Have Yourself a Merry Little Scandal: a Christmas collection of Historical Romance (Have Yourself a Merry Little... Book 1)

by Anna Campbell

  Almost stumbling in her haste to reach the parlor, Delilah took a deep breath to try and calm her racing heart. It was a laughably unsuccessful effort; only one thing would restore her balance and ease her mind: being held tightly in Ben’s arms, and coming hard with his cock buried deep inside her aching pussy.

  “Delilah, I need to apologize…” he began, as they both entered the parlor, but she gestured to continue on through her dressing room to the bedchamber’s connecting door.

  “In here.”

  In the privacy of her room, she lit several candles that soon bathed the bedchamber in a cheerful golden glow. Ben walked over to the fireplace and stoked it, before turning and leaning against the mantelpiece, his expression the very portrait of tension. “So. The verdict. I would rather blunt honesty than dissembling, for I am a little at sea right now. You kissed me downstairs and it seemed like it meant something, but I may have ruined that with a display of fisticuffs in the coat room. What say you?”

  Delilah strolled over to stand in front of him. “I have so much I wish to say. However my thoughts are a little jumbled and I need a moment to clarify them. One thing that is clear though…a strong desire to express my gratitude for your actions downstairs. Never before has a man been both my silent supporter and a pugilistic champion. I am most thankful.”

  He tilted his head, his tension easing. “Express your gratitude, hmmm?”

  “Yes, Your Grace,” she purred, placing her hands on his chest and slowly trailing them down to unfasten his jacket and waistcoat so there might be no mistaking her meaning. “As you did to me.”

  Ben lifted one hand to cup her cheek. “Then I think, madam,” he said gruffly, “you need to get on your knees and suck my cock.”

  A tiny whimper of excitement escaped at the command, and Delilah reached for a chaise cushion to kneel upon, before attending to the front fall buttons of his formal breeches. Even now, his erection grew harder before her eyes, and she couldn’t wait to have him in her mouth, to taste him as he’d tasted her. “Let me. Please.”

  He took his thick length in one hand to grip and squeeze it, teasing her as he withheld the magnificent column of flesh, yet she silently rejoiced for Ben was touching himself without shame. Then he tangled the fingers of his other hand in her hair and tugged, forcing her head back a little as he nudged her lips with the swollen head. “Open your mouth and take me, Delilah.”

  She quivered in anticipation, extending her tongue to delicately lap the head several times before closing her lips around his cock and sucking it down her throat, greedy to take as much as she could. “Mmmm.”

  Ben groaned, tightening his fingers in her hair and circling his hips as he began to gently—and then not so gently—fuck her mouth. Due to the girth it took all her will to keep her jaw relaxed and tongue flat, to not give into the temptation of touching her wet, throbbing pussy as she pleasured him. This was his reward. She had no doubt it would be reciprocated in full later on.

  Her duke would insist on that.

  “Yes,” he gasped. “Feels so good. Suck me harder, sweetheart. Just like that…Christ…I’m going to come…and you’re going to take every drop.”

  Delilah sucked him feverishly, fluttering her tongue and hollowing her cheeks, while her fingertips stroked across his balls. Seconds later a low, guttural roar escaped his mouth and his seed spurted down her throat. She swallowed it all, before licking his cock clean and letting it rest, still semi hard, against his silk breeches.

  Silently, demurely, Delilah sat back on her heels and waited for Ben to catch his breath. Eventually he crossed the room to the small decanter of brandy she kept on her desk, poured a glass, and returned to hand it to her. Although she had not minded the salty, earthy taste of him, she welcomed the fiery burn of the nerve-settling palate cleanser and gulped the contents.

  “Shall we go to bed?” she asked huskily.

  “Only if you want me for the night,” he replied, his tone uncompromising. “I won’t be a lover by the hour.”

  “You may regret that, when you see my uncombed hair and my face without rouge in the morning. I’ll just be Delilah. Not the Mistress of Sin.”

  Ben shook his head. “I want all of you, not just the face that the public sees. Now, you may share your thoughts while we undress. No matter how jumbled they are.”

