Darling Duke (Heart's Temptation Book 6) Read online

  She trailed her hand down his strong arms to his hip.

  Not many days before, she had touched his cock, cupping and stroking. While she had not known what to do then—and still did not—the heaviness in her veins, the heat settling in her belly, and the wetness between her thighs urged her onward now. She arched, making certain that her breasts burned into his chest and his arousal connected with her mound’s soft flesh.

  Yes. This was where she wanted him. Where she needed him. Nothing else mattered, not consequences or propriety, nor the fact that they were sharing a roof with their respective family members. Any part of her that would have objected to the depravity threatening to consume them both was hastily squelched, firmly shoved to the far recesses of her mind. Here, in this moment, there was no room for rules. No room for decorum. No room for anything other than pure, animal want.

  She wanted Bainbridge. He wanted her.

  Simple. She sucked his tongue, ran hers against it, bit his lower lip until he grunted, and then she kissed and licked away the sting. He had done this to her. Had turned her into a raw, unadulterated wanton. The final remnants of the girl she had once been—the girl who had tried to please her parents, who had made an effort to conform, the girl who had dutifully attended finishing school—dissipated. That girl was gone, and in her place stood a woman in her chemise, who knew what she wanted.

  Rules and everyone and everything else be damned.

  A groan tore from Bainbridge’s throat then, and he dragged his lips from her mouth, down her neck, open, hot, wet, hungry. She threw back her head to grant him better access. He licked the tense cord of her throat, sucked her skin, gently bit the taut corner of flesh where her neck and shoulder met. His hands were everywhere, kneading, caressing, making her untutored flesh come to life.

  Someone moaned into the silence, and she supposed it must have been her. The longing inside her continued to tighten and build, a delicious pang of want echoing between her thighs. She had read about such primitive feelings, but she had previously imagined them embellishments perpetrated by the authors with the intent to titillate.

  It wasn’t so.

  Those feelings—the wicked, the prurient, the wrong, the desperate—all of them, were as real as the breath leaving her lungs on an exhale of pure desire. He dragged a path of kisses over the bare décolletage above her chemise. Then lower still, his hand cupping a breast, his mouth closing over her nipple through the thin linen.

  “Bainbridge,” she gasped, arching. Nothing could have prepared her for the decadence of his hot, wet mouth on her. Suckling her. Suddenly, she longed for the last barriers between them to be gone. “Please.”

  He nipped her then, not with enough force for pain. Pleasure, clear and strong, shot through her. And then he raised his head, his gaze meeting hers. “You need to get out of this chamber, Lady Boadicea. At once.”

  But as he issued the authoritative command, his hands molded her waist, swept lower, back to the swell of her bottom, and he angled her against him. His hips thrust against her, the stroke of his cock over the sensitized bundle of flesh at her core inciting an answering twitch of her hips.

  “I do not wish to leave,” she told him then on a half gasp as he pumped against her. The friction was delicious, her undoing. She could not get enough of it, of him, and yet she still wanted more.

  More of him. More of his tongue, his mouth, his hard body, his demanding cock. More of everything. He brought her to life, and she couldn’t help but wonder if, at least in some small measure, she didn’t bring him back to life as well.

  Thoughts such as these were abruptly disbanded when he caught her chemise in his hands and rent it in two. “I want your skin. I want your body. Damn you, Lady Boadicea Harrington. I cannot think or move for wanting you.”

  Her ruined chemise fell away, down to the floor, and she was naked before him. She knew not a moment of embarrassment, so overcome was she with the newness of the sensations ricocheting through her.

  Nothing she had ever felt could compare to this—to him. He had swept into her life with the unexpected turbulence of a summer thunderstorm, changing the landscape indelibly. It did not matter that they had not known each other long, that in truth, they still scarcely knew each other at all. Apart from the way they could not seem to stop their mutual desire despite their best efforts to the contrary, they had little in common. Nothing mattered but want, need, and longing. Mouths and hands and bodies and skin, his hardness to her softness, his ice to her fire.

