Page 11 of The Earl’s Tempting Ward (Dukes Gone Dirty #2)

11

B enedict froze.

It was the most difficult thing he’d ever done, but he tensed his muscles and stilled as a rush of cold shock hit him straight between the eyes.

“You’re…” His face was still next to her head, and he pulled back to see her eyes.

Her pained, shocked, horrified eyes.

“You’re a virgin ,” he bit out.

She squeezed her eyes shut. There was no denying it. He might not have taken a virgin before, but there was no confusion over the barrier he’d just broken through.

Brutally and in one hard thrust.

“Christ,” he muttered through clenched teeth.

Her chest rose and fell quickly beneath him, and a bead of sweat trailed down her temple as she grimaced in pain.

He started to ease back, guilt and shame making his heart pound, but he stopped when her fingers dug into his back. “Don’t,” she whispered.

Horror flooded his veins as the reality of what he’d just done set in.

Horror…and fury. She’d told him she wasn’t innocent, for God’s sake. She’d told him she’d had a lover. She’d thrown her experience in his face on multiple occasions.

He glared down at her now. Clearly she’d lied.

The muscles around her mouth pinched and her nostrils flared as she drew in a deep breath. His anger sputtered and extinguished at the sight of her pain.

He kissed her forehead and then the tip of her nose. She let out a shaky breath, her grip loosening slightly on his shoulders.

“Let me pull out, love,” he said. “It’s too much for you.”

Her eyes snapped open and he found himself staring directly into her clear eyes, which looked dark and endlessly deep in the shadows. “No,” she said again. Lifting her legs, she wrapped them around him until her heels dug into his arse and he was so deep inside her he nearly lost control.

He grit his teeth and focused on the way her eyes glittered with emotion in the moonlight. Emotions too complicated to name, but identifiable all the same.

He knew them well, this motley mix of desire and fear, shame and hope. Staring into her eyes was heady. Intoxicating. Like looking into a gypsy’s tea leaves and seeing his past and his future all at once.

“I need this,” she whispered. Her hips arched up. “Please.”

Tension knotted in his back and made his jaw hard as stone.

Her voice was husky with desire and laced with pain. “I need you .”

That did it. He buried himself deeper without thinking, sheer animal instinct taking over before he could stop himself.

Her head fell back with her satisfied grunt.

“I’m hurting you,” he said through a clenched jaw.

“I don’t care.” Her whisper turned to a moan when he circled his hips slightly.

He studied her features, still tight with discomfort, but there was desire there too. Her eyelids were heavy, her gaze growing more distant and dazed with each labored breath.

He’d told himself he wouldn’t touch her anymore, but he couldn’t stop himself from dropping a kiss to her collarbone.

She arched up, thrusting her lovely tits so close to his mouth he couldn’t resist the invitation. He lapped at one nipple until it was a hard pebble beneath his tongue and she was wriggling her hips for more contact. Then he sucked that stiff peak into his mouth, sucking gently at first, and then harder when she cried out and buried her hands in his hair to hold him close.

He growled as pleasure shot down his spine and settled in his loins, his bollocks tightening with anguish and the need for release. But he kept his bottom half still, focusing all of his attention on her perfect breasts. He tried his best to ignore the sweet painful squeeze of her tight channel, but Christ she was tighter than he could have ever imagined. She was tight…and wet. For him.

The thought was humbling. He’d do whatever it took to bring back that pleasure she’d found before with his touch.

With one hand he kneaded the soft flesh of one luscious breast while his mouth worked the other, alternating sides as her breathing became pants and her moans turned to whimpers.

“Please, please, please,” she was chanting by the time he lifted his head.

He rewarded her with a kiss that startled him with its intimacy.

He’d kissed countless women before, though very few ladies. He’d even kissed women he’d liked before, including Francesca who he’d fancied himself in love with before she’d shown her true nature. But no kiss had ever felt like this.

This was…different.

Unsettlingly so. He’d never seen Philippa so vulnerable, and a surge of protectiveness had him kissing her gingerly, trying to tell her something he didn’t know how to put into words. Her lips clung to his, her tongue warm and sweet as she tasted him with soft touches and gentle licks.

It was…tender.

But all at once she tore her lips away with a shake of her head. “No more kissing.”

He stared at her in surprise, but in a heartbeat he realized she must have been turned off by the feel of his scarred skin against her flawless cheeks.

He swallowed down a wave of disgust with himself for forgetting for a moment who he was now. Who he’d become.

He’d become a beast who stole a young lady’s virginity.

She gripped his head between her hands, forcing his gaze to meet hers.

