Darling Duke

by Scarlett Scott

  The footsteps went past her.

  The breath she’d been holding escaped, and she inhaled deeply, as if she had been starved for air. That was when she realized something was amiss. For she smelled him and his delectable concoction of pine, soap, and musk. Pressing a palm to her pounding heart, she scanned the chamber.

  Aside from the color theme—the window dressings, wall coverings, and even rug were all varying shades of green—it seemed innocuous enough. She did not spot any signs of him. Yet why did his scent linger in the air? It made no sense, unless she had gone so mad being trapped for three days that she now suffered from delusions.

  What were the odds that she had happened into the chamber to which he had moved? That evening she had run into him, the halls had been dark, and with the tumult of their run-in coupled with Harry’s unexpected presence and her need to hastily disappear, she had not been certain where he’d emerged from or even where they had met in the corridor.

  Another thought occurred to her then. If this was indeed the chamber he had taken, then it stood to reason that her book was here. And Bainbridge was not. Elation surging through her, she hastened across the chamber, thinking that his mother ought to be banned from ever again decorating anything.

  The deeper she ventured into the chamber, the stronger his scent grew. She was quite certain that he had taken this room, a suspicion that was confirmed when she caught sight of her book lying on a bedside table, still in its neat embroidered cover to keep the true nature of its contents from judgmental eyes.

  “There you are,” she said with a gleeful chuckle, snatching it up. “Watching that little book of yours burn in the grate of my library. What balderdash.”

  She had known his words for the prevarication they were when he had spoken them. But finding her book at last, laid out at his bedside as though he had been reading it each night, filled her with vindication. She clutched it to her still madly beating heart. Dear Lord, it also filled her with something else. Heat, slow and licking and taunting, spread through her entire body.

  Here was the bed he slept in, her book within arm’s reach. Had he read the wicked words and become aroused? She wanted to know so much that she ached with it, and she ground her teeth. This would not do. She would take her book and leave and never look back. On to Paris. The Duke of Bainbridge could melt his own ice. He could…

  The chamber door swung open to reveal the object of her frustrated musings. He was dressed as if he had just come from riding. His green gaze crashed into hers, his sensual mouth going tight, his jaw instantly rock-solid. “What in the bloody hell?”

  He stepped over the threshold, slamming the door at his back.

  She could have asked the same of question of him. His brooding good looks were on full display this morning, and the way his riding boots hugged his muscular calves made her mouth go dry. Was it possible that he was taller, stronger, broader than she had recalled?

  “Why are you here?” she demanded, holding the book to her bosom in a protective grip.

  He raised an imperious, ducal brow. “Lady Boadicea, you are in my chamber.”

  She tipped up her chin, defiance taking charge as her displeasure for his high-handedness replaced her momentary stupor over his unexpected appearance. “I am in the first chamber I could spy after rounding the corner thanks to the jailer you planted at my door for the last few days. Had I known it was yours, I would have taken the risk of managing a few extra steps and landing myself in the next one.”

  He stalked toward her, making her resist the urge to retreat to the far end of the chamber. She would not show him her weakness. No. She would be strong. Unyielding. Above all she would not allow him to weaken her resolve or once again take possession of her book. Now that she had it back, she was not giving it up any more than she was flying to the moon.

  Bainbridge stopped only when he was so near that his riding boots brushed her hem. She knew she should wonder if he was transferring mud to her silk, but she couldn’t be bothered to look away from his arresting face.

  “You took a great fall,” he said slowly, his tone cool. “Being the stubborn, wrongheaded wench that you are, you seemed to have no concern for your wellbeing and recovery. Therefore I, being possessed of sound reasoning, endeavored to make certain that you would rest.”

  “I am not yours to order about,” she argued, trying not to notice the strong cords of his neck or the breadth of his chest. Allowing her weakness for him to get the better of her just would not do. “Nor am I a wench, wrongheaded or otherwise. I am a woman fully grown, and if I require rest I shall take it. If I do not, I will not. What I most assuredly do not need, Duke, is a man who thinks he knows better than I making my decisions for me.”

  There. Let him stew upon that.

  “I care for your wellbeing,” he said quietly. “You are stubborn to a fault, and I did not wish to worry about you wandering the halls at midnight or stealing my horses.”

  He’d rather ruined the first bit of what he’d said with the second. She frowned at him. “You are the most vexing man I have ever met. Your unfortunate personality aside, I never stole your horse.”

  His expression remained impervious as ever, revealing nothing. “I will not argue semantics with you, my lady. You are, as seems to be your singular talent, once again trespassing where you are not welcome. I need to change. Leave the bawdy book and go.”

  Ah, so he had noticed. “This is my book, and I want it back.”

  “It is filth.” His lip curled.

  “Such filth that you threw it into the fire?” If her tone was arch, it couldn’t be helped. Something about the man before her irked her in ways she could not fully comprehend. He was cold and reserved and forbidding, and yet he also made her melt.

  He tilted his head, considering her in an intense manner that left her feeling flushed and exposed. “Perhaps I wished to know what to expect from my future wife, having already been cursed with one unfaithful duchess. Tell me, Lady Boadicea, what manner of bride will I bring to my bed?”

