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CHAPTER FOUR

Beatrice did not know what to think, how to feel.

One minute, Arthur was devouring her and showing her breathtaking ways to learn and experience another person, and the next, he was telling her they needed to stop.

But he didn’t release her.

His words said one thing, but his touch and his body, another.

“Why?” she breathed.

“Because.”

She lifted a brow, silently urging him to continue. That couldn’t be the only explanation he would offer.

He narrowed his eyes at her, clearly displeased with her questioning of him. She cared not one whit. If he was going to change so suddenly on her, then she refused to allow him to pull rank now.

“Because you deserve better.”

That was not the explanation she’d expected.

Thoughtfulness and sensibility were not a part of his reputation, but if that day had taught her anything, it was that there was far more to the Debauched Duke than anyone believed.

To dismiss him as just another rake was a great disservice to everything else he was beneath the attractive surface.

She knew she’d only just come to know him, but she liked what she saw.

Tremendously. Her heart and her intuition urged her toward him with unerring force.

And the last thing she wanted was for him to find his conscience now and put a stop to what had begun to simmer between them.

“Better?” she asked dumbly.

His hands tightened in the fabric at her waist. “Better than a man who has wanted nothing more than to ravage you from the moment he laid eyes on you and heard your laughter.” She swore her heart stopped beating.

“Better than a man with a reputation like mine. Someone younger, less jaded, better situated to endear himself to your family and take you as his wife.”

“Wife?” she stammered, unable to do anything beyond parroting his words.

The lines bracketing his mouth deepened and his brow furrowed. She was about ready to crawl out of her skin when he finally spoke. “Yes. Wife. Marriage.”

“Any woman would be thrilled to marry you and become a duchess.”

“Not a duke with a history like mine, and for good reason. My choices have only confirmed the assessment.” He added the last with the bald finality of acceptance.

This was a man who had long ago learned how he was viewed and given up on fighting it.

Her heart fluttered again when he tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, his entrancing eyes scanning her features.

“You haven’t been out in Society long and you’ve probably been sheltered from the worst scandals in which I’ve been involved.

I am hardly a paragon of respectability.

If I were a better man, I would walk away from you and save you from the stain of my misdeeds. ”

“You speak as if you are some sort of monster,” she said with a small incredulous breath of laughter.

“That would not be all that off the mark as far as many in Society are concerned. You do not know me.”

Beatrice pressed her fingers to his lips, effectively halting his words.

His eyes widened in surprise at her boldness, but he complied.

It was thrilling to be able to have a man such as him obey her.

“I have seen nothing of this monster. If anything, I like what I have seen of you a great deal more than anything shown to me by any other man I’ve met.

” His imperious brow began to twitch and she found it remarkable that she already knew him well enough to predict it was headed toward an expression of condescending disbelief.

“Do not try to naysay me, or tell me that I am too naive to know of what I speak. I have seen enough of you to know there is more than the portrait the ton and the tabloids have painted. You are a multifaceted man…and I would like to learn more.”

“More?” he murmured, taking his turn at repeating words.

“Mhmm.” Despite her best efforts, a smile bloomed on her face. “As much as you’ll allow me.”

With surprising speed, he removed her hand from his lips and brought his mouth to hers in a collision of raw emotion.

He murmured against her lips praises for everything from her smile to her heart, her bravery and her sweetness.

With deft ease, he pulled her to straddle his lap without ever breaking contact.

She wound her arms around his neck and gave herself over to the crashing tide of desire drowning her common sense.

She loved the sounds he made when she pressed her pelvis to his, savored the hardness she discovered there.

One didn’t come of age in a household bursting with girls and not absorb a few whispered details about intercourse…

and she wanted to experience it all with this man. Her heart told her she’d not regret it.

Beatrice’s hands slid from his firm, broad shoulders and she began to yank at the fastenings of her maid’s garments.

By the time the duke realized what she’d done, her bodice was gaping wide to reveal her small, dark nipples to his ravenous gaze.

His tremulous breath unleashed a molten rush of liquid fire between her thighs and she pressed herself more closely to assuage the growing need there.

In one smooth movement, he flipped her to her back on the cushions and hovered an inch above her heaving bosom.

The cool air of the room caressed her legs and knew her skirts had crept up past her hips, but she cared not.

She wanted to offer herself up to this man, to allow him to teach her everything there could be between them.

The sound he made when he discovered the slit in her flimsy drawers was just shy of a masculine whimper.

White-hot flames licked her core as his touch grazed the damp thatch of curls between her thighs.

Each pass of his fingers pressed a little further until he parted her swollen folds.

The appreciative moan from deep in his throat made her squirm and spread herself wider for him.

“You are…so beautiful…” Arthur breathed shakily.

Her eyes flew open when he wrapped a hand around the back of her neck and brought their faces close to impress upon her the seriousness of his next words.

