“I know…I know you are not vulnerable like you once were, Rowe. That you know who you are and you do not need me to say this. But I need to say it for me.” Her voice rough, it cracked. She took a moment, head down, to re-gather her words.
Then she leaned further forward, her hands slipping onto his thighs. Her hazel eyes came to his face. “I have never met a man with more worth than you, Rowe. Never. Who you are. What you stand for. What you have done. Every breath you take has integrity that cannot be broken. I see that. I see you. The whole of you is what I love.”
Her thumbs tightened on his legs, drifting into dangerous territory. “And what you have done for me—all you have ever wanted to do since we met was protect me. Protect my innocence. You are good, Rowe. From your mind, to deep in your soul. Good. Every heartbeat. Every breath.”
Rowen closed his eyes, dragging air into his tight chest.
She was wrong. So very wrong. Those were the exact words he needed to hear. From anyone else, it would mean nothing. But from Wynne…from Wynne it meant the world.
“And you are still trying to protect my innocence, Rowe. But that innocence was gone—shattered—before you ever laid eyes on me. It is not something you can protect anymore.”
She stood, straddling his legs and the chair. Rowen opened his eyes to her.
Moving forward, she pulled her skirts upward, bunching them until she could lower herself onto his lap, her thighs bare to the world.
Wynne’s hands went to either side of his face, forcing his gaze to meet hers. “I needed you last night, Rowe, and you knew—you knew exactly what I needed. You gave it to me.”
Her lips came down to his, sweet softness brushing his skin. “And now you need me, Rowe. You need me.” Her lips moved against his, whispering. “Let me give you what you need.”
She curled her body forward, her hips rotating on his lap as she took his mouth fully, her tongue slipping in, her teeth teasing his skin.
The vague thoughts of resistance, of honor, floated from his mind. She was right. He did need this. Need her in the most basic, human way. Her body giving over to him.
He let it happen. Let her deepen her assault, let her move her body against his until there was no turning back. No argument against what they both knew he needed.
He needed her.
And she wasn’t going to let him choose otherwise.
Wynne’s hands slid down his body, her fingers running over his chest, pulling up his linen shirt until she could lift it off his frame.
His torso naked to her, she bent, her lips running along his neck as her hands dove downward, unbuttoning his breeches. The motion, so simple, and with every brush of her knuckles, Rowen grew harder.
Freed from the leather, he groaned, arching into her hands, begging for tightness in her touch.
Wynne obliged, taking him full in her fingers, stroking, as her teeth ran along a line from his shoulder to the back of his neck.
“Tell me I am doing this right, Rowe.”
Instinct sent his hands around her, popping buttons on her dress and dragging it off her body. For a moment he thought she would cower from her nakedness, but she didn’t hesitate, instead wrapping her body even closer to his, skin on skin. Her nipples dragged across his chest.
Rowen’s mouth went to her ear, tugging on her earlobe. “You are torture and heaven in one, Wynne. Hell, yes, you are doing this right.”
His palms dragged up her body, fingers stretched across her back as his palms, his thumbs explored her curves—reveled in the smoothness of her skin, the way her body leaned into his touch, skin prickling.
When he hit the moment he was straining, holding onto the last shreds of control, he dipped his hands inward, thumbs going to her core, finding her nubbin, waking it, owning it.
Her body already moving in rhythm against his hand, Rowen grabbed her hips, lifting her and sliding into her body. Letting her sink onto him. Slow. Torturous.
He filled her—claiming every part of her body that was open to him, and then he lifted her again. Dropping her with sweet agony, he repeated, fighting against her whimpered begs, her thrusting hips. She wanted him fast, straining herself to reach peak, and Rowen was enjoying the rawness in her need, in her mouth on his skin, in her hands ravaging his body.
She started to beg, swearing, and Rowen grimaced against coming, his thumbs attacking her folds as he let her take over the pace on top of him. She came, arching backward, breasts in his face, and in the next instant, curled into him, fingernails digging into his back, tethering herself to him.