  After kicking off her shoes, Delilah rose to her feet and lifted up her hair so he could unfasten the buttons of her gown. “You surprised me earlier,” she began, as she tugged the sleeves down her arms and removed the garment. “Most men like to wrest control from a woman, even if they are unfamiliar with the situation or facts. But you said you would be a witness, an accomplice, or an alibi. You offered support while giving me a choice, and…it gave me hope.”

  “Hope?” he asked, pausing in his unlacing of her stays to kiss her neck.

  “If you…oooh…want coherent answers, you cannot do that.”

  Ben nipped the sensitive skin where her neck met her shoulder, making her moan. The wicked man was taking forever to free her from the stays, when all she wanted to do was rip off her chemise and rub her naked body against him.

  “You’re right,” he said equably, as her stays and chemise at last dropped to the floor. “I should wait and ask while kissing your nipples instead. They look eager for my mouth, all taut and swollen. Which in turn makes me ponder the state of your clitoris. Does it need to be sucked? Is your sweet little pussy wet?”

  At the gloriously explicit talk she so enjoyed, Delilah near-swooned against his chest even though the fabric of his embroidered silver waistcoat was rough against her bare back. But she couldn’t answer even the simplest of questions when he cupped her breasts and began delicately pinching the nipples until they were almost too sensitive to touch. Instead, she writhed in a delirium of delicious pleasure-pain at the display of sexual dominance over her. The student was indeed becoming the master. “Ben…”

  “Do you know,” he said unexpectedly, “You are the only person in the world I permit to call me that. I do not like the pastime of shortening names, or titles for that matter. Like Tun. Ugh. But I am starting to believe I might permit you anything. If you were mine…”

  Delilah closed her hands over his and interlaced their fingers, even as her heart clenched. Ben would be a wonderful lover, strong and caring and attentive, until she lost him to marriage. And she would lose him, for he had stated in the past his desire to marry a noblewoman and also a distaste for adultery. But life could be short, and happiness fleeting, as she well knew. Courageous women took risks in the hope of that rich reward: love returned. “I am yours.”

  For a while, at least.

  I am yours.

  Three little words that changed everything.

  Bennett shuddered as once again, unruly emotions threatened to undo him. Pure elation at the declaration. Tenderness, yet also that fierce protectiveness he felt for those he cared about most. And yet growing stronger by the moment was a crude but undeniable need to conquer Delilah so thoroughly that even the thought of another man would be abhorrent to her forever. She had pleasured him until his eyes crossed, now he had to do the same. To make her beg to come, to hear her scream his name as she did, and then to mark her with his scent and seed like some kind of wild beast, so that everyone would know who she belonged to.

  It wasn’t rational. It certainly wasn’t humdrum.

  Then again, matters of the heart rarely were.

  “Delilah,” he gritted out, turning her in his arms so she faced him and he could gaze on her plump perfection. Those lush breasts, with her nipples nearly wine-colored after he’d pinched them. A soft belly that cushioned him, ample hips to grasp, and that crisp bush of black hair that shielded her sweet pussy.

  Unable to wait any longer, Bennett lifted her up so her legs wrapped around his waist, her arms about his neck, and carried her over to the bed. There was something pleasingly decadent about her nakedness while he remained fully dressed, but he wanted no impedimen
t between them. Not for what he had planned.

  After placing Delilah down on the quilt, he began to remove his clothing. His valet would have palpitations at both the careless way the formal jacket, waistcoat, and cravat ended up in a heap on the floor, and his less than delicate treatment of diamond-buckled shoes, stockings, and the silk knee breeches, but that didn’t matter.

  Nothing mattered but Delilah.

  She moved sinuously on the bed, her thighs spread wide. “Are you going to fuck me hard? Please say you are. I need it quite desperately.”

  “Soon,” Bennett promised, settling between her legs and leaning over her so he might tease those taut nipples with the roughness of his chest hair as he kissed her, lightly at first then with increasing pressure and purpose.

