The Ugly Dukeling

by Bex McLynn

  After. She’d tell him right after.

  But then he stopped moving.

  Stunned, Atrates froze with his cock thrust inside of Cisnetta to the hilt. Her rambled words boomed like cannon fire in his ears. Unbelievably, he found himself unresponsive.

  What she’d said… this had never happened before.

  He’d slaked his lust with enough women that he followed the usual routine. First came the negotiation of nonessentials—demands that insulated the deviance of their fucking. The terms removed the denial-shattering interactions of sight, touch, taste, and speech.

  Lights off. Clothes on. No hands. No kissing. No talking.

  Well, no talking at the outset.

  Because the women he fucked always succumbed to orgasmic-driven ranting. They would babble self-serving orders as they arched their spines and threw back their heads. Fuck me. Take me. Harder. All the while, Atrates would simply fulfill his base need to rut.

  Sex was nothing but demeaning commands and rote thrusting, culminated in orgasms that never soothed his self-loathing.

  But not with Cisnetta.

  Bloody hell, of course, not with her.

  Because she’d done what she always did. She’d engaged him in a manner that made no rational sense.

  Love you, Atrates.

  He brutally shoved her desultory words aside. They were nothing more than the lust-fueled rants of a woman who only wanted to come. She probably had no fucking clue what she even said to him.

  With stubborn resolve, he resumed fucking her, throwing himself into the visceral haze of pumping open her clenching cunt. He honed his focus on the gratifying presentation of Cisnetta’s ass. With smug satisfaction swelling in his chest, he watched his cock push into her wet heat, even increasing his pounding pace as he tightened his hold on her hips.

  Yet, while he thrust into her with the supposed purpose of sheathing his cock, his mind burned in white-hot disbelief, incinerating to ash his attempts to remain detached.

  This wasn’t fucking.

  He didn’t know what this was.

  He’d been poorly prepared to encounter a woman like Cisnetta. Earlier, she’d stood under the carriage porch, unfazed by his frenetic intensity, and offered herself to him. When he’d placed her on the bed, she’d rolled over and enticingly presented herself. With her ass up and her head down, she’d snapped his tenuous restraint on his rutting frenzy.

  None of that had been typical interactions for him.

  However, once he’d sunk his cock into her, she’d begun to mimic those previous women by getting lost in the haze of her own lust. When her breathing had hitched followed by the involuntary writhing of her hips, he’d tightened his grip on her and readied himself for her moment of revelation. The moment when he would finally get an unaffected look at her.

  The Ugly Truth.

  She’d continued to follow the script as she bowed her back. The glorious curve of her spine had dipped toward the mattress, lifting her ass and surrendering her cunt to his demanding thrusts.

  He’d bared his teeth, snarling in anticipation of her backhanded babbling of worshipful demands. He’d wanted her to know that her cutting words wouldn’t change the fact that he was serving his base needs, not sharing a moment with her.

  “Want you, Atrates. Want you so much,” she’d moaned in throaty clarity.

  Fine. Those words might have been unexpected, but weren’t enough to derail him. So, he’d continued to fuck her until…

  Love you, Atrates.

  Not ‘pound my pussy.’ Or ‘god, I love your fucking cock.’

  She’d actually broken his punishing rhythm, which had prompted her to push her ass toward him, seeking contact as she looked over her shoulder with wild eyes.

  It had broken something inside of him to see that her gaze had been unfocused and that her pupils had been blown open in lust.

  Tamping down his riled emotions, he’d hardened up and continued fucking her.

  Only he was at an utter loss because this wasn’t mindless fucking anymore.

  Now he was altering each thrust as he intensely gauged her reaction. He noted slight changes and made corrections as he strove to trigger bliss with each stroke. To recreate the pleasurable frenzy that had her senselessly sobbing that she loved him.

  To his humiliating dismay, Cisnetta reached back and tapped at his hand, signaling at him to stop.

  He braced himself, waiting for her indigent rebuke and scorn. And it struck him, that in readying himself for her rejection, his hands had increased their grip on her hips. That he didn’t want her to pull away from him.

