And she wanted to tell him, to give him all of herself. Everything. She wanted to give him everything. What was wrong with her? What had he done, what spell had he cast?
She leaned into him, and their lips met. His were soft and full and lush. Hotter than she remembered but every bit as skilled. He knew how to take control, slanting his mouth over hers, his hand sliding from her cheek to cup her head instead. Long fingers slid into her tidy chignon, sending pins raining to the floor.
She did not care that they were gone or where they fell. Her own hand slid from his shoulder, her left hand, the one bearing his ring. The symbol of their union which had mocked her every day since he had left. Elysande caught a fistful of his shirt and held him to her, kissing him back with all the pent-up yearning which had been haunting her through the entire time they had been apart.
His tongue slipped inside to tease hers, and he tasted of brandy and the biscuit pudding with raspberry sauce which had followed dinner. Sweet and yet with a decadent depth, much like the man himself. He deepened the kiss, his tongue stroking hers, before he caught her lower lip in his teeth and gently tugged.
It was as if an invisible string led directly to her core, and each nip he gave her pulled it tighter, brought her nearer to the edge of complete abandon. Dimly, she recalled they were in the sadly understocked library, her reason for seeking him out in London, the month they had spent apart.
Was this wise?
Most definitely not.
But then, his other hand, the one on her waist, began to caress her there. He played her as if she were an instrument, knowing with the inherent talent of a musician how fast, how slow, when to apply pressure, when to tease. Over her belly, that knowing hand traveled while he feasted on her lips, nibbling and licking and sucking until her knees turned to aspic and threatened to send her sprawling to the faded carpets. His palm pressed into her, then slid lower, hovering over her sex where she ached.
But he did not press deeper into the voluminous fall of her skirts and underpinnings. Instead, he caught a fistful of silk and began lifting her hem leisurely. He slowed his kisses, his lips traveling over hers with languorous and lush attention to the bow of her lips, the corners of her mouth, taking her breath, making her heart pound.
Up went her hem, and faster went her pulse. Form a race to a full gallop. Cool air rushed over her ankles as the whisper of silk and satin added to the blatantly erotic sound of their fused mouths. Fabric slipped past her knees.
Then higher, kissing the tops of her thighs.
He was first to break the kiss, raising his head to stare down at her with an intensity she had only seen on his face once before. That morning by the lake, when he had made love to her in the grass. She recognized the expression now, the hunger burning in his eyes. He wanted her.
“I need to touch you,” he said. “Please let me touch you, love.”
Love.
She knew he did not mean the word in its truest sense. And yet, the endearment still had an effect on her. “Yes,” she whispered. “Please.”
“Thank the Lord,” he murmured.
The hand that was raising her hems slid to the curve of her hip, massaging her gently there, his fingers gliding to take a handful of her rump and squeeze.
“Oh.” It was half moan, half plea. Torn from her. She liked his touch there. She liked his touch everywhere.
The hand he had plunged into her hair left, and he kissed her cheek, her jaw, her throat. Fingers danced over the split of her drawers.
She was on fire.
But he was far from finished. He caressed her for a moment through the cotton of her drawers, and then he cupped her mound, taking all of her and holding her there in an act of such shocking possession, she nearly swooned. His touch remained gentle, claiming. But she could disentangle herself from him with scarcely any effort. Only, she did not wish to.
“Do you have any notion how badly I want to take you, Elysande?” he rasped. “Christ. Of course you don’t, else you would not be here now. Run, love. Go now before I take us any further.”
She was not about to leave.
This was what she wanted, raw and real and wild.
This was the passion she had only begun to know before he had abruptly left Brinton Manor and her behind.
“I do not run from anything,” she told him.
He kissed her cheek once more. “Sweet Elysande. You should.”
As he issued the warning, his thumb pressed over that maddening bud, separated from his bare skin by the thin barrier of cotton. She was even wetter now, and she was sure he must feel it.
“I am not running,” she said. “I am staying right here.”
“Fuck.” It was the second time he had cursed since she had joined him in the library, an indication of his waning restraint. “Your drawers are damp. You’re wet for me, aren’t you, Ellie?”
His wicked words and the combination of her family’s name for her, used by him for the first time, made her dizzy. That knowing thumb of his moved over her, making her jerk and cry out.
But it was not enough. She wanted his skin on hers. Wanted him to slide his big hand into the slit in her undergarments and touch her any way he liked.
She kissed along his jaw, determined to make him every bit as weak and desperate as he was making her. And then she tipped her head back, watching him, running her tongue over her lips so she could taste him, musky and salty and good. Would he taste that way everywhere? She wanted to know.
“Hudson, more please,” she said, scarcely knowing what she was begging for, only that what she wanted was more.
“More what?” he asked, still toying with her. Light whirls now, scarcely any pressure at all.
Her hips bucked impatiently, seeking him.
“I want your hand inside,” she managed to say through the haze of lust fogging her mind. “Inside my drawers. On me.”
“With pleasure.”
At last, he parted the slit, and his fingers skimmed over her seam. One slow travel from her entrance to her pearl, then back again.
He hummed his approval. “So hot and wet and responsive.”
