Regarding the Duke

by Grace Callaway

  “How much do you like this nightgown?” he asked.

  Her brow pleated. “It’s quite comfortable. Why?”

  He let the sound of ripping cloth serve as his reply.

  “Adam.” Her eyes rounded with shock. “That was expensive and—”

  “I’ll buy you another. On second thought, no I won’t.” His voice thickened, his gaze drawn to her breasts—by God, they were perfection—then to her shapely limbs and pretty pussy. “I don’t want anything to stand between me and your beautiful self.”

  Before she could say anything, he lifted her onto the bed, laying her across it horizontally so that her legs dangled off the edge. Standing between her spread thighs, surveying the feast, he knew what he wanted to sample first.

  A moan broke from her as he ran his tongue through the deep crevice between her breasts. He savored the way her rounded mounds overflowed his palms, squeezing them as he buried his face in her fragrant flesh. He avoided her nipples, teasing her with leisurely licks and soft nips, gauging what pleased her. She began squirming, her hands clutching at his shoulders.

  “Adam, please,” she said, her voice breathless and sweet.

  He traced the rosy perimeter of her areola with the tip of his tongue, watching as her nipple swelled to new heights.

  “Ask for what you want, love. Better yet, show me.” Catching her right hand, he kissed the fingertips. “Touch yourself where you want my mouth.”

  Her fingers trembled, and he wondered if she was too shy to obey. Then, after a heartbeat, her hand left his and moved to her right breast. The sight of her ladylike fingers feathering over her straining red nipple was the stuff of male fantasies.

  “With pleasure,” he said huskily.

  Lowering his head, he laved his tongue over her taut bud. She whimpered as he flicked the sensitive nub, wetting it thoroughly, then blowing softly. He alternated that with deep sucking, drawing her into the heat of his mouth. He went back and forth between her luscious mounds, and her moans escalated, making him wonder if he could make her come just by licking her tits.

  He touched her pussy, and lust bolted through him. Devil and damn, she was wet. Dripping with honey. He searched out her pearl, frigging her with firm strokes…and that was all it took to send her over the edge. She cried out, her thighs clamping around his hand as she climaxed.

  He kissed the plump underside of her breast, the smooth valley of her belly, enjoying her aftershocks of pleasure. When her thighs slackened, he withdrew his hand. Holding her passion-dazed eyes, he licked his fingers, the taste of her making his cock weep.

  “Delicious,” he murmured. “But everyone knows nectar is sweetest from the source.”

  He placed his hands on her legs, spreading them wider to expose her glistening pink slit, prettily framed by her fiery nest. His hunger broke its tether, lunging for what it craved. His nostrils flaring, he bent his head.

  “Adam, oh my goodness…merciful heavens…”

  Gabby didn’t know what she was saying, words leaving her like a chant. She was simultaneously floating and drowning in bliss as her husband put his mouth to scandalous use. The only other time he’d kissed her there he’d been drunk, and she’d always wondered if the spirits had caused his behavior. If the brandy had been responsible for his one-time enjoyment of this lewd act.

  Given that he hadn’t remembered that night, she hadn’t had the courage to bring up the topic. For months, she realized, vague worries had floated in and out of her consciousness.

  What had prompted the introduction of this outrageous act to his repertoire? Where had he learned it? (A question that had been promptly relegated to the Bin of Blissful Ignorance). Was it…normal, what he was doing? Why had he done it only once? Had he not enjoyed it? Was it wrong and immoral of her to enjoy such depravity?

  Right now, he was answering some of those questions.

  Because he wasn’t drunk, had only had a glass of wine. And he showed every sign of enjoying what he was doing to her.

  “I love eating your pussy,” he said thickly. “In fact, it’s destined to become my favorite meal of the day.”

  His wicked words caused her hips to arch in helpless need. He held her spread, licking her, doing mind-melting things with his lips, tongue, and, goodness, teeth. He searched out her throbbing peak, lashing it with hot, liquid strokes, compressing it against his teeth, leaving her shaking and desperate for more.

