How to Love a Duke in Ten Days Read online

  The reminder of the danger smothered their good humor.

  They didn’t speak of it through their tense dinner, as a mighty wind curled the whitecapped waves high against the beach. Nor did they mention anything of import as they mounted the three flights of stairs to find their suites at the end of the evening.

  They didn’t speak about much of anything, in fact, as there was too much to say, and nowhere to begin.

  He kissed her at the door, and bade her a solemn, tender good night. “Come to me,” he invited. “If you need anything.”

  Alexandra stood in her doorway, an invitation perched on her tongue as she watched his broad, straight back until it disappeared into his rooms.

  She’d so much to ponder and to dread. The meeting. The money. The murder. All the possible outcomes of a confrontation.

  It settled her mind, somewhat, to learn the catacombs were now open. Though she battled nerves about ever setting foot in there again, she also hadn’t received any new notes about an alternate meeting place.

  Now that she had the money, she was anxious to get on with it.

  She obsessed over the identity of who would reveal themselves to her as Constance dressed her for bed with an extra attention that both bemused and moved her.

  Once they’d bade each other good night, she selected a skirt, wide belt, and simple blouse from her purchases she could hide beneath her dark cloak.

  That accomplished, Alexandra perched on her bed and glanced at the clock. Quarter to ten. She still had over three hours. Three hours to allow the howl of the wind to slowly drive her mad.

  Drifting to her husband’s door, she heard the murmur of voices and the faint rustles of footsteps over the din of the night. She pressed her ear to the cool wood, listening to the masculine percussions of his friendly but perfunctory conversation with his valet.

  Though it made her feel pathetic, she stayed like that, letting his voice and proximity create a welcome distraction. The steps faded, and the light was doused, but for the faint glow of what she assumed was a bedside lamp.

  Alexandra heard the protestations of the bed as he settled his heavy frame into it. Finally, she drifted to her own bed, collapsing onto her back.

  His presence thrummed through the wall with an almost palpable vibration, and Alexandra occupied herself by picturing him beneath the enormous canopy, his brawny limbs stretched long and splayed in indolent repose.

  Her body came alive at the image that invoked, tingling with a restless, anticipatory sensation she summarily rejected.

  What did he do before sleep claimed him? Did he read? Or ponder the view of the hectic sea? He didn’t strike her as a man who would keep a journal, though often explorers such as they were known to do so.

  Did he think about her? Or write about her? What would he say?

  Did he still want her?

  Tomorrow, he’d offered. Or whenever you’re ready.

  Tomorrow was never guaranteed, for anyone, especially them. The threat to her life hadn’t passed, and she faced a possible enemy tonight with obscure but obviously nefarious intentions. What if the money wasn’t enough anymore? What if the entire world discovered her crime?

  Could Redmayne protect her then? Would he? It was one thing to keep the secret of a victim, but another thing, entirely, to perjure oneself for a murderess. One who’d put your life in danger on multiple occasions.

  Redmayne suspected his own enemies to be responsible for the recent attempts on their lives, but he’d also noted that it was her appearance that started the happenings in the first place.

  It didn’t make sense that a blackmailer would want their target dead.

  But she wasn’t, was she? She’d never truly been harmed.

  Could he be so insidious, so ingenious, that he’d meant for her to survive everything?

  Could it be that his aim was to terrorize her, to illustrate just how easily he could take everyone she cared about from her if she failed to pay?

  Which now included her husband. A man she’d only known for nine days.

  Ten, at the stroke of midnight.

  She tossed and turned, wresting herself into a sitting position as a memory of something he’d said tore through her.

  The idea that I could have died without making love to you is untenable. Impossible.

  She made a sound of pure disbelief as a not altogether foreign ache settled low in her belly. Lower. Intimate muscles clenched around a slick sort of emptiness the moment before she sprang from the bed.

  No time for contemplation, not when there was still a chance she could change her mind.

