Page 11 of Duke with a Debt (Wicked Dukes Society #2)
CHAPTER 11
R osamund’s heart was pounding furiously.
Stuart intended to consummate their marriage. Here in his room. Now, in the midst of the afternoon. Somehow, she hadn’t expected him to be so eager. She had thought they would carry on with the formalities of the day before returning to their rooms to rest and change in preparation for dinner. Instead, he wanted to seduce her.
And she planned to enjoy every second of it.
She had a moment to glance around the room. It was as sparsely furnished as the rest of the town house, the Axminster also in need of replacement. There were no pictures adorning the walls. The ridiculous thought occurred to her that she might paint him some watercolors to liven up his space. How wifely of her. Everything felt new and strange and exciting.
“This is your bedroom, then,” she said stupidly, feeling nervous and shy even though she had been alone with Stuart many times.
Because never had she been his wife, about to share his bed.
He wanted to be inside her, he had said. And although she was no hen wit and knew the mechanisms of sexual congress, those words still made her feel faint, as if her knees might buckle, sending a streak of something wonderful straight to her core.
“This is my bedroom.” He flashed her a wry grin, looking unfairly handsome, stubble already shadowing his strong jaw from the morning’s shave. “Such as it is. I have no Roman statuary or priceless antiquities to adorn it, but it has sufficed.”
She wanted to kiss him, she thought as she studied his sensual lips. Did she dare? She took a step toward him, closing the small distance separating them, and flattened her palms on his chest. There. That felt nice. He was a wall of lean muscle, and she wondered how he accomplished such a fine form. Likely, he engaged in fencing or some other gentlemanly manner of sport.
“Did you…mean what you said?” she ventured, feeling her cheeks go hot.
“God yes.” He leaned his forehead against hers. “Ever since I saw you this morning in that red gown, I’ve been able to think of nothing other than peeling it off you.”
Hyperbole, she was sure. But Rosamund smiled, nonetheless. “You make me sound like a banana. I don’t believe my lady’s maid has ever peeled a gown off me.”
“Then she is doing it all wrong,” he said, punctuating his words with a slow, albeit chaste, kiss. “I would be more than happy to demonstrate.”
Molten heat settled between her thighs. “Would you?”
She couldn’t keep the breathlessness from her voice.
“Of course.” He raised his head and took a step back. “Turn, my dear.”
She mourned the loss of his warmth and strength burning into her, but she did as he asked, spinning to present him with her back and the row of buttons her lady’s maid, Bayneham, had swiftly fastened that morning.
His lips grazed her nape, and she lowered her chin instinctively, giving him full leave to kiss her wherever he liked. Which, as it happened, was along the curve of each nearly bared shoulder, until he reached her spine. His fingers found the fastenings, and she felt buttons beginning to come undone, slowly and surely. He continued kissing her as he went, even when her chemise and corset impeded him from kissing her bare skin. Pluck, pluck, pluck went each button. Kiss, kiss, kiss went her husband’s mouth until he reached the last in the long line, and her bodice loosened, gaping.
She held the silk to her, knowing a moment of foolish modesty. But Stuart rounded her skirts to stand before her again, his light-blue gaze smoldering with undisguised desire. He reached for her right sleeve first, his fingertips glancing over her bare skin and making her shiver with suppressed longing. He bent forward then, his lips kissing a trail down her arm as he slowly dragged her cap sleeve down until he pulled it free. Without hesitation, he moved to her left sleeve, doing the same.
The silence in the chamber was only broken by the whisper of her velvet-and-silk bodice gliding down her skin, Stuart’s kisses, and her own ragged breath. How could the act of removing her bodice—whilst she was still trussed in so many layers and so much boning—drown her in lust? She was thirty years old, and she had disrobed thousands of times before. But never had it felt so laden with sin, like the decadent prelude to something impossibly wonderful.
He draped her bodice over a nearby chair and moved behind her again, finding the tapes of her skirts and undoing them with ease. The red silk and accompanying train cascaded to the threadbare floor in a sinful susurrus. She stood before him in her favorite pair of boots, her petticoats, chemise, corset, stockings, and drawers, and although she was covered sufficiently, she felt as if she were nude.
“Perhaps…I… Ah…” she stammered, nervousness overtaking Rosamund as he moved to her topmost petticoat, unfastening it and sending it to join her overskirts.
He knelt before her on her skirts, and although she had a wardrobe positively overflowing with gowns, her instinct was to remind him to take care with her precious silk. But then he looked up at her, and he was so wonderfully handsome with the light playing over his face that she forgot to care.
“Give me your boot, sweetheart,” he said, offering his hands, palms up.
She decided on the right boot first, hoping she wouldn’t crumple to the floor as she balanced on one leg. His long, elegant fingers went to work on the laces, undoing the tie and then loosening them before he slid the leather from her foot.
