Page 18 of A Virgin for the Duke of Scars (Ton’s Beasts #1)
“ Y ou did not tell us that your wedding would be a brief affair,” Jeremy said, slamming down his pint on the table such that ale sloshed over the rim. “We barely had a chance to meet your bride. It seemed as though you wanted her all to yourself.”
“You will forgive me if I was eager for the ceremony to be over,” Aaron drawled.
His friends burst into chuckles.
Morgan had already seen his wife in her ill-fitting clothing. She had put her body on display for him, but it was lucky that his friend approached them before he slipped his hand beneath her gown.
Aaron didn’t like that Morgan had thought Theresa attractive, but his friend was laughing with the others. He supposed it must have been a good joke.
“We weren’t sure the wedding would take place,” Jeremy admitted. “Not when your nun showed up at the altar with her sister nowhere to be seen. Why should a lady of the cloth want to marry a beast?”
“Be kind,” Morgan chided, determined to stand up for his friend. “We all know that looks mean nothing. The Beast is as deserving of love as the next man. Perhaps even more so.”
“And when, pray tell, did your runaway bride return?”
“What would it do for me to tell you that she did not return?” Aaron said with a smile.
He knew he was baiting his friends, knew that they would not be able to resist the delicious morsel of gossip.
He was not heartbroken in the slightest. In fact, he got a better deal. Theresa was much more beautiful, much kinder than her sister could have been. And she saw something in him that he had not acknowledged in many years.
“Then who did you marry? I saw the Marquess walk her down the aisle.”
“Did you know that the Marquess had two daughters?” He asked.
The table fell silent.
The men had all grown up in the city , meaning they knew that the Marquess of Wyndham had only one daughter, Lady Hope.
When the Queen issued her edict, it was Hope that Aaron was supposed to marry.
As far as he knew, there were no other options.
With her on the run, he would have been jilted and would have had to appeal to the Queen.
He shared all of this with his friends, who listened intently.
“But they had another daughter hidden away. In a convent, of all places,” he finished.
“You married a nun?” Leo burst out laughing. “Tell us, is she responsive in bed?”
“She was supposed to become a woman of the cloth, but she ended up with a devil like me. She has much to learn about high society, not to mention her role as my wife.”
“It seems that she likes you well enough. The two of you were quite close in the park earlier today,” Morgan noted, a smirk on his handsome face.
“And she is fond of me, despite the odds,” Aaron said, a hint of disbelief in his voice.
At that moment, an old man came to sit beside them.
The Dukes found his imposition inconvenient, but Aaron’s anger flared immediately when he saw who it was.
He wasn’t just any old man, trying to ingratiate himself with the younger crowd, to make himself feel a bit younger. That faux pas could have been forgiven, and the group may have even bought him a pint of ale.
No, this man was the father of his ex-fiancée. Before the edict. Before Hope and, later, Theresa. Earl Ashton had somehow mistaken this gathering for an opportunity to bask in the youth of the Dukes of the ton . He was the last person Aaron wanted to see, second only to the Earl’s daughter.
“It seems congratulations are in order, Your Grace,” he said.
“So they are,” Aaron answered coolly.
Despite his anger, it would not do to ignore the man. He was still a peer, no matter how sullied his name may have been when the engagement was broken off.
Aaron would never hear the end of it from his grandmother if he were rude.
“I suppose fate did not want us to become a family,” Earl Ashton said.
“It had nothing to do with fate,” Aaron bit out.
The Earl’s mouth dropped open in surprise at Aaron’s plain disdain. He was not the kind of man used to being contradicted or disrespected. But Aaron was a beast in every sense of the word. He had no time for small talk.
“I’m glad you found a worthy wife,” Earl Ashton said instead of calling Aaron on his deplorable manners.
His tone suggested that he thought the whole affair a joke, and not in the way Aaron’s friends had.
He knew the story of the Marquess’s lost daughter. He knew that Aaron had been spurned twice.
He settled in with his pint, as if he planned to spend the night with their small gathering. If he had more to say, Aaron did not want to hear it. There was nothing he could say to fix what had happened a long time ago.
