The Duke of Desire Read online

  “You two just danced the most serious jig in history,” James said as he approached them, arm around Emma and a grin on his face. “Charlotte has said she will play a quadrille. May we trade partners so that poor Katherine will not have to continue in whatever dour little conversation you were sharing?”

  Katherine laughed and sent Robert a side glance. “His Grace and I finished our dour little conversation. I would be pleased to dance the quadrille with you.”

  She flitted off with James to her place in the line beside him, but even as all their friends began, he couldn’t stop watching her. And knowing that whatever was between them was growing. If he was not careful, it would soon be out of control.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Katherine stood at Robert’s door for the third occasion in as many nights. But this time she didn’t feel nervous. No, that old anxiety had faded. What she felt was slightly more terrifying.

  She felt peace. With this man. This man who did not love. Who did not stay. A man who would seduce. Who would make a wager because he was so convinced he could do so. A man who would run as far and as fast as he could from a future. But when she was with him, she didn’t care.

  “What do you want?” she murmured.

  That answer leapt to her mind so easily. She wanted Robert. Only him. Despite the contentious element that came into their interactions. Despite the pain he had caused her in the past and the wager she still knew existed…or did it? After all, Robert had made no move to take her.

  In fact, she was the one who longed for that now.

  She shook away her troubled thoughts and knocked on his door, at last. It opened in a moment and Robert stood there. Tonight he was still formally dressed in his evening clothes and she almost felt disappointed. She was getting very accustomed to enjoying the view of his muscular chest and touching his warm skin while he pleasured her mercilessly.

  He stepped back and motioned her into the room, shutting the door behind him and leaning back against it as he stared at her. “I wasn’t sure you’d come,” he said, his voice heavy with strain.

  She wrinkled her brow. “Why?”

  “You have to ask?” he said. “We talked about it while we danced. There was such…tension between us today. I didn’t like it.”

  “I didn’t either,” she admitted.

  He stepped forward, and it was clear he wanted to address their kiss, the interruption, her reaction. And she…didn’t. Talking wasn’t what she’d come here to do. Especially about such troubling topics. She feared if she started telling him about her heart, it would open her up to spilling it all. Including how connected she was beginning to feel to him.

  How much she wanted him, not just in this chamber, but in her life.

  She wasn’t ready for that. She wasn’t ready for him to turn away from her as he had on a night that seemed like a lifetime ago.

  “Katherine—” he began.

  She moved toward him and lifted her hand, covering his lips with her fingers. She felt the warmth of his breath against her flesh and it took every ounce of her control to speak.

  “I didn’t come here to do anything but touch you,” she whispered. “I came here to let you touch me. Please, Robert. Let’s leave the rest of the world outside for a while. Let’s just give each other pleasure.”

  His eyes widened and he kissed her fingertips before he caught her hand and moved it aside. “You want…to touch me?”

  She nodded slowly. “Yes. I do. Tonight I want to touch you as you’ve touched me. Please.”

  She didn’t have to ask him twice. He caught her waist, dragging her against him and lowered his lips. “I am at your command, my lady.”

  She shivered as he kissed her. At her command? She could not imagine that. She’d never had a man at her command before. Her husband had certainly never allowed her any power, alongside his denial of pleasure.

  And Robert? Well, he was a force of nature. She’d been swept up in him for days, never expecting he would allow anything but that.

  She pulled away, even though his kiss was heaven, and looked over his shoulder toward the bedchamber. The one they’d never made it to before. Shaking, she took his hand and drew him into that adjoining room. She stopped beside the big bed and took a long breath that did nothing to calm her racing heart.

  “Take off your clothes?” she asked.

  He smiled. “All of them?”

  Her heart stuttered. She’d not seen the man naked yet. An imbalance in the power of their relationship that matched all the others. She wanted to now. Wanted to desperately.

  “For what I want to do, you can’t have anything on.”

  The smile faded from his face. So did the brash swagger. He nodded and she watched, motionless, as he slowly shed every item he wore, starting with the jacket. He moved with grace, elegance, strength. She stared at rippling muscle that she wanted to trace with her fingers and then her tongue. She watched the casual way he tossed aside his expensive waistcoat. The way he held her gaze as he tugged his shirt over his head.

  And then he was naked from the waist up, as he’d been the first time she came here. She caught her breath, stepping forward to lay her hand on the plane of his chest.

  “Katherine,” he whispered.

  She blinked, forcing herself to look into his face and not at the body that drew her in to places that were frankly terrifying to go. “Yes?”

  “I may need help with the boots,” he said, one corner of his lips lifting.

  She laughed, she couldn’t help it. The man was so…easy. So comfortable in his own skin. He made it all a game, only there would never be a loser. No wonder it was impossible not to surrender.

  He made it that way.

  “Sit down,” she said, motioning to the chair before the fire.

  He did, slouching low on the seat and watching her as she dropped down and began to unbuckle the boots. She tugged and one slid away. Then the other. She was on her knees before him now, and she smiled as she positioned herself between his legs, just as he had done in the parlor, in the antechamber, in her dreams.

