“Christ, you’re beautiful, banshee.” The words were torn from him. Breathless. Half prayer.
She was every brilliant sunrise he’d ever seen, each awestruck breath he’d taken, the sum of every little miracle bestowed upon him; all these things and more, so much more. She was a goddess and he wanted to worship her as she deserved. How had he lived his entire life without knowing her, without touching her? It was impossible to imagine, for he could not go a day without her now.
He had never believed in fate until a governess in a gray gown had upended his world. But the governess had turned out to be an Irish rebel with a soft heart. A heart he would make his.
She continued working herself over him, finding the rhythm and pace she liked, head thrown back, hair cascading like a curtain of ink. She had never been more beautiful, and he was a sinner. A horrible, imperfect sinner, because he did not give a damn about his duty in this moment.
Leo lowered his mouth to a breast, sucking, biting. His fingers dipped into her sex, finding her pearl. She was so slick, so engorged, and he could not resist giving that responsive bud a stroke. Then another.
“Leo.” His name on her lips was one-half moan, one-half beg. “I want to touch you.”
Fucking hell.
He wanted it too. So badly, he caught her around the waist with one arm, lifting her while his free hand whisked away the bedclothes. Cool air licked over his heated skin, and then the wet kiss of her cunny was on his bare thigh as he settled her back down.
“Oh,” was all she said as her tender flesh connected with his. Her gaze lowered to his cock, rising against his stomach, rigid, thick, and full, seed already seeping from the crown. “May I?”
“You never need to ask, darling. My body is yours.” He took her hand, guided it to his painfully hard prick, and wrapped their fingers around the shaft as one. Slowly, he showed her how to touch him. How fast to slide her fist, how much pressure. Together, they worked him into a frenzy, until his hips were twitchy with the need to thrust and the pleasure pulsed in his ballocks, a sign he would soon spend. All the while, she continued to restlessly move against his thigh, seeking relief.
“I want you inside me, Leo.”
Sweeter words had never been spoken in the history of man.
Yes, cried everything within him. Take her. Fuck her. Pin her to the bed with your cock.
But he could not. She was a novice, and it was his turn to be the one to take care of her. To tend to her as he should have done when the fever had claimed her after he had wounded her, rather than relegating her to the questionable auspices of Annie.
“You will be sore, love,” he warned. “It is too soon. But there are other ways we can give each other pleasure.”
“Show me,” she whispered.
Another surge of need made his cock even harder. He rolled them as one until she was on her back once more beneath him. He settled between her thighs, his cock glancing her soaked folds. Her beauty struck him. She looked so innocent. So unencumbered by whatever secrets and demons she carried about on her small shoulders. Demons he would slay. Secrets he would learn. He kissed her, unable to resist, catching her succulent lower lip between his teeth.
He took control. In the bedchamber, as in every other aspect of his life, Leo needed authority. Dominance. He thrived on it. Craved it, and he wanted it from Bridget more than he wanted his next breath. “Touch your cunny.”
Her eyes widened, the inky lashes fluttering. He had shocked her, and for a moment, he feared she would not play his games. But then she surprised him with one word. “How?”
He took her fingers, guiding them to her clitoris. He moved with her, using her own hand as if it were his, showing her how he intended for her to pleasure herself. Quick strokes, side to side, pressure beneath the hood. Her breathing went ragged, her hips already started to jerk up from the bed. She was so responsive, so passionate, filled with fire. Perfect for him.
Leo swallowed, unable to wrest his gaze from the delicious sight of their fingers pleasuring her in unison. “Just like this, banshee. Pet your pretty pussy for me, won’t you? I want to watch.”
He released her, bringing his hand to his cock. He was on his knees between her spread legs, and he felt like a god. Her fingers stilled as he worked his shaft, root to tip. He looked away from the erotic sight of her core, drenched and on display for him, her fingers on her pearl, touching herself because he had asked it of her. The same sweet pink of her nipples infused her cheeks.
“Give yourself pleasure,” he urged. “Show me.”
Her gaze met his and clung. “It is wicked.”
“Be brazen for me.” He stroked his cock, ran his thumb over the head. Damn, he was close. So close. Just from watching her. From the way she—the wildest, fiercest woman he had ever known—submitted to him in the bedchamber. He had played games with other lovers, some who had been more depraved than even he had been. But he had never been so hopelessly, deliriously in the thrall of another woman. Never about to spend in his own palm from watching a woman touch her own cunny.
Her fingers moved. Once. Twice. Her hips undulated. Thrice. And he knew he had won this particular battle.
“Yes. That’s the way, love.” He pumped his raging hardness. Breath hissed from his lungs. “Pretend it is my fingers fucking you. Do whatever feels good. Hard and fast, soft and slow. Whatever you want.”
Her fingers moved in time with his hand, stroking, rhythmic, heightening their mutual pleasure. The chamber went quiet, the only sounds the wetness of her folds, the friction of his hand, their labored breaths, soft sounds of surrender.
“Leo,” she whispered. “Touch me.”
Damn.
Her plea was too much. He could not resist running a finger over her seam with his free hand as he continued to work himself into oblivion with the other.
