Page 24 of His Stolen Duchess (Stolen by the Duke #7)

Chapter Nineteen

“ Y ou needn’t have been so severe with Lady Eastbeck,” Georgina said fretfully.

The night was still dark, clear, and studded with stars, but the air inside the coach felt taut.

Georgina kept her gaze fixed on the passing blur of trees and lamplight, as though the glass pane could offer her a means of escape from her recent intense confrontation at the ball and the man seated near her.

Lysander sat opposite her, his profile sharpened by shadow. She could still see the scar that crept out from under his collar and traced a jagged path up his neck. Even during her swimming lessons, she hadn’t seen the full extent of it. She wasn’t sure anyone had.

“She had no right to speak to you as she did, and she certainly had no right to strike you. Or even attempt to. I don’t care what her intentions were; we both know she would have hit you if I hadn’t intervened, and I won’t ever let anyone hurt you like that.”

“She acted foolishly, but only because she is in love with Lord Abbington. I don’t know how or why, or whether he returns that sentiment, though I am sure he doesn’t, but she wasn’t in control of herself, and I feel sorry for her.”

“You can feel sorry for her all you like, and she can be in love with whomever she desires, but that doesn’t give her an excuse to do whatever she wants.

” Lysander reached out his arm, cupped her chin in his hand, and held her face to look into her eyes.

“You’re mine now, and no one, no one , gets to insult you in any way.

If Lady Eastbeck were not a lady, it would have gone much farther than it did. She was fortunate to have my mercy.”

“I appreciate you protecting me,” Georgina said softly. “They were all talking about us, and I don’t need them talking about us even more. I would rather not be around the ton ever again.”

“Don’t pay them any mind,” the Duke told her. His thumb brushed her cheek. “They talk only because they are jealous.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” she murmured. “You’re not like them.”

Lysander leaned forward slightly. “And neither are you.”

She gave a bitter little laugh and looked away, but he reached again for her chin with a deliberate, unhurried grace. He guided her face back to his, and his thumb brushed against her cheekbone.

“You needn’t shrink away,” he said. “You’re not a girl to be hidden in the shadows, nor some fragile thing to be cast aside. I saw the way Abbington treated you. You told me what he did. You were his betrothed, and yet he gave you neither care nor honor.”

She swallowed. “No,” she said. “He didn’t.”

“A real man,” Lysander said, his voice lower now, “does not make a woman feel invisible.”

Her pulse thrummed in her throat. He was still holding her chin, and his fingers were warm against her skin, anchoring her in the insulated darkness of the coach.

“He wasn’t a real man,” she said after a moment, her voice barely above a whisper.

“No,” Lysander replied. “But I am.”

And then he kissed her.

He didn’t rush. His mouth pressed to hers with deliberate restraint, a held breath, a storm not yet loosed. She felt the heat of him, his hand still on her cheek, the other braced on the seat between them, and for a moment she forgot the ball, forgot Lady Eastbeck, and forgot her own name.

When he pulled back, the silence that followed was not empty. It was charged.

Her lips tingled, her skin felt flushed, and her breath caught somewhere behind her ribs.

Lysander studied her face, then moved slowly, almost reverently, down to his knees before her, squeezing into the small space between them in the moving carriage.

The motion was fluid, effortless, as though he belonged nowhere else.

The candlelight from the coach’s side lantern flickered against his dark hair.

Georgina’s breath hitched. “What are you doing?”

He looked up at her, his expression indecipherable, but his eyes burned like molten steel.

“Perhaps it’s time I showed you how a real man treats his woman.”

He lifted the hem of her skirts.

“Do you trust me?” he asked, in a voice as low as thunder before the storm.

Georgina nodded.

“I will take care of you,” he murmured, locking his eyes onto hers. “Don’t be afraid.”

“I’m not,” she lied, as her chest hitched nervously.

Her breath fogged softly in the carriage’s dim interior—shallow, quick, and trembling as it met the velvet drapery and polished wood panels of the carriage. Her every exhale echoed like a pulse, rising from somewhere low and urgent, and stoking the embers that glowed beneath her skin.

As he sank to his knees before her, between her parted legs, Lysander did not release her from his gaze.

She could scarcely breathe.

Her gown, already loosened by the haste of earlier hours, rustled as he pushed the fabric higher, baring her thighs to the lamplight that filtered through the silk curtains.