Her knees threatened to buckle. She clutched his shoulders, using him to keep herself steady. His fingers played over her sensitive bud, skin on eager skin. Lightly at first, nothing more than the whisper of a touch.
“Like this?” he asked, voice dark and deep and knowing.
“Yes,” she hissed, breathless, her body swaying into his.
He pressed harder, finding an exquisitely sensitive place, then worked her nub back and forth until she was on the edge of coming undone. He kissed her throat, the corners of her lips.
“You feel so damn good, but it’s not enough,” he said against her wildly pounding pulse. “I want to lick you. Will you let me?”
“Please,” she said, the only word she could manage past the sudden rush of desire pulsing in her core.
She had thought of him pleasuring her with his mouth so many times. So many lonely nights. Her own touch had been a paltry substitute. Never sufficient.
He guided her, moving her slowly, until her back met with the wall of shelving. “Hold your skirts, love.”
Somehow, her mind was able to make sense of his gently issued command. Her hands left his broad shoulders, taking the hems of her skirts and petticoats, and holding them to her waist as he had.
“Good.” He kissed her once, swift and hard, on the mouth, and then he sank to his knees.
Oh sweet heavens. She would have been embarrassed, were it not for the need thundering through her, the remembrance of what that wicked mouth could do to her. How much pleasure he could bring. His hands framed her hips, caressing her with appreciative sweeps, then urged her legs farther apart. Cool air touched her intimate flesh as her drawers opened. Suddenly, the coolness was replaced by heat.
By the velvet warmth of his lips. He sucked her into his mouth and made a low growl that told her he enjoyed pleasuring her every bit as much as she liked his
mouth on her. Elysande’s knees wobbled.
He released her, glancing up at her through hooded, blue-gray eyes. “Lean into the shelves and hook your leg over my shoulder.”
She obeyed, lost in the madness of the moment. He helped her to shift her left leg as he wanted, leaving her open to him, his hot breath fanning her core. His head dipped, and he was feasting once more, eating her as if she were the finest delicacy laid before him, as if he could never slake his hunger.
He lapped at her folds, then parted her, his tongue gliding lower, pressing lightly against her entrance. She was going to swoon. Or splinter into a thousand jagged shards of herself. He alternated between long licks, pressing his face into her, his hands cupping her rump and holding her still for him to devour her.
The nip of his teeth on her pearl proved her undoing. He bit, and molten bliss, exquisite and all-consuming, rocked through her. She moaned, body bowing away from the shelving in her attempt to get closer, for him to give her more. He nibbled on her throbbing clitoris until her climax hit her.
Wave after wave of bliss crashed down. White stars speckled her vision. Hudson remained there, delivering little light flicks with his tongue, lapping her up. He rubbed her bottom in soothing, reassuring strokes, then kissed the bud of her sex, then her inner thigh.
His kiss was wet with her own dew. It was wicked and Elysande liked it. Liked his mouth on her most intimate place, the knowledge that his lips tasted like her. He slowly removed her leg from his shoulder and rocked back on his heels, staring up at her with drugged desire. He was so handsome this way, more man than gentleman, hair tousled, full lips dark and glistening from his efforts.
She was trembling and sated and limp, breaths leaving her in ragged bursts, heart galloping like a wild horse given a start. None of this had been her intention when she had initially sought him in the library, but she could not regret her actions. Her gaze dipped to the evidence of his desire, a long ridge hidden by his trousers. The sight did nothing to quell the passion still muddling her brain.
“Ah, damn,” he said, collecting her hems from her and lowering them back into place. “You make me lose my head, Ellie.”
There it was again. Ellie.
She liked the way her name sounded in his deep, smoky voice. She liked everything about him.
He rose to his feet and took her hands in his. “Come. It has been a long day, and we should both get some rest.”
She nodded, tamping down the rise of disappointment in her breast that his words had not been different. That he had not asked to come to her bed instead. “Yes, it has, and I daresay we should.”
He escorted her to her chamber and left her there, with nothing but a tender kiss on her brow. And just as she had for every night of her marriage thus far, Elysande went to bed alone.
Chapter 9
Perhaps Barlowe had the right of it. Being honorable and doing the right thing was damned hard.
But the devil of it was, so was his cock.
Hudson had risen, as he had ever since the morning by the lake, with a cockstand and no way of curing it save a thorough frigging with his own hand. This life of his was getting old.
He no longer knew who he was, living a half life between one and the next, part of him very much still Chief Inspector Stone, part of him the new Duke of Wycombe. He had a wife he had yet to make love to, a former lover who had been murdered, a monster who continuously eluded capture, two homes in need of refurbishing, former friends and fellow detectives who now considered him an outsider, yet another world in which he did not belong, and the possibility he would be charged with Maude’s murder.
The thought cooled his ardor considerably. As did the memory of what he had witnessed that night. How could he ever forget? All the blood, so much of it. Everywhere. He’d bathed thrice when he had finally made his way to the town house afterward. Had scrubbed his skin until it had been red and raw.
