“Your reputation precedes you, of course, Your Grace,” she said briskly, fighting to keep her wits about her when she couldn’t seem to pull in a full breath. “But it is not your reputation that concerns me. It is your ward’s education.”
“A clever dodge, Miss Andrews, but I’d prefer it if you answered the question.”
Eleanor reminded herself that this was not a situation that required her honesty. This man was not interested in her frank opinion of him. How could he be? Hugo was the Duke of Grovesmoor. And her employer. If he wanted to pretend that the stories about him were lies, it was only in Eleanor’s best interest to agree.
Because, as her sister reminded her almost every night, this was about the money. It was most certainly not about that odd weight in her chest that urged her to do the exact opposite of what she knew to be necessary. And smart.
She ignored that weight. She shoved it aside and pretended she couldn’t feel it. She made herself smile. Politely.
“Everyone knows the tabloids are filled with lies,” she murmured, hoping that placated him. “All smoke, no fire.”
Hugo shook his head as if he were disappointed in her. “I believe you are lying, Miss Andrews, and I am shocked onto my soul.” That curve in the corner of his mouth deepened. “And yes, I do have one. Clouded and murky though it may be.”
It was entirely too easy to drift off, staring at this man in all his dark, threatening beauty, as if he was an approaching storm and the worst that could happen to her was that she’d get a bit wet. But she had to stop thinking of him that way. She had to do something about the strange signals her body sent off that made her entirely too nervous. That tightness in her breasts. The knotted thing in her belly. And that odd, melting sensation lower still.
She had to remember what she was doing here. It was about the money and it was about Geraldine, and all these strange electrical moments were distractions, nothing more.
Because of course they couldn’t be anything more.
“I’ve given Geraldine a series of tests and have found she’s well above her year in most areas. Whatever the previous fourteen governesses might have lacked, they were clearly decent tutors. She’s very bright and quite advanced.”
“I’m delighted to hear it.” He did not sound delighted.
“I believe she will make you proud,” Eleanor said, and realized almost instantly that it was the wrong thing to say. Of course it was the wrong thing to say. The child was not his. Geraldine was his ward, not his daughter. It was entirely possible that the only proud day of his life would be the day she reached her majority and was no longer his responsibility.
And none of that was her business, as Mrs. Redding had suggested.
“I’m sorry,” she said quickly, before he could respond. Then, as if the apology needed explanation, she pushed on. “I always wanted to be a teacher when I was younger, but then I took a little bit of a detour.”
“Into a number of office positions in London,” he said, without consulting any notes. Meaning he just knew that. Eleanor told herself that wasn’t strange at all, and there was absolutely no reason that prickling feeling should intensify until she felt goose bumps on her arms.
“Yes,” she confirmed. “This governess position is new to me. Perhaps in my enthusiasm, I’ve overstepped.”
For a long moment, Hugo said nothing. But it wasn’t as if his silences were empty. On the contrary, everything felt thick. The air. That raw thing that kept expanding inside her chest, until once again, she didn’t think she could pull in a full breath. But the longer she stared at his mesmerizing face, and those unholy eyes of his, the less she cared.
“You do not treat me like a monster, Miss Andrews.” Hugo’s voice was a smooth lick against the quiet that surrounded them. “I find it disconcerting that you do not, when everyone else does. Why don’t you?”
Eleanor felt her lips part at that, and quickly snapped her mouth shut. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I think you do. Women normally approach me in one of two ways. They either fling themselves at me, desperate for my touch and my attention. Or they cower, certain that a stray graze of my finger will ruin their reputations forever, and more importantly, leave them mere, shivering wrecks of their former selves thanks to my supposed evil powers—but not in any fun way. Yet you do neither.”
There was a note in his voice that she didn’t understand, but it seemed to wind its way through her like honey. Or something far more intoxicating.
“I apologize, Your Grace,” she managed to say. “I was unaware that a certain reaction was called for the part of the job. To you, I mean. Perhaps it’s silly of me, but I thought my relationship with Geraldine was the point.”
“No one takes this job for the child. One way or another, they always take it for me. The fact that you do not wish to admit this only makes you more curious. And I should not have to tell you that making yourself the focus of my attention...has consequences.”
Eleanor was clenching her hands together entirely too tightly, something she only noticed when they went numb. She forced herself to unlace her fingers and sensation came back in a rush. She ignored it when they began to sting.
“I would prefer not to be crass, Your Grace, but you give me no choice.”
“I am all ears, of course. I enjoy crassness very much. You must realize this.”
“I’m sure you’re a very nice man. Deep down,” she added at his snort. “But of course you must realize that the position’s salary is what’s attractive. While you have a certain charm, I suppose, that really isn’t why I came. I told you before. I was assured—repeatedly—that I would never see you.”
“I have a very large and extraordinarily healthy ego, Miss Andrews, and yet it withers before you. Most women would scramble up the Cliffs of Dover if they imagined they might catch a glimpse of me.”
“I suspect your ego is quite robust and will survive handily. And I am not most women.”
“You most certainly are not.”
