When the Duke Returns (23 page)

But the gentleman in him was shouting
No
. Still.

“Show me what?” Her whisper was languid, sweet. “Simeon?”

“Yes.”

“Don't you want to help with my lacings?”

Madness fought with the plan, fought with civility, fought—and lost. “No.”

That was definitely disappointment in her eyes.

“When I—” What word was he supposed to use? Not cock and not pizzle. “This is is my prick.” The word fell harshly from his lips.

She surprised him; she'd probably always surprise him. She laughed. “
The bawdy prick of noon!
”

“Shakespeare was very fond of punning and pricks.”

“I like that word,” she said, reaching out. It was unfortunate that his brain stopped working the moment her cool fingers began running over him, touching him, tightening.

He tried. “When I—” The words were lost in a groan.

“Your
naked weapon is out,
” she said, gurgling with laughter. But he couldn't join her in a game of Shakespearean quotes, not when his body was on fire. He jerked in her hand and she laughed again, the triumphant sound of a woman who's discovered a power she didn't understand she had.

“When I come—” he said, pulling himself together.

“When you what?”

“Come. Oh God, Isidore, if you keep doing that I
am
going to come.” He leaned into the pillar at his back. The marble was chilly and gave him some sanity.

“Do,” she breathed, swaying closer to him. Her hand was trapped between the silk of her skirts and the rough hair of his belly. But he didn't want to frighten her, to have her disgusted.

He pushed her back. “Just watch, this time.”

Her eyes were huge, excited. He managed to pull his thoughts back from his groin. “In order for us to be successful between the sheets, we have to understand what makes the other person feel pleasure.”

She opened her lips but said nothing. Still, there was something in her eyes that made him keep going. “Tomorrow, I'll ask you to show me.”

“Show you what?”

“What you find pleasurable,” he confirmed. “My body isn't nearly as interesting as yours, but there are points that—” He put a thumb over his own nipple. “This isn't as beautiful nor useful, but it feels pleasure.”

Her mouth curled in a little smile that affected him much more than his own touch on his body. He moved his hand down, deliberately, slowly, wrapped his fingers around his length. Slid his hand. Took his pleasure from the way she shifted back and forth, as if she was feeling heat between her legs, as if she were remembering the afternoon.

“It looks larger than it did earlier,” she whispered.

His body moved instinctively toward her, passionate to establish a rhythm that would satisfy and daze her, drive her to the pleasure he had felt.

“So when you lose control, what happens?”

The question hung on the air. He cleared his throat. “I eject fluid that contains my contribution to a future
child.” And: “I wouldn't describe it as losing control.” He let his hand fall away from his body.

She put her hand on him, and he instantly shuddered. The fire touched his spine, raced down his legs like a premonition of the future. “If I keep doing this—” she demonstrated—“wouldn't you lose control?”

“No.” But it was a gasp.

“Because you never lose control?”

“Because that's not—” he drew in a breath—“an accurate description.”

Her fingers dandled him, stroked him, fired him. “Are you sure that I couldn't make you lose control?”

“You could give me the greatest pleasure,” he said. “As I will give to you.”

She smiled, lopsided, let her hand fall. “What else feels good?” He blinked. “Only those two parts of your body? That's it?”

“That's enough,” he told her.

She was smiling again. “Can I show you now what pleasures me?”

“The night and this place are too dark and cold for a lady,” he said, pulling his shirt over his head. His body was thrumming to a rhythm of its own, madness flaring in his blood.

“I thought our bed, perhaps…”

“But Godfrey is in the sitting room.”

“We shall have to be quiet,” she said, turning to walk out of the courtyard. The moonlight caught her hair, turned it to darkened spun silver, precious liquid light chiseling the curve of her cheek, the plumpness of her bottom lip, the wry wit in her eye.

He was just pulling on his boots when she paused.

“Of course,” she said, “it's a good thing that all of this doesn't mean losing control, Simeon, don't you think?”

“Yes.”