  When her lips were dark pink and a little puffy, he kissed his way further down, reveling in her choked gasps as he flicked her nipples with just the tip of his tongue. Delilah loved to have them sucked and he would gladly do so…when she pleaded for it. Instead he stroked and kissed the creamy flesh of her breasts, occasionally allowing his tongue to circle the areola. During their last interlude here, he’d not had nearly long enough to explore and tease. This time he had all night, and would make use of every second.

  “Ben,” she said impatiently, cupping her breasts and offering them.

  “Yes?” he replied, pausing to inhale the spiced musky scent drifting up from her pussy. How gratifying to know his lover was already wet for him, although in fairness his cock had grown fully erect again, even after that astonishingly good climax in her mouth.

  Delilah quivered as he exhaled a puff of warm air across her right nipple. “You’re going to make me beg, aren’t you?”

  “Difficult to say. I suppose you could always try that and see what happened.”

  “Rake,” she said, her blue eyes sparkling like sapphires.

  “Hmmm. Never been called that before, although I much prefer it to Humdrum Tun as a nickname,” mused Bennett, as he pushed her breasts together and licked the furrow between them.

  Delilah whimpered. “Oh God. I cannot bear it any longer. Ben. Darling Ben, you splendid rake. Would you be a dear and suck my nipples? Yes, this is me begging. Please.”

  Ah. This was what it felt like to be a conqueror.

  Benevolent now she’d surrendered, he bent his head and captured her right nipple with his teeth, tugging and scraping before sucking it hard. Then he did the same to its twin. Delilah’s moans echoed in the bedchamber, but after he slid his hand down between her legs and penetrated her pussy with two fingers, caressing that little rough spot just past her entrance, she shrieked and writhed against him as she came. When her breathing calmed and her pussy only sporadically gripped his fingers, Bennett moved once again. Now he knelt, his free hand parting the hair covering her mound to expose the slick petals of her labia and swollen clitoris.

  “If you want my mouth,” he rasped, licking his lips, “Beg, sweetheart.”

  Wetness drenched his fingers and Delilah gripped the bedsheets, her gaze a heady combination of feverish excitement and sweet yielding. “I’ll come again for you, but I need your mouth on my clitoris. Make me orgasm, Ben. The way only you can. Please.”

  Satisfaction roared through him, and he lapped the sensitive bud while lazily twisting his fingers inside her. Delilah’s hips jerked as she ground herself against him, and when he abruptly plunged his fingers deeper and sucked her clitoris, her wild, broken cry could probably be heard across Golden Square.

  He’d made her come twice. Still, he needed more. “Where do you keep your sponges?”

  “That first drawer there, inside the cloth bag. And bring the brandy. Please, please hurry.”

  When she was ready, she beckoned him closer.

  Bennett took his engorged cock in hand. It was so hard it could probably be used for construction, and the desire to be buried inside Delilah had shoved just about every other thought from his mind. She was all he wanted, all he needed in the world. “I’ll confess to a long-held fantasy; you, on your hands and knees.”

  Her eyes grew heavy lidded, and she turned onto her front before presenting herself as requested, thighs spread wide and rounded backside swaying provocatively. “Like this?”

  “Exactly like that,” he said hoarsely, running a hand down her smooth back. “I’m not sure I can be gentle, though.”

  “I don’t want gentle, I want my duke to fuck me. To feel you everywhere.”

  Good God. The way she said ‘my duke’ sounded almost as possessive as the way he felt toward her.

  Kneeling behind Delilah and curving his chest over her back, Bennett slowly pushed his cock inside her soaked pussy. She moaned as he sank deeper and deeper, her inner walls rippling around him, and he kissed her shoulder, incapable of speech.

  It felt too good.

  Too perfect.

  As though she had been fashioned exactly for him.

  But he couldn’t go slowly anymore, not with the hottest pussy in England bathing his cock in honey and gripping him like a vise. With one hand braced on the bed, and his other arm across her breasts, Bennett began to fuck her. Delilah’s head thrashed about even as her backside pressed firmly against him, urging an even harder taking.