  But she did shift away from him, and he let her go, leaving his hands and cock throbbing with aching pulses, mourning their loss of contact with her.

  He rocked back onto his haunches, his chest heaving, as he waited for her lambasting. That he was an ugly alien. That he should be fucking grateful that she permitted him to touch her. That it was a privilege to enter her cunt and grace her with his unworthy thrusts. As if her orgasm would validate him.

  Cisnetta flipped onto her back. With lust-lit eyes targeted on his face and not his cock, she opened her legs and reached for him.

  “Atrates,” she whispered tenderly as she grasped his arms and tugged him toward her.

  She hadn’t used forceful tugs. She simply conveyed her invitation that awaited his response.

  He stiffened, resisting her pull. “I don’t—The Otar don’t—”

  “I wanna look at you, Atrates.”

  He understood the desire in her voice, but the tenderness that accompanied it confused him.

  He didn’t know how to do this. To slide into a woman without grudge-fueled thrusts.

  She sat up. Her body, toned from years of working tirelessly to stave off her frenesia, had honed muscles for practical use. Once upright, she slowly climbed into his lap and straddled him. Her gaze remained on his eyes the entire time, and he saw her gauging and assessing him. Perhaps looking for an indication from him that she should stop.

  But he couldn’t give her that, because he’d never given anything before. And this… well, this had never happened to him. She came to him, rather than coming on to him.

  What was it that the hybrid, Professor Ulem, had always lectured on and on about? That the Otar were miserable with semantics because they lacked the ability to be subtle?

  “Atrates,” she held his gaze, “take me?”

  She’d poised over his rigid, eager cock, letting a kiss of warmth from her cunt brush his straining crown. Rather than sheathing herself, she’d requested that he possess her.

  Hell, she hadn’t redeclared her love, but the clarity in her eyes had spoken directly to the Otar in him. His hands must be wired to his cock rather than his brain, because he grasped her hips and dragged her down. He slid her cunt over his cock and groaned in shock. It didn’t matter that their interruption had only been a few minutes. It felt like a lifetime without her. Being inside her was like slotting into a space reserved especially for him.

  Incited, he coiled his muscles, flexing his arms in preparation to work her over his cock in fervent lifts and pulls. Her hips would carry bruises shaped like his hands for days.

  But before he could start, she began to move. She rode him in graceful undulations that rolled over him like a cresting wave.

  With an astounded huff, he dropped his gaze to where they were connected. Watched in fascination as her taut belly and toned thighs used flexible strength to pump her tight cunt up and down his cock. She moved with both power and grace.

  His chest burned with a suppressed, feral bellow, and his muscles ached with the impulse to brutally drive into her. To rut in abandon until his rising orgasm—that coiled and flamed inside him—could be released in a rushing explosion.

  God, it would surely be the end of him.

  “I take you, Atrates,” she panted out each word as she slowed her pace and stopped. “I take you.”

  Without hesitation, he took over. As he drov
e up into her, it hit him that she’d given him the control. Although she continued to cling to him, she’d relaxed the muscles in her thighs and spread herself wider to receive him. She’d also tilted her hips to take each of his pumps to the hilt.

  She came apart in his arms, her face tucked into his shoulder as she heaved his name with each clench of her orgasm around his cock. Each whimpering of ‘Atrates’ into his shoulder bound him to her tighter and tighter.

  He broke apart, and his orgasm blindsided him. It ignited and imploded because she was uttering his name so damn sweetly while she tucked herself against him, seeking comfort.

  Atrates collapsed, rolling away from her as he collided with the mattress. He flipped onto his back and gazed up at the dark shadows of the ceiling. His chest continued to billow with his exertion.

  He was dumbfounded.

  Love you, Atrates.

  That, whatever that was, had not been fucking.

