Dangerous Duke

by Scott, Scarlett

  Because the way he felt, mirrored her desperation. He needed this woman. Had to be inside her. Had to claim her. To make her his at last. For it had taken a lifetime to bring him here, to this bed, to Violet naked in his arms, and now that he was positioned between her legs, the only barrier between them a layer of fabric, he could barely wait a heartbeat more.

  He kissed his way up her throat, finding the secret place behind her ear that drove her mad. And then he found her mouth. He kissed her hard and deep, kissed her with all his emotions, the raw need, the reckless want. Kissed with her on his lips and tongue, and knowing she could taste herself only heightened the yearning swirling through him.

  He was so consumed in her, in the kiss, in wanting her, he did not feel her fingers working on the buttons of his shirt until she had it half opened. Griffin tore his mouth from hers and jerked away from her touch. He would not deny her much, but this, the sight and sensation of him, he was not ready for. No one had seen his scars before, and he was not prepared to show her. Neither could he bear the notion of her disgust and rejection.

  “No.” The hand that had been pleasuring her swiftly grasped her wrist, staying her. “The shirt stays.”

  “I want to feel you,” she said. “Your skin. I want to touch you, Griffin. Please.”

  Her plea made his gut clench. His ardor began to cool. “You have no notion what you’re asking of me.”

  “I know you have scars.” She cupped his face then, and her touch was so gentle, so tender.

  She would not allow him to look away, to see anything but her. And he saw her then, saw her in yet another way he never had before. He saw her compassion. He saw her tenacity. He saw her unwavering and stubborn grit, and he admired that. He admired her. But still, he knew what his body looked like beneath his gentleman’s façade. He was like a home that was impressive from the streets, but had been destroyed by a fire within.

  In a word, hideous.

  His face may be handsome enough, but his looks were not sufficient to blunt the other ugliness he had been marked with forever. Griffin was just as certain of it now as he had been more than a decade ago when his wounds were still fresh, and his compatriots had carried him to his freedom because he had been too badly beaten and starved to walk.

  He ground his jaw. “Knowing I have scars and seeing them are not the same thing, Violet.”

  “I understand that, and I have already seen some, if you will recall.” Her vibrant gaze searched his, but he knew not what she sought.

  If it was bravery, she would not find it. This particular brand of courage had fled him a long time ago, and it was too late to call it back now. He did not want her to see his hideously marked hide, not on their wedding night. Not when she was a virgin and he would be rending her maidenhead, not for her first time making love. Later, perhaps, if he could stomach it.

  But tonight…no.

  He could not bear it. Would not be made to face the ugliness of what had happened to him, most of which he had buried deep inside himself. Most of which he never wanted to acknowledge or even think about ever again.

  “Not this time,” he denied, unable to give her what she wanted in this. To do so would wreck him. “Not tonight. Tonight I want nothing of the past between us. No reminders of what once happened. Tonight, I want nothing but you and me and everything that makes you feel good.”

  “Touching you makes me feel good,” she persisted, her thumb swiping over his lower lip once. Twice. “Turn down the lamps if you must. I just want to touch you without any barriers.”

  Damn it.

  She was weakening his resolve. Perhaps it was her husky voice. Perhaps it was the way she stroked his lower lip and held his face. Perhaps it was merely that she was herself, Violet, his Violet, and she reached a part of him he had not realized even existed any longer.

  “My skin is rough and puckered.”

  “Your skin is a part of you,” she said, and like the scent of roses she exuded, her words hit him in the heart. Or at least in the place where his heart once was. “And I want you. All of you.”

  He stared down at her, and even more than before, he felt everything inside him shifting. Changing. He was becoming someone else, a man he had not been, and could not be, without her. This man wanted to give her as much of himself as he could bear.

  For now, that meant tearing himself away from her breathtaking body long enough to extinguish the oil lamps. Swallowing, he walked back to the bed in the darkness, plucking the remainder of his buttons from their moorings. When he reached the last, he shrugged it to the floor in a whisper of sound.

