Page 22 of A Gamble on the Duke (The Gambling Dukes #4)

ELEVEN

Catherine

Alfred gave me that tantalizing, lighting strike smile that I knew was going to end all my protestations. “I know. But it already has, hasn’t it? I love kissing you, Catherine, and I think you like being kissed by me. Don’t you want to know what it’s like to be kissed all over?”

Oh dear God, I was getting wet just sitting here.

How did he do it?

Utterly claim me, without even touching me.

Tell me I was his, without offering me anything.

Repeat that he didn’t wish to marry, without my desires decreasing an inch.

“Well?” Alfred said lightly, leaning back in his carriage and assessing me with a curious expression. “What do you think?”

What did I think?

I wasn’t even sure that I could think. I don’t think thoughts were possible in the presence of a man who was so utterly captivating, who gave me such promises of pleasure without even lifting a finger.

Though of course, it wasn’t his fingers that I wanted…

Damnit, Catherine!

This had been precisely what my Great Aunt Ormkirk had been worried about, before she had left London for Bath.

Well. Perhaps not precisely this.

Great Aunt Ormkirk had been worried that someone would attempt to fleece me in my shop and take advantage of me that way…I don’t think marauding dukes with tongues that promised pleasure were quite on her mind.

They were on my mind. The carriage was getting hot, or perhaps that was just the way Alfred, Duke of Kineallen, was looking at me.

“I am afraid I will require an answer, either way,” he said quietly. “A yes or no, that is all that will suffice.”

All that will?—

“I have to decide now?” I asked as calmly as I could manage.

Honestly, it was a small miracle I could speak at all. The man was so…so utterly delicious. Perhaps it would have been easier if I had not known just how he could touch me, tease me to a peak and then push me right over it into bliss.

Perhaps if I had been able to maintain any sort of self-restraint in the past, saying no now would be easy.

But he was right.

I did want him. I wanted him to kiss me all over, but more than that, I wanted him to want me. To care for me—dare I even think it, to love me.

My gaze flickered over Alfred’s handsome features.

But this was not a man who could love. He was not the sort of develop feelings, actually have affections for a woman.

He had been hurt in the past, had he not, and that had injured him more than anyone could see merely by looking at him.

No, Alfred wanted a little fun; a little dalliance.

The trouble was, I was actually considering it.

“And you…” I swallowed. “You will not think less of me?”

“If you say no? Not at all,” Alfred said genially with a shrug. “There are very few ladies who would even consider?—”

“No, I meant—if I said yes.”

How I had managed to interrupt I did not know. I was hardly sure how my tongue had managed to twist around the syllables, considering that I was half wishing I had lunged across the carriage and kissed?—

“If you said yes?” breathed Alfred.

I shivered, the warmth in his voice overcoming me and all my objections before I could even utter them.

I knew what was going to happen. I was going to give myself to the Duke of Kineallen, and it was going to be the most incredible experience of my life.

Try as I might, no one would ever compare to him.

He had already captured me with his laughter, but it was his serious nature, his considered approach, his willingness to do anything for those he truly cared about…

That had been how he had captured my heart.

I knew it, this possible lovemaking, meant nothing more to him than a release of tension between us.

I also knew that it meant more, so much more, to me.

“If you said yes, or no, you could never lose my respect, Catherine,” Alfred was saying from a great distance.

I shook my head and he came into focus, his eyes hungry .

“It is up to you. You have all the time in the world to decide, of course,” he continued, leaning forward and opening the carriage door. “All the time in the world.”

All the time in the world?

Well that was nonsense, wasn’t it? I knew, as I allowed the man who had just propositioned me to help me out of the carriage, that as soon as the Earl of Tuxford agreed to become a member of the Gambling Dukes—and I knew he would—then my importance to Alfred, the Duke of Kineallen, would come to an end.

Our agreement would be over, his gamble on me entirely paid off, and I would depart from his townhouse…and his life.

I would return to the station where I was born: a potter’s daughter.

And there was no shame in that, I thought wildly as I followed Alfred along the path to the front door. I was not ashamed of the thought of returning to my potter’s shop and getting my hands back into the clay.

No. But I would be disappointed.

“Well, that was a pleasant outing to be sure,” Alfred said brightly as we stepped into the hallway and relieved ourselves of my pelisse and his greatcoat. “Now, we will have to leave in about an hour to make sure we’re at Lilah’s on time for the luncheon. Will you be ready by then?”