“Because while I might be worried that
I
would make some sort of untoward noise and wake young Godfrey, I would never have to worry about you.”

He followed her. Years in the desert had taught him a number of survival lessons.

One of them was never to ignore a gauntlet thrown at your very feet.

The Dower House
March 3, 1784

H
oneydew greeted them in the entryway to the Dower House, as if disheveled dukes were all in a day's work. “Your Graces,” he said. “If you would be so kind as to keep your voices down, the young master is asleep.”

Isidore took off her wet pelisse and handed it to him. “My goodness, Honeydew,” she said, “you must take yourself to your bed. It's begun raining again.”

“There appears to be some small chance of flooding,” Honeydew said.

“Nonsense,” Simeon said. “We're on a hill.”

“The bridge leading to the village,” Honeydew clarified. “I took the liberty of sending your lady's maid to temporary lodgings in the village; if the bridge went
out, we'd have to house everyone in the barn and Miss Lucille would not be pleased.”

“Are you staying in the village as well?” Simeon asked.

“I shall retire to the barn again tonight, Your Grace. We need to keep an eye on the silver.”

“Good man,” Simeon said briefly. “We won't keep you.” He closed the door behind his butler, thinking that Honeydew was a man he'd always want at his back, whether on a camel or in an English country house. He was loyal and honest, through and through.

Isidore had vanished. Simeon poked his head into the sitting room. The fire was burning low, so he threw on a couple more logs and walked over to look at his brother. Godfrey was lying flat on his back. In the blurry firelight he looked unnervingly like their father. He even snored like their father.

Simeon listened to the noise for a few seconds and then began to grin.

The little bedchamber wasn't directly off the great room; there was a small passageway, almost a hallway leading to it.

He paused for a moment, wondering if husbands knocked at their wives' bedchambers.

 

Isidore heard him outside the door and her heart leapt so high it felt as if it were in her throat. What on earth was he doing? He wouldn't go to the barn with Honeydew, would he?

Would he?

She looked down at herself, reclining on the bed. “Come in!” she called.

The door opened and she saw him in the doorway. She gave him a moment, looking down at herself, trying to see her body through his eyes. She was plump in the
right places, she thought, and sleek in others. She'd lit candles, and the reflection of small flames darted over her skin, making her look like a marble statue, the naughty Roman kind. Her hair tumbled around her shoulders, and Isidore had arranged it so that one of her breasts showed and the other didn't.

“You may come in,” she said, feeling a nervous giggle in the back of her throat.

He closed the door with great precision and then put his hands to his coat.

“No!”

He raised an eyebrow.

“It's your turn to learn about
my
body.”

He walked over to the bed. “May I sit with you?”

“No!” He looked so large that he made her feel dizzy. He sat down in a chair and crossed his legs. The look on Simeon's face made him look younger than she'd ever seen him. There was devilment in those eyes. You couldn't look like that when you were buried in a smelly old house, surrounded by bills.

“I want you to pay very close attention to this lesson,” she told him, propping herself up on one elbow.

He had to wrench his eyes away from her breasts, but he finally looked up. “I do. I mean, I am.”

She couldn't help grinning. She sat up all the way. “These are my breasts.” She actually never touched them very much. But his eyes made her bold. She let her hands curve around her breasts, sweet and firm, the way she would like to be touched. “This afternoon…” She shook her head.

His eyes were wide and clear. “Not right?”

“Your hands are very strong. I had bruises on my hips.”

“I apologize.” The look of desire disappeared from his eyes and he stopped looking at her breasts.

“That wasn't what I meant!” she said hastily. “I liked it, but…I would like this even more.” She smiled at him and, just like that, all the desire came back into his eyes.

“I didn't hurt you, did I?”

“No!”

“Just tell me if I'm ever holding you too hard,” he said. “I didn't know. I need to practice.” Without even seeming to move, he was sitting at her side. But he didn't touch her, just watched her hands, still holding her breasts.

Isidore felt a flush and she dropped her hands to the bed. “So lovely,” he murmured. He reached out with just one fingertip and ran it over the curve of her breast. “Beautiful.” The finger trailed over pale pink, touched her nipple and she jumped.

