She gasped. “I will not— Oh, please…!” Thea’s legs almost buckled beneath her as those caressing fingers rubbed deliciously against her throbbing nubbin.
“Please, Remy,” Blackmoor pressed.
“I cannot—”
“What you cannot do, Thea, is continue to be so formal when I have my fingers inside you.” Two of his slickened fingers now pushed inside her channel, unerringly finding that sensitive knot of nerves it had taken her nights of exploration to discover inside herself. Her nubbin became a painful throb as he slowly thrust and stroked those fingers inside her, continuing to hold her balanced on the edge of release. “Say ‘please fuck me harder, Remy,’” he prompted throatily.
“Remy.” Her plea was a gasping sob, her throat arched as her head fell back against his shoulder. “Oh, please, Remy!”
“Say all of it, Thea,” he rasped. “Now.”
“I cannot— No!” she cried out as his fingers slid out from inside her before he removed his hand completely, releasing her before stepping back and allowing her gown to once again fall to her ankles. Thea could have screamed with disappointment, with the grasping emptiness between her thighs. She turned to face him. “Why have you stopped?”
He shrugged those wide shoulders. “You failed to obey me.”
To Thea’s shame, tears now stung her eyes. “Because I cannot say such words.”
He looked down the long length of his nose at her, once again every inch the cold and disdainful Duke of Blackmoor. “You can and you will do so, if you wish the two of us to continue along this path.” There was something so commanding in his tone. So uncompromising.
“I— But you cannot leave me like this.” Those humiliating tears now balanced on her lashes, her body an agonizing throb.
“Oh, but I can, Thea,” he assured her with satisfaction.
A satisfaction she could see he refused—would not allow her, until she did as he instructed.
Could she do that? Could she say those shameful words he now demanded of her?
“Tell me, Thea, is it that the word fuck shocks or excites you?” he prompted softly.
Her cheeks burned, her lashes lowered as she looked down at the floor. “It shocks me, of course.”
“Why do I not believe you?” he drawled.
“Because you enjoy scandalizing me?” She glared at him, gloved hands clenched into fists at her sides. “Because you are every inch the cold unfeeling devil society says that you are?” Thea’s feelings of humiliation were such they had pushed her well beyond any feelings of caution.
She no longer cared about any awkwardness this encounter might cause her to feel in future. Her actions today, in allowing this man to touch her so intimately, had already put her well beyond any such concerns.
She would get through the wedding next month somehow, and then thankfully, the next forced meeting between the two of them would not be until the christening of any children born into Amelia and George’s marriage. She might even be able to claim a sick headache for them and so avoid there being any more meetings at all between herself and Blackmoor—
“You would do well not listen to any gossip concerning me, Thea.” His voice was hard and clipped. “What people do not know, they will make up. Now say you are sorry, and let us continue with our conversation.”
She blinked. “But I am not sorry.” Society did call Blackmoor a cold, unfeeling devil. Along with many other things. Arrogant. Disdainful. Heartless monster. Today she had learned firsthand that he deserved every last one of those accusations.
He sighed. “Continue in this stubborn vein and I will not allow you to come tomorrow evening either.”
Her head snapped up. “Tomorrow evening…?”
“You are attending the Harringtons’ masked ball as chaperone to Amelia and George, are you not?”
“Yes…”
He nodded. “I had not intended going myself, but today has changed my mind. I will overlook your…disobedience of just now and put it down to a widow’s skittishness on your part, if you present yourself to me at the ball tomorrow evening without your drawers.”
Thea knew she should tell him to go to the devil, where he almost certainly belonged. That she should scorn and dismiss him. That she should— “What are you doing?” she gasped as he lifted his hand to his mouth and began a slow and leisurely licking of his fingers.
The same two fingers which minutes ago had been inside her.
Which must now taste and smell of her.
“Delicious,” Blackmoor murmured softly, pale gaze holding hers captive as he lowered his hand but continued to lick the taste of those juices from his lips. “I am already looking forward to the time I am able to gorge myself on your pussy.”
Gorge himself on…? Could he possibly mean to put his mouth on her down there?
“Ah, I see from the shocked curiosity in your expression that you have not experienced that particular delight as yet,” he murmured mockingly. “I take it Fitzroy was not an adventurous lover?”
“You will leave my husband out of this!”
“By all means,” Blackmoor drawled. “None of your lovers since his death have satisfied you in that way either?”
“There have been no other lovers,” she denied heatedly.
His brows rose. “Can you possibly be saying that you have not taken even one lover since Fitzroy’s death two years ago?”
Her cheeks burned with embarrassment at his obvious surprise at her celibacy. “I was in mourning for the first year, and since then there has been no opportunity or—or—” She refused to admit to this arrogant man that she had not been approached by so much as a single gentleman intent on becoming her lover during the past two years. It was too humiliating.
“But you cannot have gone completely without release all this time, have surely pleasured yourself?”
Thea began to tremble, not just because of the intimacy of the question, but because Blackmoor was once again standing far too close to her, his presence and the lemon-and-sandalwood smell of his cologne at once overwhelming. “I do not… It is not…”
“You have.” He nodded knowingly.
