He sank to his knees before her, his gaze locked upon hers, and kissed her knee through her silk stockings. He caressed her slim ankle, then grasped it firmly and urged her to lift her leg.
“Arden,” she protested.
“Lucien,” he reminded, intent upon his prize. Her mound was hidden by a dark, silky tuft of curls. He recalled how sweet she had tasted.
“Lucien,” she said, breathless. “What are you doing?”
“Loving you.” He guided her hands to his shoulders, then hooked a hand behind her knee when she continued to stand, unmoving. He rocked forward on his knees, blowing air lightly over her. “Trust me, Hazel.”
With a jerky nod, she relented, allowing him to place her right foot upon the cushion of the chair at their side. She was open to him then, naked save for her garters and stockings, those willful blue eyes upon him, and he had the perfect view of her. Pink and pretty, glistening in the light of the gas lamps. Wet for him.
She saw the direction of his gaze and shielded herself with a hand. He caught her wrist in a gentle grip, brought it to his lips for a kiss. “Let me.”
He drew her hand back to his shoulder, and he did not wait for her response this time. His head dipped. He kissed a path along her inner thigh, all the way to her sweetly spread cunny, then kissed her there too. Once, on her pearl. She stiffened, but made no move to push him away. He licked, just a flick of his tongue along the turgid bud, and she cried out, her fingers tensing on the muscles of his shoulders.
“Lucien,” she said, half moan, half protest.
He suckled her, then licked again and traced her seam with his fingers. “Shall I stop, sweetheart?” he asked, blowing a stream of air onto her exposed flesh as he glanced up at her.
“No,” she whispered.
He smiled, then buried his face between her legs once more.
The Duke of Arden possessed a miraculous tongue. This was Hazel’s sole, coherent thought as he devoured her with his mouth. Wicked and long and knowing, his tongue licked over the sensitive bundle of flesh at her center. Then he traced a path of decadence through her sex, lapping at her entrance.
Helpless. She was helpless to ask him to stop, to want him to stop. She never wanted him to stop. Her initial embarrassment at the depravity of her pose—foot upon a chair, her thighs parted to reveal the most intimate part of herself to his voracious gaze—fell away. What a beautiful sight, the high and mighty Arden, a man whose very dressing gown was of better quality than almost every garment she owned, on his knees before her.
He was, as he had said, loving her. Licking her, laving her, sucking, using his teeth to nip at her pearl until she moaned, grinding herself against him. More. She wanted more of everything he was doing to her. There was his tongue again, playing at her channel, subtle licks, circling, teasing. He wanted her as much as she wanted him inside her. That huge, hard maleness of him she had felt against her and beneath her hand would stretch and fill her there, and she wanted that too.
Wanted him.
He groaned. She felt the rumble against her eager flesh. A warm surge of wetness pooled between her thighs. She was slick, the sounds of him pleasuring her filling the silence of his massive bedchamber. Her foot slid on the damask of the chair, opening her to him more, and her hips instinctively thrust forward again and again.
He sucked her, then released her and drew back, his eyes darkened with pleasure, his lips red and glistening with the evidence of her desire. “Yes, Hazel. Show me what you want, what you like. Make me do your bidding. Tonight, I am your servant.”
His words made a heaviness settle low in her belly, the tingling coil of desire tightening into a knot that drew tighter by the moment. She relished in this great and powerful man, urging her to use him for her pleasure. There was no time for thinking or hesitating. Her fingers found his hair—she loved his hair, so dark and luxurious, with a curl to it. She gripped handfuls and urged him back to her mound.
Humming his approval, he tongued her seam, licked over her channel, his tongue dipping inside her, then darting back out again in shallow thrusts that made her desperate for more. He buried his face deeper, his tongue traveling lower, sliding over another, equally forbidden part of her. She jolted at the unexpected contact as he lapped at her, varying long and slow licks with faster flutters.
“That is… You should not… Lucien…”
She could not seem to finish her thought. Some part of her knew she should protest, but what he was doing to her was transcendent. It was wicked. It was wonderful. It was…
Oh.