  She would melt him, she thought again as she moved against him, answering his every thrust with an arch. She was hyperaware of each stroke of him against her pearl, that part of her that was most receptive to touch and stimulation.

  His hands found her breasts, kneading and cupping, his thumbs swirling over her nipples. Once. Again. And again, each stroke pure bliss. He caught the hard buds between his fingers, rolling and pulling. She moaned. Decided it was not fair that he remained fully dressed in his riding garb while she was naked and vulnerable and horribly wanting, standing before him. With a palm to his chest, she shoved him back by a few inches. He allowed her to overpower him, watching her with his heavy, half-lidded stare.

  God, how she wanted him.

  “We are well matched then, Duke.” Even bared before him, his hands on her body, his cock rubbing against her most intimate flesh, she could not shake the feeling that this moment would be the moment she would one day realize had changed everything. “I want all of you as well.”

  Bo took her turn in touching him, longing to have him free of his clothes. Feverishly, her fingers worked over his jacket, removing the layers separating him from her. Fabric dropped to the floor. She found the buttons of his shirt, freeing them from their moorings. Bare chest, defined and strong and breathtaking, met her fevered fingertips.

  “Damn you, Boadicea Harrington,” he swore, but his hands were upon her with equal fervor, coasting over her waist, her hips, cupping her bottom. “Damn you.”

  “You do not like the effect I have upon you,” she observed wryly, leaning forward to brazenly run her tongue over one of his hard nipples. The breath hissed from his lungs. She took that as encouragement and bestowed the same attention to the opposite flat disc, feeling unaccountably bold. Perhaps it was the moment, the wildness of it, perhaps it was standing before a man she barely knew without a stitch to protect her modesty. “Admit it, Duke. You cannot resist me.”

  “I have resisted far greater temptations than you,” he said coolly.

  “Hmm.” She did not believe his attempt to keep her at bay. He could play the ice king all he liked, but she knew that there was more to him hiding beneath the surface, waiting for her to discover. Her hands traveled lower, relishing the solid planes of his abdomen, rippled with muscle she would not have expected from a gentleman like him, to the trail of hair below his navel.

  He tensed beneath her touch, his skin at once firm and hot and yet soft as velvet. Such a dichotomy. She wanted to run her hands over his bare skin forever, and it would still not be long enough. Provided that he was forced to keep his supercilious mouth shut, that was.

  He caught her wrist in his grasp. “Hmm? What does that mean?”

  Irking him was a pleasant diversion all its own, heightening the bold desire surging through her. She smiled, extricating herself from his grip with ease. “It means that I do not believe you, Your Grace. Or that I do believe you, and I do not care. You may take your pick.”

  His handsome face hardened, jaw going tense, eyes darkening. “Do you want to be fucked, Lady Boadicea? Is that the purpose of your bawdy books and your presence in my chamber? Your wandering hands and your crude insinuations?”

  He was a beast. But as much as she wanted to punish him, she rather enjoyed hearing his frigid, clipped voice uttering such wicked obscenities in conjunction with his cold accusations. It made her want him more, truth be told. Yes, he was a beast, and she was an aberrant creature. Perhaps they were a match after all, for wh
ile they seemed forever at odds, they nevertheless could not keep their distance from each other.

  “Would that make it more convenient, Duke?” she asked boldly. “Would your need for me be somehow more palatable if you imagined I was the sole instigator, that I am a wanton tart masquerading as a lady?”

  She used his words against him like a weapon. Of course she did, for she still found offense in them, and he was such an obstinate sapskull that she wanted to make him suffer, just a bit. Her fingers continued their investigation, finding the fastening of his riding breeches. She made short work of it, opening them, her fingers drifting lower still. She kissed his chest, inhaling the scent of him, male and potent and delicious.

  He jerked. “Bloody hell. What do you think you are doing, my lady?”

  “This.” Her hand slipped inside his breeches and his smalls.

  Oh.

