“Perhaps she just missed him,” Lisette said gently. “Married couples often follow each other into death, especially if they were particularly close.”
“That’s not why,” he bit out. “She died wracked by a foolish guilt. She blamed herself for his death, because he died after she administered some laudanum to help him sleep. That was after she spent the years of his madness carrying him about the Continent seeking a cure, during which I accompanied her.”
Ah, so that was why he’d traveled so much, why he had a private yacht. “I would have done the same thing.”
“Exactly!” he ground out. “You would never agree to leave my welfare to others. You would never wash your hands of me. You’re not that kind of woman.”
“Certainly not, thank God!” Outraged over his idea of the only marriage allowed him, she asked, “Has it ever occurred to you that married couples endure watching their spouses grow old and feeble and senile all the time? That it’s part of marriage? A hard part, to be sure, but not so hard that one just gives up on the institution altogether.”
“That’s not the same thing.” He glared down at her. “They’ve had a lifetime together, plenty of time to be with each other, to relish the good parts of marriage, so they can be sustained through the bad parts.”
“Did my father have a lifetime with his wife, who died bearing Dom? No, he did not. And that happens more often than you think. People die young sometimes. That’s life.”
She cupped his dear, tormented face in her hands. “That’s why you must savor it while you can. Because you never know when it will be snatched away. Papa kept putting off what he knew he must do, sure that he would have time later. And later never came.”
“I’m not putting it off,” he said softly, covering her hands with his. “I’m just not doing it at all.” His gaze grew fierce. “And that’s why if Peter is alive, I won’t marry anyone. Let him be the one to pass on the legacy of madness if he wants. It will be out of my hands then, thank God.”
He stepped away and began to pace. “Father’s will made no provisions for my inheritance or position in the family if Peter is alive, so I’ll have to depend on my brother’s largesse. Which means I might not . . . be able to afford the doctors and attendants needed to deal with someone gone mad. So I won’t inflict that burden on a wife, too.”
She marched up to catch him by the arm and halt him. “Instead, you mean to cut yourself off from anyone who might care about you? To live some sterile existence in a cold and loveless marriage or without any marriage at all? That’s your plan for your future?”
Stiffening, he met her gaze with an angry one. “You can’t possibly understand. It is far easier for me not to let myself . . . care about a woman than it is to care about her with the knowledge of what a future with me will bring her.”
“First of all, you don’t know for certain what your future might bring. None of us do.” When he started to answer, she pressed a finger to his lips. “And secondly, it’s too late to keep yourself from caring.” She caressed his stubbled cheek. “You already care. About me. You said so last night. Unless that was a lie.”
“You know that it was not,” he rasped.
Because he never lied. And the full reason for that hit her. He never lied, because his parents had lied to him from his childhood on. Because madness itself was one giant lie, playing tricks on one’s mind.
That was why he so abhorred deception. And why she could be nothing but honest with him.
It was time to be honest with herself, too. Aside from her brothers, she’d never met a man as honorable and fine as him. So tossing him aside because he didn’t meet the stringent conditions she’d created to protect herself from heartache seemed ludicrous.
She might only have one chance with him, and this was it. Once they found Tristan, anything could happen. But for these few hours, she wanted to be his, to know what it was like to lie in the arms of a man she loved.
Loved? No, she wasn’t that foolish. Because he would almost certainly break her heart.
But it didn’t matter. If he was to put aside his fears, then she would have to put hers aside first. “If you care about me, then show me.” She looped her arms about his neck. “Because Lord knows I care about you.”
His expression turned stark, raw. “Lisette, don’t do this.”
“Care about you? Want you? That won’t go away just because you have decided it must.” She could feel the tension in him, the way he held himself apart still, as if to deny his own desires by sheer will.
He was fighting very hard not to react. “What happened to your not wanting to be a duke’s mistress?” he choked out.
“I have no desire to be any man’s mistress.” Giving in to the impulse to throw caution to the wind, she pressed herself against his rigid body. “But that doesn’t mean I want to spend my life as a nun, either.”
That got a very firm reaction, both in the flex of his jaw above, and in the flex of . . . something else entirely below.
He was obviously aware of it, too, for he grabbed her arms as if to pull them from around his neck. “I am not going to ruin you for any other man.”
She held on to his neck, determined to win what she wanted—him in her bed. “Too late. Do you really think I could even look at another man after you?”
When heat sparked in his eyes and he clutched her arms more like a man drowning than one fighting, she pressed her advantage.
“If I am to spend the rest of my life without you because of your conditions and your rules and your fears for the future, then at the very least give me something to remember and let me have one afternoon in your bed.”
The word bed had the desired effect. He stared at her a long moment, his internal struggle evident in every chiseled line of his bold features.
Then he muttered, “I was right—you really are a wicked, wicked woman.”
And his mouth crashed down on hers.
15
MAXIMILIAN KNEW HE shouldn’t be doing this, but she hadn’t balked when she’d heard about the family curse. She hadn’t looked at him any differently. Throughout it all, she’d remained Lisette. His Lisette.