Today, he needed to see O’Rourke. The reminder had him rising from his bed to the cool morning air. The fire in the grate had died at some time during the wee hours, and there was precious little heat to be had in the chamber. He shivered as he made his way to the washstand. Maude had been dead for three days and nights, and beyond that awful first evening, Hudson had seen nothing of the inspector.
O’Rourke had been cold and unrelenting on their previous meeting, so it was hardly surprising he had given Hudson no indication of the progression of the case. He knew he was no longer a detective himself, and that he had no right to information. However, he was partly responsible for Maude Ainsley’s murder. She would not have been followed and killed if she had not sought out Hudson that night at Barlowe’s dinner.
He ought to have been firmer with her, damn it. Clearer in his determination to remain faithful to his wife. If she had not gone to his rooms, she would still be alive, and he would not find himself mired in this damnably tenuous position. Guilt skewered him as he poured some water into a bowl and splashed his face. It, too, was cold. But the chill scarcely compared to the ice in his soul.
Hastily, he finished the routine of his morning ablutions and then dressed, foregoing a shave because he did not bloody well feel like the scrape of a razor on his face. If he looked dreadful, he didn’t care. He was living in a Purgatory of his own making, and it may as well show.
Determined to have his customary coffee and leave for Scotland Yard, he left his room and descended the staircase. This, too, was in need of repair. The wood required polishing and perhaps a fresh stain. Several of the pictures hanging on the damask walls were askew, revealing the original, vibrant color of the wall hangings. Time and sunlight had faded them, rendering the once brilliant emerald green more a faded, pale jade. So many items to fix. Not the least of which was himself.
He never should have nearly made love to Elysande in the library the night before. But he had been raw as a fresh wound, torn open and tender. And his attraction for her was as strong as ever. He had not been prepared for the effect her presence here in London would have on him.
Hudson reached the bottom of the staircase and the undeniable scent of breakfast reached him. His stomach, traitor that it was, grumbled its objection to a mere coffee in response. He had reverted to his bachelor days when staying in his rooms, which meant coffee until a late luncheon, procured at a tavern or a Finch Lane chop-house. Usually a roast leg of mutton or sausage and mashed potatoes had been all he required to stick to his ribs. But his time in Buckinghamshire had spoiled him in more ways than one.
And at the scent of poached eggs, some manner of pastry, and bacon, he found himself striding toward the breakfast room despite the intentions that had driven him from his chamber. To his surprise, Elysande was within.
She was dressed in a simple lavender-and-cream morning gown of cotton and lace, her chestnut hair piled on her head in an artful chignon. A handful of curls framed her lovely face. She paused in the act of directing a servant bearing a covered tray to the sideboard.
“Good morning, Wycombe,” she greeted him, offering a curtsy.
He wished she would have called him Hudson, but he understood she had been born and raised to this world, where ceremony and titles and the proper seating at a bloody table mattered more than air.
He returned a cursory bow, which felt damned silly, but what else was he to do? This was a formal breakfast, presided by servants, and he was suddenly ravenous enough to eat all the food on generous display. Where the devil had all this glorious food been hiding yesterday?
“Good morning, Ellie,” he said, just because he could.
And just to see the answering rise of pink in her cheeks that told him she recalled when he had decided to use her shortened sobriquet himself.
The servant relieved himself of his burden, bowed, and left them alone in this small but shabbily elegant room where the table had been painstakingly set with porcelain that appeared too dainty and frail to be used. Was it his? He supposed he had inherited it along with the threadbare carpets and the ha
lf-empty library.
“Did you arrange all this?” he asked, though he already knew the answer.
Of course she had. Elysande was nothing if not capable, and not just that but intelligent also. Her letters to him, accompanied by the reports from Saunders, had painted a picture of a woman dedicated to restoring Brinton Manor to some of its former glory. All while he had returned to London and the life he knew and loved best.
Only, the strange realization had hit him at some point during the course of his exile that the old life which had once seemed so fulfilling, which had ruled his every waking thought and action and sometimes his sleep as well, was no longer as compelling. With each passing day, he had missed his wife. Perhaps not the countryside itself, though there was a certain appreciation to be had for the quiet and solitude of Brinton Manor. The sound of all those birds. A lake in which to swim. A wife awaiting him.
“Are you displeased?” she asked, frowning. “Mrs. Evans told me that you preferred not to take breakfast during your short stay here, but you cannot intend to traipse all over London with an empty stomach.”
A smile quirked at the corner of his lips. “You sound so very wifely this morning, love. But I assure you, I do not traipse. I move with caution and deliberation.”
Just as he had last night, only then, he had been using his tongue.
The deepening color in her cheeks told him she sensed the wayward direction of his thoughts. Or perhaps she was merely embarrassed by his comment that she was wifely. Although the role suited her well, it was not one she had taken of her own accord, and he knew he must not forget that.
Just as he had not wanted to become a damned duke.
He could only hope her resentment and frustration did not match his. Or else, they were doomed to suffer a most unhappy union.
“I am most certain you do,” she said in a tone he imagined resembled that of a governess chastising her charge. “However, regardless of the manner in which you move, I must insist that you have something to assuage your hunger before you go. You do intend to go, do you not?”
The Detective Duke (Unexpected Lords Book 1) Page 13