  Something inside Bo froze. His wife had cuckolded him. It should not come as a surprise, she supposed, for marriages in which husband and wife sought comfort in the arms of lovers was commonplace in their set. And so it would seem he intended to paint her with the same brush.

  The gauntlet had been thrown. She stepped forward, straight into his large, unyielding body, and she didn’t care. “What do you mean to ask, Duke? You have only to ask, and I will answer.”

  “Why do you read such smut?” His hands settled upon her waist.

  Smut. She did not like that word. But she studied him, unable to resist the smug grin that curved her lips. She could see right through his pretense. “Because I like it. And so, I would wager, do you, else it would not have been so readily available alongside your bed. It would seem that you did not burn it in the library grate after all.”

  “As you can see, the thing is still in fine fettle.” He was solemn. “In spite of my strong inclination to destroy it.”

  “And it is mine.” Her grip upon it tightened. She didn’t know why it should matter to maintain possession of a small, unassuming volume of erotic literature. Though she hadn’t yet read it halfway through, she knew some of the stories it contained were frankly profane, some silly, and others still quite intriguing. Bainbridge clearly shared her opinion, or he would not have kept it at his bedside. There were layers to him, hidden depths, which appealed to her. And yet, she could not be certain if she was better off leaving him intact or attempting to find the pulsing heart of him.

  Did he have a heart?

  The icy Duke of Disdain—the man she’d thought him—would have her believe he did not. But she had glimpsed more than the façade he showed the world. More, even than the façade he had initially showed her. He possessed passion and fire. He was not an immovable iceberg at all. Rather, he was an enigma, a man who had known pain and hurt, who had perhaps loved a wife who had betrayed him and taken other lovers to her bed. The more s
he knew about him, the more she suspected that her opinion of him was wrong.

  “Take it, then.” His voice was a low, decadent rumble to her senses. His eyes had dipped to her mouth, and she felt that gaze like a kiss. Her lips tingled.

  For a moment, she had forgotten he spoke about the book in her hands, the shallow prize she had at last wrested from him. She blamed it upon his eyes, so vibrant and green that she swore she had never seen a shade as beautiful. And the angular lines of his handsome face, that ruggedly masculine stubble clinging to his jaw that made him seem somehow powerful and seductive all at once. Not to mention his sensual lips, that defined upper bow she longed to kiss.

  “Take it and go, Lady Boadicea,” he repeated, though he had not released his grip upon her waist. “The longer you linger here, the more likely you are to end up on your back in that bed, and we will have to hasten our nuptials even more than already necessary.”

  On your back in that bed.

  The words were meant to shock her. Instead, they sent a rush of molten desire straight through her body to the sensitive flesh between her legs. The book in her hands had given her a word for that forbidden place: cunny.

  Yes. She liked those words. That threat. When the Duke of Bainbridge issued it, there was no threat at all, only promise. It had the opposite effect, for instead of making her hasten out of the chamber door, leaving the emerald of his eyes and the matching décor behind her, it only made her want to stay. To rise on her tiptoes. To link her arms around his neck. Press her breasts shamelessly to his wide, unforgiving chest.

  So she did, dropping the book to the carpet, heedless of where it went. It was no longer the prize she sought. Instead, she luxuriated in the searing heat of him sinking into her being, burning and delicious. Shifting from side to side, she rubbed against him like a feline as her pebbled nipples dragged against him. He stepped into her, one of his sinewy thighs parting her legs. She grew moist between her thighs. Ached. For him, for the forbidden. For all of him or any part of him—however trifling—he dared to give.

  God, how he undid her, and she ought to be frightened by the knowledge. Yet somehow, it only served to heighten her arousal. Desire charged the air. She arched her back, seeking more, yearning for contact with his body everywhere she could manage.

  “Spencer,” she whispered his name for the first time, trying it on her tongue, a slow hiss. It suited him, that name. It was cool, austere, and yet beneath it hid a seductive current. She wanted to say it again. “Spencer.”

  He was handsome, so handsome at such proximity, and she couldn’t stop the tumult roaring through her, dangerous though she knew it was. They had already crossed far more boundaries than she had ever imagined possible. Here she was, in his chamber, in his arms, and though it should not, nothing had ever felt more right.

  “Hellfire.” He swallowed, but his large hands swept up from her waist, over the small of her back, tracing her spine, leisurely painting circles with his traveling palms. “Princess, grant us both this favor. You must leave. I cannot…you are wearing naught but a dressing gown and chemise, and I cannot stop touching you. Damn it.”

  The visceral swear made her flinch, the urgency and feeling of it, as though he hated himself for his weakness yet remained powerless to step away from her and put a safe distance between them. She held herself still, locked in his gaze.

  “I do not wish you to stop,” she confessed before she could stay the revelation.

  The air rushed from his lungs, heated and moist over her lips, as his jaw hardened into stone. “Fuck.”

  It was not the first time she had heard him use the crude epithet, but it was the first time that the mere utterance of it, delivered from his beautifully sculpted lips, made a sharp ache pulse through her. She knew what the word meant. Had read it in many a naughty book.

