After all, Hesper’s vitriol had been mainly focused on the destruction of her family’s title by Rafe. Her eyes had glittered with rage and the way she said that Rafe should die…it hadn’t felt like an idle threat.
He smiled, his earlier tense posture returning to his normal relaxed one, but she saw something flicker in his eyes.
“Me?” He laughed. “I cannot even imagine she would attempt such a thing, Sera.”
“Then why do you look like you’re secretly pondering something?” she asked.
His eyes widened. “What would there be to ponder?”
She pursed her lips. “I don’t know exactly. There have been a few troubling things since we met, though.”
“Such as?”
He wasn’t making this easy, and she huffed out her breath.
“The horse with the shard of metal in her bridle the first day we rode together, for one. And the mysterious kitchen fire in this very house.”
He arched an incredulous brow, and she shook her head at how foolish she must seem to him. “I realize there are only two occurrences and—”
She cut herself off when he turned his face slightly.
“What is it?” she asked. “Twice you have looked guilty.”
He cleared his throat. “I will have to remember your ability to read me in the future.”
She folded her arms. “Rafe.”
He met her gaze. “I was almost hit by a carriage today.”
Serafina staggered back as her heart seemed to twist into a painful knot of terror in her chest.
“Sit down. You’re pale,” he said, rising from his own seat.
She held up her hands to ward him off. “No. I won’t sit. Rafe, why didn’t you tell me this as soon as I arrived home?”
She took an unbidden step toward him, suddenly wanting to touch him and reassure herself that he was whole, but she forced herself to stay still.
“Are you hurt?” she asked.
“No,” he said softly. “I’m fine. Serafina, I can see how you might think these things are related, but it is far more likely that they are merely badly timed coincidences than some deeper plot.”
“Despite the fact that they have all occurred in a span of less than two weeks?” she asked, even though she desperately wanted to believe him.
He frowned. “The kitchen fire was likely because my house was being closed up. My staff didn’t expect us here that morning and mistakes happen under those circumstances. As for the carriage today, it could very well have been an inexperienced driver or a foxed one who had been harangued by his employer to hurry.”
What he said did help, but she couldn’t fully shake her anxieties. “How do you explain the horse with the metal?”
He shook his head. “My stable master doesn’t know how that could have happened, I admit, but I still think it more likely to have been an accident or an equipment failure rather than a conspiracy to hurt me launched by my aunt, of all people.”
“You didn’t see her. She was very serious in her words and actions,” Serafina whispered, although she couldn’t help but feel more at ease with how dismissive he was at the thought.
“I promise you, Sera, she has been railing about how our family should be stricken from the earth for at least a decade. Ever since Crispin seduced Miss Genevieve Kitterich, a once famous actress, and made a splash across the gossip rags for six months.”
Serafina raised both eyebrows. “How old was Crispin then? Eighteen?”
He smiled that beautiful, mischievous, lopsided grin. “You know what they say. Notorious Flynns. Please put your mind at ease. And take my advice—you do not ever have to see her again.”
He had been holding back, but now he crossed the room toward her, his gaze suddenly predatory despite the lazy quality to his movements. He was like a cat that had all day to play with the mouse.
She shivered at the thought despite herself.
“But I do appreciate your concern on my behalf,” he said as he reached her.
He caught her elbow and inched her forward until she leaned against his muscular frame. She could hardly breathe now—everything around them seemed to fade and the only important thing left was him. Them. This.
His smile widened as he dipped his head to capture her lips with his. Earlier she had been able to push him away when she thought of Emma’s accusation that Serafina might come to care for him, but now?
He was far too intoxicating a draw not to surrender. She did so with a muffled moan and lifted her arms around his neck to draw him even closer. He guided her toward the settee she had abandoned a few moments earlier. He lowered her back against the pillows gently and then stood to stare down at her.
“I’ll lock the door,” he said, his voice rough and low as it danced down her spine.
She stared up at him, unable to keep her eyes from going wide. “Here? Now?” she asked, hoping he would understand what she meant.
His widening grin told her he did. “Oh, my darling, there is still so much more to teach you, I can see.”
She blushed at his gentle words and stared as he crossed the room and turned the key to grant them the privacy he required. When he turned back, he began to shed his jacket, loosen his cravat, and she sat up to observe him divest himself of propriety and become the lover she had begun to crave.
Crave, but not quite touch.
So far, their encounters had been entirely driven by him. His tutelage had been powerful and wild and gentle, but he had never demanded she give him anything more than her surrender.
When he tugged his shirt free of his trousers and yanked it over his head to toss to the floor, she wanted to give him so much more. She found herself wanting to touch him the way he did her. Not just to make certain he wasn’t hurt by the accident he had described, but to please him.
Despite her unhappy memories of Cyril stealing what he wanted, she still had the need to gift it to this man.
He leaned over her, his bare chest now within hand’s—and mouth’s—reach. She extended her fingers and pressed a palm to the bare skin, and he hissed a sound of pleasure at her touch. He tensed as if to move closer, and she pushed him back out of reflex.
