Chapter Seven
Isabel stepped into the hall of the Donville Masquerade three nights later and her heart leapt. Everything around her suddenly felt different. More alive. More vibrant.
In her previous times coming here, she had looked, stared, felt her body react. She’d known she’d go back to her home and ease her desires with her own hand, and that would be the end of it.
Now, as she looked at the writhing bodies, the dark and desperate connections, as she scented the sex on the air, she felt something different. A deeper kinship to passion, to play, to doing things one shouldn’t do, if only because of the protection of a thin mask.
It was all still titillating, but now her eyes sought something different. She wanted…wanted…
Him.
There he was, standing across the room at the bar with the Duke of Roseford. Matthew wore a mask, but he was instantly recognizable, and her heart rose to her throat as she tried to decide if she should go forward with her bold and daring plan.
Or run off into the night once more.
It was he who decided that for her. Suddenly his gaze fell on her and he straightened up, his eyes locking with hers and somehow drawing her across the room to him. Almost against her very will. He was fire and she couldn’t resist jumping straight into the flame.
She could scarcely breathe by the time she reached him, and she clenched her trembling hands by her sides so that they wouldn’t be too obvious as he swept his gaze over her from top to bottom.
“You’re here,” he breathed.
She had no opportunity to respond when his friend shouldered his way in between them and smiled at her. It was a rather dazzling smile at that—she could see why every woman in the room cooed over Roseford. She felt no desire to do so, even if she recognized his charisma and charm.
“You are, indeed, Miss Swan,” he said.
She froze. That was her secret name. The one she gave to gain entry into the club each time she arrived. He shouldn’t have known it.
“Y-your Grace,” she said.
He laughed and elbowed Matthew. “I am. The Duke of Roseford, at your service, most especially if you bore of this one. So, you know my name. But finding out yours has been quite difficult.”
She swallowed. He’d been trying to find out her name? She glanced at Matthew, whose jaw was set hard and eyes were narrowed at Roseford.
“Enough, Robert,” he growled. “If the lady wishes to remain anonymous, that is her right.”
“Ah yes,” Robert drawled, and winked at her. “The eroticism of anonymity. I wouldn’t dare disrupt that.” He smiled. “I suppose I’m only curious to know more about the lady who has brought my friend back from the dead.”
Isabel jolted at that choice of words, dark considering what her uncle suspected of him. When she jerked her face to Tyndale, she found his lips thin and white, his irritation at the relentless teasing of his friend clear. But beneath that was something else. Something deeper.
But she couldn’t yet tell what it was. She didn’t know him well enough to read what he fought to conceal. Guilt? Heartbreak? Anger?
“Go away, Your Grace,” he ground out.
Robert laughed as he tipped his head to her in mock salute and then glided into the crowd and left them alone.
“I’m sorry about him,” Tyndale murmured. “He’s…well, he’s Roseford. He means no harm.”
“Is he really trying to uncover my true identity?” she asked, wishing her voice didn’t tremble so.
He turned his face and sighed. She could tell the answer already. “I wasn’t certain you would return. And I wanted to know why you ran away when you recognized me.”
She caught her breath. “You asked him to find out who I was?”
“Robert has avenues to investigate that I do not,” he said. “So yes, I did ask him to try.”
“Does he know? Do you know?” Her heart throbbed at the idea and the questions about what he would do now if he did realize who she was. What relationship she had to the woman he had been prepared to marry.
His forehead wrinkled. “Why are you so afraid? Why were you so afraid the last time we were together? How do you know me? Or more importantly, how do I know you?”
She moved to turn away, but he caught her arm. Her skin practically hissed as his fingers closed over her bare flesh. She slowly lifted her gaze to his and found him focused very intently on her mouth, despite the adversarial bent of the conversation between them. She licked her lips and felt the shudder move through him in response.
There was something powerful about it, the fact that she could move him physically, even if his pursuit was still abjectly terrifying.
“Wh-why would you think I knew you?” she asked, trying to keep her tone light.
“Don’t lie,” he whispered. “When you saw me without my mask, your reaction was immediate and powerful. Visceral. You ran away without so much as a look back. I know you know who I am.”
