The Duke

by Kerrigan Byrne

  Woodenly, Imgoen turned toward the curtain; its crimson and black arabesque design was faded and dingy from so many men tossing it aside on their way back to the bedrooms.

  “Room seventeen,” del Toro called after her.

  Of course it was room 17. Only the best for the Duke of Trenwyth.

  Room 17 was one of the very few suites abovestairs in the narrow, long building that housed the Bare Kitten. Climbing those stairs felt like scaling Kilimanjaro to Imogen, who was out of breath by the time she reached the top. Not because she was unused to stairs, but because her corset, combined with the band of fear squeezing her lungs, didn’t allow her to properly inhale. Room 17 might as well have been the gallows. It wasn’t that the man within didn’t appeal to her—his beauty was unparalleled—but it would mean that she’d truly become what she’d never imagined herself to be.

  A prostitute.

  Reaching for the latch, Imogen paused, placing a hand low on her belly where it seemed an entire flock of birds flapped and churned their wings in equal measure to the violent trepidation she felt.

  She closed her eyes and sent a prayer for strength to a God who would condemn her for what she was about to do. Then she stepped inside, shutting the door on her innocence.

  Trenwyth was already naked.

  Her shock had her flattened against the door as she gaped at him with blatant stupefaction. As a nurse, Imogen had been privy to the nude male form before, and again as an artist. But nothing in her extensive experience had prepared her for the pure splendor of Collin Talmage. Not even when she’d been held against him did she comprehend the raw, corded strength he wielded. With his back to her, she was able to somewhat adjust to the sight of all that perfect bare flesh.

  Before she was compelled to touch it.

  One lantern sputtered dimly on the bedside table where he set a drink next to a ready decanter, completely unabashed by his own nudity. The shadows cast by the lone flame into the grooves of his long, taut muscles were just as tantalizing as the illumination.

  “Would you like a drink?” He gestured to the golden liquid he’d abandoned. “I believe I’ve had quite enough.”

  He turned around, and Imogen couldn’t have swallowed had liquid been poured straight into her gaping mouth. Somehow, she knew that Collin Talmage, the Duke of Trenwyth, had never in his life been afflicted with the Irish curse. His sex stood proudly erect from the sinewy definition of his lean hips. He glanced down, rather sheepishly, and flicked her a look full of pure, sinful invitation.

  Surely he didn’t mean to put that … that … inside of her. It wouldn’t, couldn’t possibly fit. Her mind recoiled, but her body … her body responded. She suddenly felt like a rosebud about to bloom, trembling with the instinct to open. To bare herself. The impulse frightened her enough that she wrapped her arms around her middle in a foolish attempt to hold together.

  Glancing at the chair where he’d discarded his uniform, she noted the gleam of a veritable arsenal of weapons. Two pistols, seven knives of alternating sizes, the saber, a strange-looking vambrace that must have been beneath his shirtsleeves, and … good Lord, was that a syringe? Just where had he stashed all those on his person?

  Imogen glanced back at the duke with wide-eyed suspicion. What if he really was a spy?

  He returned her wild gaze with a steady one. Carefully, without breaking eye contact, he lowered himself to the bed, his knees falling open slightly as he lounged. A lion at rest.

  “Come to me,” he said, holding his hand out to her.

  Imogen could barely feel the legs that carried her to him, but somehow she traversed the shadows of the crimson room, until she stood before him as still as stone.

  This close, she found it difficult not to become overwhelmed by his beauty. His relaxed posture was deceptive, she realized, as his muscles were coiled as tightly as a predator ready to spring. Though his expression remained inscrutable, a distinctive sense of leashed violence wove through the air between them, though his placid, enigmatic features never revealed it.

  He released a breath he’d been holding too long, his eyes becoming heavy-lidded as his tongue snaked out to moisten lips gone dry.

  He reached for her, and then seemed to change his mind. “Take that off,” he commanded softly.

  Struck by a shy uncertainty, she didn’t believe that her fingers would be capable of the task.

