The Duke Is a Devil

by Karen Lingefelt

  Oh, but the duke really was a devil. And he was her devil.

  Dane stood up, gloriously naked, his arousal even bigger and thicker than before. And as satiated as she was already, Cecily still wanted it. She scrambled back till every inch of her was entirely on the bed.

  Dane swaggered over to the small piecrust table next to the armchair, and snatched up the decanter of brandy. “I might offer you some, but you seem quite relaxed by now.”

  “I am. Are you not relaxed by now?”

  He chuckled before putting the decanter to his lips and tilting his head back. Instead of drinking it straight down, he appeared to slosh the brandy around inside of his mouth before swallowing it. He set down the decanter. “What do you think?”

  “Well, there seems to be one part of you that doesn’t look relaxed,” she said coyly. “Is that why you drank the brandy?”

  “No, I drank it because after what I just did, you might not let me kiss you again,” he said, as he dived onto the bed next to her. The mattress sank, then slowly rose again as he moved on top of her and brought his lips to hers.

  Cecily slid her arms over his broad, naked shoulders and tasted the brandy on his tongue with her own. “Ah,” she breathed, as she broke the kiss. “This is the only way I wish to taste brandy.”

  “Then let me kiss you again,” he said, and he did so, his tongue mating with hers as he shifted on top of her, settling the lower part of his body between her thighs. “Just relax, Cecily, my love. I won’t hurt you. I would never hurt you. If I ever have, I certainly didn’t intend to.”

  “I know that now,” she whispered, as she gazed up into his handsome face. “I do trust you.”

  She only wished she could tell him that she loved him, because she did, but the words seemed stuck in her throat. Yet he seemed content enough to know she trusted him, for he gifted her with a smile that seemed to curl around her pounding heart as he very gingerly pushed into her. Cecily felt a quick sting and tensed as she closed her eyes.

  He softly shushed her as he slowly, so slowly slid into her and held himself there for a moment, then just as slowly slid out again, but not quite all the way. The sting eased. The tension ebbed away. He slid into her again, still slowly, but not quite as slow as before, and this time, instead of the sting, she felt an incredible pulse of pleasure.

  “Now how is that?” he asked in a murmur.

  “Oh yes,” she gasped. “Oh yes...oh Dane...”

  “How I love to hear you say my name,” he said, as he thrust into her again. And again. His rhythm was steady but gradually quickened as she writhed beneath him, wrapping all of her limbs around his hard, strong body, digging her nails into the skin of his back.

  Suddenly, to her dismay, he paused.

  “Oh, no!” she cried out.

  He rose to his knees and reached around for the pillow he’d placed under her head earlier. “Just for a moment. Behind your head again.”

  She couldn’t help asking, “Well, where else would I put it?”

  “You’ll need every pillow on the bed very shortly, lest you be rammed into the headboard,” he said, still kneeling upright, offering her a splendid view of his naked torso as he lifted both of her legs and hooked them over his broad shoulders.

  Oh, but he was even more beautiful in the nude, she thought. Like a statue of a Greek god turned to hot, velvet flesh. His long, thick shaft rested on her mound. Cecily reached down to touch it, amazed at how hard it was as she wrapped her hand around it and pressed down.

  “Yes,” he whispered, clearly enjoying that.

  “More,” she whispered back, as she pushed it back down to what she now considered its proper place.

  He smiled down at her. “Insatiable vixen.” In one swift move, one split second, he slid his entire length inside of her, all the way up to the hilt, and a cry of bliss escaped Cecily’s throat.

  And then he rocked and pounded into her, faster than before, causing the whole bed to shake as some mysterious instinct Cecily never knew she possessed compelled her to brace her hands against that headboard, for her head would have certainly bashed right into it if not for all those pillows. By now she moaned with every urgent thrust of Dane’s hips, reveling in a sea of passion that stormed around her, each wave bigger and stronger than the last, till she sensed that Dane had reached a crest and was about to plunge down, down, down. He closed his eyes, cocked his head back, and groaned as he bolted into her as deep as he could go and then held it there for a moment, only to come crashing down, but not quite on top of her.

