Page 7 of Dukes All Night Long
V erity was in her chamber. Not the guest chamber she’d occupied the night prior to their wedding, the one where he’d joined her. She was in the bedchamber which adjoined his, only a single wall between them.
It had been a year. One year. One year that felt like a lifetime.
Seated at the dressing table, she dragged the silver-backed brush through her hair, the movements completed by rote, without thought. And then the door between their chambers opened.
“I want you,” he said. “But I understand if you need more time. My feelings for you are unchanged, even with everything that transpired. But for you… for twelve months, you didn’t know I existed.”
She shook her head. “I didn’t know your name. But I knew you. I felt you.” Placing her hand over her heart, she added, “I felt you here. The longing and the loss… I knew someone, somewhere must be looking for me, missing me.”
“More than you can possibly know,” he said.
“And I remember how you made me feel,” she admitted breathlessly. “The night before our wedding… when you came to my bed. I want to feel that again, Colin. I don’t want to wait or take more time… So much has been taken from us already.”
Stepping deeper into the room, he halted directly in front of her. Verity didn’t quite suppress the shiver that raced through her when he lifted a lock of her hair, rubbing the strands between his fingers as though marveling at the texture.
“It’s like silk,” he said. “I cannot tell you how many times I’ve dreamed of seeing you in just this way. The memory of our night together has haunted me for the past year, but it has sustained me, as well.”
Trembling, she rose from the small chair before her dressing table and stood on her toes to reach him.
She pressed her lips against his, one corner, then the other.
Then his arms closed around her, and he kissed her with all the hunger and yearning, all the loneliness and desperation of the last year.
It poured out between them like water sweeping away all the pain and difficulty, leaving in its wake a thing which was fresh and new. A thing that was entirely theirs.
When the kiss broke at last, they were both breathless with it. Then he tugged gently at the ties of her wrapper. “I believe we can dispense with this. Don’t you?”
She nodded and with the slightest nudge, the velvet and silk simply slipped from her shoulders until it puddled on the floor at her feet. In its absence, she wore only her night rail, the lawn so fine it was rendered utterly transparent.
“Perfect.”
“No,” she said. “I’m not. I’m not perfect. I don’t wish to be perfect.”
“Then what do you wish?”
“Only to be yours,” she admitted breathlessly.
*
With one simple statement, she’d robbed him of breath, of control.
He swept her up into his arms and carried her to the bed.
When he laid her back upon the counterpane, he came down beside her, careful not to crush her more slender form beneath his.
Even then, he could not get close enough to her.
The taste of her, the scent of her, they spurred him on like a madman.
His hands moved over her with reverence, exploring the familiar and the newly rediscovered, tracing the indentation of her waist, the dip just beneath her ribs, the arcing curve of full hips.
Through the fine lawn of her night rail, her body shifted toward his hands, arching, seeking, the heat building minute by minute.
Second by second. Her breath hitched, her fingers catching in the linen at his shoulder as if to draw him nearer still.
“You feel like silk,” he murmured, his lips brushing her jaw. “I have dreamed of this—of you—night after night. Remembering the way you tasted, the way you moved beneath me.”
“I remember too,” she whispered, trembling. “I remember how you made me feel.”
She reached for him, her fingers moving to the buttons of his shirt, impatient now, baring the warm expanse of his chest to her hands. She slid her palms over him, savoring the strength there, the solid lines shaped by grief and sleepless nights and determination. He shuddered beneath her touch.
He kissed her then, more deeply than before, coaxing her open with a mastery born of devotion. When he touched her thighs, parting them with the sort of reverence a reunion like theirs deserved, she welcomed him.
The hem of her night rail crept higher, and his fingers slid beneath it—over the smooth skin of her thigh, the curve of her hip, the soft, vulnerable heat of her. She gasped his name, her hands clutching at his back as he found her—wet, aching, already so close.
He kissed her throat as he touched her, slow and patient, drawing small circles that made her breath come in ragged bursts. Her head fell back, exposing the graceful line of her neck, and he pressed his lips there, feeling the pulse flutter against his mouth.
“You are so beautiful like this,” he murmured. “Open. Unafraid.”
Her response was a moan, wordless and shaking, as her hips shifted, arching into his questing hand.
She was trembling, the muscles of her thighs drawn so tightly they quivered even as her fingers dug into his shoulders.
Her nails scored his skin, the sting of it only adding another dimension to the need that already rocked through him.
Her breath hitched, then caught entirely, her back arching as pleasure surged through her, sharp and bright and overwhelming.
She cried out, broken and soft, his name spilling from her lips as her body convulsed against him. He held her through it, pressing kisses to her shoulder, her cheek, whispering her name like a prayer.
Her body trembled, still echoing with the last ripples of pleasure, and yet even in the aftermath, she reached for him, her hands roaming over the planes of his chest with unmistakable urgency.
Her mouth found his again—no longer tentative, but boldly seeking, answering the hunger she saw in his eyes.
She wasn’t done. And neither was he.
With one swift motion, she pushed at his shirt, her voice a breathless whisper against his mouth.
“Don’t stop, Colin… please.”
“I’ve no intention of stopping… not now. Not when I finally have you here with me again… But that doesn’t mean we have to rush. Sometimes, Verity, patience is its own reward.”