Page 12 of Secrets of a Duke’s Heart (Wayward Dukes’ Alliance #25)

CHAPTER TWELVE

O bediently, Clarissa scrambled onto his four-poster clad in her shift and stockings.

“Hold on.” He pointed to the bedpost. Clarissa clutched the wood and rose on her knees. Jude lifted her long leg and stripped her stockings down. Three long, lonely nights he’d spent in this very bed imagining this exact scenario, and now she was here in the flesh.

“Gorgeous,” he said, running his palm admiringly up her calf. Denying himself a peek beneath the hem of her shift. For now.

From his position on the floor, he was eye-level with her breasts. He fisted the hem and tugged it up to her waist. She cast it aside, leaving her gloriously naked. She was Venus incarnate with her lush breasts and full hips. Her dark hair fell to her waist. He wrapped his arms around her waist and sucked her glorious pink nipple deep into his mouth. Bliss. She arched into him, threading her fingers through his hair and moaning.

Louder. He was going to marry this woman. Damn the risk of getting caught. Nathaniel would be ecstatic to have his spinster cousin married to a duke. He probably ought to mention that detail to Clarissa at some point, but this was not the time.

When he had taken his fill, he graced her nipple with his teeth and released her. Dazed, Clarissa gazed at him, her brows knitted in confusion. He pointed to the pillow.

“Lay down,” he growled. A sly smile touched her lips. Instead, she got on all fours. Jude interpreted this as an invitation to smack her bottom. She yelped, laughing.

“What was that for?”

“Impertinence.”

“I’ll show you impertinence,” she said breathily.

“Since you aren’t cooperating, little minx, I shall have to teach you a lesson.”

“What kind of lesson?”

His eager pupil. Jude’s heart soared. He shucked his trousers while taking her in, then pushed her back against the bed so that her hair fanned out across the pillow. He settled himself between her thighs and took his time pressing kisses to the impossibly soft skin of her abdomen. She writhed deliciously beneath him.

“This isn’t your first time, is it?” he asked casually.

“Nor is it yours.” There was a defensive bite to her tone that told him to be careful with what he said next.

“How did you guess?” he gasped in mock horror. She exhaled a shuddering chuckle of relief.

“No, this isn’t my first time. Rest assured that I am not attempting to entrap you into an unwanted marriage.”

“As I have said, however clumsily, marriage is very much wanted.”

“Hm,” was all she said. Still unconvinced.

To persuade her further, he took a leisurely moment to explore the divot of her navel before draping her thigh over his shoulder and parting her glistening pink folds to find the nub at the peak of her center. He lavished attention there, driving two fingers inside her. Wet sounds filled the air. His cock thickened to the cusp of pain. He rutted against the bedclothes, seeking relief. Finding none.

Clarissa’s grip on his hair tightened. He bore down on the bundle of nerves with his tongue until her thighs trembled and her back arched in climax.

Satisfied that he had given her the first of many orgasms, he inched back up beside her and found her mouth. She kissed him without hesitation, squeezing his cock through his drawers.

Then Clarissa rolled him to his back and inched down, her hair fanning across his thighs. Jude propped his head on his bent arm so he could watch as she stroked his cock, tapping the head against her lower lip, her eyes bright with mischief through long dark lashes.

The sight of her pink tongue licking the bead of liquid welling in the slit jolted him. She was fearless, taking him into her mouth and sucking as far down as she could manage, which in all truth wasn’t very far. As if she could read his thoughts, challenge flashed and she pushed down, taking him deeper. His eyes rolled back in his head. He was enveloped by her wet heat. Her tongue swirled around the head again and he almost lost control.

“Off,” he commanded. “If you want this to go any further, you must stop doing that for now.”

Clarissa flicked her hair over her shoulder and straddled his hips. He tented his fingers on her hip and held his cock steady while she sank down, her eyes fluttering closed and her lips parted.

“Very good,” he said encouragingly. He was a large man in every sense of the word, and he had learned the hard way that it was possible to hurt a woman by moving too quickly. Clarissa worked her way down over him, her tight sheath gripping his cock. “That’s it. You’re so fucking tight, Clara, you feel so fucking good.” He would call her Clara every time they were in private from now on. Give her a name that only he owned.

“You say such filthy things,” she gasped, arching her back and bringing her hips down until she was fully seated at last. Bending forward, she braced her hands on her thighs. The pose had the gorgeous effect of squeezing her glorious tits together. They bounced when she lifted herself up a few inches and slammed down.

“You love it when I tell you how the flush in your cheeks extends all the way to your breasts, don’t you? Or how gorgeous your tits bounce? I could watch you ride my cock for hours.”