  Instead he knelt over her again, burying his face in her hair between her neck and shoulder, breathing raggedly. His back was damp, and even though his chest wasn’t flush against hers, for he might have crushed her otherwise, she swore she could still feel his hammering heartbeat, for her own seemed to have subsided already.

  If only she could write about this! She’d never imagined such ecstasy, such a sense of unity with another person.

  This, she thought, had to be true love.

  How glad she was that she hadn’t offered to let him have his way with her in exchange for stopping that book! Such a desperate act would have cheapened something she now knew to be wonderful and precious, the ultimate act of love.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  He slowly lifted his head, gazing down at her in obvious bewilderment. “Thank you? What an odd thing to say after what just transpired. But you’re welcome all the same.”

  “No, I mean—thank you for what happened that day I came to Bradbury Park. Thank you for asking me how desperate I was, for asking what I would do for you to grant me that one boon.”

  Still nonplussed—and understandably so, she had to admit—he asked, “But you were furious with me, and rightly, because it showed me I was no better than Harry.”

  “No, I may as well confess to you now,” she said.

  Apparently, this baffled him enough that he slipped out of her and rolled onto his side next to her. “You have a confession to make now?”

  “I came to see you that day thinking I would do anything to persuade you, even—well, I don’t know if I would have been the one to do the seducing, or how that would have worked, but—well, once you said what you said, it reminded me of Harry so I couldn’t go through with it then, and for that, in the wake of what we just did, I am forever grateful.”

  He chuckled. “You were going to offer your body to me?”

  “And that’s another reason I wasn’t sure I could do that. I was afraid you’d laugh at me. You’re laughing at me now.”

  Maybe that was why she couldn’t bring herself to say I love you. How she wished she could say those words to him, but they remained frozen in her throat and she wasn’t sure why. A faint memory of something her mother once told her tickled the back of her mind. Never tell a man you love him. You’ll only frighten him away. He may say it to you, but he doesn’t want you saying it to him.

  Perhaps that was why she couldn’t say it. Men could say the words, and women were delighted to hear them. But if a woman said them to the man, he’d run away. Just as her mother’s lover had, and then her father, who was always away in the navy. Even Catriona never said the words to Madfury. But she left little doubt in a reader’s mind how she felt about him.

  Dane nudged into her reverie. “I’m sorry, Cecily, but I truly don’t mean to laugh at you. I don’t mean to mock you, or make you feel foolish. That’s the very last thing I’ve ever wanted to do to you, next to hurting you—though I suppose one could argue that mocking you is a way of hurting you. Just as I wasn’t making sport of you for being trapped in that wretched treehouse. I’ve always known that wasn’t your fault. I was only trying to inject some levity into the situation. I was hoping to make light of the whole episode, not just for you, but for Willard and Thea, who did not seem at all amused.”

  “They thought I committed some crime that would prompt you to use your ducal powers...” She raised her hands and waggled her fingers, as h
e chuckled again, “...to have all of us cast out of the house and into the hedgerows.”

  “My father might have done that, but not me,” Dane replied. “Not for that. No, Cecily, I’m glad you didn’t offer yourself to me that day. Such a thing should never have happened. You deserve better for your first time—and I hope that was the case this evening.”

  “Oh, it was.” She turned to her side to face him, and lovingly stroked his cheek. “I’m so glad it happened this way.”

  “And did you notice that not once did I call out for my mama in the throes of passion?”

  She burst into laughter. “Yes, I noticed.”

  He kissed her on the brow. “Will you stay here with me tonight? No one will have to know. And on the morrow, I will go ahead to London and make all the arrangements.”

  “Then you want me to stay behind here at Ashdown Park?”

  “For the time being. You can come with the Framptons. I do believe they will be staying for a day or two. I need to get a special license, and place an announcement in the newspaper, and maybe plan a ball—though perhaps Lady Frampton would fancy doing that.”