“I need you to take me,” she said. There was desperation there she didn’t try to hide. “I need you to take me rough and hard.”

The words worked a spell on him and made his already tight bollocks tighten even further. He groaned. “I don’t want to hurt you, love.”

She exhaled sharply. “I want it. I need it. Please, my lord.” Her gaze was pleading. “Please.”

He finally gave in to the need that made his hard member feel like it might shatter from being so rigid, but it was with small, gentle thrusts that required every bit of his self-control.

“Yes,” she whispered against his lips. “More. Harder.”

He shook his head. “I’ll hurt you.”

Her expression shifted so suddenly it startled him anew. She bared her teeth in a grimace as she pressed her heels down and slammed her tight quim up. “Don’t you understand, I want you to. I deserve it. Pound into me and make me scream.”

A chill shot through him, cold enough to break through his lust. This was it. He was getting to the heart of her, and what he saw shook him. “Why?” he demanded, giving her one hard thrust like she asked. “Tell me why.”

Her breath hitched and her eyes rolled back with a moan of pleasure. “More.”

“Tell me why you deserve it first,” he murmured against her lips, rolling his hips to tease that spot inside of her that made her whimper.

“Because…” Her head tossed from side to side with frustration as she used her thighs, her feet, and her hands to try and urge him on as she bucked wildly beneath him.

“Because why?” he demanded. He caught her by the chin and kissed her hard. “Tell. Me. Why.”

“Because I deserve it,” she blurted out. “Because I am wicked and evil and cruel and mean.”

Each word struck his skin like the lash of a whip. Not just the words themselves, but the self-hatred in her voice, the agony in her eyes. He couldn’t take it. Seeing that in her. He’d seen it enough in the mirror, but to see it in her innocent, sweet eyes…

He would not stand for it.

Using his grip on her chin he tried to get her to meet his stare, but her gaze was distant and filled with pain. “Listen to me, love.”

When she tried to look away, he dropped his hand to her slim, soft, tender throat and squeezed just tightly enough to shock her into the present. Her gaze collided with his—totally open and unguarded for the first time since they’d met.

“There will be some pain,” he said. “I cannot help that. But there will be more pleasure, and you will take it.”

She opened her mouth as if to protest and he drew his hips back and rammed into her making her cry out instead.

“I’m going to fill you up and fuck you hard. And you, my love…you are going to ride my cock until you find pleasure, do you hear me?”

She started to shake her head from side to side but her hips were eagerly rising for more.

“You are mine, remember?” he growled against her ear.

She stopped shaking her head and he could have sworn he saw relief in her eyes when she gazed back at him. “Yes, yes, I’m yours.”

“Which means you will do as I say,” he said as he rocked his hips, drawing his hard shaft in and out of her wet, tight cunny with agonizingly slow thrusts.

“Yes,” she whispered.

He nipped at her bottom lip. “Good girl.”

“I’m not a good girl,” she said, a hint of that sadness still there.

“You are for me, aren’t you?”

She hesitated for only a second, but when he thrust into her hard, his member filling her deep, she cried out with a yes that brought him to the edge of climax.

“That means you obey my order,” he continued. It didn’t escape his notice the way she responded physically to his commands. Her inner muscles tightened when he gave her commands, even as the rest of her seemed to melt into the bed, supple and pliant as a cat begging to be stroked.

He sucked on a nipple as his hands stroked her sides, her neck, her arms.

“I’ll obey,” she whimpered in his ear.

“Good girl,” he said again, feeling her shiver in response. “Then listen closely, love.” He pulled back to meet her gaze. “You will take me inside you and you will chase the pleasure until you explode.”

Confusion clouded her eyes. “Explode?”

His lips twitched up at his saucy little wench’s naivete. “You’ll see,” he grunted. “Don’t you dare fight it. Don’t you dare deny yourself pleasure.”

Her eyes glinted with a familiar mischief. “Or what?”

He pinched her nipple hard until she gasped, her channel tightening so fiercely he almost came right then and there.

Then she smiled up at him, a satisfied little kitten. “You know that only makes me want to get in trouble, don’t you?”

He choked on a huff of amusement that startled him. He’d never once had the desire to laugh during sex before. He rocked into her, and she lifted her hips to meet him. He dropped a light kiss on the corner of her mouth. “You know that only makes me hope that you disobey, don’t you?”

He felt her smile against his scarred cheek as she giggled softly. “Sounds like we’re both in for trouble.”

He growled his agreement, but soon enough neither could speak because the pace of his thrusts was growing harder and faster. He reached between them to stroke her slick heat, rubbing and flicking the tight sensitive pearl, making her eyes flare wide with shock before she cried out, her legs clenching around him and her fingernails digging into his back as her inner muscles milked him over and over.

