Page 15 of A Tale of Two Dukes

And her resolution snapped. She had never promised or even intended to lie there like a log while he explored her body; so now her fingers tangled in his silky hair, and she wrapped her legs around him tightly.

This was a sign, it seemed, for him to stop holding himself back too; he let his whole weight fall on her, pressing her urgently into the soft bed, and she welcomed it with a fierce emotion that she refused to describe as joy even to herself.

When he moved away a little, it was only so that his right hand could trace its way down her body, across the soft swell of her belly.

She had stretch marks there, silvery and faded now since they were eleven years old, but if he saw them and they bothered him, he did not show it.

Whatever he thought about them, and his thoughts must be as complicated as hers were, he did not share it with her, and she was glad.

His erection was no longer pressing at her core; because he had shifted, it lay heavy on her thigh, and his exploring fingers replaced it.

He’d stopped talking some while since, his mouth being fully occupied, and she was grateful once more that he did not raise his head and think to comment mockingly on how wet she was, and what it signified.

In fact, she was grateful that he did not raise his head at all.

There was nothing that he was doing that she wished him to stop.

Her hands had moved to trace the corded muscles of his shoulders and upper arms; she was greedy to touch more of him, but couldn’t reach.

She wanted to bite him, to leave a mark. Later, she would.

He wasn’t tentative this time either. Far from it.

His thumb stroked her pearl of Venus for a while, and then his fingers slid confidently inside her.

She clenched on him, and arched her back, digging her nails into the hard muscle of his upper arms, pushing her breasts up to fill his mouth and fingers in a wordless plea she’d have been shot before she uttered aloud.

Now he did lift his head up, revealing his face, wet and dazed and curiously defenceless, and what he saw in hers made him shift again, to enter her at last, but then in one smooth movement he was rolling them both over, so that she straddled him.

He had the sense not to speak to her now and ruin it.

They were both breathing hard, and he reached down to cup her buttocks and squeeze her tightly.

He filled her, stretched her in a way that was both familiar and new, and she put her hands on his chest and began to move.

After a little while, she closed her eyes and gave herself up to the pure sensation of it, riding him, shamelessly using him to give her pleasure as he thrust up to meet her.

She tried, but did not entirely succeed, to forget who he was – her husband, now – and why they were together. It had been so long.

She did not cry aloud when she came, though she badly wanted to, but she threw back her head and rode it out on him, grinding against his hardness.

When he saw her cupping her breast and pinching her nipple, he urged her forward with gentle pressure of his hands so that he could get his mouth on her again to give her what she needed, what it seemed he needed too, and with a great groan of release, he spent himself deep inside her, his face smothered in her abundant flesh.

After a while, she said, ‘Roll me over again,’ and when he did not respond immediately, she repeated it, tugging sharply on his hair.

He obeyed then, still inside her, and only pulled away from her when she was on her back.

He lay beside her, propped on one elbow, and watched as she slipped a pillow under her pelvis, raising her knees to her chest.

Nobody had ever called him a fool. ‘My precious seed,’ he said in light, ironic tones that held a wealth of tangled meaning.

‘Precisely. I have been talking to wise women of my acquaintance, my sister chiefly, and this is what she recommends, undignified though it undoubtedly is.’ She could have given a longer explanation, curious details of feminine wisdom that she thought might have interested him, but she was trying hard not to let her tone towards him soften, drift towards intimacy.

Whatever they had just done, they had not made love.

‘I do not care a great deal for dignity, and if you are worried your posture appears odd to me, banish that concern from your mind. It is damnably erotic. You are.’

‘Ridiculous,’ she said shortly. If she had cared at all what he thought of her, she wouldn’t have let him see her like this. But it was too important to neglect for the sake of mere appearances.

‘Not so. You are a spectacularly beautiful woman, and you have just taken your pleasure from me, and I from you. And it was no common, fleeting pleasure, but exquisite release. Whatever else we both know, that remains true. It is very easy to forget our bargain. I have forgot it. Your lovely breasts are still flushed pink where I kissed and licked them. We are naked here together. You smell of me, and I of you. If I sucked my fingers, I would taste you. And in a little while, we will do it all again. And again and again, as often as we wish. How could that not be erotic? Do not lie to me and say you don’t feel it. You’re not a liar, Viola.’

Not taking his eyes from her, he raised the fingers that had been deep inside her to his mouth and slowly, slowly began sucking on them.

Despite herself, she felt a fresh thrill of arousal and of need surge through her.

Good God, she had feared this. She needed to keep up her barriers, fragile as they were, because however much she might tell herself that this was just a transaction between them, a cold bargain, the unbridled passion they ignited in each other could not be denied.

There was nothing cold about that. And passion was so dangerous.

She’d almost let it ruin her once before.