He froze immediately. “Do you not want this?” he asked, his voice strained.
She forced her gaze to flicker from his bare chest to his face, and the heat that flooded her cheeks was unstoppable.
“I do want you very much. But I—”
She cut herself off, unable to say the words. Instead, she looked at his half-naked body again and curved her flat hand to stoke her fingertips against his pectoral muscle.
He cleared his throat with difficulty. “You want to explore?”
She nodded. “I do. Does it make me a wanton in your eyes?”
His face twisted in displeasure. “It makes you human. Ripe and filled with desire. That is nothing to be ashamed of, Serafina.”
He shifted to sit down on the settee beside her instead of pinning her there with his superior weight. “I am yours to command,” he said softly. “I’ll submit to your desires as long as I can.”
“And when you can’t?” she asked, her gaze flickering to his.
He smiled. “I may lose control at some point and need to be inside of you. But I assure you I will give you more than fair warning that the moment is coming.”
She shivered. Now that he had given her permission to explore, she wasn’t sure what to do. She had never had carte blanche, nor had she wanted it with Cyril. He had forced and demanded the way she touched him and she had given in because the alternative was far worse.
She had never pictured herself in the situation where exploring a man’s body would be…enticing.
But it was. She shoved the past aside, hid it as deep as she could manage and focused her attention back to Rafe. He was what mattered now. What she wanted in this charged moment.
She angled herself on the settee to face him, leaning in until his body heat wended its way around her, seeped into her. She saw a fe
w bruises that she hadn’t noticed when he was standing. Purple marred his left arm and side.
“Rafe—”
He shook his head. “I promise you, I’m fine. Though if you wish to verify that statement, I give you permission, Doctor Serafina.”
She smiled at his teasing, but her hand shook as she reached out to press it, once again, to his bare chest. She felt his muscles tense as her fingers glided over his flesh, watched his cheeks suck in as he took a sharp breath.
“Why is your skin so tanned?” she whispered as she traced the lines of each defined ridge along his chest and stomach.
His eyes went wide at the question, but he quickly smiled. “At my estate in Sussex, I do what I like. Including ride and work outside without the confines of a shirt.” His smile broadened. “And I also take the occasional naked dip in my lake. Which leads to a bit of color on a man’s skin when the weather allows for sun.”
Serafina’s mouth dropped open in shock at that admission.
“I—you—”
He laughed, revealing such straight white teeth, his eyes lighting up with life and mirth. He had never been so utterly attractive, and she actually jolted with how much she wanted to lean into him, weave into him…never let him go. It was as if he offered her escape from the confines of her past, that with him she could find a way to be something so much more than what she’d been forced to be so far.
But if she stayed, she feared she might come to care for him. That was a terrifying notion for so many reasons.
“You look as though I’ve told you I own an elephant,” he said, dragging her from her troubling thoughts.
She shook her head. “I feel I would be less surprised by that admission now. I’ve just never known a person who was so utterly free as you have been.”
He shrugged, but his bright eyes continued to hold hers mercilessly. “Would you like to hear about it? Hear about my past?”
She hesitated. She had shared her own secrets, in part because of necessity. But if he told her his, would that bind them further? Complicate a relationship that was already feeling more and more complicated each day?
Perhaps, but she found herself wanting the answers anyway.
“Yes,” she whispered.
He leaned in until their faces were but inches apart. “I will tell you everything you want to know. But only if you keep touching me. I cannot have you distracted from what you so desired.”
She worried her lip with her teeth for a moment and then nodded. “Very well.”
In truth, his words might distract both of them a fraction from what she was doing to his body. Wouldn’t it make these acts less intimate?
She pressed her palms flat against him and pushed him back on the couch until he half-reclined on the pillows. He grinned once more.
“As you well know, my father was the brother of Cyril’s father. The second son of a duke. But what many forget is that they had very different mothers. Cyril’s father’s mother died when he was just a boy, and very quickly their father remarried and had several more children with his new wife, including my father. Cyril’s father always hated my grandmother. He was quite a few years older than his brother, so he was away at school. The second marriage was a love match. They went to the country, they laughed. Apparently my grandfather was quite a different man with my grandmother.”
Serafina listened, but she stared at Rafe’s upper body, stroking over his broad shoulders, his hard chest, his toned stomach. Occasionally his voice cracked as she touched him one way or another, but otherwise, he didn’t try to interfere with what she did.
“That would explain the rift between your two parts of the family,” she said softly.
He nodded. “Cyril’s father despised us, and he taught his wife and his son to do the same. My father, on the other hand, was sad that he and his brother were estranged, but focused his life on the pleasures it contained. He gambled and drank, occasionally to excess and in inappropriate places. He rode horses and raced phaetons, always too fast. He taught my brother and sister and I that life was a feast worth partaking in.”
“Those Notorious Flynns,” she mused with a laugh.
