Page 39 of A Duke for Stealing (The Devil’s Masquerade #4)

Rose could not believe her eyes. The once proud rake who at one time would have never bowed to a woman was now on his knees, his head in her lap, and begging for her forgiveness.

Everett had said everything she had ever wanted to hear from him.

That he loved her. That he saw her. That he saw that she not only accepted his darker needs, but took joy in being a part of them.

Even now, with her heart still teetering between belief and doubt, her body yearned for those deliciously wicked acts they’d once shared.

“I want to believe you,” she confessed.

Unable to hold back from touching him anymore, she delved her fingers into his soft brown hair, stroked the back of his scalp as her other hand moved over his back.

“I want to believe you so very much, but you must understand how very frightened I am to do so. When you said you did not love me? It hurt far worse than the act that put these bruises on my jaw.”

Everett’s head rose up, his eyes glittering with a mixture of brimming tears and unabashed guilt.

“Make me suffer, Rose,” he implored. “Make me pay for my sins. I deserve it. Whatever I need to do to prove to you my love is real, I will do it.”

Rose searched his eyes for any sparkle of amusement or falsehood, but found nothing but raw devotion and need. Need to be forgiven; emotionally; physically. Everett was, she realized with fascination, hers to do with as she pleased.

Rose felt the crack in her broken heart mend just a little and flicked her tears from her cheeks before she leaned her back into the couch. She stroked her hand through Everett’s hair again, loving the power she felt as she watched his lashes flutter shut with ecstasy as he leaned into her touch.

Then, suddenly, she closed her fist tightly around the short locks and pulled back. Not much, just enough to raise Everett’s chin. He let out a hiss of breath as his eyes flew open, those dark green pools already filled with obsession.

“You will not hurt me again,” she stated. Her tone was neither demanding nor harsh, yet there was a warning laced within its softness.

“Never,” Everett vowed, his gaze not leaving hers.

His voice was heavy with ache, and it sent a shot of arousal straight into her loins. Her petals grew wet as she looked into his eyes, and a smile touched her lips.

“You get no more chances,” she went on, raising a brow.

“I do not need them,” Everett hastily swore. “I am and will be utterly devoted to you and the truth of our love.”

She caressed his hair again, and Everett’s lashes fluttered as if such a touch had been delivered directly upon his manhood.

“Such a good Duke you are,” she murmured, feeling a heady sense of power rise within her.

“Yours to do with as you wish, my Duchess,” he rasped, leaning into her touch.

“Anything?” She asked, her mind flashing with possibilities.

“Anything,” Everett breathed, “So long as you forgive me.”

It was going to take time, Rose realized in that moment as she observed the oh so submissive position her rather dominant husband had put himself in, but her body?

Her heated, sensitive, aching with need body that had been longing to be touched by him again?

That seemed to take far less time to forgive.

Rose smoothed her hand from his hair down to Everett’s handsome face, and he quickly kissed her palm when it met his lips. Her smile grew almost wicked as she continued to smooth her hand down his jaw and neck, untied his cravat.

“Take it off,” she commanded in a soft, almost taunting tone.

Pleasure coursed through Rose’s veins as Everett’s hands began to tremble, and he immediately reached for the bit of fabric and slid it from his neck.

“Now your jacket and shirt,” she went on.

Again, Everett obeyed with a quickness, yanking the clothes from his chest until his muscles were deliciously bare and available for her view. He tossed the fine clothing away from him as if they were rags, and then looked up into her eyes as if begging to know what was next.

Rose’s first urge was to let her hands move further down his neck and to his chest, to run her fingertips over the plains of warm, firm muscles she’d missed so very much these last few days.

However, that would bring him pleasure too.

More to him than her, she supposed, and she was not done making him ache. Not yet.

Torture, she knew, was not something she was capable of…but teasing?

“Now my shoes and stockings,” she commanded. “Slowly. Do not fling them about as you did with your attire. Sit them gently aside.”

Everett’s pupils dilated as his throat worked to swallow, and with reverence, he picked up her left foot and very gently slid her shoe from her foot.

Rose could not help the whimper of pleasure that escaped her lips when his thumb smoothed up the underside of her still stockinged foot.

She let her head relax onto the couch cushions, taking in the pleasure of her husband’s willingness to obey.

Everett then placed her foot atop his shoulder, and trailed his hands up her knee-high pink stocking, pushing the skirts of her matching pink dress up along with it, until he reached the edges of it.

Slowly, he peeled the stocking back down her knee, her calf, then finally her foot.