“Yes,” she moaned. He pinched her nipple and gave it a light tug. Her abdomen undulated. He pictured it round with his seed.

“You’ll give me so many children, Clara. A dozen of them. Your body was made for fucking and breeding.”

She whimpered.

“You love it when I smack this splendid arse, don’t you?” He demonstrated with a sharp slap that made her flesh jiggle. Jude wanted a mirror to see the way his palm reddened her bottom. He wanted to watch himself sliding in and out of her glistening pink folds. He wanted to bury himself within her and let loose.

But he couldn’t do that just yet. Somehow, he would have to find the strength to withdraw. He couldn’t sully the ducal name with a child born out of wedlock. That was how inheritances got messy. He didn’t want Pamela’s greedy sons staking unfounded claims upon the title. His heir must be born in the proper order: first marriage. Then babies.

Her pace quickened. “I’m close, Jude.”

“Yes, little minx. Ride me. Take everything you need.”

She gasped and panted, arching back so her breasts were thrust high. The scene would be emblazoned into his memory permanently. “You’re so gorgeous, Clara, my darling, take me, yes— yes ? — ”

Her body tensed and her pussy clenched around him. Jude couldn’t hold on any longer. When she was finished, he flipped her over without withdrawing, prompting a yelp of surprise, and rutted into her, pressing her into the bedsheets. Pleasure kicked up his spine, hazing his vision and pumping every drop of his seed deep inside her.

I shouldn’t have done that, was his first coherent thought upon returning to himself. But laying with his head buried in the crook of her shoulder, inhaling her scent and cradled between her thighs, he’d never felt so content in his life. It would be all right. He would marry her. There was the small matter of the Royal Marriages Act, seeing as he was a descendant of King George II. If the capricious Prinny refused his request to marry a woman of low birth, they would have to wait one agonizing year after giving notice to marry.

Twelve entire months of having to resist a temptation he hadn’t been able to resist for one night. He was making a mess of his succession and he could hardly bring himself to care. Not with his arms full of Clara’s soft curves and her heartbeat slowing gradually. He breathed in her soft floral scent and closed his eyes against the future, basking in the present moment.

His worries dissolved when Clarissa brushed a kiss to his forehead.

“We should get dressed. This was lovely, but we cannot afford to fall asleep and be caught.”

“Why not?” He caught her wrists and pressed them into the pillow on either side of her head. “I see no reason why we must hide. We shall be married as soon as the matter of Harriet’s wedding is squared away. I will have a word with her rogue. If this is truly what she wants, then I will find a way to break the agreement with Lord Lucarran. That will give me enough time to secure Prinny’s permission to marry you. I am certain I can apply for a special license. A week from now, you’ll be my duchess.”

He let his weight press her into the mattress, savoring the feeling of her body beneath his.

“Wait. Permission? Duchess? What?”

She sat up, blinking at him in astonishment.

“I thought you’d be pleased.”

“Pleased to discover you’ve been lying to me all this time?”

“Lying?” He hadn’t lied. He just hadn’t said it outright. “You’re a clever woman, Clarissa. You had all the clues. I cannot believe you didn’t put them together. I swear I thought you knew.”

“I may be clever, but I’m not clairvoyant! How was I supposed to know you were a duke? One does not simply encounter dukes in disguise at random villages in Cornwall. This is a disaster!”

She threw back the bedspread and dressed hastily, tripping in her attempt to pull on her stockings. She plopped into the chair and got them tied.

“I thought you were a gentleman of means. Not a duke. A duke is…”

“What, Clara?” Jude had managed to get his trousers on. He needed clothes. He wanted armor, but fabric would have to do. It was better than nothing.

“A calamity,” she finished. “I cannot be a duchess. Do you understand how much certain snobbish ladies of that set despised me by the time I had my final Season? I was too plain, too inelegant, and too smart for my own good. These women would be my peers.”

“Ignore them.”

She shot him a fulminating glare. “And when Bertram or his wife decide to inform the ton that I was stupid enough to lay with him before we had a marriage contract in place? What then?”

“Ignore them harder.”

Her wordless response of pure frustration coincided with a sharp tug on her lacings.

“Easy for you to say, Jude. But even if I could stomach putting myself in such a predicament, I will not marry a man who isn’t truthful with me about the most important aspects of his life. A duke,” she muttered as she slipped out the door, careful not to slam it despite her emotional state. “I never would have thought Mr. Montague could be a duke.”

Jude buried his face in his hands. He’d cocked this up completely, and he had no idea how to win her back.