What a Duke Dares (21 page)

The world dipped as he set her on the bed and lowered over her, shrugging off the crimson robe. She had a far too fleeting glimpse of his long, lean body before he caged her between his arms, his bare chest filling her view.

Dizzy with unprecedented, overwhelming excitement, she gasped as his weight descended. Automatically her legs parted to cradle his hips. She started up against him when she felt the insistent pressure against her belly. Huge. Demanding. Inescapable.

His mouth devoured hers, then nipped and licked her neck and shoulders. Roughly he shoved the frail batiste aside until he could kiss the ball of her shoulder and the line of her collarbone. He rushed her into a turbulent current of passion that permitted no pause. She flowed into his demands. She didn’t want to think. She just wanted to feel.

Her heart thundered so loudly that she hardly heard the sharp rip as he tore the nightdress away.

“Cam!” With her last modesty, she tried to cover her sex
and her breasts. Everything happened so quickly. She hadn’t come to terms with one sensation before another crowded to replace it.

“Let me see you,” he groaned, staring down with glittering green eyes. “I’ve dreamed of seeing you.”

She knew his dreams had involved passionate possession and nothing more. But she had no defenses against his pleading. Shaking with nerves, she lifted her hands away and buried them in the rumpled sheets.

“You’re so beautiful,” he said, bending his head to her breasts.

When he suckled, she cried out at the heat rocketing through her. Arousal tightened and coiled, making her writhe. With unsteady hands, she grabbed his forearms, fingers digging into the taut muscles. Once before, he’d pushed her to the edge, but this time, her responses were stronger, deeper. She could hardly think. This was like living inside a furnace. He’d burn her to ashes. All the time he muttered words that she’d heard so often in her fantasies.

You’re so beautiful.

You’re like fire in my arms.

I’ve wanted you so long.

I want you. I want you. I want you.

He rocked against her stomach, setting her blood shifting like the tides. She edged closer to an exquisite pinnacle. The musky smell of aroused male overwhelmed her. The torrid intimacy astonished her, even if in her imagination, her body had thrilled to his hands and lips and voice ten thousand times.

Oh, what wicked things he did to her. Arching, she bit him on the shoulder, wanting him to know a fraction of this painful joy. He jolted under the rough caress and bit her nipple hard enough to make her shake like the dice in a gambler’s cup.

Like his kisses on the
Windhover
, this mating held little tenderness. She didn’t want tenderness. Tenderness would cut too close to her lonely soul.

He raised his head and gazed at her blindly. His pupils were so enlarged, his eyes were as black as her own. The skin across his face looked too tight to contain the hard, exquisite bones: so male, so strong, so noble.

Fleetingly her aroused trance receded and she stared lost into his face, knowing she’d remember this moment as long as she lived. The burning gaze. The powerful arms straining beneath her clutching hands. The weight against her belly. The vulnerability betrayed in the line of his mouth. A vulnerability that she knew he’d deny.

She saw something else too. Something that pierced her like a sword. For all Cam’s excitement, there was a distance behind those brilliant eyes. He might want her to yield unconditionally, but if he felt anything beyond physical urgency, it remained forever locked inside him.

As he tightened his hips and plunged into her, she released a broken sob of anguish.

Pen’s harsh cry pierced the air, but it was too late. As he seated himself full length, Cam felt the delicate membrane tear.

Appalled realization crashed down and he went utterly still. Beneath him, Pen lay stiff as a board. All the lithe looseness had vanished the moment he took her.

Incredulity and shame battled inside him.

Incredulity. Shame. And unforgivable pleasure.

Because lying here, the strongest sensation was pleasure.

“Pen?” he asked shakily. He loathed that he loved being inside her. He loathed that his deepest physical nature wanted him to stay. With clumsy tenderness, he brushed back the hair clinging to her damp face.

“Pen, I’m sorry.” His apology was thick with regret and raging arousal.

“Finish,” she forced out in a guttural voice that he didn’t recognize. “For God’s sake, finish.”

Every muscle in her body hardened against him as if her very skin rejected him. The hands that circled his arms were tight as manacles. She breathed in broken little gasps.

Damn, damn, damn.

“I’ll hurt you,” he said, frantic with remorse.

“You’re hurting me now,” she snarled, nails digging deep enough to draw blood. The sting was the least he deserved.

He’d been so tragically, fatally, criminally wrong. Why the devil had he listened to the vicious lies? Hell, if anyone knew not to credit spiteful tattle, he should.

Like a coward, he buried his head in the warm nook between her neck and shoulder. What he’d done was reprehensible. The result of arrogance, prejudice, stupidity, and selfish lust. Not to mention lacerating jealousy of her imaginary lovers.

But he’d wanted her so badly that he’d been blind to the signs of inexperience. Her skittishness on the journey. Her volatile reaction when he’d suggested an affair. Most of all, tonight’s crippling nervousness.

All this knowledge came too late, too late.

He’d been so convinced about the string of lovers. Whereas everything he knew of Pen declared her fastidiousness. Sod it all, at nineteen, she’d been too fastidious to marry him.

The compulsion to finish beat in his blood. His heart crashed against his ribs. Every hot clench of her body awakened shudders of delight.

His mind insisted that her body tightened to expel the invader. His mind insisted that he must withdraw, beg
forgiveness, leave her alone. His mind insisted that he’d never make recompense for his actions tonight.

Even so, he lingered. Drew the scent of hot, aroused Pen into his lungs like incense. She smelled like the woman he’d kissed, but different. As though lilies suddenly blossomed on a favorite rosebush. As though he’d worked some deep change in her, beyond the mere matter of two bodies colliding in pain and pleasure.

