Should she be embarrassed? Was she embarrassed?
Yes. A little. Maybe a lot. It wasn’t done to find release in the arms of a fiancé’s relatives, probably not even in the Foscourts’ circle. Even though she’d just thrown her family’s respect and goodwill into the fire by running away like this, she was too used to the good opinion of others not to crave it now. She’d long ago come to the conclusion that respect and indulgence were not necessarily mutually exclusive. But her entire personality had heretofore been built on restraint and cool placidity. In the span of just a few hours, the duke had seen her behave both recklessly and unthinkingly.
I am both things, she wanted to say—not only to Jarrell, but to everyone. Restrained and deeply feeling. Placid and agitated.
Cool-blooded and also so feverish sometimes that she felt flames burning along the inside of her skin.
Like this moment right now—she wasn’t only embarrassed. She was nervous and excited and scared of what would happen when she left this room, and hungry for more of what they’d just done in this room. She glanced down at the large hand currently resting on his knee as he sat with one leg drawn up, and she wondered how those long fingers and blunt fingertips would feel under her chemise. She looked back to his face and saw the shadow of his beard darkening his jaw, and she wanted to know how it would feel against her breasts.
She almost dared to ask but stopped herself at the last moment. She’d already used up an entire lifetime’s worth of boldness, and anyway, more serious things should be discussed now. She’d run away, and he’d caught her. There were only a few different things that could happen next, and Jarrell would be well within his rights to escort her firmly and grimly back to Far Hope if she wouldn’t go willingly.
Surely that was what he meant by choices.
She didn’t like the thought much, and she shivered, pulling the blanket tighter around her, as if she were already back out in the dark.
His brow furrowed even more; he shifted towards her and then shifted back right away, as if fighting some instinct. “Move closer to the fire,” he said, a bit gruffly. “You’ll be warmer.”
She obeyed, crawling forward enough that the warmth of the fire kissed her skin, and then she looked back at the duke, still sitting with his leg drawn up, still pinning her with a stare that seemed as hot as it was troubled. The hand draped over his knee flexed and fisted and flexed again. A muscle jumped in his jaw. She followed his gaze back to herself.
Oh.
The blanket had slipped. And the low-cut bodice of her chemise hid little—she imagined the light of the fire hid even less.
Goose bumps erupted everywhere, as if he was touching her with that restless, flexing hand and not only with his stare.
“Still cold?” Jarrell asked, voice rough, jaw tight. “Do you need another blanket?”
No, she wanted to say. Warm me up yourself. Push those big hands up my chemise. Cover me with your body.
The way he looked at her then—like he could read her thoughts. As if he could sense every depraved wish that flitted through her mind.
Could moments be many things all at once, as feelings were? Because this moment felt like that, like it was spilling over with possibilities and futures and promises, as if she was standing at one of those crossroads she’d craved so badly, with many lanes and byways branching off in every direction. And it was her choice where to step next.
She looked at his flexing hand, his dark eyes, his cruel mouth.
And she chose her next step.
“No. Don’t get another blanket. I want you to warm me.”
His lips, which had been pressed together so tightly she could see lines bracketing the corners of his mouth, parted. His hand flexed once on his knee, out and then back into a fist again. His fist was massive. He was massive.
“I beg your pardon,” he said. Slowly.
She’d run away, hadn’t she? She’d disguised herself and plunged into the wilderness. And wasn’t he here looking at her like he craved her as much as she craved him? Didn’t he look like it was taking every bit of his restraint to keep from grabbing her and kissing her?
She’d already seized one unwritten future for herself tonight, so why not another? Why not reach for what she wanted, for another hope beyond the mist?
She let the blanket slide all the way off her shoulders. “I want you to warm me, Your Grace.”
That jumping muscle in his jaw again.
A sharp swallow sliding down his throat.
“We should talk,” he said, sounding like he was trying to convince himself. “There’s much to discuss. And I…should not.”
Having a mind built for projects was very convenient in this moment. The new project was convincing Jarrell. Her materials were her words and her body. And she already had a plan.
She started crawling towards him, knowing it made her bodice gape, knowing he could see straight down it. “We could do both at once,” she said reasonably. “We could talk while you warmed me—”
He reached out to touch her shoulder, as if to stop her, but the moment his fingers brushed her exposed skin, something seemed to break inside him. A latch, or a lock. A dam.
She was on her back before she knew what was happening, with the duke on top of her, his hands planted on either side of her head. The heat of his body burned against hers, and she pressed up against him with a gasp.
Then she smiled. “See? We can talk just as easily like this.”
He narrowed his eyes. Fallen hair from his queue framed his face, and he looked every inch the ruthless heathen. “I have something else in mind, Lady Eleanor.”
It was a warning. His eyes blazed with it.
Shivers of delicious fear chased down her spine. Could fear be delicious?
Yes, she decided, yes, it could. This wasn’t the primordial fear of the moors or the soulless dread of marrying someone she didn’t want to marry. This was something thrilling and wonderfully dangerous, like turning to face a prowling wolf and looking into its bright, hungry eyes.