  She found him, hard and thick and hot and smooth. Instinctively, her fingers curled around his shaft, squeezing with gentle pressure. His hips twitched, but he did not withdraw from her touch. How strong he was, holding himself as tense as a marble bust, as though he dare not move or breathe for fear he would reveal himself to her. Realization hit her then, sudden and invigorating. She was seducing him. And he would allow it.

  Wanted it, she would daresay. But for reasons all his own, he was attempting to resist with all his might. Control was important to him. Perhaps it was the way he made sense of things after the tragedy he had suffered. All she knew for certain was that she wanted to rattle him. She wanted him to admit that he burned for her the same way she did for him.

  The abrupt shift of power between them emboldened her, sending an insistent, aching pulse between her thighs. For some reason, he was attempting to resist her. But he fought a losing battle. And she enjoyed pushing him. Taunting him. Provoking him. Stroking his cock as she had only read about in her books. She did it now, once, twice. Tentative at first and then with firmer pressure, taking cues from him, learning what made him weak.

  A deep growl sounded in his throat.

  Her heart thumped madly. Her breasts felt heavy and full. She hungered for him in a way she had never known, deep within her core, as though only he could fulfill her. She stroked and stroked, and she wanted that part of him where it belonged. Where the books told her it went.

  Inside her.

  “You cannot resist me,” she said again, determined to make him admit it.

  ood God.

  Boadicea was stroking his naked cock, her touch like a brand. He had allowed things to progress too far, and now every inch of her creamy skin was on display for him, and he was so hard that he feared he was about to spend in her hand. He should push her away, wrap her in her flimsy dressing gown, leave her virginity and his honor intact, send her out the door. He should wait until they were wed to own her body the way he longed to, and yet the infernal woman was right.

  He could not resist her. But he would be damned if he would deliver her victory on a silver platter by admitting it aloud. She thought she could seduce him with her boldness, make him bend to her every whim. The beast he had attempted to restrain flared to life, ready to conquer.

  His fingers sank into the silken hair at her nape then, fisting, dragging her head back so that he could kiss and lick her throat. He dragged his teeth over the sensitive skin as she continued to grip his shaft, working it up and down. He jerked his hips, groaning. The cords of her throat fascinated him, such strength encased in softness. She tasted sweet, like musk and jasmine and every tart he had pilfered from the kitchens as a lad, only better.

  He lost himself in that moment, his control shattering. Nothing else mattered except the warm, perfectly curved, utterly divine minx in his arms and his need to bury himself inside her. With his free hand, he caught her wrist, withdrawing her from his breeches.

  When she made a needy sound of protest, his cock throbbed. He gently nipped the side of her throat, working back to the hollow beneath her ear before pressing an open-mouthed kiss there. “Get on the bed.” She hesitated, and he took her earlobe between his teeth, biting into the tender flesh. “Now.”

  Wordlessly, she obeyed, lying on the bed, her riotous auburn locks unbound and fanned around her in contrast to her pale skin. He shucked his boots, breeches, and smalls, never tearing his eyes from her, for he could not look away. Her breasts were full and round, tipped with hard peach nipples that he longed to suck. The curve of her waist, the hollow of her belly, her long, luscious legs… God, he could not wait another moment to put his mouth on her.

  He sank on the bed, beginning at her ankles, so trim and fine-boned that his hands dwarfed them. She was so bloody beautiful, a taunting goddess, an outspoken vixen, everything that appalled him and yet everything he could not get enough of. Lowering his head, he kissed the arch of each dainty foot. Even here, the workhorse of her body, she was soft and bewitching. Her feet were as lovely as the rest of her.

  “Bainbridge,” she protested, her voice breathless. “What are you doing?”

  He slanted a glance up over her glorious body, swept his palms up her calves, kissing as he went. Reached her inner knee and licked. “Tasting you.” He found her thighs next, parted them and fully exposed her to his hungry gaze at last. Pink and slick with desire, perfect and his. He kissed the soft flesh of her inner thighs, the scent of her, musky and intoxicating, luring him on to his ultimate goal.

  She jerked beneath him, attempted to close her legs but he stayed her. “You cannot mean to…oh.”

