Page 24 of The Duke of Cups (The Highwaymen #3)

He’d gotten the laudanum from the apothecary days ago, but he hadn’t drunk it. He’d teetered back and forth between drinking it or not, and thus far, he’d managed not to. He’d put it in a flask and tucked that into his jacket pocket, however, and he’d brought it to the ball.

Maybe he was just playing with it, like a child whose fingers kept getting too close to a candle’s flame. Maybe he thought if it was just a game, he wouldn’t get burned .

He took out the flask, opened it, and took a long drink.

Immediately, he hated himself.

He went directly down to the stables. His carriage was waiting for him there, but the driver wouldn’t be ready to go yet. Except, when he arrived, the driver gave him a little smile, winking at him in a way that made no sense to him.

Dunrose opened the carriage.

Hyacinth was inside.

He climbed into the carriage. “What are you doing here?”

“Going on a drive with you,” she said.

“Fuck,” he said and got out the flask. He handed it to her. “Have you ever drunk laudanum for fun?”

She snatched it from him. “No.”

“It’ll be better if we’re both… oblivious,” he said.

“All right,” she said, with a little shrug. She tipped it into her mouth.

“Not so much,” he said, taking it back. “You don’t wish to simply fall asleep, all right?”

She let out a little laugh. “You… I don’t know why I…”

He tucked the flask away and banged on the ceiling of the carriage. “Drive until I tell you to stop,” he shouted. “That clear?”

The driver laughed knowingly and called back an affirmative.

They set off.

She was nervous, tapping her fingers against her silk-covered thigh. “Are you going to try to… with me again? Is that what we’re doing?”

“I think so,” he said, opening the flask again, taking more laudanum. It was working, making everything change into a warm-tinged world of safe and happy goodness. No pain. No sharp edges. Everything just… nice.

“It’s just an attempt to convince me to poison him, I suppose,” she said.

He laughed softly. “No, love, it’s not that.”

She took the flask from him.

He took it back. “You’ve had enough.”

“You’ve just had more! ”

“Yes, well, I’m used to it,” he said. He laughed helplessly. “You have no idea how hard it was to get off that dreaded stuff, and one rejection from you, and here I am—”

“Rejection?” she said. “I’m here, am I not?”

“You are,” he breathed.

She got the flask from him again, and he reached for it, but she had opened a window and tossed it out.

He let out a cry.

“If you have a dependency, Your Grace, I don’t think you should—”

He kissed her, cutting off her words, pulling her into his arms.

She threw her arms around his neck, climbing into his lap.

They kissed like that for some time, desperate, deep kisses, and the opium was winging at the edges of his consciousness, and whenever he closed his eyes, he could see things, little opium waking dreams, a lovely soft world of the two of them, floating together in a sky of golden sunlight and gleaming clouds.

He clutched her to him.

Eventually, she stopped kissing him and tucked her head down against his chest. She yawned. “Sleepy.”

“I told you not to have more,” he said. His eyes were closed. He was soaring with her in a golden sky.

“Are you sleepy?” she said.

“Mmm, sort of,” he said. “I should like to see your breasts, though, if you’d let me. Did you come to my carriage to let me have my way with you?”

“No,” she said, yawning again. She sat up and reached back to start unbuttoning her buttons. “No, that would be stupid of me.”

“Haven’t we established that we aren’t particularly intelligent around each other?” He reached back to help her with her buttons.

“You’re never intelligent, Your Grace,” she said.

“Ouch,” he said mildly. “You’re quite heartless towards me, my lady. ”

“Why did you say that thing? About offering for me?”

“I think I did, didn’t I?” he said.

“But you don’t love me.”

“No,” he said. “I don’t think I can anymore. Whatever this is, though, it’s as close as I can manage, really. I’m quite badly affected by you.”

She pushed his hands away.

“What?” he said.

“Just say it,” she said. “If you want to see my bare bosom again, say it. Lie, if you must, but I need to hear it.”