  “Did you take it off?” she asked quietly. “Your shirt, I mean?”

  “Yes,” he grumbled, wondering how this woman, so new to his life, this wife of only one day, could rule him so neatly.

  And then he realized, just as quickly, the answer was simple: he wanted to please her. There was nothing he wanted more in this world than to make Violet West—er, rather Violet Strathmore—happy. She eclipsed everything, even his fear of being cast back into prison.

  “Thank you, Griffin,” she murmured.

  Desire returned to him in swift, steady waves, reminding him of what was about to happen this night. Reminding him the present was of far greater import than the past. He removed his trousers and smalls, and then, finding his way in the dark, he joined her on the bed once more.

  Instantly, the heady scent of roses and musky woman hit him. Home, something inside him said, and he knew it was true. Here they were, in a borrowed bedchamber, the guests of his former League comrades, on the brink of utter disaster and ruin, and yet he had never felt so reassured and comforted. Nor had he ever felt so complete.

  “Violet.” Her name was a sigh wrenched from him as his body moved against hers, without the obstruction of fabric for the first time. They were both nude, bare skin on hot, bare skin.

  His cock was once more rigid, glancing against her slick, swollen folds with erotic precision. He rubbed himself over her and they were both moving, finding a rhythm, bodies learning each other. He forgot to be concerned with the burns and scars covering him. Forgot his uncertainty. Forgot the painful pieces of his past, so often like shards of glass embedded in his flesh. And instead, he simply allowed himself to feel.

  Her hands were on him, running over his back and chest with slow, powerful caresses that made him even hungrier for her. The lack of light freed him. Their mouths met, sealing in a kiss that was deep and complete and transforming. A kiss of tongues and teeth, of desperation and culmination and everything in between.

  She turned her head, breaking the fusion of their lips, and he dropped his kiss to her neck instead.

  “You feel beautiful to me,” she said, her voice a rumble against his mouth.

  “I am the furthest one can get from that,” he returned, recovering his own voice at last. “You are beautiful, spitfire. Glorious. More than I could have imagined.”

  “You feel perfect,” she persisted, continuing her exploration.

  Her hands were on his abdomen now, skimming over the healed scores of a blade that had cut him hundreds of times, brushing the ripples of flesh. Her nimble, elegant fingers meandered over his shoulders, his back, crossing the ridges left behind by a cat o’nine tails. And with each reverent glance of her touch over his battered body, he felt healed, in a way. Renewed.

  Whole for the first time in as long as he could recall.

  She did that for him, with her tenderness and her caring. She alone.

  “I am far from perfect,” he warned her, before taking a nipple into his mouth. He sucked hard. So hard he won a keening sound from her lips, and she raked her nails over his back.

  The abrasion was delicious.

  “We are a match then,” she said. “For I am not perfect either.”

  He was finding that increasingly impossible to believe, but for now, he would not argue the point. For now, he would simply bask in her touch. He would simply revel in her body, warm and willing beneath h
is, her reverent touch on him, her full, beautiful mouth within kissing distance. Her wet, tight cunny within fucking distance.

  Damn.

  He had to be inside her. The waiting, the anticipation, it was driving him to the edge. He needed and wanted, and wanted and needed, and everything was Violet. All Violet. He continued thrusting against her, his cock sliding through her wetness, through the hot, humid heart of her.

  So good. She felt so incredibly, bloody good. He could spend forever inside her, never leaving. But of course, that was not the way life worked, was it? They would have to leave this bed eventually. Perhaps they would even have to leave each other.

  For he had not been honest with her. Even now, their bodies naked and pressed together, hands and mouths studying the curves and dips and plains and hardness and softness of each other, he was not able to be himself with the lamps lit. Nor was he able to admit to her he intended to ruin her brother.

  But he could not think about that now.