He pressed a kiss to her instep. “Your servant, Duchess.”
Oh good heavens. What was it about this man on his knees for her, tending to her, kissing her foot, that made her want to swoon?
“You needn’t,” she protested weakly.
But he ignored her, gently placing her stockinged foot on the carpet and then wordlessly requesting her left boot. She gave it to him, grasping the back of a chair to steady herself as she watched him work. When the second piece of footwear was removed, he kissed her instep again, then placed her foot on the floor.
“Now your corset.” He rose and spun her again, his nimble fingers making short work of her lacings.
A few more tugs and her aching nipples were set free. The undergarment loosened, and she hauled in a great, deep breath, her heart thudding madly, as if she had just run up and down all the steps in her town house thrice over. This was what he did to her. And he planned to do far more before he was finished.
Hands landed on her waist in a possessive grasp, and then he spun her again so that she faced him. Holding her stare, he unhooked the corset’s busk. Her breasts spilled free, only barely contained by her thin silk chemise.
“My God, you’re beautiful, Rosamund,” he murmured, such awe and reverence in his voice that she believed him.
She, who had forever been trapped in the shadow of her father’s enormous wealth, at long last felt not just attractive, but desirable in her own right. There was no denying the way her new husband looked at her.
“No one has told me so before you,” she managed.
“Fools,” he said and bent his head to adorn the tops of her breasts with more kisses through her chemise. “You’re bloody glorious, Rosamund. I don’t think my cock has ever been so hard.”
His praise, mingled with such shocking vulgarity, took her breath. And then he groaned, almost as if he were in agony, and sucked the peak of her breast through the silk covering it. Glorious. He thought she was glorious. And she made his… cock hard.
“Mmm,” she managed, her hand fluttering to his shoulder, another to his head. She didn’t know where to place them.
All she knew was that she wanted to touch him everywhere.
And she wanted him to touch her everywhere too.
His mouth was hot, drawing on her nipple, but she wished the boundary of cloth separating her bare skin from him was gone. She also wished he were not wearing so many articles of clothing. He was still fully dressed. This seemed a dreadful injustice she needed to help rectify. But how? He was intent upon devouring her through her chemise, taking her other nipple into his mouth and leaving a wet mark over the one he had just abandoned.
“So sweet,” he murmured against her breast. “I’m going to peel this off you now, just like I promised.”
Sweet heaven.
He made good on his words by pulling the sleeves of her chemise down her shoulders, to her arms. Another slow, firm tug, and he drew the undergarment around her elbows, her breasts popping free in the cool evening air.
“Perfection,” he praised, giving the chemise another jerk until it was pooled around her waist.
And then he cupped her breasts. She arched her back into his touch, wanting more. It felt so good, his bare hands on her skin, his thumbs rolling over her aching nipples simultaneously. Lowering his head, he feasted on her, licking, sucking, nipping with his teeth. He lavished attention on her breasts until she could scarcely bear more, and she was threading her fingers through his hair, holding him to her, needing something that was beyond her reach.
Needing what had happened in the carriage.
“Stuart,” she managed breathlessly, writhing against him, twisting her body so that it was in contact with his. “Please.”
“Damn.” He released a nipple and kissed a hot trail along her collarbone. “If I don’t take care, I’ll come in my trousers, and King will never forgive me.”
Dimly, some part of her mind recognized the difference in today’s elegant suit: it had been borrowed from the Duke of Kingham. She hated that his circumstances had been so reduced but held her tongue, not wanting to hurt his pride. Instead, she helped him to pull her chemise past her hips, sending it to the floor with the rest of her garments. Together, they removed what remained: drawers, stockings, red silk garters.
His lips found hers, and they kissed deeply, her hands tearing at his clothes so that he would be revealed to her as she was to him. His coat fell away, and her fingers fumbled next with the buttons on his waistcoat until he chuckled into her mouth and helped her. Next came the buttons on his shirt, which were smaller and even more difficult for her trembling hands to manage whilst he kissed her witless. Somehow, they came undone, and the crisp white linen was whisked away to reveal hot, taut skin beneath her questing fingertips.
Touching was not sufficient, however. Rosamund wanted to see him.
She stepped back, breaking the endless kiss, and drank in the sight of him, so potently male, stripped to the waist. He had called her glorious, but here was proof that he was far more so. Her gaze traveled over the breadth of his shoulders, his strong upper arms, the wall of his chest and his stomach, where a line of dark hair disappeared beneath his waistband. The prominent bulge in the placket of his trousers sent a jolt of liquid desire to her center.
Her new husband took note of the direction her eyes had fallen.
“See how much I want you?” he asked, his voice velvet-soft and sinfully deep, laden with sensual promise.