His fingers found her pearl, petting her in tantalizing strokes as he continued his shameless sensual torture. Everything within contracted. Sensations coursed through her. She was mindless, boneless, and breathless all at once. For the third time, Arden brought her to a shattering, beautiful release.
But this time was different. More intense. As she rode the first, blinding wave of pleasure, she screamed. She forgot about servants or Lady Beaufort overhearing her, forgot she was not meant to be in Arden’s chamber, let alone naked and at the mercy of his skilled fingers and even more skilled tongue. She was wetter now than she had been before, and this too, he lapped up, moaning into her flesh, as if she were the most delicious feast laid before him.
As awareness and lucidity gradually returned in the wake of her release, she realized she was gripping fistfuls of his hair tightly, and she relaxed her fingers, exhaling slowly. Her heart pounded and the rest of her tingled everywhere. Even her scalp and the bottoms of her feet. Dear God, the way he had owned her body, wringing pleasure from her in places she had never dreamt could be pleasured in such wicked fashion…
He took his time, kissing her everywhere. Flicking his tongue back over her pearl until she jerked and shuddered, ready for more. And then he kissed her thigh, the prominence of her hip bone, the curve of her belly. He stood, his expression that of a drunken man, and it was heady, so heady, to realize she was the reason for that look. That he was drunk upon her.
“Hazel,” he said, his gruff baritone making the already pulsing flesh between her thighs quiver anew. “Fuck, Hazel.”
His curse did not startle her. Nor did it offend. She had heard coarser language in her years as a Pinkerton. She allowed her foot to slide back to the floor and looped her arms around his neck. He was taller than she was, but not so very tall she could not reach him. Not so tall she could not rise on her toes and kiss his mouth. His filthy, wonderful, beautiful mouth.
He tasted earthy. Musky. Of herself and something elemental. Lust. Intercourse. Man and woman, woman and man. He tasted like nothing she had ever tasted before and could not wait to taste again.
He caught her waist, lifting her feet from the floor, and she allowed it. And when he ordered her to wrap her legs around him, she did without hesitation. And when he carried her all the way to his bed, her core sliding over the silk of his dressing gown with every step, she could not stop kissing him. His lips, his face, his throat. Ah, his throat. So strong and vital. She dared to taste him, to run her tongue over the prominence of his Adam’s apple.
He laid her on his bed as if she were as delicate as the magnolia flower she had assured him she was not. She was still wearing her stockings and garters, but she lay in the center of his bed and watched as he made short work of the knot on his belt she had been unable to free earlier. When he shrugged the robe to the floor, she could do nothing but admire him.
His shoulders were broad, his chest strong, delineated with muscles that bespoke a man who was active. Dark hair stippled his pectorals and arrowed lower into a mouthwatering trail that led over the hard plane of his stomach and straight to the prominence of his manhood.
She had known that part of him was large because of her previous encounters with him, but then, he had been clothed. Now, he was nude. And the full effect of the Duke of Arden naked and ready to join her in his bed was mouthwatering, astounding, and intimidating all at once. His cock was a thing of beauty, full and thi
ck and long. Much larger than she had even supposed.
She stared at him for longer than was polite, she knew. If indeed it was polite at all to stare at one’s bedmate’s erection? She had no earthly idea. It was a concern that had not troubled her until this moment.
“Do you approve?” he asked, amusement lacing his perfectly clipped accent.
The accent that reminded her he was an aristocrat who belonged to a world she could not even comprehend while she was an orphan from the red dirt of Georgia, a woman who had made her way in a man’s world, earning her own bread. He had been born to respect and luxury, groomed from birth and by the circumstance of it to be treated with the utmost respect. For a moment, the heat sliding through her cooled as she was reminded of all the reasons why this one night was all they could have.
Their lives were too disparate. One day, she would return to New York. He would remain here where he belonged, in a home with chamber pots that were fancier than all the crockery she had ever dined on prior to her arrival in London.
