The Duke's Holiday

by Maggie Fenton

  He tugged the tails of his lawnshirt free and pulled it over his head. He held it in one hand for a moment, then let it fall away. She gasped. He knelt before her, naked from the waist up. Her eyes flicked over his body, her cheeks darkening with a fierce blush. She licked her lips and tried to speak. No sound came out.

  He thought for one awful moment she would reject him, and he would be worse than humiliated. He didn’t think he could survive if she did such a thing.

  That night in the drawing room, when he had so lost his head and nearly taken her against a desk, he had pulled back out of fear. The power she could wield over him if he succumbed was unfathomable. Something about her – something beyond the physical – pulled at him, demanded its pound of flesh. He could not let her go, and only now he realized why.

  She had already taken that part of him he feared, and he’d never have it back from her. He’d never be whole again without her.

  No, that wasn’t true. He’d never been whole to begin with, which was much, much worse. He’d found something in Astrid Honeywell, of all people on earth, that filled the emptiness inside, the hunger he’d always felt without even knowing it. It was terrifying and exhilarating, and he’d never understand it. He’d never understand her.

  She raised her quixotic eyes to his own, and they were filled with resignation and something else that made his blood run south.

  “This is so unfair,” she murmured, then she launched herself from the pile of hay and threw herself at him. She caught him off guard. She wrapped her arms and legs around him and kissed him of her own accord, clumsily, roughly, and without pretense. She stroked her arms down his aching back, and he cried out, setting her from him.

  “Easy, for God’s sake.”

  “Oh, I’ll not make this easy for you, Montford,” she said against his mouth.

  He laughed hysterically. This was much better – and much worse – than he could have envisioned.

  She smiled up at him wickedly. “Got more than you bargained for?”

  “I never bargain. And I always get what I want.”

  “So do I,” she countered. She tugged his head down and kissed him hard again. She attempted to retreat, but he caught her by the nape of the neck and held her in place. He took his time kissing her this round, exploring her with his tongue, willing her to kiss him back, though she shifted impatiently against him. But he would not be rushed. He wanted to savor every moment of this, but more than that, he wanted her to savor it as well. He’d make her savor it, damn her eyes.

  “Montford,” she murmured, her mouth opening beneath his, taking him inside. Her iron grip on his shoulders eased. She raised her hands to his face, stroked his cheeks with a tenderness that left him completely at sea.

  She clung to him as he pressed her back into the hay, settling his weight between her legs. His hands moved down her body, over the swell of breasts and hips and thighs. She was soft and burning with heat. He buried his nose in her hair and inhaled her scent, drowning in it.

  He fumbled with the buttons on her shirt, tore apart the fabric in the end. He stripped away the garment, exposing her naked flesh. He’d seen paintings of luxurious, fertile Renaissance Madonnas before. Indeed, he collected such masterpieces and displayed them at one or other of his residences. He thought of them as he looked upon Astrid’s naked body, and how they paled in comparison to her magnificent voluptuousness. She was creamy white, the freckles fading out at her shoulders, though he spied one or two in unusual places he intended to explore at length. Her stomach was rounded, like the rest of her lush body, and rising and falling with her haggard breath. Her breasts were full and rose-tipped, quivering. They hardened to points under his touch. He hardened as well. He wanted her so much he wasn’t sure he could last another second.

  He stopped thinking about the history of art at that point. He stopped thinking at all and knew only sensation, the itching need to join himself to this woman, the friction of their skin, the pant of their breaths growing faster, louder with every intake of air. His world was reduced to a pair of lush female breasts, undulating with the nervous rise and fall of her chest. Breasts that had tormented him for what felt like eons.

  He lowered his head and took one of those glorious peaks in his mouth. She arched beneath him and moaned. “What are you doing?” she cried.

