Four Nights With the Duke (19 page)

“You have no idea how cruel children can be. It might break his spirit.”

“I do have an idea, and it won’t break him.”

“How would you know? Once, when he was five, I left him alone for just a few minutes in the village and when I returned, they had him in tears.”

“There will be more tears,” Vander said calmly. “There will be difficult moments. But if we are at his shoulder, he’ll be fine. He must do it, Mia. He has to grow up to be a man, not an invalid.”

She was grinding her teeth, which made him grin. Marriage to Mia would never be boring.

He settled his arm more firmly around her waist,
drawing her closer. “I want to change the terms of our arrangement. Of our marriage.”

“I see no reason for that,” she replied, not looking at him, but somewhere around his right ear. “Four nights a year is more than enough to produce an heir. If four nights prove insufficient for that purpose, we might reconsider after a year has passed.” She tried to leave, but he reeled her back against his chest as easily as a dappled trout caught in summertime.

“I want you,” he said again, his voice dark with lust. He nipped her ear. She jerked, but she didn’t struggle free, and he felt her pulse quickening against his arm.

“So let me tell you how this shall be,” he said, when she remained silent. “We shall consummate our marriage tonight, because that’s what newly married couples do. They go to bed together and they don’t stand upright again for hours.”

“We do not have a normal marriage,” she tried.

Her voice was tight, which Vander didn’t like. “Turn your head so I can kiss you,” he said against her sweet-smelling hair.

She shook her head. “This is inadvisable.” His wife was stubborn. Hell, if he looked up the word in a dictionary, he’d probably find the name
Mia
printed there. “We’re not really married,” she insisted.

“Yes, we are. You’re my wife, and you’re staying my wife. And if you think we’re not going to sleep together, after you kissed me like that, you are wrong.”

“Kissed you . . .” She cleared her throat and turned her head just enough to frown at him. “You kissed me, not the other way around.”

“No.”

“Yes!”

Desire boiled in his gut, urging him to topple her backward again. But he’d already pushed his wife enough. If he pressed open those strawberry lips, he could seduce her.

But that wasn’t enough. He suspected that bedding Mia would be like learning the art of making love all over again.

You can’t do that alone.

“That kiss was a long, slow ride into oblivion, and it took two of us,” he whispered, his lips brushing her cheek. “You opened that sweet little mouth of yours, and tangled tongues with me as if you wanted me just as much as I wanted you.”

NOTES
ON
C
HURCH
& J
ILTING

         
~ Shocked gasps from the assembled
audience
. guests in the cathedral. Westminster Abbey (only for royalty?) St. Paul’s.

         
~ ancient priest pats Flora’s shaking hand.

         
~ Chin high, she picks up the hem of her wedding gown.

         
~ Is she blinded by tears? “Slubbered with tears, she—” Don’t know about “slubbered.” Not sure what it means.

         
~ She runs out the (side door—Nave?) unable to meet the curious eyes/Frederic’s parents? All the way from Germany?

         
~ Bursts through the back door of church into a sunlit day. Veil floats behind.

         
~ Runs like wounded animal: only idea to hide.

         
~ kindly man on cart takes her as far as . . . (somewhere outside London) and drops her off with
two
a crust of bread.

M
ia could feel red patches breaking out on her neck from pure embarrassment. Her husband had hardly glanced at her, and the walls she’d built up to hide her love had cracked open. “I did not kiss you,” she said stoutly.

The laughter in Vander’s eyes made her at once irritated and aroused.

“The man whom you kiss would forget he’s ever been kissed by another woman,” he said, cupping her face in his hands and tilting her head until he had her just where he wanted her.

This was dangerous. All Mia’s childhood yearnings flooded back into her heart as if they had never left. As if Vander was the only man she had ever loved or desired.

He bent his head again, at the same time one of his hands slid down over her collarbone.

She pulled away. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” he said innocently.

“You are touching my—” she faltered, then cleared her throat. If they were to consummate the marriage—and she wasn’t foolish enough to delude herself about that—some basic rules of conduct had to be established.

She might be destroyed by her marriage, broken into shards. But at least she could avoid the sort of humiliation that had scarred her after her poetry—and her chest—had been mocked.

He could have her body. But not that part. Not the part she abhorred. “You may not touch me there.”

“What?”

“I prefer not to be touched there,” she repeated.