Once he had the stocking fully removed, Everett brought her foot to his mouth, and he placed a tender kiss atop her toes.

As commanded, he then folded it neatly and placed it atop the shoe he’d just removed from her.

Equal reverence was paid to her right foot, and without even being asked, Everett sat back on his heels and waited for his next command. Rose was heady with such newfound power, but even so, she had to draw courage to ask what she wanted next.

“I want you to spread my legs over your shoulders and taste me,” she said at last, a blush blooming on her cheeks as she spoke such a bold command.

Everett’s eyes widened as he looked up at her, and he cleared his throat. For a moment, panic surged through her arousal. Had she gone too far?

“Tell me what you are feeling, Everett,” she coaxed, using the very words he said to her at the Devil’s Masquerade. “Use your words.”

Everett let out a shaky breath, his muscled chest heaving as he parted his lips and smiled roguishly.

“This is…” he began, then let out a raspy chuckle as his hands slid up her thighs and gripped her hips, “This is not how I thought I would feel if ever put in such a position.”

He kept his eyes on hers as he dragged the skirts of her dress up to her waist and leaned toward her. Anticipation sizzled in Rose’s blood as she waited for him to finish.

“I like it when you command me, Rose. I like knowing what you want.”

Power surged through Rose’s veins as she saw another spark of need shoot through Everett’s eyes, and she relaxed.

“I want to explode on your tongue,” she replied, “I want to see your eyes as I do.”

A heady groan poured from Everett’s lips, and his lashes fluttered shut again as he leaned into her left knee and placed another reverent kiss upon her flesh.

“As you wish, my Duchess,” he rasped, then dragged his tongue from her knee to her lower inner thigh. “Anything you wish.”

Everett continued his reverent kisses up her inner thigh as he placed her knees upon his shoulders as commanded, and just as he reached her petals, his eyes snapped open and he looked up at her.

The green pools of his eyes were practically glowing as he slowly began to trace his tongue through her already glistening mons, and he let out another moan as he reached her sensitive bud.

Rose let out a low, needy moan of her own as she touched her throbbing clitoris. She threw her head back against the couch pillows, her own lashes fluttering. Her nails bit first into the couch, then into Everett’s scalp as his tongue began a wickedly slow dance over her mons.

Pleasure bled out of her veins and into her tendons and muscles as Everett’s skilled tongue performed precisely as she had commanded, and for several seconds she could not open her eyes again.

When she was able to do so and lift her head, she found Everett watching her intently, just as he was told to do, and it nearly made her release right then and there.

She was doing this to tease him, true, but she had not been prepared for how such an act would unwittingly tease herself. Rose took several quick breaths, trying her best to gain control over her arousal.

“Slower, slower,” she whispered, but even as Everett did as she commanded, she knew it was no use. She’d missed him too much, wanted him too much.

Her release came not ten seconds later, harsh and intense that hazed her vision.

“Look at me, my Duchess,” Everett implored between the strokes of his tongue. “Look at me.”

With effort, Rose forced her eyes open and met Everett’s as the most powerful spasm of all rocked through her body, and in such, she felt the power shift equally between the two of them.

“Take me,” she whispered. No command. Just a desperate plea to be reunited with his body.

As if it were all he needed to hear, Everett dragged her hips to the edge of the couch as he rose up on his knees. His mouth slammed needily against hers as he released himself from his trousers, and in one swift motion, his heavily erect cock was thrust into her trembling wetness.

They both let out a gasping moan as they were finally reunited, breaking their kiss apart. Everett heavily leaned his head into her shoulder as Rose clamped her hand to the back of his neck, and her back arched.

“God, I have missed you,” Everett groaned, holding her tight against him.

Rose tried to speak, but the shock and pleasure of feeling his intense size within her again had stolen her words.

As if to ease her shock, Everett’s lips laid sensual kisses along her exposed shoulder and neck, sending delightful shivers throughout her that traveled to the apex of her legs and pulsed around Everett’s buried manhood.

She wasn’t sure if he was trying to torture her for what she’d just done to him, or if he was just as blinded by the pleasure of being reunited as she was, but for several seconds, Everett’s hips didn’t move an inch.

Then he began to move. Slow at first, drawing his hips back as his hands remained locked around her hips.

Thorough, steady strokes in which he’d draw completely out of her tight, flooding sheath, then slide slowly back in until she’d taken him to the hilt.

“I have missed you too,” she finally whispered after a particularly intense thrust.

With those words, the Everett she knew, the Everett she’d learned to love to take commands from, re-emerged.