The idea that Katherine’s father would want her unique spirit broken made him hate a man he’d never met. And it tugged him toward her. To protect her. Hold her where no one like her husband or her father could ever touch her again. He wanted to close her wounds and tend her scars.
He shook away those unexpected needs that roared up in him like a tidal wave that had been constrained but now burst through the dam. This conversation was about understanding, nothing more. What he would share with her could heal some of this pain, but that was not his responsibility.
It never would be. This was a temporary distraction and it would end.
“Did he break you?” he asked.
She sucked in a sharp inhalation of breath. “My husband turned out not to be the man my father believed him to be. Oh, he looked as pious as my father, but he was not. He liked a young wife. Liked having me on his arm and implying what his prowess was to have me. And he liked my body. He used it, training me in what he liked. Wanted.”
Robert tensed. “Forced?” he asked, thinking of her earlier accusation that he would simply take what he wanted if she didn’t offer it freely.
“No,” she said swiftly, and to his great relief. “I was titillated by what he desired. What a man and a woman shared in their marriage bed. And at first, I was an eager student. But as weeks passed, I began to feel more and more empty. He had pleasure, that was clear. But for me? There was never anything but flutters. A tease of something more that he never allowed.”
Robert shook his head in disgust. Katherine was so damned responsive, it was incredible to him that a man would not tend to her pleasure. Seeing it last night was like watching magic.
“He never brought you to completion?” he asked.
Her cheeks brightened with embarrassed color and she darted her gaze away swiftly. “Can I—do I—must I…”
“No. Not if you don’t want to share.”
She kept her gaze from his for what felt like an eternity. Robert so wanted to touch her. To kiss her. To take away these painful memories, wash them clean with sensation. And yet he didn’t. He waited for her, as patiently as he could.
She finally glanced up. “I began to touch myself.”
He blinked in shock. There was an image. Katherine splayed out before him, hands between her legs, eyes locked with his as she pleasured herself. Readied herself for him and what he would do to her.
“There was pleasure then,” she admitted softly. “But Gainsworth discovered what I was doing. He accused me of being just what my father had always said. A whore. Dirty. Wrong. Wanton.”
She emphasized the last word sharply, leading Robert to wonder how many times it had been spat at her. By her father, by her husband. No wonder how she recoiled when she heard it whispered by those in Society.
“He was a bastard,” he said.
She shrugged, but there was a flash of gratitude to her expression. As if she was pleased to find an ally in her tale. He supposed she would be. So many were against her. Both in truth and in her mind. The fact that she was telling him this at all took so much courage.
And trust. Which he hadn’t earned. Which he vowed now, just to himself, never to betray as she had been betrayed before. Loyalty, at least, he knew he could give.
“I suppose you wonder about the night he died,” she whispered.
He did wonder, though he’d never considered asking her. That night was a private moment that had already been dragged into the light in the worst way possible. It had buckled her beneath the weight of gossip and half-truth. It had brought her to this place where she could hardly breathe, couldn’t look at him, believed that anyone who knew her only saw her as the countess who had killed her husband with her wanton needs.
“Of course you do,” she said, almost beneath her breath. “It is all anyone wonders when they look at me.”
Her cheeks darkened again, the color of humiliation. The color of pain. The color of desperation.
He waited, holding his breath, as she struggled. At last, he moved just a little closer. “Tell me, Katherine. Not to satisfy my curiosity, but because I can see it devouring you from the inside. Tell me so it doesn’t destroy you.”
Chapter Thirteen
Devouring her from the inside. Yes, that was the most apt description Katherine had heard to describe what she felt. Those feelings rose up all the higher as she confessed to Roseford. She hadn’t meant to do that. She’d been determined to keep the wall up between them, to only allow herself a bit of pleasure.
And yet, once she’d started talking, saying those words she’d kept to herself, stories she hadn’t even told her aunt, it was like a spigot was turned on. She couldn’t stop.
That was shocking enough, given what she knew about the motives of the man standing before her. But more than that was the fact that he took in what she said. Solemn but without judgment. He didn’t tease her or play off her words.
He just heard her.
And that was like a gift she hadn’t realized she needed so desperately.
“He was tired that night,” she whispered, trying not to follow her mind down its path to her worst memories. “But demanded his pleasure regardless. He asked me to be on…”
She stopped. This was too much. Too intimate. Too private.
Robert leaned in, his gaze never leaving hers as he reached up to stroke her cheek with the back of his hand. “You needn’t be embarrassed. I’ve seen it all, remember. Biggest cad in London. I am not capable of being shocked. Nor of judging you, which I would like to reiterate, I do not.”
She shut her eyes. He made this too easy. How could it be so easy with him? And yet it was.
“I was on top,” she finished without looking at him. Of course with her eyes shut, she could see Gregory now, laid out on their bed like some ancient king demanding tribute. “And as I moved, I began to feel that flutter of pleasure I wanted so damned badly.”
Robert took her hand, his thumb sliding over her skin gently. “You reached for it.”