In an instant, all her contradictions, her embarrassments, all the lingering terror of her foiled escape—they vanished. There was only him, this half-wild duke, and the sparkling responses he elicited in her.
Was she afraid? Oh yes. But did it sear her, thrill her, kindle her to have him like this? Did it destroy every ounce of cool serenity she’d ever claimed to possess?
Yes.
“I hope whatever it is will keep me warm,” she whispered. The whisper didn’t make her words any less bold. “Some parts of me are still so cold they ache.”
“Is that so?”
Her body was far ahead of her mind in this. Her nipples had gathered into taut, straining points, and they tented the fabric of the chemise, as if rising for his lips.
She took a deep breath. Eyes wide open, she would choose this.
Then, so there could be no mistake which parts of her twinged for his touch, she slid her hands between them and cupped her breasts. It felt so good to have warmth there, and pressure, that she slid her hands over her curves again, squeezing a little this time and savoring the shivering feeling it gave her.
The noise that tore from Jarrell’s chest was an animal noise, a feral growl, and it was all the warning she had before her hands were pushed to the side and pinned to the floor. He moved down, ducked his head between wide, straining shoulders, and put his mouth to the curve of her breast.
For a moment, he only breathed there.
Warm exhales tickled her through the near-translucent linen, taunting her, making her restless underneath him. Then he let his eyes rove up from her heaving chest to her undoubtedly flushed face. She had the thought that—despite what she’d sleepily used his body for earlier—this was the actual Rubicon; if he touched her now, if he tasted her, if he made her squirm and pant in the same way she’d made herself do earlier, then there was no going back.
What that meant, she had no idea. A wedding would be the proper outcome from a moment
such as this, and yet there was nothing proper about the Duke of Jarrell. And there were other impediments to marriage—that he was the uncle of the betrothed she’d just fled from being the largest. But he also had no desire to wed another. Famously so.
What was she doing? What road was she stepping on exactly?
What was her desire?
She didn’t know. She didn’t even know what she hoped for. She only knew this: since the moment he’d stalked into Far Hope’s dining room like a villain in a Radcliffe novel, she’d wanted him to touch her. She wanted those rough hands, those flashing eyes, that cruel mouth—and she craved something else that she couldn’t put words to. Something beyond sex itself. Something like consumption.
She wanted to consume him.
She wanted him to consume her.
Perhaps the road was one she’d been searching for since she’d decided to become a sort-of spinster—maybe even since that afternoon in the temple folly. The liberty to choose her indulgences and pleasures with someone she craved. To join herself to someone who excited her. She’d already run away. She was already ruined. Why not claim this for herself?
And when his eyes met hers, she saw an appetite that more than matched her own.
He would choose consumption, as she had.
He lowered his lips to her nipple and sucked hard, his mouth a shock of heat and wet. Eleanor had no idea—none—that anything could feel like that. The difference between her own fingers when she’d touched herself privately and someone else’s indecent mouth was so vast it was almost laughable.
His wicked kisses sizzled over her skin and drew need between her thighs. They sent fresh goose bumps everywhere and made her pant in sheer sensation.
How did anyone get anything done when this was a possibility? How were there women who spent hours on embroidery and polite conversation when this was an available option? She didn’t understand it at all! If she had her way, she’d spend all day just like this, with Jarrell’s large hands pinning her wrists to the floor and his hot mouth drawing her need to the surface.
Although, after he impatiently tugged the chemise off her body and she felt his mouth on her naked flesh, she had to amend her previous assertion a little.
This was how she’d spend every day if she could: tongue to bare flesh, teeth to sensitive skin, her eyes on the working of the duke’s jaw and the subtle hollowing of his cheeks as he feasted on her.
Jarrell moved to her other breast, kissing the underside and gently biting his way to its peak. She rocked underneath him all the while, shuddering at the feeling of her naked body against the linen and silk of his clothes. It was forbidden, every bit of this was, and she should be horrified with herself. But she wasn’t. She wanted more actually, his mouth on her breasts stoking tension low in her belly, and she told him so.
“I’m cold elsewhere too,” she whispered.
He lifted his head to look up at her with glittering eyes. “Show me,” he said.
Eleanor could feel the humiliated flush scald her chest as she took his hand. Her entire body trembled with nervous, reckless yearning, with the awareness of her own daring.
She pushed his hand between her legs and curled it over her sex.
“Here,” she murmured, watching the hunger settle over his face. “Right here.”
He shot a look up to her face that could have been furious or could have been furiously thankful—she had no time to tell because, in an instant, he was between her legs, pushing her thighs apart with his hands and looking not up at her face, but at her wet opening.
It was indecent how he looked at her. It was sinful, shocking. He didn’t merely glance at her intimate flesh—he studied it. He inspected her like a connoisseur of fine things, his midnight eyes missing nothing, allowing her no secrets from him.
“I’ve thought about this,” he said in a low voice, a finger trailing up her damp seam, “since the moment I met you. I’ve thought about what I would do to see this. Touch this.”