She couldn't stop looking at his face. He was beautiful, not
for a man,
just beautiful. His eyes were fringed with thick lashes, still a little spiky from being in the rain. His cheeks were lean and he had the chin of a man who would always protect you, never leave you.

She murmured something that even she couldn't hear and leaned into him so that his hand, his large callused hand, curled around her breast. His palm came hard against her nipple and made her shiver.

“Does that feel good?” he asked. His voice had changed. It was deeper. Not tired or strained, the way it sounded when he was talking to Honeydew about the drains, or his mother about anything at all.

She nodded. He did something else with his thumb and she flinched back.

“Too much?”

She pulled away. “It's stupid, but I feel…” She looked down. “They feel as if they're just too sensitive. It feels good, but then it hurts.”

“But first it feels good?”

She smiled at him, loving the way his eyes were dark with desire, carefully thinking at the same time, watching her, learning. “So this is the time to learn about my body,” she said almost chattily.

He nodded.

“I've never been with a man before you, but I've thought about it.”

“Tell me what you thought about, sweetheart.”

“I'd like to be kissed, not just here.” She put a finger to her lips, waited until his eyes followed her finger. “But here.” She touched her shoulder, her neck, the curve of her breast, the side of her waist, the inside of her thigh. “Everywhere,” she whispered.

That was laughter in his eyes. It made her almost embarrassed—except that embarrassment made her feel obstinate.

“I'd like to be kissed
everywhere
,” she repeated. Why not? It was beyond scandalous. But she was three-and-twenty, and she'd heard stories. The stories about what men did—sometimes, with some women.

She'd always thought that those stories sounded like heaven.

From the smile curling Simeon's lips, he didn't think it was a terrible proposition.

“Gently,” she added.

“Did you enjoy this afternoon?”

Isidore blinked.

“The truth,” he clarified.

“Not very much.” He flinched. “But you knew that,” she said, puzzled. “You didn't enjoy it either. Remember, you told me that—”

“What in particular didn't you like?” he asked. “We won't do it again.”

She cleared her throat. “I think I'd prefer kisses to some touches. Your hands are very strong.”

He smiled slowly. “Kisses. Anything else you'd like to show me?” His eyes moved over her slowly, like a caress, and Isidore suddenly felt naked. Which she was. His finger slid down the pale skin of her stomach and paused, pulling out a little ringlet of hair. “What about here?”

“A
very
delicate area,” Isidore managed. She felt as if she were getting a fever. His leg, clothed in fine woolen breeches, brushed against the naked skin of her leg; it was unbearably erotic. She reached out and wound her hands into his hair.

“You don't like my hair unpowdered,” Simeon said, as if he were promising something.

But it was thick and silky under her fingers, strong as he was. It didn't smell like violet powder, but like that indefinable smell of clean male. “I like it now,” she whispered.

His mouth lowered to hers but hovered without touching her lips. That finger was still—

“What are you doing?” she whispered. The fever was spiking, focusing between her legs in an embarrassing way.

“Kissing,” he said calmly, looking straight at her.

“That's not—”

“Think of it as pre-kissing.”

Isidore couldn't even think, not with that finger touching her so sweetly. It was completely unlike the way he gripped her the previous night…She anchored her fingers in his hair and pulled his mouth to hers. “Kiss me!”

He kissed her deep and soft, and at the same time, his fingers just kept wandering, kissing in their own way, a kind of finger kisses that made her shiver and feel a singing heat down her legs. He pulled his mouth free and licked her lip; to her embarrassment, Isidore's head
fell back and a hoarse little sound came from her throat.

“Does that feel good?” he whispered. He was kissing her jaw, and gave a little nip to her ear lobe, but frankly, Isidore wasn't paying much attention. It was what he was doing with his hand that was making her hips rise into the air and little moans fly from her mouth. Dimly she was aware that he was kissing all the parts that she had indicated. Unfortunately, she didn't care anymore.

