The Ugly Duchess

Page 63

“We will?” His voice came out in a groan and he snapped the coverlet over the bed as if a tornado had entered the room. “What way is that?”
“Under the covers,” Theo told him. “In the dark.”
“Right.” He cared neither where nor how it took place as long as she would consider letting him back inside her delectable body.
A few minutes later he learned that when his wife said “dark,” she really meant it. Theo snuffed the candles and turned the Argand lamp down to a dim glow, and then had to feel her way in the dark back to the bed.
He heard a thump and a “drat” that made him grin. For his part, his eyes adjusted quickly; he was used to stealing aboard ships in the dead of night.
By the time she made her way under the covers, James was shaking all over with less-than-altogether-controlled desire.
But he had one last thing to tell her first.
“I love you.” He whispered it into the darkness, running his hands through her sleek hair. “You’re too elegant for me, and too beautiful, and far too smart, but I still love you, even given those drawbacks.”
She snorted, but then she turned her head and kissed his wrist. He’d take it.
James was sure of one thing. He would keep the sheets over their heads, if that’s what she wanted. He didn’t need light. All he needed was her warm, sweet-smelling body twisting under his hands.
He gloried in the way she arched toward him with a sigh of relief when his lips found hers, and her squeak of pleasure when he ran his fingers up her inside thigh, her moan when those fingers moved on to warmer and wetter areas.
Every time their movements disarranged the sheet, he pulled it back into place. No words were exchanged, until he was kissing his way down her stomach.
“Are you . . . you aren’t going to do that, are you?”
Her voice came with a little pant, it gratified him to notice.
“Yes,” he said, trying to keep his voice mild and detached—and failing. “I am. I must, Daisy. You never said this was distasteful.”
He thought she muttered something, but it wasn’t in a Theo tone of voice, so he took it as a yes. Surely she would be Daisy for him, now and then? Between the sheets?
She tasted like the sweetest nectar a god could wish for. He licked and played and did all the things he spent seven years dreaming of doing. He eased her legs apart to give himself more room and kept exploring until he could feel tension building in her body. When she was strung tight as a wire, her breath escaping in tiny gasps, he slowed down and practiced torment.
And when he could feel that she was on the very edge of breaking, he raised his head and said, from under the tented sheet, “I don’t think we should have babies, Daisy.”
He heard a mumbled expletive, followed by a sharp “Don’t stop!”
“But I have something to say,” he persisted. “As I said, I don’t think we should have babies. I’ve changed my mind.” He blew on her, very gently, and ran his thumb down all that silky skin.
She trembled under his hands and then the sheet was snatched off and tossed to the side, and she cried, “What did you say?”
“No babies,” he said, easing his finger into a passage so tight and wet and hot that he nearly came on the bed, in a way he hadn’t since he was sixteen. He stifled a groan and dropped his hand down to readjust himself.
“Why?” she asked in a husky whisper.
“I’ll never be able to love anyone the way I love you. I don’t think I ever have, in fact. I’m a limited person. I wouldn’t want to make a child feel unloved.” It was a trifle manipulative, but at the same time, it was true. He couldn’t imagine having any love left for a baby.
He slid a second finger inside her. She gave a little shriek.
“Hadn’t you better pull up the sheet?” he asked, raising his head again.
“You!” she said, and the command thrilled him to his bones. “Don’t stop.” He obeyed her command.
When she was sobbing and shaking, he crawled back up her body and whispered, “Would you be more comfortable if I were to lie on my back?”
She didn’t seem to be thinking clearly, so he rolled over, lifted her into the air, and put her gently in position.
“Might I ask you to lower yourself a little?” he asked politely. He kept his hands loose on her arms, though he wanted nothing more than to pull her down and thrust up into her wet warmth.
“Yes, of course,” she said. She sounded a bit odd.
“I won’t last very long,” he said, gasping as she slid lower.
She stopped.
“Daisy?” James’s hands were shaking, so he made himself let go of her arms and grip the sheet instead. He couldn’t frighten her. He couldn’t provoke a disgust for him.
Damn, she was pulling away. He gave a silent groan: this was agonizing.
“I want a lamp,” she said, stumbling away from the bed. A gentleman probably would have risen to help, but James didn’t feel like a gentleman. He felt like a bloodthirsty ex-pirate with blue balls. An ex-pirate who was on the verge of losing every claim to control he had, because it had been too long.
She managed to find the Argand lamp across the room, and turned it all the way up. The light spilled over her body, making her limbs shine like alabaster. When she didn’t immediately return to bed, he sat up, groaning a little; his body did not want to bend in that precise fashion at this moment.
“Aren’t you coming back?” It emerged as a harsh growl.
Theo was standing by the mantelpiece, her hands once more on her hips. “What’s the matter?” he asked, choking back “now.”
“This,” she said, with a wave of her hand. She seemed to be waving toward him. Or possibly the bed. “It’s not the same.” Her eyes pooled in the soft light like darkness itself. Her lips were plump and luscious. “Doesn’t it all seem different to you?”
“Well, you’re much more beautiful than you were as a mere girl,” he said, schooling his impatience. “And I’m more battered.”
She opened her mouth, and then stopped. “Right.” She paused and then said, “No. We must get this right.”
“I’ll do anything,” he said instantly. “I shouldn’t have—or rather, I should have—let you—”
“Don’t!” She shouted it at him.
“What?”
“Don’t be like this!”
James cleared his throat. For the first time, he wasn’t sure he could be the man she needed or wanted. Which meant he wasn’t sure he could stay married to her.
In that moment a stroke of fury lit his entire body, fueled by an hours-long erection that was driving him around the bend. In one stride he was beside her, hands on her arms. “You are my wife!” he growled.
She tipped her head back to see his face, baring the long clean line of her neck. He wanted to bite it. He wanted to bite her all over, to sweat on her, and plunge into her, and lick her head to foot. He wanted to use her body. He wanted his own to be used.
“You liked the way we made love. No: you loved it. I can’t become some sort of tame spaniel just so you’ll go to bed with me!” The last declaration came out in a shout worthy of his father.