  “What do you want, love?” He blew softly on her sensitized flesh. “Tell me.”

  Heavens, could she say it? “More of…what you’re doing.”

  He playfully nipped the crease of her thigh. “Don’t be shy, sweet wife. I want to hear the naughty words from your beautiful lips.”

  His gleaming eyes compelled her to obey. To say the words he’d taught her, that until now she’d only repeated in the safety of her thoughts.

  “Please…eat my pussy,” she said, her cheeks flaming.

  “With pleasure.” The growl in his voice told her how much he liked hearing those words from her. “Your cunny is like a boiled sweet, pink, shiny, and mouth-watering. I want to lick it, suck on it, have your honey coat my tongue and throat.”

  Heavens.

  He made good on his word. Gabby gripped the bedsheets, twisting them as he left no part of her cunny uncharted, laying claim to every quivering inch. He sucked on her pulsing pearl, working it with his tongue until she was gasping his name. Then he buried his face fully in her wet pussy, his tongue tracing her opening and stabbing inside.

  “Move your hips,” he growled. “Fuck yourself on my tongue until you come in my mouth.”

  Desire became a frenzy, her hips moving mindlessly to his command. The heat inside her built and built, incinerating thought and inhibition as she gyrated against her husband’s masterful kiss. Pleasure erupted, a molten gush from her core that he greedily consumed.

  As she lay there, boneless with bliss, he straightened. His lips glistening with her essence, his eyes feral with lust, he was a beast who’d only begun feeding. His gaze pinned hers as he stripped, her pulse skipping as she took in his male grace.

  She gazed in awe at the muscular breadth of his shoulders, the granite slabs of his chest with its wiry furring. For a moment, she was drawn to his injury, the sight of that knitted flesh a potent reminder never to take life, this real and breathing moment, for granted. Swallowing, she returned her attention to the path of hair on his sectioned abdomen, not an ounce of fat there or on his narrow hips. He was taut and sinewy everywhere, with no excess bulk…except between his thighs.

  Her breath puffed through her lips. Sweet heavens, his male equipment was large.

  She’d felt his cock in the past, of course, and snuck glances at it. But he’d never stood before her as he did now, with his shoulders back, encouraging her to look her fill. His message was clear: nothing was to be hidden in their pursuit of marital pleasure. A tingle reawakened in her center as he wrapped his fingers around his rampant member, the slow stroke up and down inviting her to watch.

  The thick pole strained in his casually pumping fist, the engorged tip nearly reaching his navel. A prominent vein snaked along the underside, feeding into his stones, which hung heavy and swollen in a cloud of dark hair. She remembered all the times she’d taken that big cock inside her, felt it stretching her open and filling her up, and need flared in her pussy.

  “You do this to me, wife. Make my cock hard and ache to be inside you,” he said silkily.

  “I want you inside me.” Her voice sounded as breathless as if she’d run for miles.

  “Then spread your legs. Show me how much you want me.”

  Heart thumping, she obeyed his command. He stepped between her thighs as if he had every right to be there, a sultan claiming his prize. Grasping her hips, he drew her to the very edge of the bed. He fisted his cock again, and she moaned as he ran the fat head up and down her cleft.

  His eyes glinted down at her. “Another time, I’ll put you on your knees and w
et my cock between your sweet lips.”

  As that erotic image trembled through her, he entered her in a swift, hard thrust. The fullness made her mewl with delight. Even as her body clenched, trying to hold onto him, he withdrew. He plunged again, deep and deeper still. Gripping her hips, he pulled her into his pounding thrusts.

  “Christ, you were made to take my cock. So wet and tight.” Arousal stained his slashing cheekbones, his jaw taut with masculine demand. “You want me deeper, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” she gasped.

  “Then take me. All of me.”

  With a growl, he slammed into her deeper and harder than before. Her calves clung to the notches of his hips, his muscular buttocks flexing beneath her heels. As she felt the heavy siege of his balls against her tender entrance, the truth blazed: she would take whatever he gave her—his cock, his tongue, and sweet heavens, please, his heart—because she loved him.