  “A ball?”

  “To introduce my future duchess to society,” Dane said. “You may as well start getting used to it, my dear.”

  A ball to introduce Cecily to society. Cecily, Duchess of Bradbury. Marriage. Love.

  A happily ever after she never dreamed possible, except for the heroines in her novels.

  She kissed him back. “Then I will stay here in your bed for the night. And I will stay here at Ashdown Park while you continue to London. But once I join you in London, I mean to stay with you forever.”

  He wrapped his arms around her and held her close against him, his chest against her breasts. “Till death do us part?” he asked with a playful smile.

  Her own smile was quite sincere. “That, I promise you.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Dane had never enjoyed an erotic dream so real. In fact, he might have thought it was real were it not for the fact that he was lying in a bed not his own.

  And he was lying in it naked, while a dark-haired female—also naked—slid her tongue up and down his hard, throbbing arousal before taking it slowly, so slowly, into her mouth. He felt the heat of her mouth all around his shaft, the wetness, and even the silk of her hair as he gently cupped his hand over her head. Her tongue ran from the base all the way to the tip, and then she lifted her head to survey him across the vast expanse of his torso.

  “I just wanted to get a better look at it,” Cecily whispered, as innocent as any of the nymphs painted on the domed ceiling in the front hall of his mansion in London. “And maybe do something similar to what you did last night.”

  He smiled. “Oh, you’ve done something, all right. I’ve never had a better greeting from anyone in the morning.”

  She smiled as now she knelt upright and brushed her long hair back over her shoulders, letting him see everything he’d fallen in love with last night—breasts, hips, her dark mound, even that adorable little navel. Dane seized those hips and pulled her forward till she was just above the tip of his shaft. “I’d like to see you take it in your hand and place it where I did last night.”

  She slipped her fingers around it. “Like this?” She then inserted it easily into her satin depths. Dane closed his eyes and groaned as her tight, wet sheathe clung to him as if she would never let him go.

  He hoped not. He moved his hips, she moved hers, and before he knew it he was spilling his seed into her as she collapsed on top of him, skin to skin. She couldn’t crush him the way he could her. Breathing raggedly, with both hands he brushed back her hair that hung in his face, and looked deep into those enormous eyes the color of bluebells.

  “I can’t wait to get you somewhere I’ve never proposed marriage before, so I can propose marriage to you,” he said. “You do wish for a proposal, do you not?”

  She smiled. “Of course. I would much prefer that to a blunt ‘marry me’ as if you’re giving a command. ’Tis even more preferable to marrying because our long-departed fathers arranged it many years ago.”

  His heart skipped a beat. “Then you know about that?”

  She looked as if her own heart just did the same thing. “I’m not sure what I know about it. I only recall something my father said.” Cecily rolled off of Dane and flopped next to him, leaving him exposed to a draft in the bedchamber that cooled his body at once. “My mother suddenly left. I was only about eight or nine years old. And when I asked my father why, he said it was because she didn’t want me to marry a duke. Instead, she wanted me to stay with Uncle Willard and Aunt Thea while she went to the Continent and Papa went back to sea. In fact, that’s my last memory of him, because after that I never saw him again—or Mama. She was infected by a sick passenger on the stage to London, and died in some wayside inn without ever reaching the Continent. Or London. But when he said ‘a duke’ I never thought he meant any duke in particular. Perhaps you’re aware that it’s not unusual for young girls to dream of marrying ‘a prince’ or even ‘a duke’ one day. They tend to be faceless, nameless bridegrooms. Still, what happened has never made sense to me, and no one has ever explained it.”

  Dane reached for her hand and squeezed it. He’d always wondered how much Cecily knew about that, but had never seen the point in trying to find an answer to that question.

  “Maybe I can explain it. After your parents died, my father nullified a contract they drew up betrothing you to me.”