  She caged him in with her hands, mimicking what he’d done so many times before, and then settled herself over him, straddling his lap. It was wicked to do so. She was entirely dressed. He was half naked.

  And she liked it. Liked the way his gaze went hazy as he stared up at her.

  “Do you really intend to let me be in control?” she whispered.

  He smiled again. “I think you already are.”

  “Am I?” She shook her head. “We both know that in an instant you could reverse our positions and just have what you wanted.”

  “If I was going to simply take what I wanted, I would have had it nights ago,” he drawled. “Wouldn’t I?”

  She tensed. Yes, that was true. She would have given herself to him any time he asked. She never would have refused him, even if she’d claimed she would.

  She ground down against him a little and his breath went short as he strained up. She smiled and then slid from his lap. “Stand up. Let’s remove the rest.”

  He moved to his feet and stood watching her. He reached for the fall front of his trousers, but she batted his hands away.

  “My turn.”

  He held his hands up. A tiny surrender. He was not moving, not breathing, not stirring as he watched her tangle her fingers in the waist of his trousers. She glanced down, struggling with the buttons. The fabric strained thanks to the erection beneath. Her fingers felt thick and useless with anticipation.

  Together it made for far more of a production than it might have under other circumstances. But at last she loosened the buttons and let the flap fall, revealing his hard cock for the first time.

  She stared, knowing it was silly and girlish to do so, but unable to look away. Her husband had not looked like this. Not like velvet over steel. Not like a divining rod to pleasure rather than water. Robert was thick, the skin darker at the base of him than a
t the mushroom head of his cock.

  She glanced up, at last breaking her gaping stare and found him watching her.

  “And what is your verdict?” he asked softly, not teasing, but still easy in his manner.

  She shook her head. “My education was sorely lacking before. But I want to do things, Your Grace. And now you’re going to get onto that bed and let me.”

  He laughed and the tension bled from the room. He shifted his trousers from trim hips, kicking them aside, and then he did as she’d ordered. He settled back on his bed, hands behind his head on the pillows, staring up at her in challenge and question and desire.

  “I’m all yours.”

  She tensed, halfway up on the bed. All hers. That was most decidedly not true. Robert wasn’t hers. He wasn’t anyone’s. He’d told her that once, that he would not be seduced to marriage. To commitment of any kind. He didn’t remember that night, but she did.

  Only he didn’t mean hers to keep. He meant hers to enjoy. She pushed the first away and focused on the second.

  She was on her knees now. Settled between his calves, and all she could do was stare at his naked body.

  “Once my husband asked me to do a thing,” she whispered, reaching out to trace his cock with her fingers. “Only he didn’t like it when I did it.”

  “What did he ask you to do?” he asked, breathless.

  She leaned over, little tendrils of hair loose from her bun tickling her cheeks and tangling around his cock. She darted her tongue out and let it flick over the head.

  He sucked in a breath through his teeth. “He didn’t like it?” he choked.

  She smiled at the tension in his voice and looked up at him with a tiny shrug. “He said I did it wrong. And he said that if I did it, I was a whore. Which is an odd thing to say to someone who you asked to do a thing.”

  “I hate him,” he muttered, arching as she stroked her hand over him. “I’m glad he’s dead.”

  She shook her head. Right now she was very glad of the same, even if she would surely rot for such an uncharitable feeling. After all, his being gone allowed her to do…this…

  She licked Robert a second time, loving the softness of his skin, the underlying hardness beneath. Loving the flavor of him, male desire and clean flesh. Loving that this man who was so capable of retaining all this control at all times arched beneath her touch and gripped the coverlet like it was the only thing keeping him sane.

  “Katherine,” he groaned. “You are not doing it wrong. Don’t stop.”

  She smiled against him and licked again, circling the head of him gently before she finally dropped her mouth over him and took him inside. He was bigger than her husband—she’d never had to maneuver so much. She took him as far as she could comfortably go, gripping the base of his shaft and stoking it as she withdrew.

  He mumbled garbled, helpless sounds and they drove her on. She sucked him deeper, watching up the length of his body as his face grew lined with tension. With pleasure. With sensation. She was doing this. Making him moan. Making him arch. Making his feet flex.

  She was doing it and it made her whole body tingle, the same way it did when he touched her. When he licked her. When he made her come. She moaned against him and he cursed, his eyes squeezing shut.

  She knew then what she would do. What she wanted. What she needed. She stroked him one last time and then she slid up his body. Her dress tangled around him, one of her slippers clattered to the floor, but at last she straddled him once more. She was pushing at fabric, trying to get to the naked flesh beneath, for she had not worn drawers tonight.

  She positioned herself about him and looked down to find his eyes wide. “Are you sure?” he asked.

  She nodded, pushing away any doubt. Pushing away the wager that had kept her from this before. Pushing away memories of the night her husband died.