Eleanor caught herself before she flung something back at him. There was no call to come over all caustic and acerbic, which seemed to be her happy place where the Duke was concerned. It wouldn’t help her in any way to actively antagonize him. Hugo might have been eyeing her in very much the same way a large, indolent house cat might an extremely foolish mouse. But that didn’t mean she should scamper out there of her own volition and show him her belly.
Think of the money, she told herself sternly. Think of Vivi.
She surged up and onto her feet at that. “It’s late, Your Grace.”
“It is not yet midnight.” He didn’t bother to glance at the watch on his wrist, which Eleanor could tell must have cost a fortune or two, since it looked like it belonged on the side of an old town hall in Prague. “It is scarcely ten.”
“Which is late for those of us who rise with small children in the morning.”
“There it is,” he said softly and, if she was not mistaken, with some satisfaction. “There is that fear of me I recognize.”
“It’s not fear, it’s anxiety,” she corrected him. “It makes me anxious to have these confusing conversations. Surely you can understand that. I work for you.”
“Of course I can’t understand any such thing. I’ve never worked for anyone in all my days.”
Eleanor waved a hand at the stuffed shelves on all sides. “Thank goodness you have all these books, then, to allow you a different perspective than your own.”
“I think you’re lying again, Miss Andrews,” Hugo said, and his voice had gone silky. Dark. Something much worse than simply decadent.
And it shuddered through Eleanor. It made her ache. Everywhere.
Her pulse fluttered about weakly and she thought perhaps she shouldn’t have had those prawns for her tea. Then she wondered what had become of her that she was standing here, actively wishing she was ill. Instead of the alternative.
“You’ve lost me once again,” she told him. Faintly.
“Wha
t you’re feeling right now is not fear,” Hugo told her, and there was that certainty again. Pouring out of him as if he’d never suffered a moment’s doubt about anything in his charmed life. “Or anxiety about speaking to your employer. You can feel how quickly your heart beats, can you not? And that hot and restless yearning in the pit of your stomach?”
She flushed hot and, she feared, red. “No.”
“The funny thing about a man like me is that I cannot abide lies to my face. There are too many in print.” He smiled. “Try again.”
“I’m a bit overtired, actually. I’d like to be excused so I can take to my bed, please.”
“Bed is the cure, Miss Andrews, but I’m not talking about sleeping. And I think you know it.”
Eleanor found she was gaping at him. Again. And this time, she didn’t have it in her to do anything about it.
“Are you... You can’t...”
And Hugo laughed, stealing the heat from the fire and the air from the room.
Then, worse, he unfolded himself from his chair and rose to his feet. And suddenly, the library seemed like a closed fist—a vicious and unbreakable grip all around her. Forget breathing—Eleanor wasn’t sure she could stand. But she also couldn’t seem to move away the way everything in her screamed she should. It was as if she was frozen in place, though there wasn’t a single part of her that was cold.
Not one.
“You look very much like a woman who can think of nothing at all but the way I might kiss you,” Hugo said softly.
“That can’t happen,” Eleanor breathed.
“It already has. It will again. I’m afraid it is inevitable.”
He reached over and fit his hands to her cheeks. And as if that was not bad enough, he used one thumb to trace slowly, lazily over her mouth, as if he was learning the contours of her lips.
If he’d doused her in gasoline and lit a match, she could not have burned hotter. Or brighter. And god help her, it was all so wrong.
“See?” His voice was so low, so sure, it seemed to interfere with her ribs. “Not fear at all.”
He shifted, lifting her chin and her face toward his, and Eleanor panicked. Or anyway, that was what she thought that was, that blinding rush of sensation that was too electric and too impossible to be borne.
“I’m asexual,” she blurted out.
She expected that announcement to stop him. To stop everything. To make all of this stop pulsing and whirling and make a little sense again.
But Hugo made a noise, deep in his throat, that sounded like a cross between a laugh and a sort of growl. He didn’t let her go. If anything, his hands held her faster. And she felt them in even more places.
“Are you?” He didn’t sound particularly fussed.
“Well, yes.” This close, it was almost impossible to remember what she meant to say—it was those eyes of his. And worse, his mouth. His lush, wicked mouth, that hovered far too close to hers and made everything in her a molten sort of heat. “I always have been, I suppose.”
“Have you?”
“Yes,” she said, with a bit more asperity. She would have kicked herself if she could. And if she could remember how to operate her legs. “I don’t feel things, you see. I’m sorry if that makes things awkward.”
“It would,” Hugo agreed. He moved closer to her, making his impossibly well-formed chest part of the whole...problem. “But I think you feel quite a lot.”
“I most certainly do not,” Eleanor retorted, despite the fact that she did indeed feel entirely too much. Everywhere. And constantly. And she couldn’t tell if she was sick or panicked or something in between. But she was certain there was some other explanation than the heat she could see in his whiskey-colored eyes.
“I suspect that what you’ve been, little one,” Hugo murmured, his voice a low rumble that she could feel inside of her like a kind of earthquake, “is bored.”
And then he set his mouth to hers, and proved it.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THIS KISS WAS different from the last.