To emphasize his words, he stroked a hand over the front of his trousers, smoothing the buff fabric over the outline of his rigid length. She had seen many a marble male member on the various statues in her father’s collection and, later, in her own collection as she had taken up where he had left off. But the statues were so very small in comparison to what appeared to lie beneath the fall of Stuart’s trousers.
“Oh my,” she whispered, biting her lip as she jerked her stare back up to his, intrigued and roused. “That does not appear to be anything like the Roman statuary I’ve seen.”
He grinned at her. “My wicked wife. Have you been ogling the ancient marbles in your collection?”
Embarrassed heat suffused her face. “I wouldn’t call it ogling. More like studying.”
His smile deepened, revealing a lone groove in his right cheek that she couldn’t help but find magnetically attractive. “No need to study cold marble any longer, sweetheart. You have your own flesh and blood example right here.”
Cupping her cheek, he brought his lips down on hers again, kissing her soundly, his tongue gliding against hers until she was drowning in desire, banishing the last traces of mortification from her. By the time he withdrew, she was breathless again, clinging to him like a vine.
“Explore if you like,” he told her, reaching for her hand and bringing it between their bodies, to the front of his trousers. “I’m yours.”
Oh, how she liked those words, the notion that this beautiful man was hers. It filled her with potent power. She worked at the buttons, pulling one free from its mooring, then another. The placket loosened. She glanced down, watching as she completely undid the fall of his trousers, putting his hardness—barely encased in a pair of cotton drawers—on crude display.
“Touch me,” he invited. “Please, Rosamund. I need to feel you.”
Tentatively, she did as he asked, laying her hand over that sinful bulge, feeling the warm strength of him through the thin layer of fabric that acted as barrier. The arc of pure, molten desire it sent through her made her knees go weak.
“Ah, God,” he growled, taking her hand in his and urging it over him with greater pressure. “That’s it. Take me out of my drawers now.”
She found the slit in the front of his undergarment, not unlike hers, and she parted it, allowing his cock to spring outward, erect and decidedly larger and different from the statues in every possible way.
“May I?” she asked, hand hovering over him, longing to touch. To stroke, to tease and caress and bring him pleasure as he had done for her.
“Please,” he said simply.
It was all the invitation she required. Rosamund gently touched him, amazed by the feeling—he was hard yet his skin was so distinctly soft, and beneath her caress, to her utter amazement, he grew even larger.
“It’s growing,” she murmured.
“You have that effect on me, love.”
“I had no idea such a thing was possible.” She stroked him tentatively at first and then with growing confidence, liking the way his body responded. “How much bigger does it get?”
He choked out a laugh. “Sweet Jesus, woman. You’re going to kill me.”
“You don’t like it?” Rosamund asked, her hand hovering over the thick column. “Shall I stop?”
“I bloody love it,” he said on a groan. “I want more of it. But I also want to last.”
He caught her hand in his and brought it to his lips for a lingering, tender kiss before releasing her and pulling his trousers and drawers down in one fluid motion, leaving him as naked as she was. She had only a moment to admire the rest of his form before he was guiding her to his bed. The sturdy tester was large and tall, and she needed his help to settle into it, in the absence of a piece of furniture to boost her.
“I’ll have a stool brought in,” he said, as if reading her thoughts, caressing her hips as he aided her.
She lay on her back, watching him as he joined her on the bed without any issue, his taller frame allowing him to climb in with ease. She knew a moment of nervousness as she spied his large cock, standing prominently between his horseman’s thighs. This monstrous thing was meant to fit inside her, and such a feat seemed a sheer impossibility.
As if he sensed her concern, Stuart began dropping kisses on her body, caressing her skin in soothing motions at the same time. “Relax, sweetheart. We will go as slowly as I can manage. Pleasure is meant to be savored.”
He kissed her breasts, her belly, and then lower, his lips feathering over her hip bone, as she melted into the bed. She needed no prompting to part her thighs for him, and he took her silent invitation, his dark head lowering until his mouth brushed over her sex, taking his time as he had promised, his tongue darting over her folds, gliding up and down her seam as if he were drinking her up before flicking her pearl. She inhaled, her hips jumping toward him as pleasure streaked through her body.
His fingers glided as he feasted on her, slicking her own moisture down her swollen folds as she undulated beneath him, helpless to do anything other than surrender to the mindless bliss awaiting her. She felt a bit of pressure at her entrance and then the delicious sensation of his finger inside her, shallowly at first and then deeper as he lashed her pearl with determined strokes.
The invasion was unexpected and foreign, and yet her body instinctively knew she wanted more. Flattening her feet on the mattress, she arched upward, bringing his finger deeper. He growled his approval into her throbbing sex, still intent upon pleasuring her mercilessly with his mouth. Then his finger began to move, ever so slowly at first, pumping in and out of her with gentle, measured motions, drawing the tension within her to a crescendo. It was heavenly, the way he tongued her as he worked his finger in and out of her, her inner muscles clenching at him, wanting to keep him there. It was so much better than what had happened in the carriage because now the aching emptiness inside her was being filled by him. He was inside her, and the knowledge and sensation coupled together made her cry out with helpless need.