“Spread your legs wider.” He wanted to see all of her, wanted to see what he had claimed. What was now his.
God help him, she did exactly as he asked, without hesitation. Her legs moved farther apart, and she was open, continuing to pleasure herself. She was so beautiful, so perfect. All that sleek flesh, those swollen folds, plump and ready. He could not resist. His hand had a will of its own. His finger sank deeper, finding the heart of her. The place he had so fully owned mere hours before. And then he was inside, the hot, slick walls of her gripping him, sucking him in, telling him this was where he belonged.
Too much.
Not enough.
Everything.
He was going to explode. He met her gaze. “Come for me, love. Come with me.”
Her lips parted, her fingers flying furiously over herself, her cunny constricting around his finger, the only invasion he dared allow himself this soon. “I’m falling in love with you, Leo.”
Whether it was her confession, or the fact he was so close, her pussy gripping his finger deliciously, the air perfumed with the sweet scent of her desire, he would never know. Her submission, lying open and bare and at his mercy. Her eyes wide on his. Whatever the cause, he lost control. Pleasure catapulted through him. His ballocks tightened. He grasped his cock with one last, hard stroke.
The dam burst. He lost control. Aiming his cock at her cunny, he surrendered. His climax tore through him violently, and he spent. Thick white spurts of his seed shot all over her glistening mound, on her fingers, on her pearl. She moved with jerky motions, her body tensing, twisting, and then the tremors rocked through her too.
A moan left her lips. Her channel tightened around his finger, sucking him deeper. He absorbed the spasms, milking his cock of the last drop of his climax. And then he collapsed to the bed alongside her, utterly sated, exhausted, completely in her thrall.
His seed had been in her. Was painted all over her now. He had marked her. Claimed her.
“You are mine forever now, Bridget Carlisle,” he told her when he could at last force his mind to function, his lips to form words. From this day forward, she would never again be Bridget O’Mall
ey. She was his duchess, his wife.
Simply his.
“Aye,” she agreed softly, as breathless as he was. But then she startled him by framing his face in her hands and yanking him to her for a long, slow kiss. Her way of marking him. “And you are mine, Leo. I’ll be keeping you as well.”
Christ, her brogue. He kissed her nose.
Smitten, that was what he was.
Chapter Sixteen
“You are smitten with the Duke of Carlisle,” Daisy pronounced, the second time in the past sennight someone had accused Bridget of having amorous feelings for Leo.
Apparently, she was not as adept at hiding her emotions as she had fancied.
Her cheeks went hot. They had just withdrawn from the Duke of Trent and Leo at the dinner table, leaving the men to their port. Her bottom had not even yet grazed the gilded settee she had chosen for herself. As it was, she jerked and almost missed her seat.
She caught herself in time, passed her hands over her skirts as she settled in, attempting to force the telling flush on her skin to abate. “Nonsense. I do not even like him.”
“So you have protested before.” Daisy’s tone was smug.
Bridget studiously avoided her half sister’s gaze, looking instead at the carpet. Then at a picture hanging on the wall. Then at the hands primly folded in her lap. “I do not know what you are talking about.”
“I cannot credit it. When Sebastian first suggested the notion of you and Carlisle entering a marriage of convenience, I was convinced the two of you would eat each other alive,” Daisy continued, utterly unrepentant. “He is a cold fish, and you are the proudest woman I know. Two more opposite creatures could not be found. You are full of passion and convictions, while he is cool and methodical. Passionless as a cucumber.”
That description rather nettled. And though she did not wish to make herself the object of further scrutiny, her feelings for Leo had altered everything. She could not allow him to be maligned. Besides, she had firsthand proof there was nothing passionless or cold about the man. Good God, the wickedness he had visited upon her…the mere thought of it was enough to nearly send her up in flames right here.
Over the precious past few days, they had been lost in each other, closing off the outside world, existing in a charmed honeymoon, as if their problems and differences could forever be ignored. She had surrendered herself to that pleasure. To him. But she knew their time was limited. That it would end.
It was an inevitability.
“There is far more to him than the face he shows the world,” she defended him, continuing before she could think better of it. “And there is nothing cold or passionless about him.”
“I knew it!” Daisy crowed, clapping her hands together. “The way the two of you glanced at each other over dinner when you thought no one else was watching…I nearly caught flame myself just from observing.”
Bridget studied her nails. Examined the perplexity of her knuckles, those strange little whorls interrupting a finger’s otherwise faultless perfection. “I do not like him.”
It was a lie. Of course it was a lie. But even now, she was not ready to examine her feelings and what they meant. They existed. She loved him, and that love was an uncontrollable, untamable thing, as much a part of her as a limb. But it terrified her.
Because they came from different worlds, disparate beliefs. Because her brother needed her, and because to a certain extent, she and Leo would forever be two people existing on different sides of a very clear line. But when he touched her, when he kissed her, and Lord in Heaven, when he made such wicked demands of her in the bedchamber—when he told her she was his—she could forget.
Still, beneath it all simmered one ugly, horrible truth: she would have to betray Leo. She would have to leave him, regardless of how much she did not wish to do it. In spite of how deeply she longed to stay here with him forever and forget everyone and everything else.