  Then and now and always.

  Tears slipped from her eyes, words from her lips. “I love you so much.”

  “My sweet Gabby.” His eyes burned with the fierceness of a dark star. “I don’t know what I did to deserve you. But from the moment I awakened, I started falling in love with you.”

  Her soul spasmed with ecstasy. With a whole and complete joy that she’d never felt before. That only love could give.

  She heard him groan as her fulfillment rippled through her flesh, binding her to the source of her pleasure. He curved over her, his furious shoves lifting her off the bed. Thump, thump, thump. Her back pounded against the mattress as he took her with merciless force, prolonging her rapture as he sought his own. His formidable body shuddered, and he buried a hoarse shout against her neck as he exploded inside her, melding them with his volcanic heat.

  Afterward, he moved them both under the covers. He tucked her into his side as if she’d always belonged there. Safe in her husband’s arms, his thudding heartbeat beneath her ear, she smiled and drifted into a deep, peaceful sleep.

  23

  Something tickled Adam’s nose, making it twitch. His eyelids slowly slid up, and he found his face pressed into a coppery waterfall of silk. Memories of the night returned, and his lips curved. He buried his nose deeper, inhaling the flowery scent of his wife’s hair.

  The light seeping in through the curtains suggested it was early yet. He should probably let Gabby rest, especially since, after a short doze last night, they’d had a second round as lusty as the first. Now he was lying on his side, his wife nestled against him like a spoon. His arm was slung around her waist; even in sleep, he’d been reluctant to let her go.

  Who could blame him? When a man was married to his lady love who also happened to be a hot little wanton, he’d be a fool not to claim her at every opportunity.

  She mumbled something in her slumber, her plush bottom shifting against his morning cockstand and testing his good intentions to allow her to rest. He shuddered as his erection landed in the crack of her arse, nestling between the soft hills. He couldn’t help a slight lunge of his hips.

  Ah, God, that felt fine.

  Beneath the covers, his hand moved up, cupping one plump breast. He squeezed the firm globe, teasing the budding tip between finger and thumb. She sighed, and he leaned forward, tracing the rim of her ear with his tongue. Her sleepy shiver ratcheted up his lust.

  They were on vacation. They could always take a nap later.

  Pushing aside the heavy curtain of her hair, he kissed her nape. Her skin flowed like silk beneath his lips as he followed the elegant ladder of her spine, his fingers still playing with her nipple. He felt the instant she came awake, the tiny jolt coinciding with the nip he placed just above the split of her pretty arse. He delved lower, his tongue seeking out her sweet pucker, teasing the secret rim.

  “Adam.”

  Her scandalized reprimand told him this was new to her. Last night, he’d witnessed her inhibitions unraveling one by one under his command, and he knew this would be no different. While he lived like a gentleman, he had no intention of making love like one. Gabby brought out the uncivilized beast in him: the part of him that wanted to mark every part of her as his.

  If her reactions thus far were any indication, she was not only willing but eager to submit to his darker desires. His need was to dominate, hers to surrender: they fit together like pieces of an erotic puzzle. But…he didn’t have to fall on her like a ravening animal now. They had plenty of time to explore his deeper fantasies and hers. Hell, they had a lifetime.

  For now, he could yield to his wife’s modesty.

  He slid back up. She relaxed against him, clearly thinking that she was getting her way and he was giving up on his carnal plot. Pushing her top leg forward, he drove his cock into her pussy, adoring her startled little gasp.

  “Good morning, love,” he murmured into her ear. “One day, I will have everything I want from you. But for now, I’ll settle for a proper morning fuck.”

  This time, she moaned his name.

  Even though he’d done little to prepare her, she was still moist and slick from their prior couplings. Primal, visceral satisfaction gripped him as he felt how thoroughly he’d sprayed her with his seed. It made him plow her harder, driving his essence even deeper into her womb. It didn’t take long for her to catch up, and he helped her along, strumming her pearl in time to his vigorous shafting. Her back arched in that telling way, and he turned her head toward him, covering her mouth with his own. He drank her cries of culmination and fed her his own groans of pleasure as he detonated, flooding her again.