Fisting his hands in the puffy sleeves of her gown, he kissed her wildly, exuberantly. He ravished her mouth, then her jaw, then her throat, and when he felt her pulse leap beneath his lips and heard her soft, sweet moans, he started at the beginning again.
He told himself he would just kiss her long enough to savor this one sweet moment. He told himself he would put her away from him after he’d drunk his fill. But he knew he lied. The minute she’d started fighting for him, he’d started losing the battle to resist her.
And how could he ever end this when her fevered responses showed her to be willing and just as eager as he?
“We should stop,” he growled against her throat. “Someone will come in.”
“No, they won’t.” She shoved his coat off his shoulders. “Vidocq won’t be back for hours, and I already told the servants we didn’t need them.”
Even as that fired his imagination—and his desire—it spiked his alarm. Especially when she began to undo his waistcoat buttons.
Grabbing her hands, he tried to set her firmly from him. “What are you doing, dearling?”
She stared up at him with a minxish tilt to her lips. “Tempting you,” she murmured, exactly as he’d done in Brighton. Then, with eyes gleaming, she rubbed her lower body against his rapidly hardening cock and added, “And it seems to be working rather well.”
God help him. When had she turned into such a talented seductress? “You mustn’t do this,” he choked out.
“It’s your fault.” She lifted the hand that still gripped hers and pressed it against her breast until he could feel her taut nipple even through her gown. “You started it. You introduced me to desire, taught me to feel it, to want it. So the least you can do is satisfy the urges that you aroused.”
When she swept his hand over her breast again, he groaned and released
her, but only so he could fondle her himself as he ached to do. Flashing him a temptress’s smile, she stretched up to kiss him.
He caught her about the waist with one hand so he could knead her breast with the other while he ravaged her mouth over and over. She tasted like butter and honey, so damned delicious he could scarcely keep from eating her up.
Confound it to blazes, he was losing this battle. He’d wanted her too long, needed her too long. His blood sang, More. Now. More of Lisette, and his body heeded the cry with great enthusiasm.
After all, he didn’t have to take her innocence. They could just do what they’d done in the carriage—give each other pleasure. He could satisfy her enough to sate her curiosity—and take the edge off his hunger—without ruining her.
With that decided, he swept her up in his arms and growled, “Where?”
She blinked but caught him around the neck like a wild rose sending out runners, then cast him a sultry look that made his blood run hot. “My bedchamber.” She nodded to a half-open door next to her brother’s study. “There.”
“You have a bedchamber here?” he asked even as he strode toward it.
“I lived with Tristan for three years after Maman died.”
“Ah, right.” At the moment it was all he could do to remember his own name, with her lying soft and fragrant and yielding in his arms.
He carried her inside the high-ceilinged room, then stopped short. Papered in a lavender-and-white pattern with tiny violets trailing along the stripes, the bedchamber was quite a feminine sanctum. Ribbon embroidery adorned every chair and covering, and the draperies were lacy and frilly.
Then Lisette was peeling off his waistcoat and unbuttoning his shirt, and every lucid thought fled. All he saw was her trying to seduce him with a mixture of naïveté and anticipation that only a virgin could exhibit. It made his breath race and his blood turn to fire, even as he reminded himself that he was not going to take that innocence.
Giving him a quick, nervous smile, she turned her back to him. “You’ll have to undo my gown. I can’t manage it.”
He hesitated. Holding to his plan to only pleasure her would be decidedly more difficult if they were both entirely naked. But he couldn’t bear to give up his one chance at seeing what lay beneath the nightdress that had tantalized his thoughts over the past few days.
With an urgency born of a fervent need to touch her and hold her and see her as Nature had intended her, he stripped her down to her shift, then turned her back to face him.
“Take it off,” he growled, wanting to watch her do it.
She gazed at him from beneath lowered lashes. “Only after you take off your clothes, too.”
He didn’t hesitate. He wanted her hands on him, wanted her running those long, delicate fingers down his chest and belly and straight to the cock that was so hard for her, it was already fighting to get free of his trousers.
Once he’d undressed down to his drawers, he said hoarsely, “I want to see you naked, dearling. Let me see you.”
Suddenly shy, she dropped her gaze and concentrated on untying her shift. Then she pulled it over her head and let it drift to the floor, and he thought he’d died and gone to heaven.
Or perhaps hell, because the sight of her, so perfect, so beautiful, made him want more than he could ever allow himself to have.
Her skin was like fine porcelain that begged to be stroked and caressed, and her breasts . . . Oh, God, her breasts were full and heavy, her pink nipples so enticing that it was all he could do not to throw her on the bed and bury his face in her bosom.
But there was more he wanted to see, so he trailed his gaze down over her faintly curved belly with its beckoning navel to the soft dark curls that hid the mysteries of her female flesh.
The flesh he couldn’t wait to taste and suck and plunder.
“You’re a goddess incarnate,” he rasped as he caught her in his arms. And for now, she was his goddess incarnate.
He kissed her a long moment, indulging his urge to fill his hands with her sweet bare breasts. Only when he had her gasping and leaning into him did he ease her down onto the bed and lay beside her so he could suck at the taut nipples that were teasing him sorely.