  The idea that de Marchand might be the only man to completely have her. That her husband might learn the truth. Or worse.

  That she might die before making love to him … was untenable.

  Impossible.

  Especially now, when her desire surged with more intensity than her fear.

  She padded across the floor and pressed her ear to the door once again. The dim light of a lantern still glowed beneath the seam, but all sound was smothered by the blustery night.

  Drawing in a deep breath, she gripped the door latch and inched it open with the flat of her hand.

  She heard her name before she peeked her head around, an answer—an invitation—poised on her lips.

  At the sight of him, all her wits deserted her, the powerful tableau stealing what breath she had in her lungs and what words her mind could form. She gripped the latch of the door tighter, steadying herself as a dizzying rush of blood invaded her head.

  Redmayne was, indeed, recumbent upon the edge of the bed, eyes closed, head tossed back, throat exposed. A strapping leg stretched along the snowy linens of his mattress, the other foot anchored on the floor. One hand curled into the sheets, gripping rhythmically.

  The other around his sex.

  Her heart leaped into her throat, and she had to swallow several times, gaping as he dragged his fist down the thick, sleek shaft, pausing at the thatch of onyx hair, before pulling the opposite way.

  His features twisted into a grimace of something akin to pain, but not quite. The grooves at the edges of his eyes deepened with strain, as though his lids would never part again.

  The wind, welcomed in by his open window, noisily tossed that one recalcitrant forelock over those sealed lids as his breath hitched and released.

  For a second, or maybe an eternity, Alexandra stared at the organ he stroked between his legs. Duskier in hue than the hand around it, it jutted proud and thick and … long enough to make each fall of his fist quite the journey.

  It would never fit inside of her, there was simply no possible way—

  Her core tightened, almost insistently, releasing an alarming rush of moisture.

  A dark pleasure sound dragged from his chest, a perfectly timed rejoinder to her body’s invitation.

  The sculpted contours of his torso bunched and released, knotting with slow thrusts that could have hypnotized her if he’d not growled her name.

  Then groaned it.

  She glanced back up his body to find his eyes still closed.

  He didn’t know she stood there.

  And still he said her name.

  Was this how he wanted her? She marveled, mesmerized by the play of the lantern light, gilding the roped crests and valleys of his abdomen as he slowly rolled his hips in long, torpid motions, pausing with a labored breath before he pulled back.

  Above him, perhaps? Not pinned beneath. Not from behind.

  Unbidden, she remembered the pistoning slams of her attacker’s hips. Short, quick, dry, tearing. That was how she’d assessed men must be inside a woman. How they moved in order to—to finish.

  But this …

  She took an unbidden step toward him, then another. This gentle glide of his hips was like some magnificent, primal dance, his every muscle perfectly controlled. No violence or frenzy.

  This won’t take long.

  Alexandra blinked several times, blocking the words.r />
  What if it did with her husband? Come to think of it, none of her previous encounters with Redmayne had been abbreviated. And, so far as she could tell, he’d already pleasured himself for longer than her entire ordeal with de Marchand had taken.

  He seemed in no great hurry to finish. As if he’d learned to become patient with the agony gripping his expression.

  Almost … as if he enjoyed it.

  The breeze brushed her nightgown against her body, abrading nipples so puckered and sensitive, she could bear it no longer.

  She peeled it away with a humbled sense that she might be the only creature ever to creep so close to the Duke of Redmayne without him knowing it. He was always so ready. So aware. But in the throes of this wicked, beautiful act, he was utterly vulnerable and yet preternaturally male.

  “God,” he breathed, his hand sliding faster, his fingers tightening. “Alexandra.”

  “Piers.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  At the sound of his name, Piers bolted upright and dragged the sheets across his lap. The sight of her did nothing to curb the climax gathering in the twin weights beneath his cock.

  He’d have thought her a vision he conjured, a lust-shrouded fantasy. Naked. Ethereal, ephemeral. Possessed of a delicate, unearthly beauty.