  He didn’t answer her absurd question. He cupped her other breast in his hand as he continued to suckle her, squeezing the fullness between his fingers, a groan escaping from deep inside his body. Her skin was salty and lavender scented, and softer than silk. He wanted to sink into her and never surface again. He shifted his head to the other breast, flicking her nipple with his tongue, and she dug her hands into his hair, pulling him closer.

  His hand left her breast, traveled down her stomach, to the fall of her trousers. He jerked the buttons free and slipped a hand inside, feeling the crinkle of hair and the soft dewy warmth between her legs. She was already aroused. She pushed against his hand urgently, instinctively, nearly unmanning him. He tried to pull back, to do something to rein himself in, but he was adrift in a sea of lust so fierce he feared he would drown. It had never been like this before, so unreasonable.

  “Oh God, Astrid. Astrid, I am lost,” he murmured.

  She tugged his hair, but the sting of this gesture did nothing to dampen his ardor. His fingers stroked her, and she arched against him like some feral creature. “For God’s sake, Montford … please! Please do something! It is unbearable,” she hissed. Her hand came down over the front of his breeches, cupping the length of him. “Tell me what to do,” she cried.

  This got his attention.

  Things were moving too fast, he decided in a burst of clarity. He’d not let her drive him to spill himself as he’d done upon that blasted horse. He had some amount of self-respect left. No, he planned to be buried inside of her, with her screaming his name, when he came again.

  Sooner, rather than later. He threw her hand away before he exploded and jerked her trousers down her legs. He managed to get one of her feet free before he made the mistake of looking down at her.

  Sweet, merciful, God in heaven. He was a believer now.

  She had red hair. Everywhere.

  She stared at him urgently, confusedly, seeing the pain in his expression. “What are you doing now?” she asked with a touch of worry in her voice.

  He could not speak. He groaned, then pushed her legs apart and lowered his head, claiming her with his mouth.

  She stiffened underneath him, not understanding, until his tongue tasted her. “Oh, Good Lord!” she groaned, melting.

  She tasted salty sweet, her flesh smooth and slick. Her red corkscrew hair, heavy with her scent, tickled his nose and drove him to the brink. He felt her begin to fall apart, her body trembling, her fingers wrenching his hair. He broke away from her with effort, some cruel part of him enjoying tormenting her. And he wanted to see her face. He needed to. He came over her body.

  She stared at him, wild-eyed, her cheeks pink, and his heart flipped over. “What have you done?” she breathed.

  She asked far too many questions.

  “Kiss you?” he offered. He brought his lips down upon hers, letting her taste what he had. He kissed her and kissed her until they were both insensible. “I could kiss you. Everywhere.”

  “So it would seem,” she managed.

  “You are red,” he said, sliding his hand back between her thighs, staring down at her in wonder.

  “Stop being an idiot!” she cried, burying her head in the crook of his neck, clinging to him. She was mortified, he realized. And he liked it. He liked it even more when she bit his shoulder hard, reached down of her own accord, and undid the buttons of his breeches. She glanced down between their bodies, and it was her turn for her eyes to widen at the sight of his cock. She touched the tip of him tentatively.

  He laughed wildly, then he groaned, as her hand closed around him. “Don’t,” he warned, his voice strangling.

  “Why?�

�� she asked with an innocent expression. “Don’t you like it?”

  “You’re going to kill me yet,” he grit out.

  “I told you, I’ll not make this easy for you,” she said.

  He captured her hands above her head and lowered himself so they were flesh to flesh. “Stop talking,” he commanded, before kissing her senseless once more. His hands ran down her side, molding her flesh, curving over her backside, pulling her up to him, until no air was left between them.

  She wrapped her soft, rounded body around him without any instruction, opening herself up to him, like a flower to the sun. She was radiating heat, damp, sweet. His heart thundered, his body shuddered, and his skin broke out in a cold sweat as he guided himself inside of her. He tried to go slow, but she wouldn’t let him. She was frightening in her ardor. She rose up to meet him, and he slid all the way inside of her almost by accident.

  “Damn it, Astrid,” he breathed, clenching his teeth.