“I—” she began, but could say no more.
He leaned in closer. His breath stirred her skin and she wanted so desperately to lean into it, into him, once more. Her mind was spinning and her body singing for her to melt against him. Surrender herself in every way she could think of.
“Say it,” he demanded.
“Please don’t—”
“Say it. Say who I am,” he repeated, his gray eyes growing more intense than ever.
“Tyndale,” she heard her voice say. “The Duke of Tyndale. Matthew.”
He shifted when she said the last, his Christian name, and his gaze fluttered once more over her body. Like hearing it woke some side of him that wasn’t proper.
“That’s right,” he said, his voice suddenly rougher, lower. “You do know me. But if you ran, it has to be because you thought I might know you. Are you…” He trailed off and seemed to gather himself. “Are you the wife of a friend?”
She jerked her arm from his, the spell between them not quite broken, but lessened in the face of his suggestion. “What are you accusing me of?”
“Plenty of unhappy ladies come to this place seeking the kind of anonymous pleasure you did,” he said. “But if your husband is a friend of mine, that would change that night between us. Turn it into—”
“No!” she interrupted. “I told you the last time we were together, I am a widow. And I was not married to anyone you would know. At least not anyone you would likely recognize even if you’d seen him a dozen times.”
He tilted his head. “The way you say that, it makes me think…was he a servant? Or someone I encountered in their trade?”
She stiffened. He was so certain that her reasons to run had to do with her late husband. There was no reason to disabuse him of that notion. Let him think that Gregory was the connection that had caused her to flee and he wouldn’t go looking for her uncle.
“Yes,” she lied. “Yes, you knew him. I’d seen you before, just in passing. Our worlds were never meant to cross as they did that night, Your Grace.”
“Matthew,” he corrected softly.
“I’m sorry?”
“If I am going to bury my tongue between your thighs, I think we’re past the point of you calling me Your Grace.”
She held his stare for a moment, shivering at the direct way he’d described their encounter. At the heat that laced his tone and his expression even now.
“Are you going to do that again?” she found herself asking. Bold, too bold.
“You ran before,” he said, his fingers lifting to trace the skin of her cheek, dancing just along the edge of her mask. The edge of danger. “Why would you want to come back?”
She swallowed, and this time she didn’t have to lie to him. “I was…shocked when I recognized you without the mask. Terrified at what would happen next. So I did run. But I couldn’t stop…thinking about what happened between us that night, Your Grace.” He shot her a look. “Matthew,” she whispered, loving the feel of his name on her tongue. “That’s why I came back. But I-I don’t want you to know who I am.”
His fingers fell away. “You would have me exposed and still protect yourself.”
She hesitated a fraction. “If you knew why, you’d understand my need to do this. It isn’t fair, I suppose, and if you want to walk away, find a connection that is less complicated, I understand.”
She held her breath as she awaited his answer. She told herself it was about the investigation she had come here to pursue. But it wasn’t. She wanted him to agree to continue with her for far more than that. It was desire that drove her as much as truth. Need as much as justice.
He had somehow inspired that in her.
“I didn’t think you’d come back,” he said softly, and shifted closer to her. Close enough that she could just lift her hand and press it against that strong chest. When she did so, he hissed out a sound of pleasure. “I wanted you to come back.”
He was leaning in now, his mouth moving toward hers. “You did?” she managed to squeak out. “Why?”
He didn’t answer with words, but brushed his mouth over hers. All thought, all question, all fear dissipated with that touch. She fisted her hand against his chest as his arms came around her, drew her in closer while he deepened the kiss. She was lost. Found.
And in that moment she didn’t give a damn about investigating anything more than whatever this spark was between them. The rest could wait.
Matthew entered the chamber that had been assigned to him and his stranger, and let out a ragged sigh. He felt on edge with desire. Wild with it, and that was not something he’d truly ever experienced before. It swelled inside him, loud and powerful. It took over any guilt he felt. It swallowed all his hesitation. It spoke to him in a guttural language that was as old and powerful as time itself.
