Page 18 of The Scandalous Love of a Duke (The Marlow Family Secrets #6)
He unlaced her in a trice and she needed no prompting to continue. She slipped off her chemise, baring her breasts before removing her underwear and revealing all. He had only seen her naked yesterday, yet today he still felt awed by the site, and heat pulsed into his groin.
When he looked from her body back up to her face, she was watching him.
‘Come here.’ The heat in his blood had warmed his voice.
She came and stood between his parted thighs.
He began playing with the feather he had found where he had left his horse, drawing circles on her tummy.
She shivered.
He brushed it across her hip, then down her outer thigh before running it back up her inner thigh.
He saw her muscle jolt.
When he looked up her eyes were closed but then they opened and her hands cupped his cheeks so he could not look down again.
He did not cease his caresses but let the tip of the feather touch her intimately. The reaction on her face was shock, yet then her body relaxed and she bit her lip.
She could hide nothing from him, this girl, she did not even try, and there was that fierce burning look of love in her eyes.
Katherine.
He ran the feather in and out between her legs, testing her. He had a desire to make her hate him today, to fail him – to prove that love was wrong – because if love existed, he had not earned love as a child.
He had the dream again last night.
Then, when she was late, he thought she was not going to come and he had not been able to bear the thought. So, it was better the truth was out and she let him down now, sooner rather than later. Let her prove how shallow her love was – no one could truly love him.
‘Lay your hands on me,’ she pleaded after a while as he danced the very tip of the feather about the point where she was most sensitive.
He did not comply but carried on, holding her gaze with his eyes and her mind with his wicked game. Let her see how bad he was, let her know and then decide if she could love him.
He tormented her for a little longer, just to prove the point that he would not be told.
If anyone was the master it would be him.
But then he threw the feather to the floor and did a thing he knew would shock her virginal soul and used his mouth and tongue, bracing and kneading her buttocks while he pleasured her and himself. Her fingers clasped his hair.
He made her climax like that, teaching her just how base her passion could be, and she did so on a fractured cry, her muscles quaking in his hands.
Without a word, he brought her down onto his lap, as they’d been seated yesterday, with her straddled across his groin, yet today she was naked and he clothed.
He braced her face and kissed her, deeply, devotedly, forgetting all his plans to make her hate him.
Let her love me – let this be real , it would be the only damned real thing he had ever had in his life.
Spoilt for things he might be, but he had never been spoilt by love.
He touched her then and whispered, ‘Ride them,’ into her ear. He dared not undo his trousers, he did not quite trust himself today. If she was that close to him he might just be tempted to take it all.
She reached another peak like this, with a beautiful broken cry after many little gasps. She was a swift learner.
But the climax was addictive, he more than anyone knew that.
‘You have not had your own release,’ she said, looking down at him flushed and panting.
She was not selfish. She was selfless.
He suddenly knew she had only come here to do this for him, not for herself. She might enjoy the climax, she might even have raced to reach it today, but for her this was about him, not herself.
Was that love? Doing things for others had only ever been duty to him.
He kissed her hard, his hand in her hair. She was throwing him off his natural axis again.
His good intentions scattered to the wind, and he stood, lifting her, he turned, put her bottom down on the chair, and held her naked thighs about his waist. She slumped back, her back hunching in a way which scrunched up her stomach.
Her hands clasped the arms of the chair as he undid his trousers.
Then he pressed himself against the open flesh at the apex of her thighs.
A hard and firm need gripped in his stomach and tightened in his chest and he felt excruciatingly desperate to baptise himself in her warmth.
He did not. He had made her a promise, but his hands held the very tops of her thighs, his fingers clasping at the first curve of her buttocks and he simply ravished her, working hard and fast, as though he was inside her, but without entering her.
‘I want you inside me,’ she whispered after a while, visibly enchanted by his onslaught. Her blue eyes glowed up at him, her pupils wide with lust, but even now, the look was not hard-edged need, it was soft adoration.
‘You do not,’ he answered, the words sounding sour because he was denying them both, but the tone brought hurt into her eyes.
He gathered her up and held her against him.