  If not for the insecurity flickering behind the heat in her burnt-whisky gaze.

  Stymied, he closed his eyes and opened them again, just to be sure.

  At the sight of her, his cock was beset by an insistent, painful throb so agonizing, he ground his teeth together.

  In his fantasy, she’d been sliding her slick body down his shaft, those perfect, pert breasts swaying in a most tantalizing manner every time her hips met his.

  And, miraculously, there they were. There she stood. In his bedroom. Pale and proud and nude, shivering in the breeze that fluttered at her heavy locks, making them shimmer like the tresses of some pagan goddess.

  He dragged his eyes away from her pink nipples. “Alexandra. What are you—what do you—?”

  “You said my name.” She swiped a nervous tongue across her lower lip, just the one, as her eyes locked on the sheet barely concealing the ridge of his erection.

  He grimaced. How long had she been there? How long had she watched as he stroked himself to an illusion of her?

  God, but his mind couldn’t have conjured anything close to the magnificence of reality.

  “Did you say my name because … because you imagined me doing … that to you?” She nodded to his hand, now clutching the sheet to him.

  Panic surged above his lust as he searched her frustratingly placid features. Was she disgusted? Aroused? Afraid?

  What should he answer?

  He decided upon the truth. At the very least, it would drive her back to the other side of that door. Because he could think of no reason on God’s blighted earth that she would be in here with him unless …

  “No, Alexandra. No, you weren’t stroking me with your hand, not in my mind.”

  “I was—you were—inside of me.”

  His breath stopped. His heart stuttered, stalled, and then started again, pounding against the cage of his ribs. And still, he answered her with complete honesty. “Yes.”

  She stepped closer. “I was on top of you?”

  He held up his hand. “Don’t.”

  Her composure flickered, unveiling a hurt.

  “Alexandra,” he rushed around a hoarse throat. “If you come any closer—” Bloody hell, that sounded like a threat. “I mean … You don’t have to do this. I told you I wouldn’t touch you.”

  “I know.” She stopped right in front of him, her breasts inches from his mouth. Her knees almost touching his. It was torment. Torture. It was pure, spike-riddled hell. But he kept his word, bunching his fists in the sheets.

  “I want you, Piers.”

  His mouth watered, his muscles gathered, and his cock gave an insistent jerk against his thigh.

  A wayward strand of hair fluttered over her face, and he yearned to tuck it away, to stroke the downy softness of her cheek. “Are you sure? You have to be sure.”

  “I wasn’t,” she answered, her eyes shy and gilded with so many things, not the least of which was sex. “Not until I came in here and saw you … like that.”

  He swallowed a flare of embarrassment at being caught in such an honest moment of need.

  It was her fingers that smoothed his errant hair back from his forehead, her touch cool on his lust-fevered skin. “All I know from before you is…” She searched for words, her eyes drifting from side to side. “Was forceful and fast.”

  Some of the heat wilted out of him, replaced by a well of sorrow and anger. He thought he’d wanted to know what happened to her and how.

  How wrong he’d been. The mere mention of it slayed him.

  “But you were … slow, just now,” she continued. “Deliberate.” She bent to him, sliding her hand down his arm until she captured his wrist.

  Mesmerized, and frankly petrified, Piers remained mute, his lids peeled wide as she guided his hand to the soft mahogany hair between her legs. She pressed his fingers there, and they easily slid between the plump folds, encountering warm, wet silk.

  They each gasped, sharing a shudder of disbelief at the sparks that ignited between them.

  “I want you to be the last man inside of me.” Guiding his wrist, she rolled his finger over the bud hidden between her closed folds, her gaze turning as liquid as her desire. “I want it to be you. My husband…”

  He’d heard enough.

  Piers lifted himself, reached for her, and dragged her down over him. This he could do. This he would do, what he’d promised from the beginning. Replace the memory of another man with nothing but soul-shattering bliss.