And what it said was to take this woman. Claim her. Mark her as his.
He shuddered and pushed that thought aside, along with all the others.
“Come here,” he whispered as he moved toward the bed.
She followed his directive silently, but her hand trembled as she reached for him. He smiled. So he moved her as much as she moved him. Despite whatever kept her in that mask, her desire was real.
He wanted to bathe in it. Let it wash him clean and set him free like it had the last time he touched her. She looked up at him, and he caught his breath as he drank in the sight of her. She was truly exquisite. Her features were delicate, at least those he could see. Her dark eyes sparkled as she let them flit over him nervously. They matched her silky hair to perfection and he lifted a hand to gently smooth it over the loose chignon. Little tendrils cascaded from the style, created pathways over her exposed collarbone and the column of her throat.
He leaned in to trace one of those pathways with his lips. She made a soft groan and her hands came up to tangle in his hair. His mask bumped her neck, and he lifted his head with a frown.
“Since you know who I am,” he said, and reached up to untie the mask. “I think I can remove this.”
She caught her breath as he did so and tracked his movements as he set the mask away on the bedside table. When he returned his lips to her neck, she sighed again and he devoted himself to nibbling and sucking his way along the elegant column. She tasted like…honey, like spiced wine. Sweet and intoxicating. A flavor he wanted to lose himself in.
And he would. For a while. His hands slid around her back and as he continued to kiss her, he found the line of buttons along her gown. He unfastened each one slowly, letting his fingers stroke the shockingly bare skin beneath.
“Why no undergarments?” he murmured against her throat.
She shifted. “I-it felt m-more outrageous,” she stammered, her voice strained as he sucked her neck gently. “Oh…”
He lifted his head and met her unsteady gaze. “You liked the danger of coming here,” he said softly. “The uncertainty.”
She nodded slowly. “My life has always been…arranged. My future will be, too, soon enough. Coming here was a rebellion. A claiming of what I want, if only for a little while.”
He stared at her. This was supposed to be a moment stolen from time, wrapped in anonymity. Except she knew who he was now. And she was confessing secrets that were powerful.
Secrets that inspired him to go wild, to forget that he was a rational man of control. With her, he wanted to be more.
“What do you want, Miss Swan?” he asked, using that secret name Robert had uncovered in his investigation into her identity.
Her throat fluttered at the question and she stared up at him, her lips trembling, her breath coming short so that it lifted her utterly delectable breasts on each inhalation.
“I want you,” she whispered, dark color filling her cheeks with every pointed word. “What happened between us, it was never like that with my husband. It was never like that with just…just my…my hand.”
He shifted as his mind moved to images of this woman spread out before him, touching herself for his pleasure. For her own. He shook the thoughts off.
“How do you want me?” he whispered as he hooked his fingers into the neckline of her gown and gently tugged it forward, baring her from the waist up.
She swallowed. “Hard,” she gasped. “Fast. With your mouth, with your fingers, with your cock. I don’t care. I just want you. I don’t know enough to ask for anything more.”
“Then let me show you,” he growled, shocked by his own words. He sounded like Robert at his swaggering, drawling, seductive best…or worst. But that had never been Matthew. And yet here he was, inspired to tug this stranger’s gown the rest of the way off. Inspired to tug her naked body flush against his as he drove his tongue deep within her mouth and showed her that he wanted her.
As he imagined every wicked, wild thing his mind had ever conjured and planned how to fulfill those fantasies until she was shaking in release beneath him.
He caught her hips and lifted her, cupping her bottom as he ground her down over his aching cock. She dipped her head back on a gasp and her legs came around his hips to hold herself steady. He smiled as he moved them across the room like this and pressed her hard against the wall. She lifted against him, soft sounds lost on his tongue as he fumbled with the placard on his trousers. Finally he managed to get the buttons loose and he popped free, his cock brushing her backside. He hissed at the touch of heat on heat, hardness against soft.
He wanted her. To be inside of her. And his mind kept screaming now. Now. Now! Everything else was lost. All his usual control was gone, and he reached between them to press his fingers against her sex. She was wet, hot to the touch, and he shuddered as he moved himself in place and drove hard into her waiting body.