Her nude body flush to his. Her arms wrapped about his neck, while his hands braced her at her shoulder and mid-back.
He finished thus releasing onto the skin of her stomach, but not before she had reached another climax too.
‘You would have regretted it if I had entered you, Katherine,’ he said as her head lay on his shoulder and he brushed his fingers through her hair.
‘I would not,’ she answered stubbornly against his shoulder, her muscles trembling.
‘You would.’ Again his voice was cold, because his mind and body were reeling with emotion too hard to tame.
He released her, leaving her in the chair, stood and turned away to re-secure his clothes. Then picked up her underwear and threw the garment to her. ‘Get dressed.’
It seemed he could not stop himself from casting orders today and sounding harsh, even though the last thing he really wanted to do was push her away.
‘There are two sides to you,’ Katherine said.
‘Are there?’ he replied, aloof.
‘Yes. The duke who shuts me out and John who lets me in.’
‘They, I, am one person.’ He reached for his waistcoat before turning to look at her.
‘And besides, I could say the same of you; the shy church mouse, Miss Spencer, and the passionate woman, Katherine. You have barely blushed in this room when we have done indecent things, while outside it, you colour up even when I look at you.’
She felt her blush rise then. He was stabbing at her, because she was daring to try and penetrate his tough exterior, but he could be so cruel.
It was not fair to cast shame on her because she enjoyed what they did.
If it was her timidity he appreciated, he should not have asked her here.
But perhaps he only invited her because he had known she would allow these things.
‘Get dressed, sweetheart,’ he said in a gentler voice as he buttoned up his waistcoat.
‘Now that you are done with me.’ She felt betrayed.
‘Now that you are done with me,’ he mimicked, reaching for his cravat as she stood.
She really was done with him. She was never doing this again. It obviously meant nothing to him. It means everything to me.
She dressed silently, as he did, turning her back to ask him to re-secure her lacing.
Once he had done so, he leaned his buttocks back against the table and poured himself a glass of wine as she put on her dress.
He sighed as she picked up her spencer.
‘Are you tired?’ He looked worn out.
His gaze lifted and met hers. He had been staring at his glass but now his gaze shuttered, locking her out of his thoughts. ‘I had a late night.’
She lifted her chin at his dismissive tone. ‘I am not going to do anything bad to you, John, you do not have to push me away.’
‘Do I not, Kate?’
He was in such a strange mood, she could not understand him. ‘No, and you need not answer me with questions whenever I get close to the truth.’
‘Is that what I am doing?’ He set down the glass and walked forward then began securing her buttons.
She pushed his hands away and did them herself. She wanted to help him, but he was not letting her get close enough to help.
‘I cannot easily trust, Katherine, you do not understand, it is the nature?—’
‘You do not trust me? Yet you asked me here to do this and trust you.’
‘A duke cannot trust anyone, even family.’ He sounded impatient now, as if she were too na?ve to understand.
Perhaps she was. She had been foolish enough to agree to this. But she was not unintelligent. She was not the imbecile he implied. ‘You mean you choose not to trust anyone.’
‘I do not trust people for a reason. People associate with me for a purpose.’
‘And what purpose do I have, John? Or your family?’
He did not reply, merely looking at her with his unapproachable do-not-come-too-close-to-me expression.
She picked up her bonnet, the bonnet he had bought, and looked away, putting it on and tying the ribbons beneath her chin.
She loved the bonnet, she had loved the gesture, it was a frivolous thing which she would never have been allowed to have, and never had the money to purchase.
But had it only been a trade to secure her trust when he would not give his.
He spoke again then, his voice a little softer as though he had been questioning himself.
‘I am different from the others in my family. I am different from everyone. My title sets me apart, yes, but in my family it is not just that. I am the eldest and the only one not of my stepfather and I am so much older than the others I cannot be a part of their life.’ He sounded as though he wished he were.
She understood that – she understood that more than anyone.
He sipped his wine, not looking at her. Perhaps he realised sometimes his vulnerability showed in his eyes and avoiding eye contact was because he did not even feel able to trust her with the knowledge of his emotions.