He moved down to his elbows, and all the distant thoughts and worries in Eleanor’s mind burned themselves to ash. The sight of him there, his sculpted mouth hovering over her gold curls, his massive shoulders and arms backlit by the firelight—it was a sight that immolated all reason. If someone had laid out all the logical explanations for why this was a terrible idea, she would only have to gesture to the muscle-hewn silhouette of him to make her argument.
There was no denying herself this. She wouldn’t even know how to try.
“I would have given up my entire world to taste you,” Jarrell said, right before kissing her in her wettest, hottest place.
The first brush of his lips made her sigh, and the second made her moan. But then he parted his mouth and began exploring her with his tongue, giving her slick kisses that curled her toes. He stroked into her entrance with no shame, nothing even approaching shame, as if she were indeed a feast fit for a king, and when she looked down, his hips were flexing against the plush rug, as if to give himself pressure and friction. As if to—
Oh.
Oh.
It was his erection he was grinding against the floor. It was that hard part of himself he was seeking relief for as he pleasured her with his mouth. Because he was enjoying this as much as she was? It hardly seemed possible, but there was the slow churn of his hips, those were his hungry moans from between her legs. Those were his eyelashes fluttering like those of a mortal drinking the gods’ nectar.
Doing this made him as wild as it made her—and ah, the knowledge of that. The feeling of it. She wanted more and more and more of it; she wanted to be dragged under and drowned in it.
“Please,” she murmured, not entirely sure what she was asking for, but knowing that it was more. “It feels so good. Please, Your Grace.”
“Ajax,” he said. When he lifted his head, his pupils were blown laudanum-wide and his mouth was wet with her. “My name is Ajax.”
“Ajax,” she said softly, and the answering grunt of satisfaction was enough to make her thighs and belly tighten dangerously. She was close to the mindless urgency that had overtaken her earlier in her sleep, but it felt different now. Perhaps because she was awake. Perhaps because the wickedness of his mouth was a world apart from pleasuring herself against his thigh. Or perhaps it was because she could actually see him—the large hands wrapped around her hips, the dark fans of his lashes over his cheeks as he kissed her. The restive toil of his hips as he pressed himself against the floor. All of it was so much more.
There was only his tongue stroking into her, his mouth at her swollen bud, his flickering kiss in the firelight. There was only the sweet frustration of her release building just out of reach, and she didn’t know whether to squirm away from it or seize it with both hands—
When the cataclysm came, it came like the storm outside…in furious, seething lashes that had her crying out to the ceiling. Her whole body shuddered, her belly and thighs quivered with it, and she could no more stop herself from twisting in Jarrell’s hold than she could stop herself from trying to rock harder against his mouth at the same time.
Jarrell didn’t stop, but he did ease his insistent kisses somewhat. They were more reverent than hungry now. When he finally stopped completely and raised up to his knees, hunger was still present in his glittering gaze. And the thick rod straining against his breeches . . .
Her heart skipped.
With fear or with lust? Terror or delight?
Once again, did it matter?
But her heart still cautioned her. She’d already made the mistake of falling in love with him, surely it would be an even larger mistake to assume he could ever feel the same. But when he looked at her like he was doing now, when he moved over her to trail darkly worshipful kisses over her breasts and throat . . .
Was it so impossible to think he might return her feelings? That he might not regret later what they were doing right now? That he might want to do it again?
She wasn’t a fool. She wouldn’t expect love
. But perhaps a proposal wasn’t as farfetched as she’d thought earlier? She hadn’t wanted marriage with Sloreley, but with Jarrell . . .
Yes. Yes, she wanted it. She wanted everything. And surely that’s what he meant when he mentioned choices. After the night they’d just spent together, there could be only one choice left.
The choice she’d spent the last week trying to keep herself from dreaming about.
But if he doesn’t propose?
Well, then, she would take her blows like the soldier of serenity she was. She was capable of that, right? She was capable of surviving a broken heart?
Enough now. Enough of the circular thoughts—she’d already leapt, and there was little sense in regretting the fall. She gave into her deepest urges, slid her hands into his silky hair, and pulled him close.
Chapter Eight
“I thought we were going to talk,” she murmured against his mouth.
He couldn’t answer at first. She was simply too sweet to stop kissing. Her mouth was too soft, her tongue too eager to slide against his. Her hands in his hair were too perfect—tentative and seeking at turns, as if her need to hold him and use him warred with the polite reserve she’d deployed all these years to survive.
Use me however you like, he wanted to tell her. Use me until we both hurt with it.
He felt tempted as he hadn’t been in years to let the beast free, to tell this quiet blossom currently panting beneath him everything. Everything.
No. He couldn’t do that.
What did he think would happen then? If he explained to this well-mannered English rose—who was still legally betrothed to his nephew—that he’d like to tie her to his bed, pretty please? That he wanted her naked at his dining room table every night until the end of time, wearing nothing but Dartham heirloom jewelry and white silk stockings?
That he wanted to taste her cunt, not because it was the gentlemanly thing to do, but because it got him hard?
Duke I’d Like to F… Page 6