your earlier pique with me over my tardiness.”
He moved to her with the cagey grace of a predatory cat. A big, predatory cat. A tiger, she thought, before thinking better of the choice. No, he was a lion. Proud and strong and savage. And handsome. Yes, he was undeniably that.
“I appreciate punctuality,” he said, as if that explained his behavior. “And it’s Sebastian, buttercup, as I’ve already told you. No more formality between us. I don’t like it.”
He skirted the table, never taking his eyes from her. No lord she had ever seen dignifying London’s ballrooms had been anything like him. It was as if he were a breed of his own, even if she couldn’t quite determine just what it was that set him so apart from all the rest. Wealth and titles had never meant anything to her. Kindness did. Compassion as well—two things she’d seen precious little of thus far, whether at home or here in England.
But that wasn’t it. Anyone could be compassionate. Anyone could be kind if he chose. The duke—Sebastian, she must think of him as now—had been both to her at times. And still, there was something else about him that marked him as different. The mystery, the shadows in his eyes, the potent strength, the way he doled out parts of himself in such tiny increments that she was sure she’d only gotten to know the equivalent of a thimble-full… it was all those things and more. He was like a summer storm: aggressive, sudden, and beautiful in his harsh, powerful way.
He didn’t stop until he stood behind her. She sat frozen, waiting, her heart pounding faster than a spooked horse’s hooves on a road. Every part of her clamored for his touch. At last, his hands, large and warm, settled on her bare shoulders, just above the layered sleeves of her evening gown. Just a touch, his skin on hers, and yet it felt unbearably intimate. Desire ricocheted through her.
His breath was hot, his lips brushing over her ear as he spoke. “A true gentleman should never stand in the presence of a lady while she remains seated.”
She knew as much, of course. She had been trained, after all. Her father had done his utmost to see that she would be wedded to the husband of his choice. A titled, born-in-the-purple aristocrat. Perhaps she should have stood when he had, for the sake of manners. But she had been too preoccupied by watching him to take note of anything else.
Breathe, she chided herself, breathe. And she did, inhaling slowly, refusing to give in to the temptation of turning her head and meeting his mouth with hers. They were courting, after all, were they not? Moreover, he remained a man she little knew, despite the fact that they were now husband and wife.
“Are you not a true gentleman, then?” she forced herself to ask as his thumbs began to run a lazy pattern of circles over her collarbone.
“Would a gentleman follow a lady into the moonlight, intent on her seduction?” Something hot and wet and firm—his tongue, she realized, traced the ridges of her ear.
She trembled, though it wasn’t with fear. It was with something else, something far more authoritative. Her own need. Her hands remained in her lap, but now she grabbed fistfuls of fabric, clenching the brocade to keep herself from touching him.
“Would a lady lead a gentleman into the moonlight?” She injected a lightness into her tone that she hardly felt. After all, she wasn’t blameless in the situation in which they now found themselves mired. She hadn’t forgiven herself yet, even if it seemed that he had.
His hands slid lower, to the swells of her breasts, continuing their careful, steady seduction. Swirls on her skin. Circles of desire that threatened to set her aflame. The tips of his fingers brushed the ribbon trimming her décolletage. Though she knew it was wanton and she ought not to, she arched her back ever so slightly, as if in offering. Her nipples longed for his touch. She felt as coiled as a spring, her entire being a pile of dry kindling about to be set aflame.
“Perhaps we are a perfect match, buttercup.” His words were low, tinged with desire, rendering them almost a feral growl. “I’m not a gentleman, and you’re not a lady.”
Either they brought out the worst in each other or the best. Daisy still hadn’t decided. All she knew was that he was setting her on fire in a slow burn, and she couldn’t bear much more teasing. Her body longed—no, hungered—for something, anything deeper and more meaningful than what they’d already shared. She didn’t know what it was, what he could give her that he hadn’t already, but her instinct told her it would far surpass anything she’d experienced thus far.
She wanted him to claim her. To do wicked things to her. To make her his.
He slipped beneath her bodice then, between her chemise and her skin, beneath her corset. Those knowing fingers found her nipples with unerring persistence, rolling them, pinching, plucking. Drawing a moan from her. His lips pressed to her throat, just below her ear.
“Why did you call off the servants?” the question left her, a re-asking of the query she’d already posed. It was a desperate attempt at self-preservation. Because every part of her longed for him to continue doing what he was doing to her and then more. So much more. Anything he wished. Good heavens, this man was pure, blissful torture.
“Cannot a man long to be alone with his wife?” He dragged his teeth slowly down the corded column of her throat. When he reached her shoulder, he gave her a playful bite as he pinched her nipples again.
The ache between her thighs heightened. Her body felt boneless, breath held in anticipation, the core of her wet and wanting in a way she’d never before known. It was shameful, how much he could make her desire him.
“You said we should court,” she reminded him as his mouth opened over her flesh, sucking and biting before soothing the sting with his tongue.
“This is courting.” He removed his left hand from her bodice and lowered it to her lap, settling over hers where she clasped her skirts. Their fingers tangled while his right hand continued to play with her nipple. “If I had my way, I’d have you bent over this table right now, buttercup, with your skirt up around your waist and my cock so deep inside you that—”
A discreet knock sounded at the door to the dining room just then. How had the time passed with such swiftness? The butler’s calm, utterly proper voice cut through the moment. “Your Grace? Forgive the interruption, but the next course will arrive in two minutes.”
“Damn it.” Sebastian exhaled against her throat.
Yes, damn it, she echoed inwardly. Some wicked part of her she hadn’t known existed still longed to hear the rest of what he’d been about to say. Such wicked, wanton things. So low and base, she ought to take umbrage as any properly bred lady would. But what he had said would taunt her all night long. His cock inside her. The mere notion was enough to make her come out of her skin.
His hand retreated from her bodice. “I should have asked for a whole bloody hour.”
His tone was grim. As grim as she felt. The loss of his touch was an ache pounding through her wherever his skin had last met hers. Acting on instinct alone, she released her skirts at last, reaching behind her to still him when he would have disengaged. She caught his cheek to her palm, the bristles of his whiskers a welcome abrasion upon her palm. She had chosen not to wear gloves on occasion of the intimacy of the setting and she was heartily glad for it now.
Daisy turned finally, so that their mouths nearly brushed.
Her eyes met his, challenging the sparks she saw. The heat. The want. “Yes,” she agreed, “you should have.”
And then she pressed her lips to his.