“Truthfully, Beatrice. You are stunning in every way and I have wanted you from the very first moment I heard your perfect laughter. I am unworthy of holding your hand, let alone…” he dragged his finger through her slickness, making her jump when he discovered the sensitive bundle of nerves at the crux of her sex; “this...” The word finished with a delicious hiss.

“You must come to your senses now and shove me away, or else I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to control myself. ”

Her fingers clutched his wrist to prevent him from stopping his gentle caresses. “Do. Not. Stop,” she gasped and panted.

Their breath hissed through their teeth as she forced his hand more firmly between her thighs so he cupped her fully, filling his palm with her sex.

She rolled her pelvis against him, needing the pressure but unable to voice it.

She was acting on pure instinct and that was far more inebriating to Arthur than any substance he might imbibe.

He crooked his two longest fingers and slowly, reverently ran them through her slit.

“Is this what you want, pretty one?” he growled against her mouth and applied pressure to the place he knew would make her writhe.

She whimpered into his mouth, enflaming his throbbing groin to an almost unbearable degree.

“And this?” His middle finger circled her entrance and dipped just inside the passage.

“Hell. You’re so bloody tight,” he groaned tremulously.

She would be the death of him—of that, he was certain.

Her hips canted to grant him better access and he slid his digit a little deeper.

“I can’t wait to have you like this, sweet and panting beneath me as I introduce you to pleasure. ”

“Then do it,” she ground out through gritted teeth, her words shattering as he slid another finger inside to join the first. Beatrice gasped and rocked against him, rotating her hips as a counterpressure to his ministrations. “More,” she mewled again and again.

“There would be no turning back from that, Beatrice,” he replied raggedly, leaning heavily upon the final shreds of his sanity.

“With this, I can give you pleasure and leave you a virgin.” In contrast to his roughness, his free hand cupped her cheek with infinite care.

“And leave you free to back out of this should you realize marriage to me is not what you desire.”

Her glazed eyes flew to his, but she said nothing.

Instead, she leaned forward, slid her fingers along his abdomen until she found the waistband of his breeches, tugging him to fit between her thighs.

Every bit of air escaped his lungs and all coherent thoughts fled when her hand gave his cock a tentative stroke through the fabric of his clothing.

She struggled to undo the falls of his breeches, but a flick of his wrist finished the job and his turgid member sprang into her palm.

When she tested his length and girth with innocent enthusiasm, he was no longer a man.

He’d been reduced to a bundle of nerves and sensation, created solely for pleasure—his and this woman’s.

In the snap of a finger, he tore off his coat and waistcoat, followed quickly by his shirt.

A few swift movements from both and they were naked together.

Flesh to flesh. The softness of her pert breasts heaved against the hardness of his chest. The coarse hair on his thighs tickled the sensitive skin of her lithe legs.

His painfully hard cock fit so perfectly in the dripping cradle of her sex, nestled there as if they were two halves of the same whole.

Holding himself above her, he expected to see trepidation in her expression; however, his breath caught when he was met with her delicately flushed features, soft parted lips, and eyes so warm and trusting that they made his heart bleed.

No one had ever looked at him like that—put so much faith and trust in him—and it was overwhelming.

She soothed the raw parts of his soul he hadn’t known existed.

The years had worn him down in unseen, heretofore unrecognized ways, and he could feel himself begin to heal with her acceptance.

He knew he could get lost in the way she made him feel and how she viewed him.

How had she done this to him? How had she wheedled her way beneath his skin so deeply, so completely? All he knew was that she had, and there was no getting her out now.

Not when she begged him to claim her.

Not when she made him feel more seen than he ever had with women almost twice her age.

She was a gem of the truest order. To think that someone as young as she held more poise and openness in her heart than most people he’d met…how was he worthy of this? Of her?

Notching himself in place, Arthur pressed forward.

“I will marry you, Beatrice,” he groaned.

“I will never, ever want another.” He relished the bite of her nails as she clutched his shoulders, the tightening of her slick body as it struggled to accept his intrusion, the nip of her teeth against his bobbing throat.

“Mine,” he growled, sinking to the hilt and pausing to savor it.

“Promise?” she breathed against his sweat-slicked chest, and Arthur was lost.

Her nubile body welcomed his forceful rhythm as his body pounded into hers. Beatrice clung to him as they rocked together, slid and collided, welcomed his fingers as they stroked her in time to his claiming thrusts.

“God, Beatrice.” His breath caught in his throat.

“I love everything about you.” He punctuated each phrase with a buck of his hips.

“I love your smile, your laughter, your mind, your body.” He kissed her deeply.

“And I will do anything to ensure your happiness, because I love you and I am beyond all sense and reason for it.”

With a sob and a keening cry, Beatrice stiffened around him, wrapped her legs around his hips, and held him deep within her as she crested wave after wave of her climax. Arthur followed soon after, allowing her body to milk his pleasure from him until they were both boneless and spent.