Unable to stomach the idea of sitting with him, Aaron knocked back his whiskey and stood up.
“Excuse me, but I must return to my wife,” he said, before making his way to the exit.
When he got to the door, he paused just outside to take a deep breath of fresh air. He had a long walk back to the manor, but he was grateful for the solitude, the steady rhythm of putting one foot in front of the other.
True, he had been promised to another in the past. Now, he could not imagine being married to anyone but the little nun who had caught his attention. He had no idea if she would be able to stand his attention a year or a decade from now.
But he hoped that she would. That she would always look at him with the same wonder and amazement that this was her life. In time, the small things would become less wonderful, but he hoped that being able to do them together would sustain the magic.
He kicked a rock that tumbled across his path when a carriage passed by.
He would start to ride in the carriage with his wife, he decided. It was not fair to deprive her of the joy of riding when he was free to ride his stallion whenever and wherever.
There were many things he would need to change to give her the life she deserved.
He pondered these things on the way back to the manor. When he arrived, he took care to avoid the servants and quietly slipped up the stairwell that led to the Duchess’s Suite.
There’s nothing to be ashamed of . I am permitted to bid my wife goodnight.
But he paused before the door to her bedroom, wanting to peer in through the crack first. How would she act when she was alone, with no risk of someone watching her?
He nudged the door open just a bit wider. Her back was to him as she faced the mirror that was propped up in the corner of the room. She slid her foot behind her and knelt low, her head bowed. In one fluid motion, she pushed herself up, and he caught her smile in the mirror.
She practiced a few more times, each curtsy more graceful than the last. It did not escape Aaron’s notice that she was wearing one of the nightgowns they had picked up at the dressmaker’s earlier that day.
It hugged her curves, like an open invitation for him to wrap his hands around the dip of her waist.
Still, he wanted to watch her while she could not see him. This was who his wife was, really and truly, when she was alone. She was intent on learning decorum and etiquette, on behaving as was expected of her.
It helped that she was mesmerisingly attractive. As she bowed one more time, Aaron tried to ignore the twitch in his pants and draw her attention to him.
Of its own volition, his mind wandered to the night he had first spent with his new wife. The one where he bent her over the desk and gave her the pleasure she had never known before.
Knowing that he was the only one who could ever touch her that way only made the desire stronger.
I could do so much more…
Aaron chastised himself for thinking of her that way. She was a more noble woman than he could ever hope to have wed. It would not do for him to defile a woman of the cloth.
Instead, he tried to focus on his evening with his friends. The Dukes and their bawdy talk took his mind off his wife for a moment, but it was nearly impossible to think of anything with her bent down before him.
The hour was late, and he should have been in his own chambers. Still, he could not take his eyes off Theresa. She had not seen his reflection in the mirror she was using for practice, and he wanted to draw her attention to himself.
He slowly clapped as she rose to her feet and leaned against the door casually. He could have been there for five minutes or an hour. He was no longer sure how long he had been watching her.
She turned to face him, her face flushed. “You were not meant to see me practicing.”
“You were born to be a duchess,” he said, stepping into the room. “Do you see how graceful you are after just one day of practicing? It is natural to you, despite your unfortunate upbringing.”
“My time in the convent wasn’t unfortunate,” she shot back.
“It was unfortunate for your life here. I’m afraid you may always be at a disadvantage here.”
But she simply shrugged. “We have been invited to our first house party. At the end of the week. I do not wish to embarrass you in front of your friends.”
“I could never be embarrassed by you,” he told her honestly. With a smile, he put his hands on her waist and turned her around. “Have you ever seen yourself in a mirror?”
“Not until recently,” she admitted. “The nuns don’t believe in the vanity of looking at ourselves all day. There were few opportunities to see how we looked in the nunnery.”
“They were wrong, then.” He pulled her closer to him, his voice dropping to a whisper. “If I had the chance to look at you all day, I would.”
She blushed and looked down at the floor, not sure how to respond to his overtures. He could see the smile on her face, and he knew he had pleased her. He wanted to do more, to see that smile light up her face like sunrise.