She only realized that he'd stopped kissing when his hand stopped moving.

“Sweetheart?”

She frowned at him. Simeon didn't say that sort of endearment to her. Nor did he smile like that, a kind of wide, joyful smile like a child in a playground.

“You're gripping me very tightly,” he said, sparks of mischief in his eyes. “I might have bruises on my arms.” He moved his fingers again and she arched backward with a gasp.

She showed her teeth in a warning. “Simeon…”

“Enough pre-kisses,” he muttered. Before she knew what was happening, there was a warm wet tongue where one finger had been, and still his hand was there, filling her, making her shake all over until she finally dug her fingers into his arms and threw back her head and screamed.

Thirty seconds later she remembered where she was. “Godfrey!”

Simeon cocked an ear. “Still snoring,” he said cheerfully.

She fell backwards.

“No thanks to you,” Simeon added.

“Oh…my,” Isidore said. Her body was slowly coming back to earth. The pleasure felt as if it were still trembling in her toes, singing in her fingertips.

Simeon stood up and started taking off his clothes. He was as methodical as she would have expected. He neatly aligned his boots by the wall. He took off his neckcloth and hung it over a chair.

If Isidore hadn't been feeling a kind of outrageous, limp pleasure, she would almost have been annoyed. But then she kept looking at his front, and she couldn't get annoyed. He wanted her, yet there was a part of Simeon that resisted chaos so strongly that he couldn't rip off his clothes and fall on her like a ravening wolf.

That didn't mean he wasn't strung as tightly as a drum. His eyes were glowing with a combination of controlled power and pure lust. Her body stopped being quite so limp and a prickling awareness overtook her.

Naked now, Simeon bent over to place his carefully folded breeches on the old rocking chair. The line of his flank gleamed golden in the firelight.

So what if he were an example of control and methodical thinking? He was gorgeous, and he was hers.

She rolled over on her side and propped up her head with one hand, checking to make sure that her breasts were not flopping inelegantly. They looked quite delectable and round, thank goodness.

He stopped and put a log on the fire.

She bit back a smile. He was afraid. Making love didn't suit Simeon's wish to be in control. To be in charge. In fact, she would guess that the parts of it that she most enjoyed, he most disliked.

What she wanted was to see that look on his face again, the one which surrendered to the moment, to the pleasure, to
her.

Simeon straightened from the fire, turned and started to sit down next to her, probably intending, gentlemanlike, to ask her what she would prefer. Or something like that.

“My turn,” Isidore said, putting her hand over his mouth before he could speak. She was getting feverish again. She pulled him and pushed him until he was lying flat on the bed. Of course, he was too much of a gentleman to resist, though she could see he didn't really like it. Simeon wanted to be in control. He felt too vulnerable, lying on his back.

She smiled at him, a sweet, dangerous smile. He was just where she wanted him. Then she reached out to touch him. He was hard, like a marble statue, but burning hot. Smooth and erotic. Made to stroke. He didn't move while she explored him, soothed him, coaxed him.

He didn't even make a sound until her hand closed around him again and she made an experimental move—

And then he uttered an odd strangled noise that made her head jerk back. But she knew, she knew that it wasn't pain, and her fingers curled even tighter.

Then she started all those pre-kisses he had perfected, using two hands instead of one. And she followed them directly with real kisses, dusting his golden skin with the press of her lips. When she reached his nipples, he surged up under her. She looked up to find his eyes wide, full of passion, with no thought of control or order. It was hard to smile and kiss at the same time, but the taste of his skin calmed her giddy pleasure, brought on another kind of wildness. She tasted him, bit him, sipping his skin and his smell. Of course he didn't scream, the way she did. But his breath came quickly, forcefully, especially the lower she went on his body.

And lower she went.

He tasted like soap, and felt soft and hard at once. He said “No, Isidore,” seeming to wake up, so she put her lips around him.

He fell back then, surrendered, gave in. She played
with him, teased him, loved him, until he suddenly surged from beneath her and flipped her over.