She still didn’t open her eyes. “God, yes. Harder and faster. In control for the first time in a very long time. I saw his eyes go wide, saw him gape with what I thought was surprise. And then he went so stiff beneath me. I could see something was wrong. He was not well. I screamed for help immediately. I wasn’t thinking of how it would look when the servants burst in. Me naked over him, him sprawled out on our bed. Dead.”
She heard her voice getting louder, more hysterical, as it had that awful night. Robert tugged her and she fell into his arms. Warm arms, comforting beyond measure. He smoothed his hands across her back, whispering empty words of comfort against her hair as he just…held her.
Some part of her screamed in to pull away. Run away because this felt too, too real. But she was exhausted by confession, broken by reliving all that pain in the past. Knowing all the pain still yet to come as she navigated her way through Society and their judgment.
And his arms were so strong. She leaned into his chest, shuddering as she fought tears. “It was awful,” she whispered against his skin. “He died, and I recognized immediately that his death would be the end of my life, too. Everyone would know what had happened. Everyone would see I was exactly what my father always accused me of being.”
She felt him stiffen and his arms tightened around her. Like he could protect her from her words. Like he wanted to.
“That’s all of it,” she whispered.
She stayed there in the cocoon of his warmth for a moment, then began to pull away. He held her tight, not forcing her, but not letting her get away either.
He looked down into her face. His was just inches from hers. His gaze was firm on hers. “This was not your fault.”
She jolted at the words, at how deeply they touched her even though she couldn’t trust him. Didn’t trust him. Didn’t want to like him or see him as a person she could curl into and surrender her fears just as she had.
“Look at me,” he said
gently. “Really look at me, Katherine, without thinking about your next move.”
She froze in the midst of her struggle to escape this connection and forced herself to take a long breath. To come back to this moment rather than let her fear take over.
“What happened that night is not your fault,” he repeated. “Gainsworth was wrong not to teach you how to harness your own pleasure. He was certainly wrong to tell you that the desire for that sensation was dirty. He should have celebrated your responsiveness. Nurtured it.”
She felt a tear slide down her cheek and gasped at the heat of it. He wiped it away with his thumb and then pressed a kiss to her forehead.
“You were never, never wrong for what you wanted, Katherine.”
He released her when she pulled away this time. Only she didn’t race across the room as she had thought to do at first. She stood before him, still warmed by his presence as she stared at him. “No one else but you would ever say that.”
He shook his head. “Not true. Any person who’d ever experienced pleasure would say the same. Every duchess in this house would tell you the same.”
Terror raced through her. She had so little—the burgeoning friendship with the duchesses was so fragile and precious to her as she came to know them.
“You would not tell them what I said? Your friends? Their wives?”
“No,” he said immediately, with strength. Almost with shock that she would assume that. “Never, Katherine. Here in this room, between us, it is private. It will remain so.”
She sighed. “Trusting you will never be easy.”
“But I will prove you right in doing so.”
She turned away, staring into the fire as she thought about that night all those years ago. That encounter that had started her road to marriage. And the other encounter that had sealed her fate. He remembered neither, and they were so pivotal to her life.
“Please, Katherine.” His soft words broke into the cloud of her doubt. “I see now why you would want something that was just for your pleasure. I understand your desire. I want to grant you that.”
She faced him and lifted her chin. “You understand that I never want to be someone’s plaything ever again?”
“You won’t be,” he said, then cupped the nape of her neck and drew her forward. His mouth dropped and he kissed her.
She didn’t want to melt into him. She didn’t want to give herself without a hesitation or without setting further boundaries, but she did. She lifted a hand to his bare chest, settling it against the planes of muscle there. He continued kissing her, drawing her further and further into his spell, further and further into her every desire.
Her fingers clenched against his skin, tracing the lines of his chest, lower to his stomach. Great God, but the man was a specimen. She didn’t even know men could be made like this. It had always seemed a flight of fantasy in painting and sculptures, but here he was. Real. And hers, apparently, if his words could be believed.
He nudged her back to the settee where they’d begun and lowered her there. She glanced toward the bedchamber as he leaned away, but he made no motion to take her there. To bring her to his bed. She almost felt disappointed, but then he pressed a finger beneath her chin and lifted so she was looking at him.
“I want to undress you, Katherine. See you, be able to touch you far more than I did last night. May I?”
She blinked. “You are asking me?”
He nodded. “I told you that you would be able to trust me. That despite what you think of me, I am not a man who takes and takes and takes. You are in control of whatever happens here.”
She gaped at him in shock. She had never known a man who would cede any kind of power or control to a woman. And yet here this man was. A man who would do whatever he liked, with whomever he liked. A man who had done both those things.
And he was asking her permission.
Her head spun as she tried to recategorize him from the cad she had always believed and experienced him to be. Where did she put him now that he was proving to be so much more than that?
“Katherine?” he said softly. “You can tell me no. There’s no punishment.” He smiled. “I would be disappointed, of course. But you owe me nothing.”
