Lily Dalton - Never Desire a Duke

She pulled up, lips glistening with moisture, her eyes glazed and bright.

“I don’t want to waste the tiniest bit.” She pushed his shoulders, easing him back on the pillow.

“How did you know to do that?” he asked hoarsely.

“I found those books in your library—”

“The books.”

“So many interesting illustrations.” With his help, she eased his breeches lower. “Like this one—”

He didn’t even get them or his boots off before she straddled him. “Yes.”

He’d been reduced to one-word syllables, like a Neanderthal.

“Show me how.” Candlelight from the bedside lamp gleamed off her thighs and her face.

He shoved her gown up, bunching the flannel over her waist. The dark shadow of her mons hovered above his arousal. Sophia. His wife. His every fantasy come to life.

“Take me inside you,” he commanded in a guttural tone.

“Yes.” She gripped him again, directing him until his cock probed her warmth. The sight of their bodies joined proved too much. Impatiently, he thrust up, evoking a ragged cry from her lips and his own. His wife was as tight as a virgin. She adjusted her position and grasped his shoulders, gasping as her body stretched to accept him, inch by blessed inch, while he met her from beneath. When at last she’d taken all of him, he fisted his hand in her gown and dragged the flannel from her shoulders, baring her shoulders, breasts, and torso to his hungry gaze.

She bent low, pressing her mouth to his and staving her hands, fingers outstretched, across the plane of his chest. Through pink and swollen lips, she whispered, “This isn’t about obligation. Certainly now you must know that.”

He wanted to believe her. But did he dare? In this moment with their bodies so intimately joined, he knew only one certainty—that they would give each other pleasure.

His heart beating wildly, he kissed her back. Yet she pushed away, rocking back on her hips until her face tilted toward the canopy. The motion impaled her more deeply on his shaft.

“Sophia.” He seized her breasts in his hands, dragging his thumbs across her nipples.

“Claxton, yes.” Her inner muscles clenched him tightly.

She covered his hands with hers and with a flex of her thighs lifted herself up a few inches to sink down on him again. Gripping her hips, he encouraged her to ride him and they found a rhythm that pleased them both—one that started slow and sweet, but that soon had the bed creaking and swaying with the intensity of their efforts.

“Ah—” he groaned from deep in his throat. He wouldn’t last another—

“Now,” she cried.

Like the sudden strike of a flint against the frizzen, he exploded, his body reverberating with one earth-shattering report after another. She collapsed onto his chest, her hair strewn across his shoulder.

Afterward as they lay tangled in the sheets and each other’s limbs, he silently prayed she would be as open with her heart and mind in the bright light of morning as she had been with her body in the shadowed privacy of their bed.

Sophia awakened to near darkness and the pleasure of a strong male body twined around hers. Just when she’d finally grown accustomed to sleeping alone, her husband had returned to her bed. She liked the feel of him behind her in the dark. The steady rise and fall of his chest against her back. His muscled thigh aligned with hers. His arm banded tightly over her body, as if he’d never let her go. In this moment, everything felt perfect. She felt protected and cherished. As if their marriage was meant to be. Yet like a dirty secret, the list seemed to whisper at her from its hiding place. She ought to get up from the bed right now and burn the hateful thing…only she didn’t. The idea of leaving all this luxurious warmth made her snuggle closer to him, savoring Vane’s even warmer body…

Only to feel the sudden press of something long and thick against her bottom. And hot.

“You’re not asleep, are you?” she whispered.

“What gave me away?” He chuckled low in his throat. His chest vibrated against her back. He shifted, and with a hand to her hip, gently settled her flat on her back. His eyes, black in the night, peered down at her intently. “I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t stop thinking…”

“About what?” she asked softly.

She hoped he wouldn’t press her about the future. Yes, things were changing between them, and so quickly. There were decisions to be made. Though she knew Vane wanted her and even cared for her, she realized he also sought to put his ducal house in order. Their lives as duke and duchess were very much scrutinized by all who surrounded them—peers, servants, and the public. There were details to discuss. Social appearances. Sleeping arrangements. But it would be unwise to make such decisions while lying naked in his arms. Though her body had been thoroughly seduced, her mind—and more important, her heart—still harbored reservations.