Eleanor would not have imagined in a million years that she would ever be in a position where she was noting the difference between kisses, having never expected to spend much time kissing anyone, but here she was. This one was different than the lazy way he’d taken her mouth in the hall outside the nursery.
Much different. Much...hotter.
There was urgency this time. Bright fire and driving need.
Or maybe, she thought with no little wonder, that was her.
Hugo dropped his hands from her face and slid them down her back. He pulled her up against him, and it was as if everything inside her head simply went white. Blank. She disappeared into the sound of her heart, clattering wildly against her ribs, and the impossible, wild beauty of his mouth on hers.
Over and over again.
In some distant part of her mind, Eleanor knew this was a mistake. She knew it. But she couldn’t seem to stop herself. She didn’t want to stop herself. He angled his head and took the kiss deeper. Hotter. Wetter and wilder.
And she was content to let him guide her. Teach her. Take her over and burn her alive.
He kissed her again and again, bending her backward as he did. One of his hands found the small of her back and held her fast against him as he continued to use that mouth of his like some kind of slick weapon. Eleanor found her arms around his neck, but had no memory of putting them there. Maybe there was something inside of her that knew she needed to hold on. Or be lost forever in this storm she should have had the good sense to avoid.
But she didn’t want to avoid it. She wanted to dance in it. She wanted to shout down the thunder and let the rain wash her clean.
She didn’t even know what that meant, but she wanted it, and every time he dragged his lips across hers, she thrilled to it.
And then there was what he did with his hands. She couldn’t work out which was worse, that he seemed to know her so much better than she knew herself, or that she was afraid she might explode with every sizzling new touch.
He slid his free hand down her side as if he was testing her shape, spilling heat wherever he went, then sliding around to grip her bottom and pull her even closer.
“Perfect,” he muttered against her mouth, and a sheer, shivery sort of reaction burst inside of her at that.
Pleasure, she thought. Pure pleasure.
She had never allowed herself that sort of thing before. She hadn’t known it existed, if she was honest. But Hugo’s hands on her body opened up a new window into near-unimaginable delights and Eleanor couldn’t seem to keep herself from tossing herself headfirst into them. Whatever they were. Whatever the price.
“More,” Hugo said in a low, dangerously gruff voice, moving his mouth down the line of her neck.
And when the world seemed to shift, the floor moving beneath them and the fire spinning in a giddy loop, it took Eleanor a moment to realize that it was because Hugo was doing it. She didn’t think her feet hit the ground as he picked her up and swung her around until her back was to the bookshelf.
Then he pressed himself against her as if he couldn’t bear another inch of separation between them.
Eleanor supposed she should have objected to that—to all of it—but she was entirely too busy being overwhelmed by him. All of him. Her mind could hardly keep up with what was happening to her body. What he was doing to her body.
And what her body was doing to her, every time she shivered. Every time she surrendered. Every time she let out sounds she didn’t recognize.
Hugo’s mouth was a torment. A reward. Both at once.
He stroked his hands down the length of her arms and threaded his fingers with hers. Then, never breaking contact with her lips, he lifted her arms up above her and pinned her wrists to the bookshelves at her back.
“Stay still,” he ordered her.
And it didn’t occur to Eleanor to do anything but obey him. She was quivering too much. She was too undone. She was lost in this, whatever it w
as, and she wasn’t sure she could make her way out of it.
Scarier still, she wasn’t sure she wanted out in the first place.
Hugo muttered something that she couldn’t quite make sense of, and then he shifted back slightly so he could look down at her, moving his hands so that one rested on each side of her face. In some far-off corner of her mind it occurred to Eleanor to worry that he might find her lacking. That looking at her the way he was might break this spell, whatever it was. Because this was a man who could sleep with any of the great beauties of their age at will. And had.
But when he finally dragged his gaze back to hers, all thoughts and insecurities vanished. Because Eleanor might not have done this before. She might have no idea how this had happened or what she was meant to do next. But she’d never seen anything so hot or so needy in all her life as that look on Hugo’s face.
It was so intense it felt like a kind of devastation, rolling over her and flattening her and changing her, but she was still standing.
Somehow, she was still standing, and she couldn’t seem to step away from him. She couldn’t even bring herself to try.
Hugo moved then. He traced his way down her neck, then moved his hands to cup her breasts, making her breath desert her in an audible rush that embarrassed her, it was obvious. But there was something reverent in the way his hands curved around her, testing her through the layers she wore and dragging those expert thumbs of his over her nipples—and the crazy part was that she could still feel the heat of his palms. Flooding into her. Making her feel even more needy and wild.
He made another one of those distinctly male noises deep in his throat, low and somehow untamed, that made everything inside Eleanor bristle into a kind of liquid awareness. Shocking and bright, even as it pooled low in her belly.
“Later,” he said, and it sounded like a promise.
Eleanor had no idea what he was talking about. And she didn’t care, because he kept going. He bent closer to her as he traced his way down the length of her body, finding the indentation of her waist and then the swell of her hips and taking his time learning both.
And then he found his way to the fastening of her trousers, and it was as if everything inside of her toppled over and crumbled into dust. Just like that.
Undone by the Billionaire Duke Page 7