  His fingers were working upon her pearl, stroking her, working her into a frenzy.

  “Are you certain you are ready for me?” he asked, rocking his hips so his hardness pressed against her.

  She arched, seeking more contact, more connection. He gave it to her on a sigh of pure bliss, running his cock deeper within her slippery folds. Bloody hell, all the saliva in his mouth and the breath in his lungs chose to abandon him, simultaneously, in that moment.

  “Take me, Griffin.”

  Her urging was all the spurring he needed. Gripping his cock, he positioned himself at her entrance. “It will hurt,” he warned, “the first time. I will go slowly. Allow you to become accustomed to me.”

  And then he kissed her.

  In the next breath, he canted his hips, pressing against her dripping core. She was wet, so wet, and so hot, hotter than the flames of an inferno. One more breath, and he was inside her. Just the tip of his cock, nothing more than a slow and steady invasion.

  With great effort, he held himself still, kissing her, waiting until her body relaxed to thrust again. He kissed the corner of her lips. “Tell me if I should stop. Just say the word, and I shall.” Another kiss. Another undulation of his hips.

  This time, he was deep enough to recognize the barrier against him.

  “More, Griffin.”

  “Are you certain?” he breathed against her mouth, his eyes open, studying her. He did not want there to be any doubt. Not this night, or any that came after. Regardless of what came to pass between them.

  “More certain than I have ever been in my life,” she said. “Make me yours.”

  He required no further urging. At her words, he thrust. And as he thrust forward, the barrier within her giving way, he took her mouth. They kissed and kissed and kissed, his tongue in her mouth, her hands on his shoulders, dragging him closer, digging in. Until he broke away.

  “Have I hurt you?” he demanded through clenched teeth.

  Her cunny was painfully tight around him, and he wanted nothing more than to continue, but he maintained his stillness with the greatest effort. First, he needed to be certain she was ready.

  “No,” she said. “You feel wonderful.”

  So did she.

  In fact, wonderful did not begin to describe it. He rolled his hips again, taking his time. His cock sank deeper and deeper within her depths. Until finally, at long last, he slid home, as deep as he could go. He reached between their bodies, finding her pearl as slick and responsive as ever, and worked her. Worked her until she was pumping against him, breathless and frantic.

  He wanted to fuck her so badly.

  But he would not give in to those base urges.

  For today, he would settle for this slow and steady initiation. For the welcoming of her body beneath his. For the hungry grip of her on his cock. For her juices, running down his shaft to his ballocks. For her whimpering and hungry beneath him.

  They discovered a rhythm together. Slow, easy. His mouth found its way back to her breasts, and he sucked her nipples as he rode her, sliding in, then out, then in again. Slow and easy, slow and easy, slow and—

  Damn it, he wasn’t going to last.

  He flicked his tongue over her nipple, then bit, then sucked.

  “Yes,” she crooned, touching him more, her fingers everywhere, healing him with her caresses. “More.”

  It was all the encouragement he needed.

  Griffin slammed into her. He lost himself. Lost the need to be a gentleman. He lost everything but her and this moment and claiming her—making her his—forever. She was ablaze, sodden and tight, her cunny gripping his cock like a fist. He was not going to last.

  He kept going, thrusting, kissing, sucking, making love to her so fully and completely, she would never be the same again. He was deep inside her, surging, the wicked sounds of their bodies slapping together, and the slickness of Violet’s desire and the scent of their lovemaking in the air.

  He increased the pressure and rhythm on her clitoris, knowing instinctively what she needed. What she wanted. He could not stay himself. He knew he could ill afford to sire a child now, with all the uncertainty and indecision of Arden’s false charges lodged against him, and that he ought to withdraw and spend into the bed linens.

  Yet even knowing all that, he could not stop.

  Not when he was thrusting desperately inside her, rocking into the soft anchor of her sweet body. Not when he flicked his forefinger over her pearl and she shook beneath him again, tightening on his cock in a series of spasms.

