How to Love a Duke in Ten Days Read online

  His powerful shoulders sank forward, spreading her legs further as his mouth gently parted her, his tongue drawing through the pleats of slick flesh until he drank of the abundant moisture he found there.

  He swallowed it.

  She clamped her hand over her mouth and bit down on the flesh of her finger.

  Hard.

  He feasted upon her with a tender yet relentless exactitude. He knew her sex better than she did. He understood just when to coax and when to torment. His lips would nibble delicately one moment, then his tongue would swirl and slide the next.

  It was as though he’d discovered the secrets to an intricate mechanism engineered only for his mouth. For his personal use.

  Multiple times Alexandra was certain she’d lose control of reality. She wanted to grasp at him. To push him away. To pull him closer and tug at his hair. She couldn’t process the wickedness of this act. The wet, silken depravity they conducted here in the open night air.

  A need welled within her so deeply, she couldn’t identify it.

  Please. She wanted to beg him. To stop? To never stop?

  Please, she silently prayed. Not to a god. Not exactly.

  But to a man who might as well be one.

  Only a whimper escaped as her hand clamped harder over her lips, the sounds gathering in her throat and screaming to be let free.

  Her legs trembled. Quivered. Her buttocks clenched and unclenched as he laid a slick and silent siege to her sex.

  Because he took nothing, her body seemed intent upon relinquishing her dignity. Her humanity. Becoming a feral, physical creature. Writhing and mindlessly forcing breaths and gasps and groans through her nose as she valiantly fought the cries and pleas flooding her throat.

  He gripped her hips. Ruthlessly pinning her still as he focused wet, rhythmic darts of his tongue across the trembling peak of her clitoris. The sensation of it seized every one of her muscles with such arching force, she’d not realized what his other hand was about to do.

  Until his finger sank inside her.

  She clamped her other hand over the first, unable to contain her scream. The pleasure locked her muscles. Held her captive in a dizzying, almost terrifying summit.

  She ceased to breathe. She may have ceased to be as his agile tongue held her a captive of unfathomable sensation.

  A part of him was inside of her.

  And it was … incredible.

  It was as though the sea-swept wind carried her away from herself, catapulted her across the cosmos where she could meld with grand, ancient secrets incomprehensible to mortal senses. Perhaps in this pulsating place she could understand the concepts language tried and failed to convey.

  Concepts like God and time and love.

  When she thought it would break her, the peak crested like the white-tipped waves a scarce league away. It broke upon her again, and again, and once more until the tide passed and retreated, leaving her a dark, smooth surface. Pliant and undone.

  He withdrew and kissed her thigh, leaving a slick of moisture behind.

  With a naughty gesture, he brushed her petticoats over his beard, wiping away the wet aftermath of her bliss before his dark head appeared in her line of sight. Her vision dimmed by the immensity of what she’d just experienced more than the darkness of the night.

  He prowled up her body, which was as limp and boneless as a jellyfish in contrast to the mass of coiled muscle that was his tremendous frame.

  Alexandra peeled her hands away from her mouth, setting them on biceps strung so tightly, her grip didn’t even compress the iron flesh.

  “If every woman tasted like you, a man would hunger for nothing else.” His voice held a tightness, a husky, cavernous ferocity it hadn’t before. “God, what you do to me. I’ve never been so—”

  A veranda door opened on the far side of the hotel. The light had become faint by the time it reached the corner around which their alcove had been tucked. Anyone would have to walk several paces to discover them, but footsteps creaked on the planks. And the low hum of voices reached them.

  A string of low, hard, foul words from Redmayne’s mouth blistered Alexandra’s ears as he set her to rights.

  “Go,” he bit out.

  She blinked incoherently up at him for a moment. “Aren’t you coming with me?”

  “No,” he growled. “I’m not going anywhere for several long minutes.”

  “Oh.” She swallowed, unsure of what to do. Or if her legs would carry her anywhere.

  “Go. Inside,” he ordered.

  “Will you … come and find me later?”

  He bodily turned her and all but shoved her toward the hotel entrance, and in her stumbling astonishment she missed his reply.

  Alexandra smoothed her hair as she dreamily drifted through the shadows back toward the nearest door, not looking in the direction of the conclave of revelers on the far end of the deck.

  All she could feel was the slickness between her legs as she walked.

  All she could think of was what would happen next once her husband came to find her.

  Because he still had a prize yet to claim.

  And his desire hadn’t been satisfied.

  * * *

  Sweet merciful Christ, was it possible to expire from wanting a woman? Could a man completely go mad with desire? Lose his humanity altogether?

  Because Piers was perilously close to just that. Giving in to the beast.

  By the time he had nigh limped across his room to his wife’s adjoining door, he’d thrown his cuffs, ripped open his jacket, untied his cravat, and shucked his shoes.

  He made a pathway of distinct intention before pausing with his hand gripping the door separating them.

  Never in his life had he been in such a state. His cock hard and heavy as wrought iron, an insistent, pendulous weight aching for one touch from her. His bollocks drawn unbearably close with a need so pervasive, he could feel the clench of a building release even now.

  Every muscle stretched taut over his bones, screaming to surge and grip and thrust and fuck.