The crackle of the fire played soft counterpoint to her panting distress. Somewhere outside a night bird called, a high, melancholy sound that echoed her cry as he’d entered her.

Gradually she gave him what he waited for. Her shocked rigidity softened. So infinitesimally that unless he’d tuned his attention to her so closely, he’d miss it.

She was woefully removed from squirming urgency. But she was no longer so tense that she’d likely break if he made the slightest twitch.

Every muscle howling for release, he rose on his arms. He opened his eyes and saw her bite her lip to stifle a protest at his movement. Hell, he knew he hurt her. Guilt sliced at him like razors.

She stared up at the tester, embroidered with gilt Rothermere unicorns. Tears trickled from the corners of her eyes to soak the black hair spread around her like tangled silk. Compared to her ashen cheeks, her lips seemed startlingly red, bruised with his kisses.

“For pity’s sake, end this.” Her demand rasped across his nerves. “I want this over.”

“My dear—”

He faltered into silence. After his ruthlessness, he had no right to speak endearments. His lips brushed hers in a kiss meant to comfort, but her nearness defeated him and he deepened the contact. He tasted tears.

Dear God, he was a swine. Self-disgust struggled to rise above his craving to complete the act.

Gingerly, he retreated. Her breathtaking tightness made every inch excruciating and rapturous. Then very carefully, he eased inside, hearing her muffled grunt of surprise at the unexpected smoothness. She didn’t stiffen against his invasion, although he caught the flinch she tried to hide.

Brave Penelope.

He moved again, gently, although the need to lose himself shook good intentions. He hooked a hand beneath her knee, bending it to aid his entry.

Another withdrawal. Another careful thrust. Rewarded with a sigh, this time conveying something other than discomfort.

He shifted again and again, desperate to grant her some scrap of pleasure to make up for his sins. But with every moment, control frayed.

On a long groan, his hips surged forward and his seed flooded his wife’s virgin womb.

Chapter Nineteen

C
am’s body crushed Pen into the mattress. Shock receded, but every breath reminded her that he hadn’t been gentle. She still couldn’t believe that the wild crescendo ended in such awkward intimacy.

Astonishment kept all other emotions at bay. Although resentment, regret, frustration, wretchedness, confusion all hovered.

She tried to make sense of what had happened. She’d always imagined that Cam would please her as a lover. She’d feared that he’d please her too much. His hold over her was already terrifyingly powerful.

The overture to Cam’s horrible invasion had been extraordinary. Better than being in his arms on the yacht. Better than anything in her life.

If the prelude was so breathtaking, surely the act itself must be even better. Then he’d thrust inside her. The union had given her no joy. Which seemed so unfair when she’d edged beyond discomfort and toward satisfaction before he brought everything to an abrupt end.

She made herself look at Cam, then wished to heaven that she hadn’t. Now the worst ache resided in her soul. He looked completely devastated and self-loathing clouded his green eyes.

“Pen, I’m so sorry,” he whispered brokenly, and kissed her forehead with a grieving tenderness that slashed her heart into tattered shreds. His tenderness was much more painful than his possession. She had no defenses against it.

He eased out, setting off twinges through her body. Stupidly she missed him the moment he withdrew to collapse beside her with an unhappy grunt.

“It was my duty,” she said dully. Now that the pain faded, she was aware of a heavy restlessness, like Cam had held her high in the air and couldn’t decide whether to drag her to safety or drop her to destruction.

“It should have been more.” Regret deepened his voice. “I was a clumsy oaf.”

“I’ll live.” With every minute, her aches subsided. The physical ones at least.

“Pen, don’t be gallant. I can’t bear it.” Then in a shaking voice, he asked, “Why the hell didn’t you tell me you were a virgin?”

She started. “Why would you think I wasn’t?” Then shame filled her. “It’s because I let you touch me on the yacht, isn’t it?”

Shocked denial made him grimace. “No!”

She stared into Cam’s face and wondered just what he’d imagined she’d been up to. The possibilities made her sick. She looked away and mumbled, “I don’t want to talk about this now.”

“We’ll have to talk about it sometime,” he said implacably.

“Just… not now.” Through her misery and exhaustion, anger stirred as she recalled him asking her to be his mistress.
He’d obviously spent the last weeks convinced that he traveled with a woman who rivaled Jezebel for wickedness.

While nothing had matched the pleasure she’d found in his kisses and caresses, she hadn’t absolutely hated the act. She wished desperately she knew more about what men and women did together. After all those racy conversations in Continental salons, she’d considered herself worldly. None of those sly, witty exchanges had hinted at the raw, earthy reality of a man’s body pushing into a tight female passage.

She stared up at the tester. She’d never see the Rothermere unicorns without remembering how Cam had thundered into her. Given she’d just signed up to a lifetime as the Duchess of Sedgemoor, those unicorns would remind her over and over.

“You should go back to your room.” She rose against the pillows and dragged the sheet up. Lying naked beside him, she felt too much like a ritual sacrifice. She winced. Changing her position launched a barrage of new twinges. Between her legs, she felt sore and sticky.

He’d flung one arm over his eyes, so she had no idea whether he’d drifted off or whether he merely avoided his dissatisfied bride. Except the dissatisfied bride couldn’t help stealing this opportunity to study the superb masculine form beside her. Long, lean, powerful. Intriguingly hairy on his chest and… down there.

Surreptitious interest stirred in places that she thought could never react again. The heaviness between her legs turned hot and insistent, instead of purely uncomfortable.

One question beat at her over and over.
Was the act always like that?

“Do you really want to be alone?” Cam sounded weary and reasonable, a different man from the passionate seducer. “I’ll go if you like, but I need to make amends and I can’t manage that from behind a closed door.”

“As long as we don’t have to do it again,” she said stiffly, sidling toward the edge of the bed.