She cried out at the breach and ground against him, likely out of pure instinct. But the cry broke their mouths, and as she looked at him, their faces so close together, the intensity of that connection only drove the power of the other. He held her stare as he drove her against the wall, pivoting his hips just so, withdrawing as far as he could before he took again and again.
He watched her as she met his rhythm. Watched the wonder in her expression transform to wanton desire and deepen to the edge of release. And then he watched her plummet off that edge. Her body milked him as she dug her nails into his shirt and rode out the pleasure. Only when she went limp in his arms did he carry her back to the bed and part their bodies to lay her across the pillows.
She stared up at him, dark eyes glazed as they slid down his body and settled on his still hard and now very wet cock. “You didn’t—” she said.
He shook his head. “Not yet. I’m savoring this. You wouldn’t dare deny me that, would you?”
She sat up and caught his cravat, with a tug, she pulled him in close. “I think it’s evident I wouldn’t dare deny you anything.”
She kissed him. Slowly. And he let her trace her tongue over his lips. Let her come inside and gently, carefully explore as he had explored. She flattened her hand on his chest and pushed him back until he lay across the bed with her leaning over him. Only then did she part their mouths and begin to untie his cravat, unfasten his shirt. He placed his arms beneath his head and smiled up at her.
“Seduction looks well on you, Miss Swan.”
She blushed. “It sounds so silly for you to call me that.”
She opened his shirt and swallowed hard. He almost puffed with a pride that felt so very odd. He was not one to preen and here he did so as she lifted a trembling hand and laid it to his flesh.
“You want to tell me your real name?” he asked, trying to focus on the conversation rather than the fact that she was smoothing that soft, delicate hand down his stomach, to the waist of his open trousers, closer and closer to the cock that still throbbed and demanded attention.
If he weren’t careful, he’d be unmanned the moment she touched him. And that wasn’t what he had in mind for the rest of this night.
“No,” she said, darting her gaze from his face and settling it on the same cock he’d been pondering. “That would be a very bad idea.”
He frowned, but didn’t press. Anonymity, it seemed, would reign, at least for her. And then she touched him and he no longer cared about that or anything else.
She took his length in her hand and smoothed her fingers from tip to base. He lifted up into her with a grunt, and she smiled. A wicked little smile on an otherwise very sweet and ladylike face. At least the part he could see.
“I have watched those around me in this place,” she said. “With much interest.”
He arched a brow as she stroked him again and electric sensation raced through his entire body. “Did you now?”
“I saw more than I ever imagined, but I was always interested in one particular act.”
He sat up on his elbows and watched as she inched a little lower. “What act is that?”
She positioned herself so those full, luscious lips were just beside his cock. His heart had begun to throb. “This one,” she whispered, then darted her tongue out and swirled it around the tip of him. She glanced up and met his eyes. Hers were wide. “I taste myself on you.”
He grunted. “You will kill me, I think.”
She smiled again and then lowered her mouth over him a second time. This time, though, she was not teasing. Whatever she’d watched in the masquerade, whatever she knew or didn’t know but had observed…she was a good student of the wanton arts. She took him into her mouth as deep as she could and stroked him in time with her hand.
Pleasure jolted through him with every motion, and he dipped his head back with a long, unsteady moan. It had been ages since he had this experience, and he’d forgotten just how good a woman’s tongue felt as it swirled around his cock, what kind of desire the pressure of it could create. How it made a man want to surrender whatever small power he had and worship any woman who gave such unselfish pleasure.
She built him toward completion like it was a race, and he had no control left to fight her. His mind was emptying, his hips lifting, he just kept growling out incoherent sounds of need as his balls tightened and the pleasure reached its peak.
When it did, he grunted and pulled free just as he came. She didn’t recoil, but continue to pump him with her hand until he gasped out surrender and collapsed into a boneless, tingling heap.
Only then did she cuddle into his side and wrap her arm around him as they lay together in satisfied silence. And for just a moment, it felt perfect.