“I did not say that.” The wings of color had become a permanent fixture in her cheeks.
“You did not have to,” he assured softly. “You will not touch yourself today or tonight, Thea.” His voice hardened. “No matter how much you might wish to do so. If you obey me in this, and also leave off your drawers tomorrow evening,” he continued as Thea would have spoken, “then I promise I will fulfill all your fantasies, no matter how debauched.”
Thea had every intention of going to her bedchamber and relieving herself of this throbbing arousal as soon as Blackmoor had departed. He would never know—
“I will know, Thea.”
She looked up at him quickly, seeing by the hard glitter of his gaze that he did know exactly what her thoughts had been.
“I will know, Thea,” he repeated coldly. “I have allowed you a certain indulgence today because you are not yet accustomed to thinking of me as your lover. But if you lie to me again, or disobey me, then I will never touch you again.”
Thea’s knees were now shaking so much they were in danger of no longer supporting her. Because she wanted Blackmoor to touch her again. Because she ached for his touch, the pleasure he promised. He had already given her a pleasure so much more intense, exciting, more thrilling than any she had experienced during her marriage or while caressing herself alone in her bed at night.
She gave a shake of her head. “I am neither fashionable nor beautiful.” She knew Blackmoor’s wife was reputed to have been both those things. As had the women he had bedded during the seventeen years since his wife died. “Nor am I voluptuous.” Again, as his dead wife and those other women had been. “Truly, I am none of the things a gentleman such as you requires in his bed.”
That hard gray gaze observed her from head to toe for fully a minute before he answered her. “Your looks are…different. But intriguin
gly so. The size of your breasts is more than adequate. More importantly, you are exceedingly responsive to my touch. What else does a man require in a woman?”
Vivaciousness? Sensuality? Perhaps even the art of scintillating conversation?
Thea possessed none of those things.
Blackmoor reached out and tweaked one of her swollen nipples, giving a hard grin of satisfaction when she failed to suppress a groan of aching pleasure. “Tomorrow evening, I will take these out and play with them properly.” He tweaked the other nipple. “Then I shall suckle and bite—”
“Please stop!” Thea protested weakly. She was once again on the edge of release, just from listening to this man talk of these intimate things.
“Perhaps you would prefer we talk of the things I shall ask of you?” he continued conversationally. “Have you ever sucked a man’s cock, Thea?”
Her gaze instinctively moved to that telling—and very large—bulge in his pantaloons. Would he really expect her to take his member into her mouth and suck it?
“Yes, I shall expect you to do that, and sooner rather than later,” he answered her thoughts. “You see, your mouth is as hot and wet as your pussy, and once my cock is inside, thrusting in and gliding out, then it, and consequently I, shall have no interest in differentiating between the two.”
Did he mean that he… That he would… That his cock would…
“I see we have many hours of pleasurable exploration together ahead of us,” Blackmoor drawled. “What mask and gown will you be wearing tomorrow evening?”
“Sorry?” Thea’s thoughts were still lost in the intimacies he had been describing to her. Intimacies she had never so much as dreamed of.
“I deplore the wearing of masks and the powdering of hair in order to disguise one’s appearance,” he dismissed harshly. “But I appreciate you will most likely be doing so at the Harringtons’ ball tomorrow evening?”
And he, obviously, would not be able to tell which lady she was without that information.
Because she was so unremarkable in both her looks and bearing.
And this man, Julian Rupert Sylvester Remington, was remarkable in every way, from the top of his glossy dark head to his highly polished boots.
“You will answer me now, Thea.”
She gave a pained frown. “Why are you doing this, Blackmoor?”
He raised dark brows. “Do you wish for another demonstration already?”
Of his desire for her?
Or her unmistakable desire for him?
Was Blackmoor playing with her for his own amusement? Secure in the knowledge she would not expose him to her brother at the risk of also exposing how shocking her own behavior had been today?
She gave a shake of her head. “I am wearing a silver mask with an emerald gown.”
Blackmoor gave a nod of approval. “Until tomorrow evening.” He picked up her hand to brush it against his lips. “I will see myself out.” He gave her a formal bow before leaving her standing alone in the middle of the empty ballroom.
What was that old adage? Be careful what you wish for.
Just a short time ago, Thea had wished for a lover.
She had never, in her wildest fantasies, imagined that lover could or ever would be the haughtily unattainable Duke of Blackmoor.
Chapter 4
Julian ignored the stares and the gossiping behind ladies’ fans as he stood unmasked and deliberately unapproachable in the Harringtons’ overcrowded ballroom the following evening.
He had questioned his own sanity many times in the past twenty-four hours in regard to his behavior towards Thea Fitzroy. More than questioned it as he pondered on what it was about her he found so sexually arousing he would willingly put himself through the torture of attending a ton ball in order to see and be with her again.
He had dismissed his last mistress over a year ago, bored with her and the arrangement. None of the women he had bedded since had taken his fancy enough for him even to consider making her his permanent mistress.