  He felt her gasp of pain against his throat, and her fingers dig into the flesh of his back as she tried to absorb the shock. He was relieved and ashamed all at once. And so caught up in his lust that nothing else mattered but finishing what he started. She was so hot, so tight. It was killing him to remain still.

  “Is that it?” she asked, startling him out of his trance.

  He raised himself on his elbows and studied her face. The face of a minx. She was smiling gently, relaxing around him, and his heart responded, though he couldn’t find words. He shook his head and moved his hips, just a fraction, to test her response. Her smile faded, replaced by a look of startled wonder. “Oh!” He moved again because he couldn’t contain himself. “Oh, Cyril!”

  Really, she was quite merciless. What a time to call him by his given name! It was … rather lovely. Horrible, but lovely. And it made him want her even more earnestly, if that were possible. When she began to rise up, meeting his thrusts, he lost all semblance of control. He groaned. She was in all of his senses, pulling him under until he hardly could distinguish where his body ended and hers began. He didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to stop. He’d never felt this way before, so tangled up in another person, body and spirit. He squeezed her hips, pulling her up to him, and stroked into her frantically, over and over again, frightened at the intensity of his emotions, his body’s helpless surrender.

  He felt her tip over the edge, her body trembling, her voice crying out against his ear. He thrust harder, longer, feeling so close, and filled with trepidation, the way a climber must feel at the summit of a mountaintop, the atmosphere thin, coherent thought impossible.

  She seemed to pull him further into her, dislodging something that could never be put back. He came in a torrent of white heat and raging emotions. His body convulsed into hers, and he gripped her hips between his fingers so hard he was sure to bruise her. And even though he was quite done, he stayed within her, thrusting upwards, chasing the ecstasy that still had his limbs quaking and his blood thrumming. He had never felt so blissfully alive. Nor so terrified.

  It was too much.

  He wanted more. Even as he slumped against her, exhausted, sweat-soaked, and utterly squeezed dry, he wanted more. And more and more. He would always want more, and he would always want her.

  He rolled onto his side and pulled her with him because he could not be parted from her. She had no words left, and she let him hold her, for once doing precisely as he wished. He kissed the top of her head and tried to catch his breath as he formulated a plan to keep her forever.

  Mine, mine.

  He was going to marry Astrid Honeywell.

  The thought was as unsettling – and as spectacularly brilliant – as her eyes.

  MOST OF Miss Anabel Honeywell’s far-fetched tales were fabricated, though a couple of the more outlandish ones were true. She had, in truth, actually been at the court of Versailles, and had, in truth, actually sailed the seas with a genuine pirate years before the Revolution. She had been a hoyden in her youth, and a skilled lover in her prime. She had taken a number of cher ami into her bed on the condition they take her on their adventures.

  The Yorkshire countryside of her birth had been quite dull for someone with her appetites and intelligence, and to escape a proper marriage with a proper gentleman who loved his hounds more than her, she had run away at sixteen with the handsome butcher’s son. It was a bad decision, for she had soon discovered that he had loved cards more than her. He had lost her in a roll of dice in a gambling palace in London to a scurrilous pirate, for which she was profoundly grateful. She’d liked her scurrilous pirate. Until she discovered he liked the sea more than her. A bounder of a French aristocrat had picked her up in Marseilles, where she had washed ashore, and introduced her to the bawdy Bourbon court, in which she had thrived on petty intrigue and decadence until the peasantry began chopping off heads. Her French aristocrat’s had rolled in the first round.

  Life back at Rylestone Green was quiet by comparison, but occasionally it could be quite interesting indeed. It had not been in the least boring since the young Duke had come to call. He was a bit stiff, and a total idiot, but then most men were. He’d taken it into his thick head to manage them all, and had yet to catch on that he was the one being managed. Anabel had little doubt that her eldest niece could have him eating out of her hand. But the girl was a bit of an idiot herself. She had no conception of men and their foolishness, and if she weren’t careful, she’d have them all on the streets before she came to her senses.