  “You could…” she offered hesitantly. “You could undress me, if you like.”

  “You wouldn’t like that,” he warned, shifting his position to angle slightly away from her.

  “I—I don’t mind. I’m to do whatever you ask.”

  “If I touch that dress, I’ll shred it,” he said tightly. “And I don’t believe you’re ready for that.” How a man could manage to appear savage, bleak, and seductive at the same time was beyond her. But, in the end, it was the soul-haunting sorrow beneath the naked desire in his eyes that brought her fingers to the buttons of her scandalously low bodice.

  His feral gaze latched onto the movements of her unsteady hands, and Imogen groped for something to say as she peeled her dress down her arms.

  “Twenty pounds?” Her eyes closed in mortification. How vulgar and stupid it was to bring up money when you were being paid for fantasy.

  “I didn’t like Mackenzie’s hands on you.” His own hands curled as her dress slid in a heap to the floor, leaving her only in her corset, drawers, stockings, and slippers. “Then I realized it was because I wanted to put my hands on you. Only my hands. I could feel how warm you were all night against my thigh.”

  The memory apparently proved too much for him.

  He sprang and she started, but the arms that pulled Imogen down to him were careful, if not gentle. Trenwyth was a man aware of his own strength. Used to tempering it, controlling it, and only unleashing it upon the deserving.

  He split her thighs over his lap and, true to his word, he rent her undergarments with his big hands and tossed them to the floor. She was too astounded to make a sound, to do anything but kneel above him and hope her trembling bare thighs didn’t give out. Without thinking, her hand gripped the unyielding flesh of his shoulders to steady herself.

  Their eyes met and clung, her face only inches from his. She didn’t dare look down, couldn’t think of the chill of the air against the heat of her most intimate flesh. Flesh she’d bared to no one before this night. Didn’t want to see how close it was to the aroused column of his sex.

  Dear God, she thought in a rush of panic, how could she bring herself to do this?

  His hands gripped the span of her hips to steady her. Her muscles trembled and quivered beneath them, and he ran his thumb over the protuberance of her hip bone in a soothing gesture.

  “Of all the torments I’ve experienced, and they’ve been many, the heat of your slit against my leg had to be the most pleasant torture yet.” The unfettered depravity of his increasingly garbled words elicited a startled sound from her, one that he covered with a kiss.

  Her mouth felt uncommonly soft beneath his hard lips. Her flesh and bones even more delicate against a body so hard and lean.

  He reminded her how breakable she was and yet … she felt nothing but protected.

  Desired.

  His questing tongue tested the seam of her lips, and instinct drove her to let him inside. Crushing her against him, corset and all, he released a growl as his tongue conducted a wet exploration of her mouth. The sound vibrated up between their bodies, and somehow lent the night an even darker hue. Had she heard a sound like that elsewhere she’d have run from it, screaming for help. But now, like this, it thrilled through her, causing another of those unsettling spasms deep inside her as her sex clenched around its own emptiness.

  Imogen thought she’d been kissed before, but she’d been utterly mistaken. His siege of her mouth went on and on until she lost her breath and didn’t care. Her thoughts scattered like a flock of panicked birds chased out of their roost. Even inebriated, his skill with his mou
th pushed her beyond her wits. He tasted of Scotch and sin, and Imogen wondered if intoxication was as contagious as a fever, because she felt quite funny.

  Just when she thought there was no other place for him to lick, he would begin to suck and nip. To sample and savor. First her bottom lip, then the top before gently capturing her tongue. She thought she’d go mad from the busy sensations.

  Eventually he relented, pulling his tongue away and dragging his mouth across hers in great, gentle sweeps, letting some of his evening stubble rasp at her tender lips.

  His hands didn’t remain idle. They tested the garters securing her stockings to her thighs. They spanned her hips again, apparently enjoying that particular part of her anatomy, and then molded to the curve of her bottom before reaching beneath and—

  Imogen surged away and tried unsuccessfully to clamp her thighs shut as questing fingers found a wellspring of moisture between her legs.

  “Hold still,” he breathed out on a shudder.