  Chapter 11

  Cisnetta lay sprawled on the bed. Her lungs ached as she tried to catch her breath, yet her body thrummed and her pussy throbbed with the relaxing pulses of release. Sweat—some of it hers, some of it his—coated her skin. Sleep tugged at her, but she brushed it off as she focused on listening.

  To her dismay, she heard nothing. Only Atrates’s ragged breathing as it gradually returned to normal.

  Well, this wouldn’t do.

  She rolled toward him, the mattress dipping and creaking with her movement.

  Atrates sprung from the bed, leaving her to flop where he’d once been.

  She gazed up in confusion and encountering another one of his frowns. “Atrates?”

  “I’m on a mandatory contraceptive,” he spat out gruffly. “You needn’t worry that you’ll have—”

  She hushed him, her heart breaking as she guessed his next words. That she needn’t fear having an ugly swain like him.

  Even as they were converging on a moment of connection, he’d yet to trust her. That once again, he’d assumed that being the first one to push meant avoiding being shoved.

  She ignored her sore, protesting limbs as she clambered from the bed. Then she practically chased him as he retreated to the opposite side and began snatching his clothes off the floor.

  “Atrates,” she said. “If you only wanted me once, I’ll accept that. I will. But tell me that now. Don’t leave me staring at your back as you walk out.”

  After all, she was strong, but not invincible.

  He rounded on her.

  “How many?” he grated out.

  She shook her head. “How many?”

  “How many times, Cisnetta? I’ll take tonight and whatever other nights you give me.”

  Stunned, she stared at him, then embarrassment accompanied her forgetfulness. How could she not have remembered that the Otar had yet to master nuance? Offering was not giving. One was a proposal, the other was a transfer. And accepting was not taking, thus distinguishing receiving from possessing.

  Well, he wouldn’t change overnight. She knew that. She also knew that he might never change at all, and she certainly couldn’t demand that he transform. All she could do was offer him a safe place to cocoon. Help him wrap himself up and dress his gaping wounds. Let him emerge as someone who was the same as he was, yet healed over with scars.

  “Atrates,” she cupped his cheeks. “This night is about you and me. But a night will come when it will be about you, me, and the profound privilege of bearing your children.”

  His jaw tightened as he darted his heated gaze over her face. Caution stiffened all his movements.

  Perhaps she needed to meet him halfway. “I’m offering you all my nights, Atrates. Please take them.”

  “Take them,” he said hollowly as he stared at his fists. Then he opened his hands, dropping his clothes. “But I’ve nothing to give, Ciss. I’ve got nothing.”

  Again, her heart ached. He mimicked the Mayreni gesture without true understanding. No one was empty-handed. Everyone’s hands were open, welcoming an honest exchange with another.

  She slid her hands into his and held them. He had no idea the intimacy behind this gesture. It was experienced between loved ones—family, lovers, dear friends. But she would tell him in due time, because he deserved to know how deeply she felt for him. How she admired his tenacity to carry on.

  But he needn’t carry on alone. She was there to help him haul his burdens.

  “You know that I am a double-fowler,” she said. “Fowler is more than just my family name.”

  She waited, letting her idiotic confession register.

  His brow wrinkled. “Ciss?”

  If he only knew that saying her name, prompting her to continue, elated her. Most people didn’t want to hear the rest. They would typically laugh—because of Cobbs—and direct the conversation elsewhere.

  “Remember Corporal Fowler?” she squeezed his hands and waited.

  “Your father,” he grated out, and she was pleased he didn’t qualify his answer. “What of him?”

  “When he knew he was dying, he urged me to go to university. Used all of his pension to send me, because he said an education would last longer than inheriting those funds.”

  “Smart man,” Atrates said.

  His voice sounded tight. Was he jealous because her father cared for her? Or was he bracing himself, because no one told tales like this, especially in her wistfully tender tone, if there wasn’t loss and grief with a lesson to be learned at the end?

  “But I was a fowler, you see.” She suppressed her urge to cringe and stop talking. “I was teased because I wasn’t from a distinguished family.”