  He licked her slit, running his tongue over her in slow, teasing swipes up, down, up down. He avoided her channel and her pearl, the two places he knew she longed for him most. She gasped and writhed beneath him, her fingers sinking into his hair. Her breathy sighs spurred him on, and he felt each one in his tightening ballocks. He licked and laved, drawing no quarter with his torture. Here, she tasted sweetest of all, and he rewarded her by running his tongue over the demanding jewel at the center of her folds at last before working his teeth over it. She stiffened beneath him, and he knew she was close. He alternated between sucking, licks, and nips, adding pressure, burying his face so deep between her legs that she was all he could taste and breathe.

  She came apart for him, arching off the bed and crying out as tremors of release shook her body. He cupped her luscious bottom, holding her to him, lapping the sweet spendings of her release like it was manna from heaven. He would have happily remained there all morning, pleasing her with his mouth again and again, but the need to be inside her surged through him then with such force that his teeth ached.

  He dropped another kiss on her mound and worked his way up the rest of her body, worshipping her belly, the fullness of her breasts, suckling her hard nipples until she moaned and he was about to come on her thigh like a green lad. He kissed her neck, tongued the hollow behind her ear, rolled his hips against her so that she could feel his cock straining to be inside her.

  “Is this what you want?” he asked into her ear.

  Her hands swept up his back, urging him on. “Spencer,” she whispered, bringing him to the edge with one word. His name on her lips. That was all it took.

  Fuck, he was desperate. Primal possession roared through him. He had to be inside her. Now. He reached between their bodies, dragging his cock over her slick flesh. “Tell me what you want,” he gritted, his cock poised at her entrance now. Her heat beckoned, and it took every ounce of self-restraint he owned to keep from slamming home. He wanted the filthy words on her luscious lips. For her to say it.

  “I want you inside me,” she said, shifting so that the tip of his cock sank into her.

  On a groan, he pressed slowly forward, not wishing to cause her pain yet dying to have her. He kissed her on the mouth then, forcing her lips open, letting her taste herself on his tongue, and she moaned, writhing beneath him. He sank deeper, giving her shallow thrusts to allow her body to stretch and accommodate the new invasion. And then, he could not wait a moment more. One more deep th
rust, and he was fully sheathed inside her.

  She stiffened, and he stilled, his fingers finding her clitoris, stimulating her to take away any pain she may have felt. Everything in him longed to thrust hard and fast, again and again, empty himself inside her. But he reigned himself in, kissing her, pleasuring her, waiting until she relaxed and her hips bucked against him, taking him deeper.

  Damn. She was so tight, so hot, and being inside her felt better than he had even imagined it would. He lost himself. Perhaps it was that it had been so long since he’d had a woman. Perhaps it was just this woman. He didn’t know. Spencer’s strokes grew faster, harder, taking him deeper. He could not be deep enough. Could not have enough of her. She clenched on him as she came again, sudden and hard, and he was close, so close to following. The slick sounds of her desire, the mewling cries she made in her throat, the scent of her, her tongue in his mouth. It was too much, and he was delirious with it, with raw, unadulterated pleasure.

  She was his, and he sank home inside her once more, deep and true, before recalling himself at the last moment and withdrawing, gripping his cock as he spent all over the coverlet in thick, white streams. He collapsed against her, kissing her one last time before breaking away.

  He had just debauched his bride-to-be in the emerald room in the midst of the morning, and while his body didn’t regret a moment of the explosive passion they’d shared, his conscience chose that moment to reappear. What the hell had he done? If his mother caught wind of his recklessness, she would roast his heart on a spit.

  “We will get married as soon as possible,” he announced grimly. “I will procure a license tomorrow.”

  She muttered something that sounded suspiciously like arrogant oaf. Surely not?

  He raised his head, frowning down at her. “What did you say, madam?”

  She blinked, and he could not help but notice with pride how her cheeks were flushed from pleasure and her lips swollen from his kisses. Mine, he thought again with an instinctive surge of possessiveness.