His lips parted. “You wish me to tell you I…”

“What does it matter, Your Grace? You and I both know you are only using me to kill my husband.”

“That’s not what—”

“Lie to me,” she said. “I promise I shall only believe for as long as the opium makes me feel this detached feeling of happy nothingness.”

He reached up and dragged the pads of his fingertips over her cheekbone, over her jaw. “Oh, Hyacinth, I love you.”

She smiled, her eyelids fluttering closed.

He kissed her.

She gasped into his mouth.

“Say it back,” he grunted, going back to work her buttons.

“What do you care?”

“Say it,” he said.

“No, it’s not a lie for me, so—”

“Sure, it is,” he said. “You don’t know me, Hyacinth. Once you do, you’ll hate me. Everyone does. Please. I wish to pretend that someone could love me, just for this carriage ride.”

She drew back to look carefully into his eyes.

“Oh, hell and damnation,” he said in a gravelly voice, “do not think to argue with me and say that other people do love me. For the sake of everything above and below, trust me when I say I know this. I know what I am. I know that I am not worthy of love.”

“No,” she said quietly, “perhaps you are not. ”

That should have hurt, but thank God, he was too far gone on the laudanum to feel anything except warmth. “Say it.”

“I love you,” she said.

“My name, say my name.” He tucked his hand down the front of her bodice.

“Daniel,” she said. “I love you, Daniel.”

He kissed her again, reaching down to cup the soft wonder of her breast. How was her skin so impossibly smooth?

She sighed. “Oh, like that, please, not so rough like before?”

“Was I rough, love? I’m so sorry.”

“I was thinking that you probably touch the way you’d like to be touched,” she said. “And that you must want more force than I want.”

“You’re sensitive and delicate, aren’t you?” he breathed, teasing her nipple stiff.

She moaned. “That’s very nice.”

“I want my mouth on them,” he said, scooping one breast out of her stays and then the other.

She was in his lap, her dress half off, her breasts on display, and there was something wondrously wicked about her half-dressed like this. He felt himself pulse between his legs. He put his mouth on her.

She groaned, throwing back her head.

“Good girl,” he said. “I want you just like this. Let me make you groan like that, again and again, if you please.”

She sighed her assent.

He touched one nipple with one hand and suckled the other.

“Ouch,” she said.

He laughed. “Still too rough? You’re very delicate, aren’t you?”

“Maybe,” she whispered.

Or maybe he was as bad at this as Seraphine had accused him of being. If he had another chance with her, with Hyacinth, he wanted to do it properly this time. “Well, that’s good,” he told her, dragging his tongue over her puckered nipple. “I wouldn’t want you other than delicate. You’re perfect.”

She shivered against him, making a tiny gasping noise.

“You’ll tell me if I’m even remotely too rough again,” he said.

“Yes,” she breathed, and when he licked her again, she shuddered in such a way that let him know she very much enjoyed it.

He applied his fingers and his mouth to teasing her senseless, and she fell apart in his arms, gasping and sighing against him, writhing in his arms, the most beautiful and arousing thing he thought he’d ever witnessed.

He had to admit he’d never tried very hard with other women. He likely hadn’t been good at what he was doing. If this was the amount of effort it took, he’d never made much effort.

When he finally tugged up her skirts to find her bare sex (she was sans drawers again, which pleased him.

Some women were of the mind it was improper to have anything between their thighs, and he didn’t mind that interpretation, not at all, if it made it easier for him to get at her) she was loose and sinfully wet.

He dredged his fingers through her and licked them clean.

She let out a shocked noise. “You didn’t just do that!”

He grinned up at her. “May I taste you again?”

“You can’t like that,” she said, but she wasn’t stopping him as he arranged her on the seat and settled between her lovely, shapely, spread thighs.

“Ah, but I do like it. You taste like honeysuckle and lavender.”

She snorted. “I know I don’t taste like that.”