His voice came out fast and low. “Did someone grope you against your will?”

“No!” Mia cried, startled. “No one has ever—and no one shall, and that includes you.”

His face relaxed, but his eyes had lost the heated sweetness they had before. She regretted it, but it was essential that she made herself understood. She’d gathered from other women that men liked to feel women’s breasts.

“Why not?” he asked.

She tried to explain. “We all have parts of our body that we are less than happy with.”

An eyebrow shot up. “We have?”

Men, it seemed, liked everything about themselves. That didn’t surprise her in the least. “Women have, at any rate. Some women don’t like their knees, or their feet, or their hair.”

“Your bosom is exquisite. And your hair. I can’t speak of your knees or feet, but if given the chance, I can reassure you on those points as well.”

Mia could hardly believe that Evander Septimus Brody, the most handsome duke in all England, was gazing at plain Emilia Carrington with desire in his eyes.

But he was.

Lust, even. Lust for someone like her? A quiet voice reminded her that men were like tomcats; they lusted indiscriminately.

But another part of her thought that his eyes had changed color since kissing her. That was for her.

Not for just any woman.

For her.

“Mia?” He leaned forward and kissed her, swift and hard. “Can we agree about your hair and move to points farther south?”

“I thought you hated my hair.”

“Why on earth would you think that?”

“You said it was like my father’s. Actually, you referred to him as my ‘blasted father,’” she clarified.

Vander brought a handful of her hair forward, his strong brown fingers entangled in it. “I will never be fond of your father. But . . . Chuffy revealed a few things tonight that I—at any rate, I must give it some thought. Your hair is like sunshine. And your breasts are truly stupendous.”

She stiffened. “I don’t wish to talk about them.” Back when Oakenrott had labeled them cabbages, they had been large for her age, but now they were larger still. Stupendous was one word for them.

But he persisted, asking again, “Why not?”

“I just don’t. I think we should wait,” she said, babbling a bit. “A bride should . . . A bride should look entirely different when . . . when intimacies . . .” Her voice died away because Vander’s lips were sliding across her cheek, coming ever closer to her mouth.

“Go on,” he said, “tell me more about what you think should happen.” Rather than wait for a reply, though, he kissed her again. His kiss was rough and sweet, and his urgency made her melt against him helplessly.

Sometime later she opened her eyes. They were lying down again, and Vander’s hands were sliding up her legs. His eyes were on hers, waiting to see if she approved. “You make me so fucking hungry,” he growled.

Mia had overheard that word shouted by street sweepers and once, memorably, growled by her father, but no one had ever said it
to
her. “Did you say that word?”

“I did.”

“You—you can’t say things like that!”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re a duke and I’m—”

“You’re my duchess.” His hand went higher, skimming over her thigh. She shivered under his touch. Her legs fell open because that part of her was burning.

He made a groaning noise. “I’m not much of a duke, Mia. You should know that by now. My mother was known as a whore the length and breadth of England by the time I got to Eton. I had to fight my way through school. My only friend was a bastard.”

Mia froze, horrified. “The boys
spoke
to you about your mother’s behavior?”

He grinned as if she had asked the silliest question imaginable. “They generally didn’t speak; they just called me names. And I answered them with my fists.”

“Oakenrott,” she said with disgust. “That loathsome little toad.”

“How did you—” He stopped. “I forgot that you know precisely what Rotter is like.”

His hand had reached the roundest part of Mia’s thighs and she was fighting an impulse to moan. Anything that would encourage him to move his hand higher, to the place between her legs that was waiting for his touch.

He smiled as if he knew what she was thinking, and his fingers slid right between her legs. Mia squeezed her eyes shut and concentrated on the aching darkness behind her eyelids, and the fact that her hands clutched arms hard with muscles.

She wondered for a second if this touch was permissible between a lady and gentleman, and pushed the thought away. She had no one to ask. And she didn’t want him to stop.

In fact, she thought of allowing her legs to fall open
and pulling his large body on top of her. That image was so shocking that she stayed absolutely still, not moving a muscle.

“I love touching you, Mia,” Vander growled, his voice low, guttural but sweet. “I intend to kiss you there too.”

Her eyes flew open. “No, you will not!”

He laughed, and his fingers swirled and pressed. Mia’s head fell back again and she let out a sound that no lady would allow to pass her lips.