He seemed to sense the sudden reticence in her, because he joined her on the bed, stretching his long, lean body alongside her, and cupped her face. “We do not have to do this, Hazel. Not if you do not want it.”
But he had misread her hesitation. She clasped his wrists, grateful for his tenderness, and lost herself in his eyes. “I want this. I want you.”
“Thank Christ.” On a growl, he buried his face in her neck, kissing her there, then opening his mouth and sucking.
It was as if he wanted to mark her. As if he wanted to brand every part of her body with his taste, his smell, his touch, his searing style of pleasure. And she wanted him everywhere.
She reached for him, pushing aside the doubts in her mind. They could be addressed later. Tonight was hers. Arden was hers. Not Arden, she reminded herself as she ran her hands over him, savoring the hot, sleek male flesh and the barely leashed strength lingering just beneath the surface.
Lucien.
She must have spoken his name aloud, for he ceased suckling her throat and raised his head. “What is it, sweetheart?”
Sweetheart. He had called her that before, when she had been injured, and earlier, when he had been pleasuring her with such depraved persistence. But something about the way he said it now, something about the deepness of his voice coupled with the intimacy of the moment—both of them naked, skin to skin in his bed—resonated with her. Broke something inside her.
But perhaps it was something that had been meant to be broken all along. Long ago, when she had been hopelessly in love with Adam only to lose him, she had sworn she would never again allow herself to feel anything for another man. She had always supposed a part of her had died along with him, never to be resurrected. Now, it seemed what had been inside her had been a monument to her grief, precious and precarious, fashioned of her own guilt, her own fears, and her everlasting sorrow.
The monument had lodged inside her, impenetrable and immovable, obstructing her ability to feel, until Arden had come along. Until he had dared her with his arrogant condescension to prove her worth. Until he had shown her he was just as vulnerable on the inside as she was. Until he had made her see she had not been honoring Adam’s memory by closing herself off from the world.
She had only been protecting her heart.
“Hazel?” Lucien’s brow furrowed, his gaze probing hers. “Tears?”
She blinked, realizing belatedly her cheeks were wet, her lashes spiked with drops. Leftover emotions she had never allowed herself to indulge in the wake of Adam’s brutal killing swarmed her.
“We need not go any further,” he said, kissing her cheek, the tip of her nose, her forehead.
His gentleness and concern pierced her armor. “It is not that,” she reassured him, caressing him wherever she could—his back, his shoulders, his rigid jaw.
“What is it then?” He traced her cheekbone, then the whorl of her ear, with his forefinger.
It was as if every part of her was desirable to him, as if he needed to touch her everywhere. And she recognized the feeling, for she felt it too. It was the way she felt about him.
She took his hand in hers and turned her head to press a kiss to his palm. “It is me, realizing I can still feel after all this time.”
“What happened to you, Hazel Montgomery?” he asked, brushing a tendril of hair from her face. “Will you tell me?”
But she was not ready to answer his question. Not now, not yet. Just as he had not been prepared to unburden himself to her.
“One day,” she said, hoping she could keep her promise. “Not tonight. Tonight, I want you inside me.”
“Jesus, Hazel.” He kissed her slowly, lingeringly.
She had proven to herself that the part of her she had believed died alongside Adam had not. Lucien had helped her to resurrect it. First, with longing. And now, with something more. Caring and compassion. Tenderness.
Their kiss deepened. As one, they moved until Hazel was on her back and Lucien atop her, settled between her splayed thighs. His fingers dipped between them, working her to a new crescendo, before he withdrew.
He broke the kiss, his breathing harsh and ragged, his forehead pressed to hers. “Are you certain?”
She did not hesitate. “Certain.”
His blunt tip met her slick and swollen flesh. He positioned himself at her entrance, poised to take her.
“How slow must I go, Hazel?” he asked.
She did not fully comprehend his question. “Only as slow as you wish,” she answered, for it seemed the right thing to say.
