Page 11 of The Untamed Duke
Pouring a brandy from the decanter on the dressing table, Nicholas spoke over his shoulder. “No. You won’t.”
The baroness should gather her things and depart his room here at Calmont Downs as quickly as when she visited his exclusive corner of Mayfair. Flicking her a glance when she expelled an irritated sigh, he watched impassively as she arranged herself in a most provocative manner; stomach flat upon the mattress, pale rump slightly lifted and exposed amongst the tangled sheets. She slowly brought one leg up, bending it at the knee, a wavy mass of red hair streaming to her waist. That hair was most recently wrapped about his fists while he thrust repeatedly into her mouth.
Nicholas’s gaze dropped. While in the heat of things, he remembered imagining Helene’s hair as straight and golden, flowing over and through his hands like liquid sunshine. A pair of bronzed topaz eyes, not icy blue, gazing up at him. And the mouth encompassing him was a soft rose pink, not Helene’s blood red. Damn if the earlier fantasy wasn’t arousing him now.
During dinner, he could hardly tear his eyes away from Grace Willsdown. That heart-shaped face, with its stubborn chin and high cheekbones, was not the beauty set by society’s rules, but it was lovely just the same. There was something about the girl that left Nicholas a little dazed. Every time she laughed, his eyes sought her out. When gentlemen swarmed around her during a lively conversation regarding Irish racers, he felt like barreling into their midst, throwing her over his shoulder, and carting her off so he’d have her full attention. He would have dragged her into some dark corner. Taken her sweet mouth. Claimed her for himself.
The unruly thoughts made him angry. With her. With Tristan. With the Earl of Ravenswood. Mostly, his own lack of control infuriated him. Control was important. It carried him through disaster, and the knowledge old friends no longer held faith in his honor. Lifting him above censure and his own self-hatred, that control was his very existence. It was quickly disintegrating, and all because of a silly, blonde chit.
When the baroness slipped into his room just after midnight, Nicholas found himself in a devil of a mood. He took his erstwhile mistress so roughly, he left bruises, his frustration soaring because her hair was not shimmery blonde, her eyes not dark honey, her skin pale white instead of Grace Willsdown’s gold-dusted ivory. Helene did not mind his roughness. She never did.
Helene’s blue eyes narrowed as she watched him now. The softness of her voice belied the aggravation evident in her grip of the pillow clutched between her breasts. “You seem interested in what awaits you here.”
Pulled from his memories, Nicholas’s gaze deliberately dropped where his semi-erection rose between his legs. “Trust me. You have no part in this.” Pulling on a pair of sleeping pants, he willed his arousal’s demise.
“That cruel streak of yours is showing,” Helene shot back.
“You had no complaints earlier. When you begged for more. Harder. Deeper. More vicious. You always do.”
“You were...different tonight, Richeforte. I cannot explain it.”
Richeforte.Would he always flinch when called by that hated name? If only the title could rot with the man from whom it was inherited. Maybe the cruelty, this coldness inside him would die too. Maybe, but doubtful.
Nicholas did not hide the sneer in his voice. “Can’t explain why you love it?”
Taunting Helene brought no response. She enjoyed his savagery during sex, liked being dominated, loved the roughness. Their affair centered around it, although lately her participation had become a desperate clinging, morphing into hope for something more. She desired a connection, a permanent relationship, as impossible as that was. Women were temporary solutions to satisfy his lust, and he’d cultivated his reputation based on that fact. When gossips called him the Winter Wolf - behind his back, of course - it only steeled his resolve in remaining aloof and unattached.
There could never be anything more than a superficial arrangement with the women he encountered simply because something within him was absent. No one was allowed inside his icy world, not after the disaster with Sebastian Cain and Marilee. And because of his father. Whatever was once soft and tender inside him was beaten out with a riding crop by that hated man and destroyed by those he once called friends.
Accepting defeat, Helene sat up, the pillow falling away and exposing her naked breasts. “You’ll have to help me with my gown. I can’t reach the buttons in the back.”
“Completely unnecessary. If you encounter anyone in the halls, mention your habit of sleepwalking.”
“I don’t sleepwalk,” she gritted out.
“If someone comes across you, you do.” Nicholas tossed a gown and a few undergarments onto the bed, ignoring her mutterings. “Hurry, my dear. Unless you enjoy dressing in the hall.”
He maneuvered her into the corridor in record time, closing the door with a firm click, but seconds later the hushed, angry raps of her knuckles sounded on the oak.
“Richeforte? I don’t have my bloody sho—”
The heavy portal swung open, the forgotten slippers shoved into her hands, the door slammed and locked again, all in an unhurried, brusque manner. Nicholas sighed in relief as Helene moved down the hall, cursing the entire time.
Morning was close. Dangerously so. Beyond the bedroom window drapes, shifting shades of black and charcoal grey shrouded Calmont Down’s sprawling landscape. Stepping over to the desk, he withdrew a battered leather-bound journal and quickly scrawled the lines of verse he’d dreamed. It was a habit when he awoke. It helped him focus, calmed his nerves. A pitiful way of dealing with the darkness lurking inside him; putting to paper his even darker thoughts.
Many times, the lines made little sense. Often, he was inspired to write a complete stanza. He kept the “scribbles”, as his father once referred to them, in a walnut chest. He’d filled dozens of journals over the years, all private, certainly not intended for anyone’s eyes other than his own.
Looking over the words, Nicholas frowned. He pulled out a bottle of setting powder and sprinkled a little over the page. While it dried, he peered into the darkness from the vantage point of the fourth-floor room, idly wondering how much longer until the sun rose.
A slight movement in the pre-dawn darkness caught his attention. Someone had just exited the manor near the kitchens and now rushed down the path toward the stables. A stable boy, based on the dark coat, breeches and cap. Returning from a secret assignment with a kitchen maid, no doubt.
A pale sliver of remaining moonlight broke through the clouds, and with it, a robust gust of wind. Snatched away by the breeze, the person’s cap flew off, revealing a braided gold waterfall of hair tumbling over delicate shoulders. Hardly a stable boy after all, but a girl. Illuminated in a pool of light, she scampered after the cap as it cartwheeled end over end. When it was finally within her grasp and jammed back into place, shiny locks tucked securely beneath it, her gaze lifted. Apparently satisfied no one watched from the numerous glassy eyes of the mansion’s windows, she tugged her coat closer and turned again toward the stables.
Cold, surprising fury bombarded Nicholas.
He counted.
One through ten.