She swallowed hard, refocusing on this moment. There was only this moment, after all. She caught his hand and lifted it, settling his fingers at the line of buttons along the front of her gown.
“Yes,” she breathed, her cheeks flaming as she surrendered once more. “Please.”
The corner of his lips tilted into half a smile and he leaned in, putting his mouth against the side of her neck. He licked and sucked, wild sensation bursting through her entire body. She was aware of his fingers moving, and suddenly her dress gaped.
She struggled to find words. “So easily, eh?”
He lifted his mouth from its trail along her collarbone and grinned. “You will find there are many benefits to asking a libertine to pleasure you, my dear. Experience has its benefits.”
She couldn’t help but laugh along with him, though the sound was quickly transformed into a moan when his mouth returned to her flesh. He pushed her gown open and his mouth moved between her breasts, steaming breath through the thin fabric of her chemise.
Her fingers slid into his hair and she shut her eyes as she surrendered, once again to all he would do to her. For her. He said this night was for her. And she wanted it so badly. If he was willing to meet her terms, why shouldn’t she give in? Enjoy every second since it would certainly not be repeated. He would want more.
She couldn’t give it. Not with so much on the line.
But this she could take. And she did as she rested her head against the settee arm and let go of everything in her mind.
Robert felt Katherine’s surrender in the way her body went liquid beneath him. Her breath exited her lungs in a shaky sigh and she shut her eyes. He took the opportunity to look at her face as he slipped a hand beneath her gown and lowered her sleeve and chemise strap at the same time.
There was normally a tension to everything Katherine did. With him, yes—of course he felt it. She was conflicted whenever she was with him. Torn between wanting him and hating him for those unnamed crimes he hadn’t yet determined.
But he saw that tension everywhere else, too. He understood it more now. She was always waiting for an attack to come…because in her past it always had. How he despised her father and her husband, men who had convinced her that her desire was to be hidden. Quashed.
She had deserved so much better.
And this was to be her reward.
Oh, he still wanted her. He wanted to take her and make her see that sex with him would be something for them both. But not tonight. Tonight was about her. Even if his cock was hard as stone and aching to plunge into her heat and mark her forever.
He jolted at that unexpected thought. Then shoved it away as he pushed the opposite arm of her gown down and bared her, at last, from the waist up.
She had small breasts with dusky pink areolas and hard nipples just begging to be sucked. He covered each one with his hands and felt her lift beneath him, arching to get more, demand more.
Oh, he was going to give that to her. Carefully. Gently.
“I want to take the rest off,” he whispered.
Her eyes opened, and once again she looked at him with the same confusion as the first time he had asked for her consent. His heart hurt at the expression. Clearly her wants had never been on the top of any man’s mind.
She nodded. “Yes. Please.”
The please was needy, plaintive. Wanton. And he liked that sound so very much. He liked making her long for what would come. Needed it like breath. That was his job tonight, after all. To make her anticipate and then quake with release. One thing he knew—he was very good at doing that.
He stood, drawing her to her feet in one smooth motion. She steadied herself by placing a hand on his chest, and he felt the burn of her ski
n against his. God, but when she touched him. He wanted to feel it all over.
He pushed that desire aside. Holding her gaze, he hooked his thumbs into the folded fabric of her tangled gown and pushed, drawing the entire contraption down around her feet. She stood naked before him now, save for her drawers and stockings and slippers.
He stared. She was a goddess. Meant to be worshipped exactly as he intended to worship her. Meant to be surrendered to and offered whatever she desired.
What she desired was pleasure, release, orgasm. That was easy.
“Did he ever tell you how beautiful you were?” he asked.
The flicker of pain over her face was enough to give him the answer even before she choked, “He liked my looks until I belonged to him. Then he would accuse me of using them to tempt others.”
“You are beautiful, Katherine,” he whispered as he smoothed his hands along her naked sides and up over the flimsy fabric encasing her round hips. “The kind of woman men used to go to war for.”
She swallowed hard and he thought he saw tears in her eyes before she turned her face away. He pressed his mouth to her flesh as he dropped to his knees. Now his face was even with her stomach, and he sucked and licked there as he untied the little ribbon at the waist of her drawers. He lifted his gaze. “Yes?”
“Y-Yes.”
He tugged, gliding the drawers down to join at the pile of fabric at her feet. He let his mouth trace the line of one hip, then across her thigh. As he brought his face across the apex of her thighs, he breathed in that cinnamon scent that so enraptured him. She made a little moan above him and it was like music to his ears.
He cupped her bare backside, kneading his fingers into the soft flesh. Pulling her against his mouth and steaming warm breath over that most sensitive place. Her fingers came into his hair again and she let out cry of pleasure as she massaged his scalp.
He smiled against her, darting his tongue out to just tease her mound. She buckled and he shifted so he could place her into a seated position on the settee. Her eyes were glazed as she stared at him, wedged between her legs. The legs she’d had to open when she sat.
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