Bringing Down the Duke

She gave a laugh. “Don’t ever let it be known. Your life would become infinitely more difficult.”

The sudden intensity in his stare should have alarmed her.

She only felt a powerful throb of anticipation.

He flipped her onto her belly.

His hand brushed the tangle of her hair over her shoulder and his tongue was hot against the side of her throat. There was hunger in his kisses, in his exploration of downy skin and sensitive places that came throbbing to life again. She arched her back, enthralled by the feel of firm muscle and crisp chest hair against her shoulders.

“I like hearing you laugh,” he murmured between nips. “It’s a beautiful sound.”

“Better than Mendelssohn?”

She gasped when he bit down on the curve of her neck, lightly enough, mind.

“Yes,” he said, “better.”

His hands slipped between the mattress and the silky weight of her breasts, and the caress of his palms against the excited pink tips tore a surprised moan from her lips. He knew things about her body she hadn’t known, and the more he showed her, the more she could give over, until she was nothing but sensation, until . . . his thighs pressed against hers from behind, spreading her open to fit himself against her.

She stilled when his intention sank in.

His voice was dark and smooth like midnight silk against her ear. “Will you have me like this?”

She swallowed.

His mouth was so soft, so eager, against the curve of her jaw, nipping gently, grazing her tender skin with golden stubble.

“Yes,” she whispered. Yes and yes and yes.

She’d be saying yes to everything soon, so deeply was he already under her skin.

There was no struggle this time, only a smooth, hot glide, the relief to be joined to him again. She buried her flaming face against the cool sheets when he hitched her hips a little higher. Her fingers helplessly curled into the mattress.

Plato was wrong. It wasn’t a satire, the missing half of a soul. The sense of completeness as Sebastian filled her was frightfully, joyfully real. So right, so real, it should never end. But again he nudged her steadily onward with the slide of his thrusts, with his fingers sliding over the slickness between her legs, until she was dissolving to the distant echo of her own cries. In the thick of her pleasure, there was a pang of regret when he pulled away rather than finding completion inside her.

* * *

They lay in a graceless tangle of limbs, him on his back, her tucked against his side with one lethargic leg flung over his thighs. Her cheek rested on his chest. His delicious scent seemed to concentrate there. It’s the hair, she thought, sifting her fingers through it. How clever of men to have a little pelt to trap their fragrance exactly where they want a woman’s head.

He was trailing lazy fingers up her nape, scraping gentle fingertips against her scalp, and she wanted to purr like a contented cat. Sure, morning would arrive in a few hours. But she hadn’t felt this fulfilled in years, if ever—a deep, quiet calm, as if a constantly niggling question had finally been answered and now everything had slotted into place. She might regret it later, her failure at resisting temptation once again. But not now.

She splayed her fingers over his chest, right where his heart was beating an even rhythm.

“What I did earlier,” she said. “When I came to you . . .”

He tipped up her chin with his thumb. “Yes?”

This was more embarrassing than she had expected. “When you were in the armchair,” she said.

“Ah,” he said, and his eyes heated. “That.”

“Yes,” she said, “I’ve never . . . what I mean is, I’ve only ever read about it before. Accidentally.”

“Accidentally,” he echoed, one brow arching.

“Yes. Sometimes one accidentally stumbles upon . . . depictions . . . in ancient Greek documents. Or on Greek vases.”

“I consider myself indebted to Greek pottery, then,” he murmured, his gaze dropping to her mouth.

And, incredibly, she knew she would have him again this moment, if he wanted to.

He gathered the wayward locks of her hair in one hand behind her head.

“Who was he?” he asked softly.

Her heart stuttered to a halt. She had not expected him to broach that subject. Ever.

Her throat squeezed shut. She had probably opened that avenue of discussion just now, with her inane desire to convince him that she was not overly experienced.

But tell him about William?

It made her feel ill.

She sensed that he was waiting, and the longer she said nothing, the more she felt like a shrew, after all he had told her about his duchess. But he was asking to see the ugliest parts of her, while she was still naked and sore from allowing him in. Her meager defenses would not stand his contempt tonight.