  She hoped that Atrates had been taught Mayreni history, thus he would know that surnames indicated occupation. Anyone with family names like Taylor, Baker, Smith, Mason—they proclaimed their ancestry as common.

  “Teased?” Atrates asked, a growl in his throat.

  Tormented, actually. “I’d come back to my dorm to find dead birds. So much pointless cruelty, Atrates.”

  He said nothing, but the tension in his hands and wrists persisted. If she ran her hands up his arms, they’d be corded with the suppression of his emotions—whatever those feelings might be.

  But it was time for him to hear the happy ending. “Except for Cobbs. I think he bit whoever tried to wring his neck. His neck feathers were all skewed and ruffled, but he was squawking and pissed and alive.”

  She let silence settle. Atrates was an intelligent man. No need to bash him over the head with her fable-framed confession.

  “Is that what you think of me?” Atrates’s voice sounded rough and hesitant. Before she could respond, he pulled away from her, his attention snapping toward the bedroom door and his nostrils flared. “Get dressed and get out.”

  Shocked at his brusqueness, she gaped at him as he hurried to snatch his shorts and stepped into them. Then he shoved his feet into his shoes.

  He gave her a stern look. “Hurry, Cisnetta.”

  Her heart lodged in her throat. “Atrates?”

  He strode toward the door and yanked it open. “There’s a bloody fire, Ciss. Get everyone out.”

  Cisnetta stood on the manor’s veranda as she and Naosim watched the back field of magone burn.

  Naosim leaned into her comfortingly with his shoulder. “They are simply flowers, Cissy.”

  “I know,” she said hollowly.

  She knew, but still. What a bloody waste. She couldn’t fathom any reason why someone would burn the fields, other than to send a message that she and her women were not welcome there.

  “And the arses who did this are idiots,” Naosim huffed. “Burning a field is the best way to revitalize the soil. Those fields are gonna absorb the ash and thrive next season. You’ll see. Those flowers will be the most potent extract, teas, and soaps.”

  She cocked a brow at him. “So the arsonists have done me a favor?”

  “That they did,” Naosim sighed. “At least they didn’t set flame to the house.”

  C
isnetta jolted. “The house? Why would they?”

  Naosim tsked at her. “Because ‘they’ would do whatever the duke paid them to do.”

  Vagabond vandals, bored and looking to raise a ruckus, were one thing. Atrates had handled them swiftly and then hailed the Otar to suppress the flames. However, to consider that the duke had a hand in this, had a chill gripping her belly.

  Dismayed, she looked back at the manor. “You mean Andrake?”

  “Yes,” Naosim sighed. “The dastardly duke.”

  “But why—” As she shifted her gaze back to Naosim, she caught the riled, frustrated look on his face.

  Oh. Of course she knew why.

  With a heavy heart, Cisnetta said, “The duke found out about you and Trone.”

  Her poor friends. They had hidden their love for one another from the duke for a score of years. Or, at least, she thought they had done so.

  “When did this happen, Simmy?”

  “A few years back.”

  “I see.”

  She tried to muffle her wounded pride that her friends hadn’t confided in her, but Naosim sighed and gave her a contrite look.

  “There was nothing you could have done, Ciss. The duke threatened to sell Barbotière off, cleave it from the ducal holdings, rather than ‘see a pretty bird be its mistress.’” Then Naosim shrugged, as if it were no matter. Her friend was a homosexual foreigner who’d come from humble beginnings, yet was a highly educated professional. In regards to the duke, Cisnetta truly believed that Naosim couldn’t give a shit. “But when it came to Atrates, the duke said he would burn Barbotière down. Nothing left but ash. Nothing to rebuild. Nothing to salvage.”

  She turned her attention to the dying orange glow of the back field. Advanced Otaric airships had finished dousing the fire.

  She shook her head. The duke’s narrow-minded pride brought them to this. The man lacked the strength to leave his bed for the toilet, yet he’d sent men to torch the manor.

  How could one man be consumed by such hatred? That he would strike a blow from his deathbed, inflicting wounds that would heal long after he’d been in his grave.