  “Then it is true. I imagined it, but never believed it. ’Tis a good thing I’m lying down.”

  “My father drew up several such contracts with girls’ fathers. I doubt if yours was the only one he nullified. I only know about yours because when I was at Ashdown Park two years ago pretending to betroth myself to Evangeline Benedict, Ashdown himself showed me a letter addressed to your father from my own father’s solicitor, ending our betrothal due to breach of contract. So yes, I’ve known about this for a couple of years, but never said anything to you because—well, because I don’t want to marry anyone for that reason, and I’d like to think you feel the same.”

  “You know I do. I do believe we’ve done better to let things take a more natural course.”

  He smiled. “I’d say we’re taking a very natural course at this moment.”

  She sat up, but to his disappointment, she made certain her hair hung over the front of her shoulders, concealing her breasts. “Only why would your father do that?”

  Dane sighed heavily as he gazed up at her. She had the right to know. “Cecily, my dearest, if there was any duke who was a real devil, then it was my father. He was never faithful to my mother. Indeed, he was so faithless that my mother once said she couldn’t even be certain that Linus and Gareth and I were hers.” He forced a smile.

  Cecily smiled, too. “I had no idea. Indeed, I always thought that when the duchess died, he went abroad because he was so deeply grieved over losing her.”

  “That’s what everyone thinks,” Dane replied. “Indeed, that’s what everyone is supposed to believe. Even my two brothers believed it. Or at least as far as I know, they’ve never believed otherwise. I never asked them. Linus was killed on the Peninsula, but Gareth is in London. I should ask him when I get there. But no, my father went abroad to have himself a wonderful time sampling women from different lands, no doubt leaving behind more than a few by-blows here and there. He never returned to England until he took ill and realized he was dying. But I digress, and there’s no way to dress this up in silk and lace. Prior to all of that, my father wanted to spend the night with your mother. That’s the sort of man he was. He saw a woman he desired, and it mattered not if she was the wife of someone else. He offered your father an inducement—a marriage contract. Your father agreed.”

  Cecily gasped and leaped out of bed, dragging the counterpane with her. “My mother—and your father—did what we did just now, what we did last night—in exchange for a betrothal between you and
me?”

  Dane sat up and pulled the sheet to his waist. It was probably for the better that they didn’t have this conversation while they were both naked. He shook his head. “No. Apparently, when your mother found out what your father had done, she left him—ran away before she could be placed in my father’s bed. She wanted no part of that arrangement. Thus the contract was nullified. She left you with her sister and fled, while your father returned to sea as if nothing happened.”

  “And I never saw either of them again,” she whispered.

  Tears glistened in her eyes, tugging at Dane’s heart. The last thing he ever wanted to do was hurt Cecily, an innocent pawn who’d long made him wonder the same thing that spurred her to write her stories.

  What if...?

  What if her mother had spent the night with his father, after all? Would Dane still have married Cecily? Would he still have fallen in love with her?

  Did it even matter now?

  “I’m sorry for what our fathers did, and for your mother abandoning you,” he said. “Though I daresay it must have taken a great deal of courage for her to stand up to them and do what she did, even if it was all she could do. I see that same courage in you, Cecily.” It was another one of the things Dane loved about her.

  She sniffled and wiped her eyes. “Had my mother taken me with her, I might have sickened and died, too. But I’m glad she never kept her end of the bargain, such as it was. And make that another reason I don’t want that book published. You’re not the duke who’s the devil. You’re only the duke who’s been made to look like one because of all the wicked deeds committed by the real devil duke.” She paused and pondered before adding, “That really sounds ludicrous, doesn’t it?”

  He rose from the bed, wrapping the sheet around himself as he stepped over to her. “Don’t worry anymore about the book you wrote, Cecily. I don’t want you to worry about anything, anymore. You deserve happiness, and I mean to do whatever it takes to make you happy. Because that will make me happy.” He arched a brow. “And I don’t know about you, but I do believe I deserve happiness, too.”