  He collapsed onto his back, pulling her with him. He tucked her head beneath his chin, and closed his eyes, enjoying the hum of aftermath. “I’ve just found my favorite way to wake up.”

  “Me too.”

  His lips quirked at the dreamy quality in her voice. “Capital. Since I seem to like schedules so much, we’ll put a morning tup as every day’s top priority.”

  “Oh, I wasn’t referring to our lovemaking.”

  At that, he cracked his eyes open to look at her.

  “Or not just that, anyway,” she amended with a gratifying blush.

  “Then what were you referring to? What is your favorite way to wake up?”

  “In your arms,” she whispered.

  “Surely you’ve woken up here before…” When her gaze broke from his, he caught her chin; the shadows in her heavenly blue orbs made him say in disbelief, “Haven’t you?”

  The quick shake of her head felt like a punch to his solar plexus.

  He forced himself to inhale. “We didn’t sleep together? Ever? Not even on those bleeding Wednesdays?”

  “No,” she said quietly.

  Outrage and incredulity seared through him. “Why the bloody hell not?”

  “We just…didn’t.” She sat up, wrapped her arms around her raised knees. Her posture made her look young, a bit forlorn. “Most fashionable couples have separate bedchambers and don’t sleep together.”

  “I’m not talking about most people; I’m talking about us.” He settled his back against the headboard, trying to understand the past he didn’t remember. Trying to keep a rein on his frustration and anger at himself. “Hell, Gabby, we set the sheets aflame together. More than that, I cannot fathom not wanting you beside me every night, even if we’re not making love.”

  “Truly?”

  The hope in her eyes was more than he could stand. “Sweetheart, didn’t you hear me? I’m falling in love with you.” He cupped her face in his hands and felt the preciousness of what he held. “Christ, I’m not falling—I’m bloody there.”

  “I love you.” A tear slid down her cheek. “I always have.”

  “I’m not sure I deserve it.” He thumbed the moisture away. “What kind of a bastard did you marry, Gabby? What in blazes was wrong with me?”

  “Nothing was wrong with you.” That was his wife, loyal to a fault. “You were just…different back then.”

  “I was an idiot,” he said flatly.

>   “No more than I was.” She let go of a breath. “There were two of us in this marriage. I could have said something, tried to change things…but I didn’t.”

  “What stopped you?”

  She bit her lip. “I’ve been asking myself the same thing. Why didn’t I ask for what I wanted? Why didn’t I try to have these conversations that we’re having now? I don’t think I know all the answers yet.”

  “You don’t have to have the answers.” He tucked a wayward tress behind her ear. “Just tell me what you’re thinking.”

  Her eyes, so big and pure, searched his face. As if reassured by what she saw, she gave a quick nod, her hair rippling over her shoulders.

  “When you asked me to marry you, I was ecstatic. In shock, truth be told, because I never, ever imagined a man like you would be interested in someone like me.”

  He frowned, about to interrupt, but her rueful smile stopped him.

  “You wanted to know what I’m thinking, and this is it,” she reminded him.

  “Go on, then.”

  “You were so handsome, powerful, and rich…you could have had anyone you wanted, but you chose me. A wallflower who was shunned, even at her own house party. Not only that, but you were kind to me. You listened to my silly woes and made me feel…important. I think I fell in love with you at that moment.” Her throat rippled. “When you proposed to me, you said you wanted a virtuous, trustworthy, and loyal wife. And I knew I could be those things—that I wanted to be those things more than I’d ever wanted anything in my life. Because you were the kind of husband I’d always dreamed of having.”

  The sincerity of her answer tautened his chest. He forced himself to remain quiet and listen, to let her release what she’d clearly been keeping to herself for so long.

  “The only catch was that you said you didn’t believe in romantic love. I told myself it didn’t matter, especially because you offered other things that were just as important. Your affection, protection, and care. I have always felt those things from you, Adam. Always.”