  Pleasure built in his ballocks, and he felt it in his spine, tingling, licking through him like a fire. He lost control in the next breath when she clamped down upon him once more, and he could not keep the rise at bay any longer. He surged inside her, coming so violently, his entire body locked up with the force of his release.

  He pounded into her again and again, and she clung to him, accepting it. Accepting him. Taking every last drop of him, and claiming him, indelibly, forever, as hers.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Violet woke, uncertain of where she was.

  She blinked herself awake, her gaze taking in her surroundings. The wall coverings were cheerful and blue and hung with pastoral oil pictures. The room was narrow and long, low-ceilinged.

  Harlton Hall, she recalled.

  It was the third roof above her head in nearly as many days. But this day, unlike all the rest in recent memory, she awoke as someone else.

  A wife.

  A lover.

  This morning, she was the Duchess of Strathmore, and there was a large, solid, masculine presence in the bed alongside her. A long leg tangled with hers. A heavy arm draped over her waist. Hot breath fanning over her nape. And Wicked Violet was quiet and sated at last, right alongside her heart.

  Slowly, taking great care not to wake him, she turned to face her husband. In slumber, he was just as infallibly gorgeous as he was awake. But there was something more intimate about watching him sleep, something that called to her on a deeper level than the mere surface. Yes, he was so beautiful he took her breath, but here, in the morning light, he possessed a vulnerable softness ordinarily absent.

  It was as if she had been granted a peek at another Griffin entirely, the Griffin he had been before he had been traumatized by his imprisonment. Whatever had happened to him had been worse than the scars and pain those terrors had left behind, she was certain. How she wished he had been willing to bare himself before her completely, to show her that part of himself he still kept at bay.

  But he had met her halfway, and she knew what his concession must have cost him, and she was grateful for it. Indeed, she was grateful for him. How impossible it was to think mere weeks ago, he had not even been a part of her life. Now, he was hers, and her heart was full just looking at him; so very full.

  He was hers to love, hers to heal. She was prepared to go to battle for him, to fight to win his heart. She would slay his demons, show him his scars were a part of him, and that she loved all of h
im. One day, he would trust her with himself, she vowed. One day he would be completely hers.

  He woke then, slowly and adorably, blinking at her with his beautiful cobalt eyes, his face still relaxed in sleep. And then he bestowed a smile upon her she felt all the way to her tingling toes.

  “Am I dreaming you, spitfire?” he asked, his voice extra deep and rough from his rest.

  “No more than I am dreaming you,” she returned with a hesitant smile of her own.

  All the fears crowding her mind at the wedding breakfast had dispersed, first in the wake of their time together in the tower when she had realized she loved him, and later in his arms. She was not her mother, and neither was Griffin his father. They were themselves, and together they would forge their own path.

  United.

  “I can scarcely believe you are mine,” he said softly, interrupting her whirling thoughts.

  His words sent a wave of warmth washing over her, for she felt the same way about him. He was unfairly handsome, it was true, and yet so sweet. No man had ever made her feel the way Griffin did.

  She smiled at him, unable to keep herself from reaching out to him. She framed his face in her hands, careful to keep from touching him anywhere he had scars. She would not push him or force him into revealing more of himself than he was willing. After all, she had the rest of her life to earn it. “Thank you for being patient with me yesterday. For listening to me. For not thinking me mad. And thank you for sharing a part of yourself with me in turn.”

  He kissed her, just a slow, fleeting brush of his mouth over hers. “Thank you for marrying me. I am currently no matrimonial prize, and I know it. Your willingness to trust in me and go against your brother, all in the name of aiding me, means more than I can possibly convey.”

  But she was not entirely selfless. She would not have married just any man who had been wrongfully accused and staying at Lark House. Her heart beat for this one alone, and he was staring at her now as if she were the most glorious creature he had ever seen. As if she were a goddess descended before him.