“He doesn’t matter,” she managed.

His fingers began manipulating her shoulders, and she realized her body had gone rigid as a board.

“He does not matter,” he said quietly, “unless you need me to put something right for you.”

“What do you mean?”

His eyes were unfathomable. “You’re experienced, but neither married nor widowed. Someone didn’t do right by you.”

No, he hadn’t done right by her, but she understood that wasn’t what Sebastian was asking.

“I did what I did because I wanted it,” she said.

His body relaxed against hers.

So he had braced for the worst.

She wondered what he would have done. She remembered his murderous expression when he had seen the bruises on her knees. It was a distinct possibility that he would have gone and destroyed the man.

“I was seventeen when I met him,” she said. “Since my father was the vicar, he was sometimes invited to a dinner or a dance at the estate that owned our parish, and he would take me along. One summer, the lord of the manor had a houseguest. William. He was one-and-twenty, and the second son of a viscount.”

“A nobleman,” Sebastian said softly.

“Yes. He was dashing. Cultured voice. Green velvet coat, and a front lock like Byron.”

Sebastian scoffed.

“Indeed. He charmed me on the spot,” she said. “He asked me to dance, and I was enamored with his urbane sophistication and his front lock at the end of the second reel.”

“He seduced you,” Sebastian said grimly.

“I made it shockingly easy for him,” she said. “He was unlike any of the young men I had ever encountered. He dazzled. He asked my opinion on literature and politics, which made me feel terribly important. You see, the village was a very small place, and after Mama’s passing, my father never went to a town again, but I hadn’t grasped how restless that had made me until I met William. Something in me just . . . burst.”

“A London lothario with his eye on debauching a vicar’s daughter? You stood little chance at seventeen, sweeting.”

“But I knew it was wrong,” she said. “Every girl knows it’s wrong.”

“And he knew it was wrong,” he replied. “Did he offer for you?”

She gave a hollow laugh. “He certainly said everything that made it sound like it. Asked me to elope to America with him, where he wanted to make his own fortune, away from his father. Well, he did go to America when autumn came. He didn’t even leave me a letter.”

There was a small, terse pause.

“You loved him,” he said, and his voice was cold enough to make her shiver.

“I thought I did,” she said. “He had wooed me wonderfully.”

He had said that he loved her. It had thrilled her so to hear it, but she’d waited to say it back and when she finally had, it had felt sacred, an oath whispered into his ear as he lay on her, damp and panting. A week and a few couplings later, he had walked out of her life.

She cringed. It had taken days for it to dawn on her that it hadn’t been a mistake, that he had left Kent, had left her, without as much as a good-bye. She had been nothing but a pleasant footnote in a rich man’s summer.

“What happened then?” Sebastian sounded suspicious.

She closed her eyes. “The worst.”

“Word got out?”

She looked at him bleakly. “I found I was increasing.”

He turned ghostly pale. “Where,” he asked, “where is the child?”

She shook her head. “It never came to be. I lost it soon after my father sent me to Yorkshire, to his aunt. Aunt May.” And Aunt May had implied she ought to be glad to have lost the babe. She should have. Instead, she had already come to love the little one. But her body had failed them . . . she had failed everyone.

Sebastian’s lips moved against her hair, and she realized she was clinging to him, trembling uncontrollably, unable to stop the words from pouring out.

“My father first dragged me all the way to London after I finally confessed. He was convinced the viscount would force William to do right by me. Of course, his lordship said that I was a strumpet who had tried and failed to hook a rich lordling, and that he had no use for a peasant grandchild.”

There was a pause. When Sebastian spoke again, his voice was dangerously soft. “Will you tell me his name?”

By Hades, no. “He said what most men in his position would have said.”

“Not most—” Sebastian began, and then he fell abruptly silent. “Damn,” he said, “I believe I accused you of something along those lines when we first met at Claremont.”