  Perhaps she was shameless. This was not the manner in which she had been raised. Finishing school had not taught her to act with such flagrant disregard for propriety, nor to offer herself so freely and without compunction. She was meant to be a lady, treasure her comportment, never be alone with a gentleman, never invite him to sin with her. But she was Boadicea Harrington, and she had never found a single rule she hadn’t longed to smash to bits.

  “Do you feel it?” she asked in a whisper. Her eyes searched his. “Tell me, Spencer. Do you feel whatever this is between us?”

  “Damn you,” he gritted, his expression tense. One of his large hands swept lower, cupping her bottom, driving her body into him so that she rode his thigh. “You are madder than a March hare, I swear it on my life, and yet…”

  “And yet,” Bo prompted when he allowed his words to trail away, as though loath to speak them aloud.

  He did not need to say it, for she could read his thoughts. They mirrored her own.

  And yet, he could not resist this. Could not avoid the burning desire, the need to become one, that sparked like live electricity wires in the air. Nor did she want him to, for she felt the pull every bit as much as he did. He was nothing she had ever wanted, the last man in the world she should desire, and yet she could not think of any other man she had ever wanted more. He transcended everything—person, place, time. In the heat of his stare, beneath the magic of his touch, all else faded.

  All that remained was him. Spencer. Bainbridge. The Duke of Disdain. They were all varying versions of the same beautiful, complicated man. And she wanted them. Every last one of them. All of them.

  All of him.

  “And yet,” she prompted again, unable to squelch the restless desire to hear the rest of what he would have spoken though she knew it already.

  He did not respond, merely scorched her with his relentless stare that seemed to see to the heart of her, to unlock all the secrets she kept within. And then, in the next instant, his mouth was upon hers. Fierce. Hungry. Devouring.

  She opened to him, feeding on his kiss, sucking his tongue into her mouth. He was all she wanted without ever having known it. He was vital. Air. Water. Succor. He was everything, and it was as if his kiss could sustain her even if she was lost in the deepest, darkest wilds of the world. He kissed her as if she were someone he longed to consume and someone who was precious to him all at once. His hands were gentle. His mouth was firm, hard, demanding.

  A moan tore from her throat, her fingers delving into his thick hair. His scent enveloped her, filling her, overtaking her. She welcomed it. Welcomed him. His questing touch smoothed over her waist, finding the belt of her robe, made short work of undoing the knot.

  He groaned, tongue playing against hers, gliding with deep, languorous sweeps as though he had all the time in the world to discover her. To pleasure her. But Bo did not feel nearly so generous. She wanted everything she had read about, and she wanted it now. She wanted him to strip her of the layers keeping her skin from his, wanted him to lick and suck and nip her everywhere and anywhere he chose, wanted him between her thighs and deep inside her body.

  The knot opened. Her robe de chambre slipped down her shoulders, puddling to the floor in a whisper of fabric. Only a chemise, thin and transparent, kept her body from his traveling hands. Knowing, traveling hands, and everywhere he touched her, her traitorous body seemed to sing.

  His thumbs found her nipples, circling, plucking. He pinched them between his fingers, rolled them, pulled, made her moan into his mouth with his tender yet skilled ministrations. Her breasts were so sensitive, heavy and full, desperate for his touch. She arched her back, licked her tongue against his, fisted her hands in his hair.

  Nothing had ever made her feel more depraved or alive than this forbidden moment with the Duke of Bainbridge in her arms, his hands on her body, his mouth playing with wicked abandon over hers. He set her aflame as no other man before him ever had, and as she was beginning to suspect no man after him ever could.

  How had she ever thought him icy?

  For he was not. Not cold. Not cool. Not rigid or frigid.

  Rather, he was on fire, singeing her w
ith his kisses and his caresses, the sweep of his hands over her back and lower still. And she wanted that fire more than anything. Wanted to get burned. It would be an inferno, claiming everything in its path. But it would be worth it.

  He cupped her bottom with both hands, kneading and squeezing before angling her to his body more fully. She felt him against her belly, erect and uncompromising and so tempting. The books she had read made it impossible for her to remain ignorant of what he would do with that part of himself or what it meant. He wanted her. Despite their differences, in spite of all that had happened since her arrival at Boswell Manor, the Duke of Bainbridge wanted her.

  And she wanted him. More than she had ever wanted anything or anyone. So much that it frightened her. So much that she stood in nothing more than a chemise, in his chamber, tossing the last remnants of her reputation into the proverbial flame. No good would come of her presence in his chamber.

  No good would come of his hands meandering over her body or the restless desire within her to feel his bare skin pressed to hers. No good would come of anything that was happening now, in this moment, in the emerald chamber without the ghosts of his past and the fears of their future curtailing them.

  For the moment, it was as if they were suspended from reality. No one knew she was within his chamber. No one knew she had gone from hers with the exception of the servant posted at her door, and she suspected that he would not wish to alert his retainers of his failure now that he had lost her. Indeed, no one, then, would suspect at all. No one would ever know what she had risked, what he had taken, or what she had given. It was as if time ceased to exist, and they were the only two souls in the world, both on fire for each other, both needy and desperate for something they did not comprehend.