Until yesterday.
Yesterday, Thea Fitzroy’s arousal had made him hard, and he had remained in varying degrees of that state all the hours since. He had several times thought of relieving the problem himself, but as he had instructed Thea not to do so, he thought it only fair that he practiced the same control. Anticipation, as the clergy were fond of saying, being good for the soul.
And fucking, Julian acknowledged wryly. A good fucking would be very good for his body right now, if not his soul.
In truth, he had been half expecting Thea’s brother to come knocking on his door since yesterday to express his outrage at Julian’s behavior towards his young and widowed sister.
The fact that Latham had come nowhere near had increased Julian’s respect for the lady.
He wondered if Thea would also comply with the instructions he had given her.
Not to touch herself,
Not to wear drawers this evening.
The lengthy wait for her arrival was certainly doing nothing to improve his temper.
Or the fact that he was once again as hard as bloody stone beneath his pantaloons.
Where the fuck was she?
He had left the house earlier to go to his club and pass an hour or two in the company of friends before attending the ball, but he knew his daughter expected Thea and her nephew to call for her shortly before nine o’clock, and it was now almost ten.
Perhaps they had been involved in a carriage accident—
Julian’s attention sharpened, his eyes narrowing as he took in the appearance of the party now arriving in the ballroom. He easily recognized his daughter in the cream silk gown he had purchased for her to wear this evening. George Somersby he also recognized, as the younger man paid close attention to Amelia.
It was the woman who accompanied them, wearing a gold mask and a shockingly red silk gown, who held Julian’s complete and rapt attention.
As with the other female guests, for the sake of disguise her hair was powdered, the off-the-shoulder design of her gown revealing a scandalous amount of bared flesh, the low neckline only just stopping short of revealing her nipples. Her lips—the only feature visible beneath the gold mask—were a red and tempting pout.
A woman who was unmistakably Thea Fitzroy.
Wearing a gold mask and red gown, and not the silver mask and emerald-colored gown she had told him she would be wearing.
In defiance of him?
Julian instantly felt the need to lay her facedown over his knee, the red gown thrown up to her waist, her drawers—if she had dared to disobey him completely—pulled down to her knees as he paddled her ass for attempting to deceive him.
For also daring to show so much of herself to all the other men in the room, most of whom were transfixed by the arrival of the mysterious and beautifully sensuous woman in red.
Mine, Julian growled inwardly as he strode purposefully across the ballroom towards her.
Thea had been unsure she would ever find occasion to wear the scandalous red silk gown which Amelia persuaded her into purchasing several weeks ago as the two women shopped together for the young girl’s wedding clothes.
Considering the sensation her appearance seemed to have now caused in the Harringtons’ ballroom, Thea knew she had been right to feel that uncertainty concerning its being suitable wear for a young widow.
Her only consolation was none of the guests were announced at a masked ball, and the anonymity afforded by her golden mask meant that hopefully not too many people would realize that the woman in red was in fact the prim and proper widow Lady Dorothea Fitzroy.
Although the unmasked man currently powering himself single-mindedly across the crowded ballroom towards her seemed to be in no doubt as to her identity, despite the fact she was not wearing the mask or gown he had been told to expect.
The ice in Blackmoor’s eyes stripped even that revealing red gown from her body, at the same time as it issued a warning that she was to be punished for attempting
to deceive him.
A delicious thrill traveled the length of Thea’s spine in anticipation of that punishment.
Dear God, what is wrong with me?
Was she so very bored with her life at present, so in need of that excitement and adventure, she was even willing to deliberately goad Blackmoor into some wicked action?
“Papa!” Amelia’s pleasure in seeing her father here was the complete opposite of Thea’s own feelings.
“Amelia. Somersby.” The duke nodded curtly to the young couple. “I have come to steal Lady Dorothea away for our promised waltz together.” Having made the abrupt announcement, he took a firm hold of Thea’s arm and led her onto the dance floor.
Leaving Amelia and George agape, along with the rest of the Harringtons’ guests, as the Duke of Blackmoor publicly took to the dance floor for the first time in seventeen years.
“It is usually polite to ask a lady if she wishes to dance.” Thea seethed at being the focus of so much attention as the duke held one of her hands tightly within the grip of his, his other hand pressed firmly against the dip of her spine.
“You forfeited any politeness from me the moment you decided to deceive me in regard to your appearance this evening,” he bit out between clenched teeth.
“A lady is allowed to change her mind about the gown she chooses to wear,” she challenged.
“Not when that lady has informed her lover otherwise.”
Thea had managed to convince herself that the intimacies of yesterday had been a figment of her imagination. A fever of the brain, perhaps, brought on, no doubt, by her increasing need for sexual release. Because she could not believe the cold and haughty Julian Remington could really have said and done all those things to her yesterday in the Latham ballroom.
His conversation now said the opposite. That it was all true. Every last word and caress.
“You are not my lover.” Was it Thea’s imagination, or was Blackmoor deliberately waltzing the two of them across the floor, in between the other dancing couples, and in the direction of the open doors leading out onto the terrace?
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