  And she glided down, her wet sheath taking him, stretching and aching with pleasure as he filled her completely. Together they shivered, and she rested her forehead against his as their ragged breathing began to match. They were one now, joined in a way that could never be undone or forgotten.

  He glanced up at her and smiled. “You’re wearing too many clothes.”

  She laughed, shocked one could find humor at the same time that sensation ripped through her whole body. There was nothing dour or serious about this moment. Not like it had been before. This was no duty. It was something magical.

  He caught her hips, dragging her forward and kissing her. She drove her tongue into his mouth, rotating her body, squeezing him inside of her. He moaned and she did the same as the pleasure ricocheted through her, hitting parts of her she didn’t know existed until this moment.

  She was vaguely aware of his fingers flitting along her spine. Her dress opened in the back and gaped forward. He tugged at it, pulling it over her head. She heard the delicate fabric rending before he tossed it aside.

  “My maid will not be happy,” she giggled. She grabbed the hem of her chemise and yanked it off her head, letting it join the dress on the floor.

  Now she was naked, save her stockings and the one slipper that had stayed on her foot when she straddled him. He glided his hands up her sides, staring at her as he cupped her breasts and squeezed, massaging the flesh there.

  She shut her eyes, dipping her head back as her hips thrust of their own accord. He grunted out his satisfaction, lifting to meet her as she rode him. She thrust harder, faster, feeling the pleasure build in her. She was just on the edge of it, ready to fall, when her mind yanked her back to that night just over a year ago.

  The night when her husband had died in just this very position.

  Her eyes flew open, pleasure gone as she stared down at Robert in horror. His face had been lined with satisfaction, but when he saw her expression, that faded. Concern replaced everything and he settled his hands onto her bare hips.

  “What is it?” he said, his voice strained.

  She shook her head, trying to make those images go away. “Just…he…I…”

  He nodded slowly. “That night,” he whispered. “You’re remembering.”

  She gasped out a sob and leaned down against his shoulder. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  His arms came around her, gentle as he smoothed his hands along her bare spine in comfort. “Why are you apologizing?” he asked against her ear as he kissed her there. “Of course you would experience memories, considering our position. Had I known you were going to do that, I might have moved us this first time.”

  She pulled back. “You aren’t angry?”

  “No.” He traced her face with his fingers. “Never. But I need you to listen to me, Katherine. You didn’t do anything wrong. The night that he died, it had nothing to do with your prowess.”

  “I know,” she said.

  He cupped her chin. “You say it. But do you know it?”

  Her bottom lip began to tremble as she relived not just the moment Gregory had died, but the moments after. When the servants had come in to find her screaming over him. When the doctor had hissed at her to put on a robe. When everyone in the world, it seemed, judged her and whispered about her and the worst moment of her life.

  “You married an old man,” Robert said gently, “who obviously had a great many health problems. But I’m not an old man. You can’t hurt me. What you were doing just now, riding me, felt like heaven. And watching you edge up to release as your body gripped me, that was something I will never forget.”

  She stared down at him. He was taking care of her so sweetly, not angry their interaction had been interrupted. And he wasn’t lewd about what she was capable of doing to a man, as so many might be. Nor was he teasing her, instead taking her pain seriously. No one had ever done that. No one had ever done anything that Robert had done in the time they’d been here in Abernathe.

  In that moment she realized she didn’t just want him. She didn’t just like him despite all the reasons she had to put wall
s up between them.

  She was in love with him.

  And she blinked down at him in shock that the feeling existed, growing now that she’d named it in her heart.

  “Will you let me take over?” he asked. “And show you that you can have pleasure and I can bear it?”

  Her throat was thick and she couldn’t speak, not without confessing the thing she now knew. And he couldn’t love her. That much was clear. So she simply nodded. She would take this connection of bodies, even though she might not ever get a connection of souls.

  He gripped her hips and rolled her to her back. Their bodies stayed connected, and at first she thought he would just start thrusting. But he didn’t. He withdrew, leaving her bereft until he began to trace his mouth down her naked body.

  “This has been so worth the wait,” he murmured before he began sucking her nipple.

  He was hard, firm, and her thoughts left her mind as she trembled at his expert touch. She drove her fingers into his thick hair, lifting her hips to his as the pleasure began to grow deep inside her once more.

  He shifted, one hand gliding between them, and he positioned himself back at her entrance. She gasped as he speared her, filling her completely in one long thrust. He brought his mouth back to hers, devouring her with kisses as he circled his hips in long, slow, almost languid thrusts.

  She was drowning. In his kiss, in his touch, in the intense sensation that flowed from their joined bodies through her entire being. All her fear, the terror that had gripped her, it faded as he brought her focus back to their joined bodies. She was with no one else but him, there was no moment but this one.

  When she surrendered to that fully, that was when her orgasm began. She’d had them before, of course. Alone in her bed as she furtively touched herself, from the expert skill of Robert’s mouth and his fingers. But this…this was something different. Her body began to ripple, her sheath squeezing out of control. But this time he was inside of her and she had something to brace against as she cried out his name into the quiet room.