“So very notorious,” he admitted. “There are so many stories, Serafina, you will be shocked once you hear them all. As for my father, there was only one place he refused to stray into wildness, and that was with women. He adored my mother—it was another love match.”
Serafina jerked her head up to look at him. He was staring at her, but it didn’t seem to be because she was touching him intimately.
She lowered her head, determined to distract him from whatever thoughts were in his head. Gently, she dragged her tongue over his salty flesh. He stiffened beneath her and his hand came up to rest against the back of her head.
She focused now, tasting his shoulder, nipping along his collarbone, and finally she wrapped her lips around his flat nipple and sucked gently.
He grunted out a low, needy sound of pleasure, and she smiled against his flesh. There was something very powerful in what she was doing. For this moment, at least, he was at her mercy.
And she wanted to test how far he would allow her to go before he could not speak, before he would snatch control back and take her.
“Please continue,” she murmured against his flesh.
His breath was heavier now and he shook his head. “I can scarcely recall what I was talking about.”
“Your father teaching his children that life was a feast,” she offered before returning her lips to his flesh and doing a bit of feasting of her own. He smelled so clean, so male, and he tasted just as good.
Rafe’s voice was strained as he said, “We were encouraged to play as children, to laugh. We ate as a family, and although we had governesses, my parents raised us without separating us from their lives. My father taught me to gamble. He took my brother and me to races. And when we began to be associated with scandals, he only laughed. He never helped us to escape our troubles—he told us we had to learn to do that ourselves, but he never saw the harm in a good time. Even a good time gone slightly wrong.”
Serafina lifted her head from his tempting flesh and stared at him. “That sounds heavenly.”
He nodded. “It was.”
For a moment, she was overcome with jealousy for his happy childhood. And with a deep desire to give her own children such unconditional and unconventional lives.
But she and Rafe would be different. Theirs was not a love match, after all. They would have children, but there was a vast difference in how they would be raised. After all, she could not picture Rafe taking them from her, legal right to do so or not. So while they would be exposed regularly to their father, it wouldn’t be the same.
She shook her head and instead put her thoughts back to his body. He still wore his trousers, and she could see his erection pressing against those. She wanted more of him now.
Blushing, she turned her face so he wouldn’t fully see her expression when she said, “Will you remove the rest of your clothing, please?”
He said nothing and didn’t move for so long that she forced herself to look up at him. He was staring at her, a fire burning bright in his eyes that let her know he was on the edge of taking back control. Of taking her.
“Rafe?” she whispered.
He nodded slowly. “Of course, Your Grace. Your wish is my command.”
She slid away from him to allow him to get to his feet and watched as he removed his boots, tossing them aside without breaking the intensive eye contact he had made with her. He kept it as he began to unfasten his trousers, slowly, tortuously, until she all but licked her lips in a desire to see him fully naked.
Finally he pushed the remainder of his clothing away and stood before her, naked and proud. He was aroused by her earlier touch and his hard member jutted up against his stomach. She had never thought she would crave that instrument, but oh, how she did.
She couldn’t help herself. She reached out and touched him with the tips of her fingers.
He sucked his breath in with a gasp of what sounded like pain, and she snatched her hand away with a blush.
“Did I hurt you?” she asked.
He shook his head. “God, no. When you touch me, it is anything but painful. My cock is merely sensitive.”
She stared at him again. “Your cock?”
“Yes. It could be considered a vulgar term, but I prefer it to many other ways a man refers to his penis.”
“What other ways?” she asked.
He gave a wicked smile. “A rod, a whore’s pipe, a lady’s delight, a pego, a plug tail. There are more, but you understand.”
She shivered at the blunt conversation, but couldn’t tear her eyes away. He stood before her, hard as steel but cloaked in velvet flesh. She knew what he could do with his cock. She knew what pleasure it could bring.
“Fascinating,” she murmured as she reached out to touch him again. She just traced the length of him with the edge of her fingernail and this time didn’t pull away when he gulped in breath.
She briefly recalled the things Cyril had forced her to do, this time not with a shudder, but with the question if Rafe might like the same attention.
There was only one way to find out. She wrapped her hand around him and gently stroked him once. He stiffened with a low moan, and she looked up at him. She didn’t have to ask if he liked what she did. His expression told her he did, very much. And the fact that she had brought him pleasure made her want to give him more.
She stroked him again, paying attention to the sounds he made, the sweat that broke out above his lip, the way his body jerked toward her. She increased the rate of her hand, then decreased it in accordance to his reaction.
It was odd how her body reacted to the things she did to him. Although she was fully clothed, not at all stimulated, her sex began to tingle. Her nipples hardened beneath her gown and her breath came short. It was exciting to please him. There was power in knowing that she had some small control over his feelings and reactions.
She wanted more. Her breath caught as she considered the “more” she knew about. An act she had never liked, but now, as she stared at Rafe’s swollen cock, it didn’t seem so very repugnant.
The Other Duke Page 14