“That’s it, sweetheart,” he praised. “You’re so, so wet. Come for me. I want your cream dripping down my wrist.”
“Oh, Stuart,” she cried out, body bowing as pleasure exploded deep inside her, making her toes curl into the bedclothes while wave after wave of white-hot bliss washed through her.
“Yes,” he crooned, withdrawing his finger and then replacing it with his mouth at her entrance, lapping her up as if he couldn’t get enough of her essence. “You taste so bloody sweet.”
He licked her as the last of her pinnacle roared through her and then ebbed away, leaving her boneless and sated until he began kissing his way back up her body again and the heaviness of him between her legs filled her with renewed longing. He sucked her nipple, his mouth wet from her, glistening, the scent of them both wrapping her in a sensual haze. Reaching between them, he gripped his cock, guiding it over her sensitive flesh, slicking the head up and down her slit.
Stuart moved to her other breast, suckling her as he notched himself against her. Oh heavens, the pressure was intense and wonderful all at once, like his finger yet so much larger.
“I don’t…think…you can possibly…fit,” she managed breathlessly.
He lifted his head, casting an amused look up at her. “Trust me, sweetheart.”
He gently guided her leg over his hip, opening her to him, the position easing his entrance. His head dipped, and he sucked her nipple hard again as he pushed forward, the tip of his cock breaching her.
She gasped, arching into him, the intensity of the connection beyond anything she had ever imagined. “Stuart.”
He rocked into her, filling her with more of him, the stretch of her inner walls exquisitely sensitive, on the border of pain. There was a heaviness deep within her, mingling with need. Another shallow thrust of his hips, and he gave her more of himself.
She moaned, clinging to him as if she feared he would slip away when the fullness within her and the weight of his body pressing her into the bed proved there was no fear of that happening. He released her breast and hovered over her, his countenance taut with worry and desire as he leveraged himself on his forearms.
“You feel so good, love,” he murmured. “So tight and wet on my cock.”
His naughty words made her relax, something within her softening. Another flex of his hips, and he was seated within her, his hips aligned with hers, and she was full of him, his cock somehow buried deep.
The breath fled her, her fingers tightening on his shoulders. There was such a strange blend within her, of desire and discomfort, of need and uncertainty.
“Breathe, sweetheart.” Stuart cupped her face with one hand and lowered his lips to hers, kissing her softly, tenderly. “Breathe and relax. Let me make you feel good.”
He kissed her again and began moving, his length slipping almost completely from her and then sliding in again. She tasted herself on his lips as she opened for his questing tongue. He began a steady rhythm, thrusting into her, then withdrawing, increasing his pace a little as his hand moved between their bodies.
His fingers sought and found her swollen bud with expert ease, and the combination of his touch on that sensitive place and his cock dragging in and out of her was almost too much. It chased the lingering sharpness, the slight pinch as her body grew accustomed to his and replaced it instead with pleasure so potent that she could do nothing but cry out into his mouth and hold him to her.
She was so close to coming apart again. His fingers worked her into a frenzy, each stroke of his cock inside her making that delicious tension wind ever tighter. She was acutely aware of everything—the heat of his body blazing into hers, the weight of him, the hardness of his muscled form, the barely leashed strength. The gentleness, too, the way he kissed her with such reverent care, even, the relentless strumming of his fingers over her pearl, the glide of him in and out, in and out, the sounds of need emerging from low in his chest, the breathy cries she couldn’t contain. The scent of the two of them combined, the coolness of the bedclothes beneath her, the softness of the pillow, the scrape of his whiskers on her chin, the rake of her nails down his back as he claimed her.
She never wanted this moment to end. Never wanted him to be anywhere other than where he was, atop her, inside her, making her his. He moved faster, his body tensing, his cock surging inside her, and the dam broke. Bliss surged from her core, spiraling outward, and she stiffened beneath him, shuddering at the force of her climax.
He broke the kiss, rising over her to drive into her body with frenzied pumps of his hips, his breathing as ragged as hers, his muscles flexing with each movement. “Rosamund. Fuck. I’m going to fill your sweet pussy. Fill you and fill you until I give you a babe.”
For some inexplicable reason, her body reacted to those words, to that promise. Her cunny fluttered around him as she splintered apart yet again. He sank deep, his cock hard and insistent and just where she wanted him, where she had to have him—or so it seemed—lest she expire from want.
“Yes,” she gasped out, beyond all rational thought. “Please, Stuart. I need you.”
He thrust into her again once, twice, and then the hot rush of his spend flooded her as she clutched him tightly, holding him to her, never wanting to let go.