It turned Rowen savage, holding no bars against what he needed to unleash in her. How he needed to take her. Fill her. Deep and hard, again and again.
She held fast to him, her body trembling, the throes of her orgasm jerking through her muscles. Softly screaming his name in his ear.
It only took moments, and Rowen came, brutally, his body shuddering under her.
Emptying into her, lost in her body, in all the woman above him was, the click of the door only partially made it into his consciousness.
Only partially, and he did not bother to convince himself it was real.
His imagination.
Only his imagination.
{ Chapter 16 • Worth of a Duke }
Rowen propped his ankle onto his knee, leaning back in the leather chair. Gaze lost on the fire in the study, he took another sip of brandy.
He had hoped the brandy would numb the urge he was having to go up to Wynne’s bedroom, to wake her up, to take her.
No matter that it was the middle of the night. No matter that it was only a few hours since they left the painting room.
But it was already a precarious precipice they were balancing on. He still had serious concerns about Wynne’s state of mind. About her grief. About his own state of mind. About the demons she managed to drag from the depths of his mind. About the fact that he was very quickly coming to the point where he was consumed with her.
All he wanted to do was be with Wynne. Talk to her. Laugh with her. Take her to his bed and keep her there until the need for her was sated—sated for at least a few hours.
He needed to get a license and find a minister, and soon. He was done sneaking around with Wynne.
Rowen took another slow sip, still hoping it would help—but also disgusted that the brandy had done very little against easing the turmoil going on in his mind.
“I saw you.”
The words came into the room, harsh, accusing. And then the duchess appeared out of the darkness, stepping in front of him and blocking his line to the fire.
Rowen’s eyes fell closed with an inhale. He could not take the duchess right now. Not tonight. Not after what he had told Wynne. Not when all he wanted to do was curl up with Wynne tight to his body.
“Let me be more specific, L.B.” He heard the duchess’s skirts swish. “I saw you in the painting room, not but a few hours ago.”
Shit.
Rowen’s eyes opened slowly to the duchess, fury palpitating.
“You have compromised her, L.B.”
“What do you want, Duchess?”
She took a step closer, lording over him. “I want Wynne back. You have taken her away from me, and I want her back as mine.”
“She is not a pet, Duchess.”
“I am aware. She was my friend, and you took her away.” Her voice turned wicked. “Just as you have always taken everything from me, L.B. But you will not have her as well.”
“Wynne is a grown woman who can make her own decisions. And be very careful with your next words, Duchess. Do not dare to threaten her again.”
“No. Do not worry on that, L.B. I have decided that would not be fair.” The duchess’s arms came up slowly, crossing over her ribcage. She tilted her head slightly toward him, her voice suddenly sweet honey. “You are right—Wynne should not be the one to suffer because you cannot keep your breeches buttoned.”
Rowen’s eyes narrowed, wary. “What are you planning, Duc
hess?”
“I believe it is time to share our secret, little bastard.”
The glass shattered in his hand.
She had not been bold enough to utter those words since he was six—not since she had conveniently replaced them with “L.B.”
Rowen threw the shards to the floor, blood drops splattering, and jumped to his feet, stance threatening. “You would not dare.”
“No?” She looked up at him with wicked coolness. “It will remove you from Wynne, and she would remain unharmed, her reputation intact.”
“You talk gibberish, old woman. How would that remove me from Wynne?”
She shook her head, pitying. “L.B., do you honestly think she wants a man who has been stripped of a dukedom? Who has nothing?” She stepped closer, her folded arms touching him as she sneered up at him. “I removed Victoria from your grasp rather easily. And I did not even need to tell her of your lineage.”
“You? Victoria?” Rowen froze, shock vibrating through his body.
She nodded, vicious smile on her lips.