Why ruin the magic of their night with talk of reality, of tomorrow?

Yet she instantly forgot her concerns. Propped on one elbow, he slowly tugged the sheet downward, dragging the linen over her breasts, baring them to his gaze and the chill of the room. Her nipples stiffened into hard points. She shifted, deliciously tortured by being so exposed, and felt the blunt pressure of his sex against her hip. At the foot of the bed, the fire had burned low, and it now gave off only the glow from its embers.

“About those books from my library.” Slowly his fingertips circled her breasts and teased her nipples. With a dip of his head, he suckled one, leaving it wet, glistening, and puckered. She squirmed, but he pinned her against the bed with his knee. “The naughty ones.”

She sighed, wanting more and knowing with a certainty she would have it.

“They were very naughty books, indeed,” she whispered.

His palm ventured downward over her stomach to slip beneath the sheet.

“Were you shocked by those books, Sophia?” Long, square-tipped fingers touched her, sliding between her legs to stroke and tease swollen flesh, already drenched with desire. Like a cat, she purred and stretched, parting her thighs just enough to grant them entrance—

She moaned the moment they entered her.

“Tell me.” He stroked more deeply, and she lifted her hips off the bed, matching his tempo. “Were you shocked by the pictures?”

She panted. “Not as…shocked…as I ought to have been.”

She’d never let go of herself like this, been so free in taking pleasure for herself. Nothing else mattered in this moment but these delicious sensations and the two of them. She moaned again, this time into his mouth when he dipped low to kiss her.

But he drew back. “When you looked at those pictures, did you think of me?”

Suddenly his fingers were gone, and in a blur of linen and darkness and ember glow, she found herself half turned on her side and propped against a pillow, with him behind her…stroking again, probing with his fingers and then, blessedly, with his cock. “Did you imagine me doing this to you?”

His hand caught her behind the knee. He lifted her there, spreading her, entering her fast and deep.

“Vane!” she cried, shattered by the pleasure of being so completely filled and stretched by him.

“Did you?” he murmured in that low, wicked voice that she loved. He pumped his hips, but slowly in smooth, controlled thrusts.

“Yes, always.” It was true. There had never been anyone but him, even in her most secret of fantasies.

Gently and without pulling out, he maneuvered her onto her hands and her knees. A glance over her shoulder revealed him reared back like a stallion, his torso tautly defined by shadow and muscle. But in the next moment, he came down, his body a cage around her, one arm coming up to band around her waist.

“From what I recall,” he rasped into her ear. “There were many different pictures. You…weren’t hoping to go back to sleep anytime soon, were you?”

The next morning brought no new snow and news from the village that the frost on the river had begun to disappear. Vane smiled like everyone else and pretended jubilance, but inside he cursed his miserable luck.

Selfishly, he had hoped for just a few more days. And nights if he had to be honest with himself. His luxurious house in London inspired the envy of many, but there were so many visitors and servants and expectations…while here at Camellia House, things were uncomplicated and warm and true. Only he couldn’t keep Sophia here forever. She had a family to return to, one with whom she desperately wanted to spend her Christmas.

But this chilly December morning, for the first time in Vane’s memory, Mrs. Kettle threw open the doors of the dining hall, a large and formal room never used by his mother. With just her and the two boys in residence, there had been no need.

However, Mrs. Kettle, declaring that all known babies had been birthed, had thrown herself into the task of feeding the Duke and Duchess of Claxton and their guests in residence with unparalleled enthusiasm. Together they enjoyed a full sideboard of selections as fine as any grand London residence would boast, or better, Vane had assured her.

The only absences were Haden, who remained at the inn in the village, for the obvious reason of wishing to avoid Lord and Lady Meltenbourne, and the Branigans, who breakfasted in their room, insisting they could not further impose upon the duke and duchess, who had already been more than kind, given the circumstances of their initial introduction. Sophia had insisted on taking two trays up.