She did. Well, no, she didn’t, he supposed. She tasted like a cunny there, but it was sweet and feminine, and it did make him think of honeysuckle, and he liked licking her there, and she cried out as he delved into the tart and delightful secret parts of her .

“Ouch,” she said.

Damn it. He kissed her mound, gentle. “Apologies, love. I’ll be gentler.”

“Well, I don’t know,” she said, her voice dreamy. “I feel like the laudanum is making it harder for me to find a climax, and I know you were bored last time.”

He lifted his face from what he was doing. “I was not.”

She opened her eyes to meet his gaze. “Well, you said it took me a long time to reach my climax—”

“Yes, it’s been pointed out to me that I may have had no idea what a woman’s climax was actually like.”

She blinked at him. “But you’ve been with… how many women have you been with?”

“I want to please you,” he said. “I want to please you, and I want you to correct me if I don’t please you.”

“But I want to please you ,” she said, gasping because he had his tongue on her clitoris again. “And I can’t see how you could possibly like doing this.”

“I do, though. Very much.” He licked her again, and she tasted like sunlight, like a bright golden sky.

“I suppose, though, maybe it’s like before, when I just wanted to use your prick like my own little toy,” she said, sighing, her voice insubstantial.

His cock jerked. “What did you just say?”

“Ooh, can I put that in my mouth?” she said, wriggling her hips against him.

He grunted into her skin. “You’re the most perfect woman in the history of the entire known world.”

“I’ll let you keep doing this if I can do that,” she said, decided.

He laughed helplessly into her. “Well, all right, then.”

“Good,” she said, wriggling again, running her wetness over him, painting his lips with it.

He nearly crested. Fuck.

“Make me come, Daniel,” she panted. “Please.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “You need to be my very, very good comtesse and come, right on the tongue of the man who is not your husband. ”

She giggled. “That’s nice. That wickedness is very nice. You’re a wicked man, Your Grace.”

“You’re not wicked at all. You’re goodness personified, my lady. And the very best thing you could do is let yourself relax and burst all over my fucking face.”

She moaned.

He licked her, lapped at her. She was the sun and he was the moon, chasing her through the sky, trying to catch up to her brilliance but only able to reflect it.

He licked her and she trembled and sighed and each one of her little noises made his prick harder.

He fought not to jerk himself into the carriage seat.

He wanted it all to last, to last as long as he could make it last, even if it was agony waiting.

He fell into another opium dream, this one a golden world of bright yellow flowers and a golden path and the sun bouncing through the clouds of a blue sky as he ran after it, faster and faster, tumbling downhill, until—

She pushed his forehead away. “ Assez, ” she was huffing, saying “enough” in French, which must be her first tongue, he supposed, though maybe not if she had been born in England. He must ask her this, and he would.

But just then, he was distracted because she pushed him back into the seat and tore at his trousers.

She had him free in seconds, and he was too sensitive as she barely touched him, running her fingers over his pulsing hardness.

“Have pity on me, Hyacinth,” he managed. “I can’t possibly—”

She tucked him into her mouth.

“ Fuck. ” He exploded immediately, his hips jerking up, so that he likely choked her, spearing her throat, for heaven’s sake. He tried to find his voice to apologize, because she was wide eyed and shocked at what had just happened.

She swallowed, though, swallowed all of it.

“Oh… you…” He smiled at her. “You’re a very good comtesse. Very, very good at cuckolding your husband. That’s just exactly right, love. Swallow every drop of me.”

She still had him in her mouth. She was smiling. She sucked.

He cried out. “Stop. Too much!”

She giggled, pulling off. “Well, some of your own medicine then.”

He was out of breath. “That’s not at all what I intended us to do.”

“No?” she said, sitting up and settling next to him. Her breasts were still sticking out over the top of her stays.

“I wanted to be inside you.”

“I wanted that, too,” she said with a sigh.

“Well,” he whispered. “The driver won’t stop the carriage until I say. So, let’s just keep going.”