She fisted her hands in his hair, holding him close as she panted and moaned beneath the lashes of his tongue over her lush breasts. “Oh . . . mon coeur . . . that feels so . . . very . . . good.”
She’d called him my heart? Reveling in the endearment, he kissed his way down her belly to the dewy center of her he wanted to devour. When he covered her flesh with his mouth, she nearly shot up off the bed.
“Max! What are you doing?”
“Satisfying your desire,” he murmured against her silky skin.
Then he got right to it. And God, was it heady to taste her, to have his tongue inside her the way he ached to put his cock inside her. Since he couldn’t do the latter, he used all the knowledge he’d gained in his youthful flings with opera dancers and actresses to rouse her and tease her, until she was writhing and begging beneath his mouth.
When she gripped his head and began to pant, he knew she was nearly there, and it took every bit of his control not to rise up and thrust into her.
Instead he redoubled his efforts, satisfaction roaring through him when she pressed up hard against his mouth and found her release so forcefully that he felt the spasms against his tongue as she cried out.
Long after she came, he stayed there between her lovely thighs, kissing her, stroking her as he fought for control over his eager cock. Did he dare ask her to do again for him what she’d done in the carriage? Could he keep a grip on his control if she did?
Because having her just pleasure him with her hand was no longer enough. It could never be enough. As soon as he finished, he’d want her again and again, until he made her his. Which was why he should leave the bed right now.
Yet the temptation to have her hands on him was too great to resist. Lying alongside her, he shoved off his drawers, then closed her fingers around his cock.
To his surprise, she resisted. “No,” she whispered. “I want you inside me.”
“I won’t do it,” he choked out. “If you don’t want to pleasure me, that’s fine, but I’m not going to take your innocence.”
Stubbornness flared in her face. “You think not, do you?” She scooted close enough to cradle his cock against her belly. Then she undulated against him.
“Damn it, Lisette,” he gritted out as his cock went from hard to stone, “you’re playing with fire.”
“I’m not playing. I’m fighting. I want you to take my innocence. Only you.”
When he tried to pull away, she grabbed his hips and added desperately, “I swear, Max, that this is the only thing I will ask of you. I don’t need a promise of marriage—I know that you can’t offer that. I only want this one time with you. And you want it, too. I know you do.”
“You deserve better,” he said hoarsely, thrusting helplessly against the satin skin of her belly. “You deserve everything.”
“But are you sure I’ll get it? Even if I find another man to be with me, how can you be sure he’ll treat me well? I might lose my innocence to a man who proves heartless or cruel.”
He closed his eyes against the words, but that only made it worse, because now he could imagine it in stark detail. He could see her with some arse who at best would take her for granted and at worst might hurt her. Who would almost certainly never appreciate her as he did.
“Then again,” she added in a wounded whisper, “perhaps that doesn’t matter to you.”
His eyes shot open. “You bloody well know that it does.” And leave it to her to fight with logic, not tears. She knew how susceptible he was to a reasonable argument. “You don’t play fair.”
“I play as fair as you, who taught me to desire you and now expect me to forget that I ache for you, that I need—”
He kissed her hard in an attempt to blot out her words, but it didn’t work. Because he needed her, too.
And she knew it, his tempting minx.
Rolling atop her, he growled, “Damn you, Lisette.” He kissed her roughly as he parted her thighs with his knees. “Damn you,” he rasped against her lips as he found the entrance to her silken passage. “You won’t rest until . . . you have me utterly in thrall to you . . .”
“Yes . . . mon coeur . . .”
With those sweet words ringing in his ears, he slid inside her.
Lisette’s heart soared. Hardly able to believe she’d won, she gasped her relief against his mouth. She’d won and he hadn’t left her, which meant he cared. It meant that no matter what he said about what they should or shouldn’t do, no matter what his conditions and his rules, he had deep feelings for her.
She had him at last.
But she seemed to have a tiger by the tail, for he was thick and hard inside her, much larger and more intrusive than she’d expected.
“Oh, God, Lisette,” he murmured, “you feel bloody wonderful.”
“So . . . do you,” she managed to choke out, telling herself it was only a little untrue. It did feel wonderful to have his body surround her, his strong arms bracket her, his hair brush her cheeks whenever he kissed her brow or her lips or her throat.
He stopped inching inside her and drew back to stare at her, an unholy amusement in his eyes. “You haven’t lied to me yet, minx. Don’t start now. I know that it can’t be comfortable for you.” He bent to whisper, “So, imagine us alone together on my private yacht on a beautiful summer day in the Mediterranean.”
She relaxed a fraction, and he slipped deeper inside her.
“That’s it,” he whispered. “Imagine the sun warming our skin. Imagine us lazing away the day, feeding each other oranges and drinking wine.”
Closing her eyes, she pictured it, and she relaxed a little more. He settled his braquemard farther in, but it felt less . . . uncomfortable somehow.
“Better now?” he rasped.
This time she told the truth. “A bit.”
The Duke's Men [1] What the Duke Desires Page 19