The truth could only be avoided for so long. It lurked like an ugly, pulsing shadow waiting to claim its victims and return them to the ether.
“Bridget, look at me,” her half sister demanded.
Bridget pursed her lips, looking everywhere else. She could not shake the feeling Daisy would read everything she was so desperate to keep from her and more if she met her gaze.
“Bridget.”
Stubborn woman. She supposed it made sense. They did share blood, after all, and Bridget knew her own faults all too well. She flicked a glance to her sister, her face going hot all over again. “What would you have me say? He and I are enemies by definition.”
Daisy’s shrewd gaze plumbed hers. “No longer, I suspect. My dearest sister, no one knows better than I the conundrum in which you find yourself. Sebastian thought I was guilty of aiding the Fenian cause because of our father, when in truth, I was innocent. I thought he had betrayed me. When our misunderstandings were solved, and we allowed ourselves to love each other, everything changed.”
“But I am guilty,” Bridget blurted before she could still her foolish tongue.
She loved her half sister, and she was grateful to her for her steadfast intervention on her behalf, but she was not certain she could trust her. Indeed, Bridget’s life experiences had taught her to trust no one, and that was what she did. Even with Leo, though she loved him and had given her body to him, there remained a part of her she reserved only for herself. It was the part of her that would go into action should he ever betray her.
Why, then, would she do something as foolish as confessing her sins to anyone, even if it was Daisy?
“I know you are guilty, dearest,” said her half sister, shocking her with her calm acceptance. “It is why Sebastian and I felt it was best for Carlisle to marry you. It was the only way we could be ensured you would remain safe.”
Bridget’s brows snapped together as she attempted to make sense of the revelation. “You know?”
“Of course I know, Bridget. You disappeared without warning and could not be reached. I had word that you had become embroiled in a particularly cutthroat band of Fenians. You attempted to abduct the Duke of Burghly, and though I know you had no intention of doing him harm, I am afraid your past leaves one with a rather clear picture.”
Her frown deepened, for this made no sense. None whatsoever. “You knew I was guilty, and yet you wished to help me anyway?”
“Of course.” Daisy smiled at her, and though there was a tinge of sadness in that smile, it was undeniably genuine. “I know your heart is good, Bridget, and you would not take the actions you have unless you felt as if you had no choice in the matter. You are my sister, and I will always do everything in my power to help you.”
Tears stung Bridget’s eyes. Tears of gratitude. Of love. For so long, she had been an island, her shores battered by violent seas on all sides. Alone. But she was beginning to realize she need not remain that way. That there could be strength in admitting others into her heart. If only she could keep them there. If only she could pause this moment, and never move forward into the maelstrom inevitably awaiting her.
“Thank you, Daisy,” she said softly. “I will always remember how good you have been to me, when I have least deserved it.”
“You deserve it, Bridget. It is only you who has convinced yourself you do not.”
Bridget did not bother to argue the point. She alone knew the truth. She was not worthy of anyone’s kindness, compassion, or love. She was betraying her brother with each day that passed, allowing him to rot in Kilmainham while she fell more in love with the enemy. And when the time came, she would have no choice but to betray Daisy and Leo too.
The only thing she deserved was scorn.
Leo waited for the Duke of Trent to cease choking on his port. This was decidedly not the reaction to his declaration he had anticipated. Very well, he supposed he ought not to be surprised, but still.
He fixed Trent with a narrow glare. “Will you recover, do you think, or are you passing on to your reward?”
The duke ga
ve another exaggerated cough. “Forgive me. Will you repeat what you just said to me? I believe I must have misheard.”
Leo knew what the blighter was after, but he decided to be deliberately obtuse. “Will you recover, do you think—”
“Not that bit,” Trent interrupted with a dismissive wave of his hand. “The sentence wherein you claimed to possess the capacity for emotion. I confess, I thought you were dead inside.”
Leo gritted his teeth. “I thought I was as well. It would seem we were both in err, and moreover, that fate and fortune harbor the devil’s own sense of humor.”
“You do realize you just confessed to being in love with a Fenian conspirator?” Trent asked, raising a brow. “The very same woman who abducted your nephew and held a pistol to his head?”
“The pistol was empty.” The words left him before he could hold them back or attempt to examine them.
But Christ, once they had emerged, he wished he could recall them, for he had unwittingly taken up the cudgels for Bridget in the exact same fashion Trent had not long ago. He was acutely aware of just how much had altered in the intervening time since that day.
Trent grinned. “The mighty Duke of Carlisle, felled by one Irish lass. I never thought to see the day.”
Leo barely resisted the urge to smash the duke in his teeth. “Have you finished gloating now, or do you require more time?”
“Another minute more, if you please.” Trent’s smile widened. “You must admit, this is highly irregular.”
“Thoroughly unwanted,” he growled. “Entirely foolish. I am aware I have taken leave of my senses, thank you. As they do not seem likely to restore themselves to me any time soon, perhaps we might move our dialogue forward, before I deliver you the sound trouncing you deserve.”
“It would be no trouncing, and you know it.” Trent raised his glass in a mock salute, still making no effort to disguise his delight.
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