He blinked, shaking himself free of the blow. “Whatever you did, Dowager, it has no bearing. Wynne cannot be manipulated as easily as Victoria was.”
“But do you want Wynne to know you are a bastard? A worthless little bastard? Who your real father is? I will do it, L.B., and I will do it with great satisfaction.”
Rowen had to physically fight his own hands to keep them from wrapping around the duchess’s neck. He seethed down at her. “You would not dare. The line ends with me, Duchess.”
“It ended with my son.”
He forced a chuckle. “Yes. But do remember it is this very secret that keeps you in this place. That keeps you an army of servants. Clothes to wear. Food to eat. Your own holdings are not enough for any of that—your husband made very well sure of it.”
“Something my son would have corrected, had he the chance to do so.”
“But he did not get the chance, Duchess. And you enjoy your comforts too much. Your power. Power that disappears the second the duchy is dissolved.”
She took a deep breath, a bright smile appearing on her face. “I am willing to sacrifice. If for nothing else, than to see you destroyed, once and for all. And Wynne will be at my side once again.”
“Do not do this, Dowager.”
The smile slipped from her face. “You go. You leave Notlund. Or I tell her the truth. She will be the first to know. The first to know you are a bastard, living a life, owning a title you do not deserve. Can you imagine how she will look at you, L.B.? The disgust on her face? For her to know you are lower than dirt? I can imagine it. I can imagine it very well.”
Rowen glared down at her, her words filling his head, wrapping around his neck, setting free the demons from his childhood.
Demons choking him.
She wouldn’t. She had never even dared to suggest this move in the past. She would lose too much.
But then Rowen saw it in her eyes. She would. She would do it just to see him suffer. Just to plunge the knife of revenge into him. The revenge she always needed.
A lifetime of warfare against him would not be enough for her. No—she had waited, waited until this very moment. This moment when he actually had something to lose. She waited until she could make him lose the very thing that meant the most to him.
Wynne.
She had recognized it before he even did—how much Wynne meant to him. That Wynne was the very thing that could destroy him.
Losing the title—he could handle that. The estate—he could care less. He had never wanted the blasted dukedom anyway.
But Wynne knowing. Knowing he was a bastard. How she would look at him once she knew. A bastard baby. Worthless.
He truly was worthless.
If he was lucky, it would just be pity in Wynne’s eyes. If he was unlucky, disdain—scorn—revulsion.
And he could not take Wynne looking at him like that. He could not.
Rowen pushed past the duchess, storming to the door.
“Be gone by morning, L.B.”
~~~
He had asked her to trust him. Yet in all of it, he had omitted that one truth. Kept that one lie hidden from Wynne.
Hell, his whole damn life was a lie.
Every morning. Every evening. It was the one thought that sent him to sleep. The one thought that greeted him when he woke.
Who he really was. A bastard.
For as far from his childhood as he had come, that one fact remained with him. He was a bastard. Born a bastard. Would always be a bastard. The one fact he could not escape, could not forget.
Rowen exhaled, his breath crystallizing in the cold morning air. Phalos had been faster along the trail than Rowen would have liked.
He wanted to drag out his exit from Notlund. Drag out putting more distance between him and Wynne. But Phalos was feeling spry legs and happy to be tromping through the forest.
Three hours since he had disappeared from the castle at the sun’s first rays. Three hours of torture he could only hope would ebb once he made it to London.
But he was not about to give up on the slight sliver of hope he had left—that Wynne would choose to come after him on her own accord. Rowen had left Notlund to satisfy the duchess’s demand, but the one thing the dowager forgot was that she could not control Wynne.
Wynne would come after him. She had to.
He had left her the horse. The note. The money. She would come.
And Rowen was taking the roundabout way to the main road to London—the trail Wynne knew—just in case. The same trail that had first brought Wynne to Notlund.
A squirrel flitted down a tree and scampered across the muddy trail in front of Phalos. The image of the first time he had met Wynne flickered into Rowen’s mind. Of her gutting the squirrel. Offering the meat up to him.