  Anabel intended to help things along. She had learned her craft well. One always got rid of the hard evidence first, to level the battlefield. It had taken some time poking about the Duke’s possessions before she located the book. It was at the bottom of a chest packed full of cravats. She liked a man who knew how to dress, but a hundred cravats for a jaunt to Yorkshire seemed to be a bit excessive, even for a Duke.

  A strange calm had descended over the castle premises as she made her way down the corridor towards her private chambers near the north tower. Those two young bucks of Montford’s seemed to have managed to get the pig in hand at last. It appeared they could do more than drink other people’s port. Not that she was complaining. The thin, continental-looking one with the devilish smile could drink all of their port and be as useless as he pleased, as far as she was concerned. It was a pleasant change to have someone like that to look at. If she were forty years younger, she’d make sure he looked at her as well and had plenty to occupy his energies besides a bottle.

  She hated being old.

  She turned into her boudoir and shut the door behind her with her cane. She crept over to the fireplace, where the coals were still smoldering from the morning fire and stirred them up with a poker until a flame caught. She added a few more coals for good measure, until a nice fire was burning, then retrieved her contraband from the folds of her gown. She tossed the estate ledger onto the flames. It struck the coals in the center, then bounced off to one side.

  “Damn and blast,” she muttered. She took her cane and attempted to reposition the book. It fell off behind the fire, and she sighed in irritation and bent down, her old bones creaking.

  When had it become so difficult to burn a book?

  She reached her hand around the fire and tried to grab the recalcitrant volume, but it was too far away. She reached further in, caught the edge of a page, and tried to drag it out. The page tore and she cursed again.

  Something began to smolder, the stink of singed hair burning the back of her nose. It took her several moments to realize her favorite wig had caught fire. She jumped to her feet – or she would have jumped if she could – and knocked the wig off of her head. It rolled onto the carpet at her feet, and it was more than smoldering. It was a ball of fire.

  “Oh, dear,” she muttered, attempting to beat out the flames with her cane.

  This made the situation worse. Pieces of burning hair floated in the air, landing on the carpet and setting it on fire. Quite by accident, the end of her cane caught the underside of the wig, and as she brought up the cane, she brought up the wig as well, sending it flying across the room. It landed on the draperies covering the windows. The fire spread up them at lightning speed.

  In less than a minute, her boudoir was flickering with flame and filling with smoke.

  “Oh, hell!” she muttered, backing towards the door. She had liked that wig.

  And despite her youthful rebellions, she rather liked the castle.

  Astrid was not going to thank her for this one.

  “OH HELL,” Astrid muttered, attempting to roll away from the Duke and pull the edges of her shirt together. It was a bit cold, for one. For another, the hay was scratchy and was poking her in places hay had no right to poke. She wondered that barns and stables were such popular places for seductions. It seemed maids and swains were always getting into mischief in them, as if dead wheat piled in a room decorated with livestock and riding equipment was in some way romantic. It wasn’t.

  Well, perhaps it was a little, she conceded, glancing reluctantly next to her, where Montford lay, looking astounded, his eyes sightless, his extraordinary body still shuddering from what had occurred.

  But it was damned uncomfortable.

  Montford seemed to agree on this point, for he shifted restlessly, reached behind him, and pulled out what looked to be a tree root from the hay. He tossed it aside and turned his head in her direction and watched her attempt to refasten the buttons on her shirt. His eyes were opaque, molten silver. They seemed to cut directly to the center of her heart and attempt to extract her soul. Those eyes wanted everything of her. Even her body had not been enough, and already that was too much to have given.

  She could not regret it. Some things were inevitable. But she could wish she’d never met him. She could wish he’d not taken off his clothes like some brazen tart. She could wish it had been a disappointment. She could wish it had not felt so perfect and astonishing she would never be the same. For then she could regret it and walk away laughing at them both. She could not laugh now.

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