  Thus, his hesitation.

  He’d fuck her tonight. The minute the door was open. The very second her scent reached him. The moment her sweet form came into view.

  He’d seize her and bend her over the first smooth surface he could find. He’d toss her skirts over her head and part the globes of her soft ass so he could watch himself spear into the sex he’d made slick and swollen and ready.

  Oh, he’d fuck her. He’d fuck her well and plenty.

  And when his senses returned to him, he’d berate himself for a fool for the rest of his bloody life.

  He didn’t want her to be another regret.

  He couldn’t go in her room, he realized on a tortured groan. In this state, he was more animal than man, and the moment he sensed sexual submission, he’d mount her, he’d rut upon her like a stallion in the frenzy of an all-consuming primal drive to mate.

  And she’d offered her body already for the taking.

  She wanted him to plant a baby inside of her.

  His cock surged at the thought, eliciting a vague nausea deep in his gut.

  With a tortured grunt, he palmed himself over his trousers, expelling a strangled noise as textile abraded turgid flesh.

  He could do it.

  She was his wife.

  And yet … there could already be a child. No matter how prettily she denied it. How ardently he wanted to believe her. He must be certain.

  He must.

  And so he could not have her. For the sake of his future sanity. For his legacy. For all that was holy. He. Could. Not—

  Someone knocked on his wife’s door to the hall.

  Forsythe?

  Unable to stop himself, he tilted his ear to the door.

  “I’m told you’ve retired for the night, Your Grace,” Constance, her lady’s maid, called into the room. “Would you like me to dress you for bed?”

  “No, thank you. I’ve done it myself and am brushing out
my hair. I’ll bid you good night now.”

  “Pleasant dreams, Your Grace.”

  “You too, Constance.”

  A soft humming reached him through the door, lilting, preoccupied, and a bit melancholy.

  God’s blood, what her voice did to him.

  Were he not in such a state, he would have entered her rooms and teased her for spoiling the servants. He’d watch her brush her hair, perhaps relieving her of the implement and doing it himself. How intimate it would be, to run his hands over the crackling strands until they gleamed the color of dark, ripe cherries. He’d sweep the hair over one shoulder and kiss her neck, the downy hollow behind her ear, the places he knew flared chill bumps over her entire body. The collar of her prim nightgown would give as he patiently unbuttoned it, sliding down the creamy silk of her shoulder until he could reach inside to palm her heavy breast.

  Her red hair would tangle with his fingers as he toyed with her nipple, simultaneously nibbling at her ear.

  Falt Ruadh. Someday that hair would curtain his hips.

  He bit his lip hard enough to bleed.

  Not tonight.

  Eight days. Seven tomorrow. Devil take him, he might die before then. Die of blood loss to his head.

  He drew his hand down his ruined face, pausing when a distinctive scent roused his senses and infused his veins with raw fire.

  There. On his fingers, the faint essence of her sex still lingered. The proof of her pleasure. Her desire. Her capitulation to his need.

  Tonight in the dark, a part of him had entered her, if only for the briefest of blissful moments … and she’d drenched him with her sweetest release.

  At once, his cock was no longer in his trousers. He dipped the finger into his mouth, then another, searching for the trace of her flavor. Leaving moisture on his fingers, he brought them down to his pulsing sex, spreading what he could over the steely length of him.

  He wanted this to be her hand. Soft and small where his was large and rough.

  Or her mouth. Hot and wet and welcoming.

  Oh, the things he could do to that mouth.

  Safe on the other side of the door, his wife began to hum a different tune. Something husky and foreign. Persian maybe. The vibrations of her voice traveled through his blood until he could feel his body tremble with an answering rhythm.

  Unbidden, his hips curled forward, his hand drew over the blunt crown and down the length of his shaft.

  He’d wanted to do this while his head was buried between her trembling thighs. To take himself in hand while he reveled in the scent and taste and heat of her.

  Remembering what he’d saved from the veranda, he reached into the crease of his jacket beneath his arm and pulled out her undergarment. White linen bedecked in tiny pink and green bows.

  He brought it to his nose, drew in a breath, and found the palest hint of her distinct female musk.

  God. His mouth flooded at the memory of the taste of her. Had there ever been a woman so sweet? Had there ever been a sex so perfectly formed?

  He ached to strip her bare in the afternoon. To throw open the draperies and spread her wide, letting the sun glisten between her parted thighs, illuminating each and every soft, secret, hidden part of her.

  Someday, he would.

  His cock was as hot as a branding iron in his hand as he pumped his fist down the length once more, and again.

  How perfect she would look sinking down upon the full, pulsing veins of his shaft. Those tight, female muscles would resist him at first, but he’d ease his way inside until she held him to the hilt.

  His hips thrust into his hand in a disappointing parody of what he truly craved.

  He savored the intimate scent of her as he moved his fist harder. Faster. Working the velvet skin of his shaft around the unyielding rod beneath.

  As long as he lived he’d crave this succulent female flavor. Hers alone. She was his to dine on as he pleased.

  One man didn’t deserve such fortunes.