  Scandalized and overstimulated, Imogen blinked back a few confused tears. “You don’t have to … We can just … get to it.” She wanted—no—needed this to be over before she lost her nerve. A heated curiosity had bloomed within her, and crawled over her skin. She felt like a wanton. Not like a whore, but like a lover. And she knew whatever he did to her just now was utterly dangerous.

  Dangerous, because she didn’t want him to stop.

  He’d awakened something, some wicked need, and she knew that feeling anything but revulsion with him would only intensify her shame later.

  He blinked her into focus, scrutinizing her with his unsettlingly astute eyes for someone in his state, while his hands steadied her at her waist. “I assume you don’t have many … customers who care to give you pleasure.”

  Imogen bit her kiss-abraded lip before answering carefully. “I … can’t say that I have.”

  His eyes warmed, melting the copper to a smoldering liquid. He pressed his nose against hers before kissing her lightly in an affectionate gesture that nearly undid her.

  “Do you want to know why I chose you tonight? Why I paid the twenty quid? I mean, other than your exotic beauty, of course?”

  He was being a flirt, but Imogen still couldn’t stop the pleased blush from claiming her flesh.

  “Your eyes.” He reached up, running a thumb beneath where thick kohl liner accentuated the shape. “While they are lovely, they are tired. Strained. You looked as though you’ve had a rather difficult go of things.”

  Imogen swept her lashes down, disturbed that she’d given away so much. She pressed her lips together against the tide of tears his kindness threatened to unleash, and swallowed them down, nearly forgetting their intimate pose for a moment.

  “I’ve had a rather trying week,” he muttered. “I’m certain you’ve heard about it.”

  She nodded, a pang of sympathy permeating her own misery.

  His finger trailed down her cheek, to her jaw, and across the bare expanse of her chest, encouraging her to look up at him again now that she’d composed herself.

  Lord, but she’d never accustom herself to the beauty that assaulted her each time she saw his face.

  “I came here tonight hoping to drink enough to forget…” His own eyes became suspiciously liquid, and he took his own moment to grapple with his composure. His voice was huskier as he continued, deeper, if at all possible. “I want us both to enjoy this indulgence. This oblivion. I want this night to be a reprieve … because the dawn brings everything back, doesn’t it? Duty does not allow for sorrow or weariness. I’ll have to go to—” He caught himself in time, clenching his teeth against words that would escape him. “It doesn’t matter where I’m going. What I’m saying is that the world will churn on, despite what we’ve lost. Despite what we’ve gained … what we want or—don’t want, in any case.”

  Brimming with empathy for the naked grief in his eyes, Imogen brought her hands to his face, cupping his hard jaw. The man had lost his family, and even the coldest soldier or spy had to mourn in his own way.

  “Take your pleasure, Cole,” she whispered. “Don’t worry about mine.”

  He was right about one thing, no one else ever did.

  He breathed out on a shudder. “Here.” Grasping her hand, he guided it down between their bodies until he wrapped her fingers around the surprisingly hot flesh of his cock. Her small hand barely fit around the velvety skin encasing the rod of steel beneath.

  Her eyes widened in alarm. What did he want her to do with it?

  “Now you see,” he said on a breathless groan. “It’s better that I make you come. That I make you ready. Even the most experienced … ladies have difficulty sometimes.”

  Imogen swallowed her apprehension and pulled her fingers from around him.

  Though she appreciated that he’d done his best to avoid referring to her as a whore.

  His arms snaked around her as he pulled her close. “Let me,” he commanded, and stole her breath with another kiss. “Let us share pleasure, as though we were lovers instead of strangers.”

  He didn’t explore or caress her body again. Merely delved into the fine nest of hair between her legs and stroked into her folds with merciless fingers. Imogen gasped and trembled, but it was he who sucked a labored breath through his clenched teeth.

  His other hand held her fast, again gripping the flesh of her hip while his rough-skinned fingers turned slick as her body coated them in desire. A lightning-quick pleasure speared her as he trailed past a cluster of sensation. He didn’t linger there, but slipped over and through the folds with light, playful gestures.