He groaned and buried his face against the sweat, sweaty heat of her neck as he pumped into her hard and fast a few more times until his own release barreled into him and sent him flying as he filled her with his seed.

He couldn’t move for a long moment as he rested his head against her breast, listening to her heart pounding in her chest.

When he could, he shifted, slowly pulling out of her to rest his weight at her side, his hand settling over her belly. He was so much bigger than her that his hand fully encompassed her torso, and he was overwhelmed by that wave of tender protectiveness again as his fingers lightly stroked her silky skin.

His seed was in there. He’d known from the moment he’d decided to take what she was offering, what this would mean. But now he faced that decision with a new stark clarity that probably should have been terrifying…but wasn’t.

If anything, it merely felt…inevitable.

He thought she might have fallen asleep when he started to roll away from her, but her sleepy voice mumbled, “Where are you going?”

He didn’t answer, finding his way to her washbasin in the dark and wetting a cloth. When he came back to bed, he found she’d rolled onto her belly, her hair strewn over her face and the pillow as her breathing grew deep and even.

Her brows drew down and she gave a little jerk as the wet cloth moved over her thighs.

“Easy, love,” he whispered when she tried to pull away from his ministrations. He continued his work with gentle movements, cleaning away the blood and his semen from her thighs and her sex.

“Stop being nice to me,” she murmured, her voice muffled by the pillow where her face was still half buried. “You’re not supposed to be nice to me.”

He stilled, his heart giving a harsh slam at those words. But he kept his voice even. “Why not?”

“Because you’re just not.” She sounded like a whiny child, which had his lips tugging up against his will.

Little brat. He eyed her bare bottom, his member already stirring at the image of the tupping to come if he were to give her a spanking for using that childish tone.

He could see it so clearly, the way she’d gasp and moan as her bottom turned red and the flesh of her arse jiggled beneath his palm. And when she was writhing with need, her sex swollen and dripping wet with desire, he’d lift that bottom up in the air and he’d ram his cock into her from behind.

His breathing grew harsh as the image filled his mind. One day. Soon. He took a deep breath and glared at his half-erect member. But not now. She’d be too sore.

So instead, he settled his hand on the round curve of her bottom and his fingers bit into her soft skin reflexively. Rather than squirm in protest, she arched her hips up for more. Even half asleep she responded to his touch.

Tomorrow maybe. Or the day after that. He shifted on the edge of the bed to ease the ache in his loins. There’d be plenty of time to take her every way he could imagine.

He’d make her come apart with a scream every morning, noon, and night. He’d lick her quim until she begged for mercy. He ran a hand over her smooth back as his imagination ran wild. He’d take her on the dining room table when she gave him that haughty little smirk and have her ride him until she screamed in ecstasy during a walk in the woods.

He’d fuck that pretty mouth of hers whenever she dared to say that she was evil.

His brow furrowed as he stared down at her, her bare back rising and falling with deep, even breaths. Her hair was strewn about and with a light touch he brushed a lock out of her face.

She looked just as innocent as she was in sleep. And for a long time, he sat there and watched her. Those lush lips swollen and slightly parted, her lashes long and dark against her pale cheek.

I am wicked and evil and cruel and mean.

He frowned down at her. That was what she truly believed. But why? Who’d told her such a thing?

She was naughty, yes. Willful and stubborn, no doubt. Lustful and passionate, definitely. But there was nothing evil about that. There was nothing wrong with her, though she seemed convinced that there was.

To him she was… well, not perfect.

But then again, neither was he. But maybe that was the point. He wouldn’t know what to do with a woman who was kind and gentle through and through.

No, his Philippa was not a proper young lady, but she was perfect in her own odd way. She was complicated, and all the more appealing for her complexity. He let out a short huff of laughter as he considered her.

She certainly wasn’t boring. If anything, she was a riddle.

There was a gentleness to her that tempered her brash behavior, a strength that belied her small stature, and a sweet innocence and vulnerability that she hid behind tempting smiles and saucy flirtation. Beyond that, she had passion the likes of which he’d never seen. Not even the most experienced mistress had brought him such pleasure in bed. She’d thrown herself into the act with wild impetuous abandon.

He smoothed a hand over her lower back. Was that why she thought herself evil? Because she had longings and desires that were considered inappropriate for a young lady?

He scowled at the thought. He supposed her issues went deeper than that, but that was a good enough place to start.

How to prove to her that there was nothing wrong with having needs? That to have a salacious, insatiable appetite in the bedroom was a good thing.

Or it would be…once they were married.