  Eight … More … Days …

  The climax began as a burn in his spine, spilling down his entire frame like an avalanche. Inevitable. Unstoppable. Overpowering.

  As the shocks of release became surges, he made a sound only an animal could have. Bringing her drawers down to his hips, he spilled liquid heat on the snowy-white linen. The sight of it inflamed him further as pulse after pulse was pulled from his very core for such a length of time, he wondered if it would ever cease.

  Finally, the grip of his bliss abated, and he folded forward in blind relief, resting his forehead against the door with a thump.

  Alexandra’s humming died away at the sound, and soft footfalls padded toward the door. “Piers?” A tentative invitation painted his name, and his still-pounding heart accelerated. “Have you returned to … would you like to come in?”

  Trying to regain a semblance of wit, he reached for the door.

  And threw the lock.

  “Not tonight, pet,” he managed.

  She hesitated. “But aren’t you … you’re in need of … you still have your third prize to claim, if you are so inclined.”

  Despite what he’d just done, his cock twitched at the offer.

  Piers placed a hand against the cool wood of the door, picturing her doing the same.

  Oh, he’d claim his prize. Of course, he would. But not until he could regain some of his lost self-control. Not until the scent and sight of her didn’t whip him into an unprecedented, animalistic monster. Until he could be other than this rutting beast he’d only just become, aching to mount her like a prized mare.

  Wondering who’d mounted her first.

  That thought was enough to push him away from the door. There would always be a barrier between them, wouldn’t there? A secret. A past.

  Hers. His. Someone else’s. It didn’t matter.

  “Get some rest,” he rumbled, battling a hollow ache in his chest.

  “If … if you’re certain.” Was it disappointment or relief in her careful voice?

  He couldn’t tell through the door.

  Berating himself, he promised that he could no longer toy with desire without giving in to it completely. He had to wait. Had to keep his hands, his mouth, all the parts of him that hungered for her to himself.

  “Good night, Doctor.” He injected as much kindness as he could into his voice before he went to the basin to wash, assuming she’d shuffled off to bed.

  “Good night, husband,” she called softly, pausing once more. “And … thank you.”

  What exactly had she thanked him for? he pondered as he undressed, washed, and settled into his cavernous, lonely bed.

  Her pleasure? His company?

  Or for leaving her alone?

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  For four days, Alexandra almost forgot she had killed a man.

  That she’d been raped by one.

  That someone perhaps wished her ill, or worse.

  For four blessed, busy days, she’d buried her troubled memories in the familiarity of a crypt. She’d toiled alongside her husband to unearth the bones of his celebrated ancestor.

  Instead of focusing on her own grave concerns, she spent a great deal of time enjoying her husband’s company.

  And lamenting the fact that he didn’t attempt to drag her into any more dark alcoves. That he hadn’t so much as kissed her since that night on the veranda.

  Why that bothered her, she couldn’t tell, but it did.

  It bothered her with increasing frequency and intensity.

  He’d teased her, flirted with her. Tormented her, even, with scalding looks and brief, if titillating physical contact. A brush of his hand. A stroke of her hair. A memory of what they’d already shared. A promise of what was to come.

  But nothing more.

  They dined together. Drank together. Laughed and chatted and socialized. Every moment in his company had been naught but a delight. And, from what she could tell, he enjoyed her company also. Despite his brutal features and intimidati
ng moniker, he’d won over students and servants alike with his unabashed wit and unpretentious nobility. It wasn’t just his title that she could take pride in, but the man, as well.

  Alexandra woke every morning less and less astonished to find that she felt enthusiastic, impatient even, to dress and hurry downstairs. Not only to begin her work at the catacombs, but to find her husband awaiting her at the bottom of the stairs, offering his elbow to escort her to the site.

  She went to bed every night alone with nothing but a kiss on her knuckles as a token of his esteem.

  It kept her up at night, the why of it.

  She’d asked him about it the night before last. Invited him into her bedroom.

  His hand had tightened on hers, but his mouth was no less gentle as he pressed it to her knuckles.

  Blue flames had threatened to singe her as he’d replied. “Five days.”

  This morning, after awakening no less than a hundred times in the night plagued by a restless and terrible feeling, Alexandra capitulated to the idea that she’d get no more sleep and had dressed uncharacteristically early.

  Three days now, she’d realized as she all but skipped down the stairs awash with a new, optimistic fervor and a smile in her heart. Three days and the state of her empty womb would be confirmed.

  Three days and he’d be one step closer to trusting her. In this respect, at least.

  She’d reached the lobby before her husband did, and was called over by the desk clerk.

  “A note for you, Your Grace.” He extended a small ivory envelope with a solicitous smile.

  An envelope identical to the one she’d dreaded nearly every month for the last decade.

  It might have been another lovely day, Alexandra mourned as a flush of hot panic ignited little pinprick fires over her skin.

  If she’d never killed a man.

  She knew the author of the letter before her unsteady fingers grappled it open.

  Her sin had followed her to Normandy.

  It followed her everywhere, didn’t it? Wherever she’d escaped to on the globe, her blackmailer had known. Had found her. And a letter had arrived like a clockwork nightmare.

  You’ll bring the money to the Redmayne tomb tomorrow night.