Vander rolled on top of her, all his delicious weight holding her down. He began kissing her so fiercely that his hunger soaked into her body, taking all her restraints, taking away her claim to be a lady.

Before she knew it, she was shuddering all over, her hands clenched tight around his forearms, begging without words.

And then begging
with
words, because she was bursting into flames and he was the only person who could help her.

But he stopped. Why had he stopped? She whimpered, looking at him through eyes dazed with desire. She was wound tighter than a spool of wire, vibrating like a note so high that it barely struck the ear. “Mia,” he growled, “ask me for one of your four nights.”

“Wh—what?”

His hand took up that rough caress again.

“Don’t stop,” she whispered.

“Is this to be one of your four nights?”

Something unraveled in her heart, destroying the last of her defenses, the final shard of sanity she possessed. “Yes! It is, it is.”

What he said in response . . . what he did . . . was blasphemous. Miraculous. She felt like a river, liquid, rushing to a destination outside her control. She clung to him, crying out, her body clenching around
his probing fingers as his thumb dragged over her soft flesh, setting it on fire.

The only thing that mattered was the stark lust that shimmered in the air around both of them. Vander was driving her to a pleasure greater than she could have imagined.

She hadn’t quite got there when he bundled her skirts around her waist and, as if he were her maid preparing her for bed, began swiftly undressing her. As she would to her maid, Mia mindlessly obeyed his requests, her breath coming in little pants, her brain muddled by desire.
Raise your arms, Turn on your side, Twist the other way
.

Her corset was tossed to the floor. It was only when he tried to remove her chemise that she came back to herself and clamped her arms across her chest.

“No.” She’d used the word thousands of times, but never under these circumstances. It came out with a kind of sultry intimacy that she’d never heard from her own lips. Or anyone else’s, either.

In response, Vander stood and pulled his shirt over his head. She pushed up on her elbows, openly staring. When she was a girl, she used to sit on the fence and watch him working with horses, surreptitiously feasting her eyes on his chest. He hadn’t even been fifteen years old.

It was all different now.

What had been a youth’s sinewy leanness had filled out into a grown-up male beauty that made her tremble. His face was set in ferocious lines of need and his eyes roamed over her body without the slightest distaste. He bent down and pulled off his breeches, standing squarely before her, flaunting himself.

Her eyes widened. This was entirely different than seeing him in his smalls, when she proposed marriage.

Vander grinned at her with a purely male pride. “Is it the first time you’ve seen a man in the flesh?” he purred. He came down on all fours over her. This was truly happening.

Vander was about to make love to her.

She had the vague sense that she was expected to exhibit virginal apprehension, but she felt none. She wanted to touch him all over, wind his thick hair around her fingers, pull his mouth down to hers.

Of course she couldn’t behave like that. She had to rein in this unfamiliar wantonness. So she reached up to him, but in a ladylike way, putting her hands delicately, loosely around his neck, sliding them to his shoulders with the hope that caress was appropriate. “Shouldn’t we douse the lamp?”

Warm muscles slid beneath her fingers as he shrugged. “Why?”

Because darkness was more modest, she thought. But what part did modesty play in bedding, when a man put his fingers in such private places, and teased those pleading sounds from a woman’s mouth?

Who could be modest after that?

It was too late.

Mia abruptly decided to abandon her plans for ladylike restraint. She surrendered to curiosity and slid her hand down his chest to reach the part of him that strained toward her.

He stifled a groan as she ran a finger down his length and, with a quick glance at him for approval, curved her hand around him. He was thick, hot and silky.

A curse, dark and guttural, wrenched from his throat. Likely every man thought he possessed the largest tool a woman had ever seen. And because society demanded that a lady never admit to intimacies
of any sort, these delusions of grandeur were never dispelled.

Still, she could hardly imagine anyone larger than Vander. It would be impossible. It was impossible now.

The thought brought a chill down her spine and she felt a pang of fear. “What do we do now?” she asked, bringing her hands back to his shoulders. She was on her back, legs together, and he had a knee on either side of her hips.

The whole situation was embarrassing, and the lovely warmth she had in her stomach began to drain away.

“Is the rule about not touching your breasts still in place?”

Mia withdrew her arms from around his neck and crossed them over her breasts. Maybe she would start to wear her corset under her chemise to hold them in a bit. Glancing down showed that her breasts looked even larger from this perspective. She felt a lurch of disgust in her stomach.