  Her belly became tight as an aching, pulsing void of need opened up within her womb. Unbidden, her hips followed his clever fingers, seeking after that first, arousing stroke again with undulating demand. He fondled and separated her, teased and tantalized her, all the while keeping her mouth occupied with his questing tongue.

  Her breath came in gasps, then pants, and then little mewls of wordless delight as he finally stroked at the right spot again, and once again, until her fingernails bit into his shoulders as an insistent, burning pleasure began to seize upon her.

  “Cole?” she whimpered, clutching at him, almost afraid of whatever it was that locked every muscle from her sternum down into uncontrolled pulses.

  “Yes,” he growled into her mouth. “Fucking come for me. That’s it.”

  The gathering storm broke upon her with scream-provoking intensity. Tears sprang to her eyes as she curled around him, her thighs clenching his as though she rode a powerful steed rather than wave after wave of unimaginable pleasure. Convinced there was magic in his hands, she opened her mouth to tell him so, but all that escaped her was a low cry. Or maybe nothing. She couldn’t tell. Or remember. Or care.

  When it became too much, too intense, she bit down on the meat right below where his neck met his shoulder and he made that sound again. That dark, savage groan that became a growl in a chest as large and cavernous as his.

  But he seemed to understand, as his ministrations gentled until his fingers only whispered across that bud of sensation in a tremor-inducing caress before letting his hand fall away.

  “Christ, you’re exquisite,” he panted, his eyes a little unfocused, his skin flushed and his body one long knot of tension. “You’re ready,” he gritted out. “Now.”

  In one graceful move he lifted her, rotated them both, and tossed her onto her back. His body was so big on top of her, pressing her legs almost uncomfortably wide. She wanted to tell him to wait, to give her a moment, but he distracted her with another deep, long kiss.

  He released unintelligible words into her mouth, and Imogen knew them to be harsh and filthy. His eyes had glazed over completely now, as though his wits had deserted him, leaving her with nothing but this beast of lust and need.

  He lifted himself, arched his neck, and on a smooth, brutal thrust, he was inside her, ripping through the feeble barrier of her virginity as though it didn’t exist, and separating
muscles unused to intrusion. The sound he made was more roar than growl, and drowned out her whimper of protestation. Tears sprang to her eyes, and she bit down on her cheek hard enough to taste blood by the time he’d ceased his endless plunge.

  Because of his height she buried her face in the crook of his neck, doing her best to breathe through the pain. To hide her tears, lest she displease him.

  “Jesus,” he cursed. “Tight.”

  He slid away and pushed forward again, this time gaining more ground, a hot, searing brand against her untried flesh. She could feel her body trying to adjust, molding around him.

  “Too … tight…” he panted. His movements shortened, became less graceful and more frenzied. Her sex felt like a knot of tension and fire, though something beneath the discomfort whispered at the pleasure his hands had introduced her to. She wondered, as her body began to relax, as his penetrations became shallower, if that incomparable bliss would come for her again.

  If she would come again.

  With a low moan, his body seized and he pulled out of her, still pumping his sex between their bodies before great tremors rolled over him, forcing his head back with what looked like racking, almost painful convulsions as warm, wet moisture coated her hip.

  Imogen turned her head to look away, feeling like an intruder on an intimate moment, even though that moment was her own. She watched the muscles of his arm, braced beside her head, as they clenched and flexed, forcing vivid veins to the surface of his straining skin. She’d never seen something so beautifully sensual in her entire life.

  As with every violent storm, the aftermath hung heavy and silent as they each willed their bodies back under their control. He held himself above her, still but for his chest heaving against hers. She thought he’d whispered something like “Never.” But the word was lost to the darkness.

  It was done. What was left of her innocence had been taken. No, not taken.

  Bought.

  Imogen decided that the sacrifice of her virginity had been ultimately worth it. A few seconds of pain in trade for an entire year of freedom. For an entire lifetime of loneliness. For the safety of her sister.