  “Like this?” he asked as he advanced and withdrew, merely repeating her words from earlier.

  “Exactly…like…that…” she replied hoarsely, quivering beneath him.

  “Tell me how it feels to have my cock filling you up.”

  Delilah cried out. “So good. I love…I love…”

  Say it.

  “Tell me,” he commanded, plunging brutally deep.

  “I love it!” she screamed as her pussy spasmed around him, her whole body shaking as it surrendered to a violent, prolonged orgasm.

  The twinge of disappointment was shocking for a man who had pledged to marry without love. But he couldn’t ponder that, not when the drive to ecstasy also consumed him. Soon it felt like every muscle tightened, and with a low, guttural growl, Bennett yanked his cock from Delilah’s pussy to come hard all over the small of her back.

  She collapsed onto the bed, and he fell on top of her, unable to move. This was how it should be between lovers. Both sated. Both exhausted. But he wanted so much more.

  To be sated and exhausted not with Delilah his lover, but Delilah his duchess.

  Bennett closed his eyes. Did he yearn for the impossible? She was a successful and independent woman, with her own fortune.

  What could he offer that she truly desired?

  Chapter 8

  “A bath for two in this enormous tub feels almost too decadent.”

  Delilah smiled at Ben’s murmured words, entirely in charity with the world as she lay on his chest, fully immersed in steaming hot water sprinkled with herbal salts. After a whole night in bed, their mutual lust seemingly insatiable, her body certainly welcomed such a restorative act. “Too decadent for a duke? Surely that is impossible.”

  “Ah, but I’m not like other dukes.”

  “Correct. You are the only handsome one. Well, apart from Wellington, who has a certain appeal that comes with victory.”

  “As long as you look but don’t touch. I really don’t want a dawn appointment with a well-seasoned British war hero; there is a small chance I might be defeated.”

  She giggled. “Never. Not with me as your second. Besides, you also have youthful vigor in your favor.”

  “Am I too young?” he asked hesitantly.

  “There are only three years between us.”

  Ben trailed the soapy washcloth across her stomach. “Far more in experience though. You are a bold, worldly woman; I’m probably the most sheltered duke in England. I feel like I only started to live when I turned twenty-five and could finally make all my own decisions. My trustees taught me a lot about estate management and so forth. But…”

  “Those damned trustees have a lot to answer for,” she replied tartly. “I don’t condone young lads running wild, bu
t you need the freedom to make mistakes and learn consequences. Although in Lord Fletcher’s case, he makes all the mistakes and learns nothing. I find it incomprehensible that Lord Hurst practically caged you while his own son, to this day, larks about with the ghastly Carlton House set. I’ve denied all of them membership and the Prince Regent hates me for it.”

  He sighed. “You’d be forever chasing Prinny for money. As for Fletcher, he is an only child, born late in life, so does no wrong in Hurst’s eyes. I know the trustees guarded my fortune with great zeal, but I wish my father hadn’t appointed three elderly men. They thought bloody everything was improper, or worse, sinful. Then again, if he had…I might not have met you.”

  Delilah pointed her toe and traced a pattern on his left foot. “It vexes me that I have something to thank Fletcher for. His wife has my deepest sympathies. In saying that, perhaps she is quite content with the arrangement. I’ve already made my thoughts plain on the ridiculousness of cold aristocratic marriages.”

  “You think peers should marry for love.”

  “I think everyone should.”

  “Even a duke and say…a pleasure club madam?” asked Bennett quietly.

  She froze at the too-casual words. Her duke did not indulge in idle chatter. To have a husband and life companion who understood and admired her, who wanted Delilah rather than a bank account or the Mistress of Sin, would be beyond her wildest dreams. And yet he couldn’t be seriously contemplating marriage. When Charles Fox wed Mrs. Armistead, it remained the talk of the town for years. Granted, Ben was a high-ranking peer rather than a high-ranking politician, but it would still be an enormous scandal. Women like her might be mistress to a duke, however they were rarely a wife.