“We have not spent much time together today. And unlike you, I wish to abide by your rules.”
He walked back to the door and closed it behind him so that they were truly alone. No servants would interrupt them now, no nosy sisters, no friends during a picnic in a secluded area of the park.
Instead, he led her straight to the mirror.
“Don’t you see what I see, Duchess?” His lips trailed down her neck, and she tilted her head back, giving him more access.
Aaron knew he could never settle for just a kiss on her neck, not at this point. His cock was straining against his pants, needing more.
More of her .
He slid his hands around her torso and began to unbutton her nightgown, slowly baring her to his hungry gaze. First, her shoulders, then her collarbones. When he looked at her face, he noticed her eyes were closed.
“Look,” he commanded. “I want you to watch what I’m doing to you. I want you to watch me slowly undress you in front of this mirror. And I want you to know how beautiful you are.”
Her eyes fluttered open and slowly met his in the mirror, a pink flush to her cheeks.
Theresa stared at him defiantly, egging him to continue undressing her.
When her nightgown slipped beneath her breasts, he cupped them in his warm palms. His fingers circled her small nipples, and they immediately pebbled in his hands. He moaned in the back of his throat, his erection pressing into her backside.
Aaron wished he could pull her nipples into his mouth, taste them, and swirl his tongue around them until she moaned. He knew that he needed to do more than that right now, though. To please her the way he did last time.
Roughly, he pushed the nightgown down her hips and to the floor so that she stood completely naked before him.
His eyes landed on the scars that marred her back. He wondered how he could have missed them that first time, if not for his sheer desperation to have the little nun. Tonight, he wanted to stop and kiss each one of them, but she did not seem to notice his gaze on her scars.
Not wanting to interrupt the moment, he said nothing. But he resolved to ask her about them later. Vowed to avenge her, even.
“Do you remember the rules?” He asked, his voice husky in her ear.
“The only words are yes, please, and more,” Theresa said quietly as his hands roamed over her skin.
He trailed his fingertips between her breasts and down her stomach, stopping to grab her hips.
“Please,” she begged. “Aaron, please .”
Her plea, the blatant desire on her face, almost undid him. He had become so accustomed to women running from him when he attempted to seduce them, but here was his little nun, eager for his touch.
He slipped his hand between her legs, which parted without him having to ask this time. He touched her gently at first, circling her with one finger while she moaned quietly.
He needed more, though. Needed to feel her slick walls around him.
He nudged her legs farther apart and slid one finger deep inside her. She thrust her hips forward to meet his hand, and he chuckled against her neck, the sound coming out as a growl.
“How is that, dear wife?” He murmured.
“More,” she panted. “Please.”
Always willing to oblige his wife, Aaron slid a second finger inside her and brushed his thumb over her bud.
“I wish you knew how incredible you feel.”
He paused, but then she put her hand over his, forcing him to resume his ministrations.
She was eager for him, then. He could have guessed as much from the wetness between her legs. He had been with many women, but none as eager for a simple touch as his little nun. She had been deprived for so long that she would accept anything he wanted to do to her.
And there was plenty he wanted to do to her.
He grabbed her by the waist and pulled her into him so that she could feel his erection against her backside. She gasped at the feel of him, but then tilted her head back as he slipped his hand between her legs again.
As his fingers moved faster, circling her and sliding in and out of her, she started to shake.
“Can you stand?” He asked, wondering if he should carry her to the bed.
He loved watching himself pleasure her, wanted her to see the things he could do to her.
“Yes,” she said, still playing their game. “But please, don’t stop.”
“As you wish, Duchess,” he said, increasing the pressure on her bud until she was panting with desire for him.
Her knees began to wobble and give out, so that he had to hold her in an upright position. Briefly, he considered taking her across the room to her bed to continue the moment, if not for her obvious exhaustion.
She cried out so loud that he feared the servants might hear and come running, but he had the foresight to shut the door. Surely, they could tell the difference between a lady in distress and one in the throes of pleasure.