Earthy. Genuine. Trusting.
It was who she was. All of those things, to her core.
It hit him.
She wouldn’t care. She wouldn’t care who his father was. How he was born. If he had a title or not. If he had money.
It was him—without the title, without money, without land—him that she had first smiled at. First offered half a squirrel to. She didn’t know who he was then, she just knew she liked him. Knew he had helped her, and wanted to repay him.
She was living in a damn forest—and more than content to do so. And he was worried about how she would react to his lineage? That she would leave him—deny him if she knew the truth?
He had asked Wynne to trust him, yet he had not given her the very same.
Pure stupidity.
Rowen yanked up on the reins, stopping Phalos.
Wynne was the exact opposite of everyone he had ever known. The trappings of wealth and a title were nowhere near important to her.
Take away her painting, she would care.
Not enough food to eat, she would care.
Beyond those two things, she was happy.
Just happy to be in his life.
Rowen curled over, head bowed. Physically disgusted at his own stupidity. Disgusted that he had let the duchess into his head. Disgusted that he had doubted himself—doubted Wynne.
He had just made the decision for her—decided how she would react to his lineage.
Except he was wrong, and he knew it. Completely and utterly wrong.
And he had left her with a note.
Bloody hell.
He spun Phalos, heels digging in. He needed to get back.
Back to Wynne before she found his note.
{ Chapter 17 • Worth of a Duke }
The feel of Rowen’s lips, his body encasing her, ebbed away as lucidity pulled Wynne away from the darkness of dream and into the morning. Too exhausted by Rowen the previous night, she hadn’t bothered to pull the heavy drapes against the window, and sunlight streamed in, calling her to the day.
She rolled to her side, eyes closed and lips still pulsating. She needed to fall back asleep. Fall back into th
e deliciousness of her memories—of Rowen.
Her eyes flew open. Even better than the memory of Rowen would be finding him and tagging along with him down to the stables. She could get him to take Phalos out so she could study the muscle tone of the horse. Plus—she smirked to herself—then she could study the muscle lines of Rowen as well.
The sun would be warming the air, and if she was fast, she might catch Rowen before he headed out of the castle for the day.
She was dressed, sitting on the side of the bed and tying up her tall boots when she noticed a cream envelope with her name scrawled across it on the table next to the bed.
Had that been there last night and she missed it?
Boots tied, she stood, picking up the envelope and opening it.
A small notecard inside, it had just a few words on it.
Wynne—
Please visit stall 39 in the stables.
—Rowe
A smile spread wide across her face. Rowen had a surprise waiting for her. She sprang over to the bureau and pulled out a dark wool cloak, wrapping it around her as she went out the door.
Braiding her hair along the way, fifteen minutes later, Wynne had greeted several of the stable hands on the way into the center stable, and was watching the brass numbers on each stall tick upward as she made it deep into the structure…34…35…36…37…38…39.
She stopped, seeing immediately a gleaming new side saddle, a motif of ivy etched into the deep brown leather, draped over the short wall at the front of the stall. The horse she had ridden to Tanloon, the beautiful honey-colored mare with a creamy white nose, stepped forward at noticing her, sniffing at the saddle and watching Wynne with interest.
She glanced into the stall and then looked around. No one was nearby. And Rowen was nowhere to be seen.
Opening the gate of the stall, Wynne moved in and stroked the bridge of the horse’s nose. “Here I am, sweetheart. Stall 39. Do you know why I am here, girl?”
The horse whinnied, shaking her mane, then nudged Wynne’s still outstretched hand for another stroke. The smell of fresh hay wafted up and Wynne had to hold her nose against a sneeze. Mindlessly, Wynne rubbed the horse’s nose, looking around.
Lord of Fates: A Complete Historical Regency Romance Series (3-Book Box Set) Page 17