No man had ever made love to her before. Not completely. There had been kissing, touching, teasing. There had been pleasure, to be sure. But there had never been another inside her. She had not wanted it after Adam. But she wanted it now, with Lucien. Only Lucien.
He moved. Thrust inside her, fast and hard. She had not been entirely prepared, and she stiffened beneath him, a burning pain tearing through her, momentarily supplanting the pleasure.
He stilled, his shaft buried deep inside her, her body stretched and aching all around him, and lifted his head. “You are a virgin?”
She was trapped in his glittering green gaze, and his face was strained, a reflection of the control he exerted to remain still within her. “I was.”
“I thought—” He stopped whatever it was he had been about to say and exhaled.
She knew what he meant. He had assumed she was an experienced woman, and he was not entirely wrong. She had done far more than was proper with Adam, but that had been years ago, and it had never been…this.
“It doesn’t matter,” she reassured him. Because it didn’t. Not what he had believed her to be, not her past, not anyone or anything but the two of them.
But he was not appeased. He frowned down at her, looking torn. “Damn it, Hazel, did I hurt you?”
“No,” she whispered, framing his handsome face in her hands. He was so beautiful in his concern for her, it almost made her heart ache to look at him. “You could never hurt me, Lucien.”
But as she said those words, she knew they were not true. He could hurt her, but not physically, not intentionally. She had somehow, in spite of her resolve to keep what was happening between them relegated to the sexual rather than the emotional, allowed him to slip past her walls. He was inside her now in more than one way.
And now that her body had adjusted to the suddenness of his bold invasion, a new hunger pulsed inside her. She tested the instinct to move, moving her hips against his and bringing him deeper still. Pleasure and pain intertwined. She exhaled on a sigh.
“Do not move,” Lucien warned.
He ought to have known by now she never took orders. She moved again, undulating her body beneath his. The friction made heat unfurl in her belly. The need had returned, taking control of her. She pumped her hips against him.
He groaned and dropped his forehead back to hers. “Hazel.”
“Lucien.” She kissed him. “I told you I am no
magnolia blossom. I want you to make love to me.”
At long last, he began a rhythm, withdrawing from her in long, slow strokes only to sink inside her once more. She could not be certain if it was her imagination, or if he had hardened even more. He was large, and each time he sank inside her channel, he filled her, the sensation exquisite almost to the point of pain.
They were kissing again, mouths fused, a messy, carnal kiss of tongues and teeth. Her body had never felt more alive. She was attuned to her every sense, ridiculously aware of all the places where they met, not just deep inside her, but elsewhere. Her breasts crushed into his chest, their stomachs melded, his lean strength against her softness, her inner thighs wrapped around him. He was so very masculine, dominating her, devouring her, pinning her to the bed, completing her.
There was no other way to describe his possession.
His questing fingers returned to her pearl, giving her just the right amount of pressure and stimulation. Her body had already broken open for him. He had introduced her to a raw, wicked pleasure, and she was still alive with it, tingling, ready to come again. Ready to give him anything.
To give him everything.
When he dragged his mouth to her ear, kissing her there, his breath hot and harsh and desperate, and he issued a command, this time, she could not help but to obey. “Spend for me.”
And she did. Her inner muscles clenched on him, around him. The force of her climax took her by surprise. She cried out, slamming her hips into his, trying to drive him deeper inside her. So deep. Mewling sounds erupted from her throat. Sounds she did not even recognize as her own. A shudder rocked through her as he continued his pace, sliding in and out faster and faster, until suddenly he withdrew from her entirely.
Holding himself in his hand, he came with a roar of his own, spurting all over her belly. His breathing was as ragged as hers, his eyes intent upon her. She could not look away. Licks of pleasure still rippled through her body.
“Are you…well?” he asked hoarsely.
“Yes.” She watched him, trying not to ogle him and failing. She had never imagined a man could be beautiful. But the Duke of Arden was. There was not a hint of spare flesh on him. He was all lean muscle, angles and planes and sinews.
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