The gentle rocking of the carriage only served to heighten the precariousness of what was unfolding—the candlelit shadows dancing across the ceiling, the patter of soft rain against the roof above, and the nearness of his warm breath between her thighs.

This is what it means to be a woman .

His hands grazed the sensitive skin of her calves, then her thighs, as reverently as one might trace a scripture. The warmth of his palms melted across her limbs, coaxing them open, making space for him.

And she gave it freely. She gave herself freely.

She did not expect him to show such tenderness or such restraint in that moment.

Georgina gasped as his knuckles brushed the inside of her thigh—an involuntary, trembling sound that left her lips before she could contain it. Her skin prickled with gooseflesh as his other hand mirrored the motion, a lazy, deliberate stroke that sent a current rippling through her spine.

She tilted her head back, her eyes searching the carriage ceiling, not daring to look down to see him kneeling there, fully clothed and utterly composed, while her own restraint dissolved thread by silken thread.

It felt sacrilegious. Intimate. Irrevocable.

Her thighs tensed as his thumbs pressed gently, parting her further. She did not resist. Her breath caught again, this time in anticipation, as he leaned in. The warmth of his exhale ghosted over her exposed core.

The first touch was nothing more than the pad of his finger, gliding across her soft folds as though to learn them by heart. She shivered.

Then, a flick of his thumb, just once, over that aching bud, and her hips lifted instinctively, seeking more. Her body spoke a language she did not know she knew.

She moaned, low and broken, a sound she might have been ashamed of had she been able to think clearly. But there was no space for shame here. Only sensation.

His tongue replaced his thumb—hot, slow, and devastating.

Georgina reached down, threading her fingers through his hair as though she needed something to anchor her to the earth.

She pushed him closer, and he did not resist.

“Mmm…” she exhaled, trembling. “Please… don’t stop.”

The growl that answered her was wolflike, possessive, primal. It vibrated through her and into her core, making her cry out again, her voice smothered by the palm she brought to her lips. London might as well have vanished beyond the carriage walls for all that it now mattered.

He devoured her with reverence and hunger, his tongue circling, teasing, pressing.

Her hips rolled with his rhythm, helpless to stop the movement, so utterly absorbed by it.

One of his hands gripped her thigh to keep her steady, the other slid around to cradle her bottom, drawing her closer to his mouth.

She could not have stopped him if she wanted to. And she did not want to.

The moment stretched—liquid, golden, unbearable.

A tiny jolt of the wheels knocked them both gently upward. She gasped again, the unexpected friction of movement tipping her closer to the edge. Her hand clawed for the cushions, desperate to hold herself together, but she was already unraveling.

His lips closed around her swollen bud, sucking softly before lashing it with his tongue.

Her back arched. She couldn’t stop herself. Her legs trembled, her stomach tightened.

“Lysander,” she whispered. “Oh— please ?—”

It was a prayer, demand, and surrender, all at once.

Then came the crescendo.

He held her down as she shattered, her thighs trembling beneath his palms, her moans caught somewhere between pleasure and disbelief. She convulsed in slow waves, the sensation cresting and breaking repeatedly until her voice gave out and her limbs went slack.

She slumped against the velvet cushions, boneless, her chest rising and falling in ragged breaths. Her pulse drummed in her ears.

Still, he lingered. He pressed one final kiss to her inner thigh, and only then did he lift his head.

The coach came to a smooth stop.

“Impeccable timing,” he muttered with a crooked smile, his voice rough with restraint.

Georgina couldn’t meet his eyes.

She couldn’t even look at him—this man who had just kneeled before her and coaxed such sounds from her, who had touched her with worshipful patience and brought her body to its first bloom of pleasure.

He smoothed down her skirts with meticulous care, then offered her his hand. She took it, dazed, her fingers trembling in his.

The cool air outside hit her flushed skin as the door opened.

Mr. Squawksby shrieked somewhere in the shadows of the townhouse as they stepped into the lamplight.

She couldn’t feel the ground beneath her feet. She was floating—light, warm, remade.

The Duke said nothing as he guided her up the stairs, pausing only at the door to her chamber.

He did not enter.

“That will do for tonight,” he said, almost gently. He kissed her brow. “Rest.”

She wanted to say something—ask him to stay, ask him to hold her, ask what this meant—but her lips would not form the words. She only watched as he disappeared down the corridor.

She lay back on her bed, still wearing the evidence of his attention, the scent of him absorbed in her skin.

The room was dark, the world quiet. And still, her body hummed like a plucked string.

She closed her eyes.

And smiled.