  * * *

  Alexandra didn’t realize what it had taken from her to offer this, to request it, until he’d taken the mantle of seducer from her shoulders.

  Redmayne remained seated and kept the sheet over his hips as he guided her legs to split over him.

  They sat like that, sharing breaths of disbelief, his eyes searching hers as though looking for a reason not to.

  He found none, because she gave none.

  Alexandra steadied herself on his strong shoulders as he anchored one arm behind her, wrapping her legs around him. She liked this, being above him. Looking down at the scarred and primal beast pinned beneath her. There was power here, potent and feminine. One that caused a tremor in his limbs and unfocused his gaze as though the sight of her inebriated him.

  When he fused their lips, her very grip on reality shifted beneath her. Other parts of them merged, as well. Their hearts. Their souls. Perhaps their destinies.

  It was she who tangled her tongue with his, tasting him, stroking in wet circles. Penetrating him.

  With a low, primal growl, his hands went to work.

  Though his kiss grew in ferocity, his fingers stroked her leisurely, reacquainting himself with the warm folds of her sex, spreading the wet desire he found there to the hard pearl throbbing above it. He oh-so-gently pressed the hood between his forefinger and thumb, rubbing at it with such slippery skill, a shower of sparks exploded behind her eyelids.

  “Piers,” she gasped against his mouth. “I’m already … I’m going to…”

  “I know.” His reply was so incredibly male. So full of ardor and arrogance, and she didn’t have the chance to be incensed by it, as he did something else eminently more infuriating.

  He stopped.

  His fingers left the swollen, aching bud, and reached beneath, to circle the intimate opening, abrading it softly with the work-roughened pads of his fingers.

  Feminine muscles convulsed beneath his touch, clenching at him, inviting him in.

  He probed at first, pulling back to watch her expression as his finger sank deep. Deep enough to fit his palm against the cradle of her thighs.

  “You’re so wet,” he whispered with a broken reverence. “But I want more. I want to make
you ready.”

  “I am ready,” she panted, fighting the urge to squirm and writhe.

  He answered her challenge by withdrawing and entering her once more, another finger joining the first.

  A stretching sensation startled her, but she felt no pain as he sank in deep once again, pressing the heel of his palm against her throbbing peak.

  Magic. Those magic hands.

  She whispered his name. Gasped it as he created delicious friction in a soft, rhythmic motion. His fingers felt both foreign and fantastic inside of her, but it was the heel of his hand, pressed against her quivering bud, that elicited the most intense response.

  With her legs split as they were, and nothing but his arm to keep her from falling, her instincts to twitch and writhe were little more than frustrated little jerks of her hips. The lurches became lithe rolls, until she rode his hand with an almost shameless need as a sweet and adamant tension gathered between her legs.

  He claimed another kiss as her thighs locked and trembled, releasing another rush of moisture around his fingers as he brought her to that beautiful, straining, almost-there place.

  And again, drew away.

  She whimpered against his lips, bereft, her hips curling forward, searching for the magic.

  “I know, darling,” he rumbled, his voice laced with a similar tenuous suffering. “Are you afraid?”

  “No.” She was terrified. And tantalized. And so utterly in need of the release he could provide, she might die from wanting it.

  His eyes glowed almost silver in the light as he searched hers, finding the fear she did her best to conceal.

  Steadying her with gentle hands on her thighs, he reclined away from her, lying back on the bed.

  The wind felt marvelous on her skin, already slicked with a sheen wrought of both apprehension and passion. It tightened her nipples and lifted her hair from the back of her neck.

  “If you want me inside of you, wife, you may have me at your leisure.” His eyes glistened with a need almost fanatical. A hunger akin to worship. He prostrated himself beneath her, an offering of flesh and blood. A sacrifice and a prayer.

  She stared at his magnificent body, an answering hunger surging through her.