My mind was whirling, hardly able to take in a single word that he was saying. Images of what my future could hold were rushing through me, distracting me from the very real man before me.

Alfred, slowly removing my gown.

Alfred, kissing up my arm.

Alfred, leaning above me, about to sink himself into? —

“I said, will you be ready by then?”

I swallowed, knowing what I was about to say would change the course of my life. “Yes.”

Alfred nodded curtly. “Good. Well, in that case?—”

“No, I mean—yes.” I cleared my throat, wishing to goodness I had a better way to articulate this. “Yes. To what you said.”

“Yes, I asked…” Alfred’s voice faded away as he took in my serious, and undoubtedly warm expression. “To what I said…in the carriage?”

I nodded, hardly trusting my voice.

And before I knew what was happening, Alfred had stepped forward and pulled my into his arms, crushing a kiss upon me that was welcomed.

Oh, his kisses.

I had never dreamt that a gentleman would kiss like this. Rough, and demanding, and pouring passion onto me and into me and through me in a way that made me want to tear all my clothes off.

His hands were gripping my arms and I leaned into his embrace, grabbing his lapels and tugging him closer.

Oh, I wanted him closer—closer than it was possible to get, standing here in the hallway.

“Catherine,” Alfred muttered, pressing kisses down my jaw and inhaling deeply as he pressed a kiss on my neck.

My knees wavered and it was only thanks to his strong arm that had now snaked around my waist that I was still standing. “Alfred…”

How long we stood there kissing, I don’t know. Time did not seem to matter.

Only when a door opened behind Alfred and we sprang apart, my legs still barely managing to hold me, did I realize just how outrageously we had been acting .

“Y’Grace,” bobbed a housemaid, utterly oblivious as she walked from one room to another with a mop.

Only when the door closed behind me did Alfred and I manage to look each other in the eye.

Our laughter filled the hallway.

“That was close,” I said ruefully, hoping my cheeks weren’t too pink.

They probably were. They burned when Alfred’s gaze met mine, his clear desire pouring forth.

“Too close,” he said with a nod. “Shall we take this somewhere we don’t have to worry about being disturbed?”

This was it: the final moment that I could change my mind.

Oh, I was certain that if in the throes of passion, I realized I did not want to go through with this, Alfred would stop. He was a gentleman, a duke—and he cared about me. Exactly how, I didn’t know. But he did.

But this was the threshold moment, the moment that I decided whether I was willing to go through with this or not.

Once I made this decision, I would know what sort of a person I was. And I wasn’t sure if I wanted to find out, one way or the other.

Disappointment, tempered with that iron clad control of his, wavered in Alfred’s eyes. “You are under no obligation of course to?—”

“Come with me,” I whispered, slipping my hand into his.

Somehow, this was far more intimate. This was something we had never done—oh, not like this. Not fingers entwined and knowing that what we were to each other now was so much more than two individuals involved in a contract that required a false sense of connection .

This connection was real. It wouldn’t go anywhere, I was certain of that.

But it meant something.

Alfred’s lips beamed as he allowed me to lead up to the staircase. Unfortunately, we didn’t get anywhere near the top.

“Alfred!”

“I want to kiss you, and I want to kiss you now,” he growled, pressing me against the wall halfway up the staircase. “Are you going to deny me?”

I shivered at his barely concealed need for me. I didn’t think I could deny this man anything.

Especially when it was exactly what I wanted.

“No,” I breathed, kissing him hard, parting my lips and letting him in with a whimper.

For some reason that noise appeared to have an effect on him, for Alfred pressed me harder into the wall, something in his breeches—and I had a good idea what—pressing into my hip.

To know that he was just as taken with me as I was him, oh, it only increased my desire for him. Pleasure was tingling throughout my body with every second that the kiss continued, but I managed to slip out of his grasp and up a few steps.

“Well, the last thing we need is for your butler to find us,” I jested with a grin, hoping that my expression was sufficient encouragement for Alfred to follow me. “Then you’d have to marry me!”

The words had slipped out before I could stop them, and I saw a momentary shadow pass over Alfred’s face.

And then he was grinning, chasing after me as I yelped with anticipation. We rushed down the corridor, my heart pounding, and I screamed with delight as Alfred grabbed me around the waist and pushed me once again to the wall.