Page 24 of The Untamed Duke
Ninth Duke of Richeforte
Grace’s wordssliced Nicholas with blistering awareness.
For one night, you shall have me.
Was she serious?
Was shefuckingserious? Her body, her mouth, her kisses, her virginity, her soul, all offered in exchange for a few damn nags? She was bloody crazy. Insane. Daft...
His mouth watered until he nearly choked.
He wanted to cross his study and snatch her up. Kiss her senseless. Rip that damned wet blouse away and lick her cold-pebbled nipples with the heat of his tongue. He wanted to bite them—gently at first—then with increasing passion until she cried out his name. And he would thrust his cock into her so hard, so deep, she’d be unable to speak at all.
He stared at her. Like an idiot. When Grace stepped closer, he stumbled in retreat before bracing himself.
"Did you hear me?"
Her voice was high, thin. Embarrassed, as though his silence was a rejection instead of a reflection of the varied ways he would take her. He envisioned bending her over his desk while he slid into her wet heat from behind, his palms warming the cold, rain dampened skin of her buttocks until she flamed as hot as the fire in the hearth.
While he fought a molten river of lust, her bronze colored eyes searched his, waiting for an answer.
Control.He needed to regain control. Of himself. The situation.
Affecting the relaxed manner of a man humoring an irrational child, Nicholas stalked past her and leaned against his desk. He hoped his forthcoming appeasement eased the rejection of her offer, or at least erased the erotic images in his mind. The offered proposal was impossible. He could not permit it. The price she would pay was too high, even in his debauched world.
Nicholas snapped open a humidor. Selecting a cigar, he took his time lighting it, intensely aware of her nervous fidgeting in the yawning silence. Drawing on the cylinder of tobacco in a leisurely fashion, he released a puff of smoke upward. It drifted above their heads, swirling into miniature grey-white clouds.
With a smirk, he tapped the ashes into a heavy crystal bowl. "What of marriage, honeybee? A future husband, even someone other than Longleigh, will expect a virgin in his bed. How will you explain the loss of that valuable commodity? Because believe me, come your wedding night, a man will know someone else claimed the prize. And any man worth his salt will be angered by its absence." His gaze drifted over her in a lazy assessment. "Especially with you. The man you belong to will want every bloody piece of you. Pardon the expression."
At his crudeness, Grace's features hardened into steel even as her cheeks flushed scarlet. Lush, smudgy-dark eyelashes fluttered downward. "An insignificant factor, as I've no intention of ever marrying. Should you agree with the arrangement, I shall have my stables and Bellmar. With full control of my inheritance and the sale of a few foals, there won’t be a need to marry. Besides, I’ve no desire for a husband who simply wants control of all I hold dear. I’ve no need for a man anyway, least of all one who thinks to buy me based on the value of my estate."
"You’ve no wish for children? In the future?" All silly young girls of thetondreamed of advantageous marriages and children. They were raised from birth preparing for such things.
Broodmares, the lot of them. When they grew bored with being wives and mothers, they sought affairs as a pleasant, empty means of distraction. He'd slept with countless married women, all searching for an element of danger, the excitement missing from their humdrum lives. Nicholas willingly complied, for love matches were rare in their world, and everyone found pleasure where they would. His affairs were carefully conducted with women unlikely to pose any form of entanglement. From either jealous husbands or worse, romantic expectations. The moment a woman expressed anything more than an interest in being thoroughly fucked, without love, without attachment or affection, he ended the affair and selected a new lover.
The last two affairs before Helene Ralston had ended badly. Or maybe they were merely examples of bad luck. His pretty little actress drank herself into a stupor, striking her head during a fall and dying two days after being discovered. Inebriation dotted their encounters and Anne was completely uninhibited when mildly intoxicated, willing to try anything. When dealing with the aftermath of her benders became tedious, frequent, and more extreme, Nicholas moved on. He wanted a mistress he could fuck and enjoy, not a woman who’d grown too fond of cheap gin and required coddling. But still, upon learning the stage troupe was short on funds needed to give the girl a proper burial, Nicholas anonymously paid for not only a service, but a fine casket and a plot in a pretty little cemetery in the village where her sister still lived.
Following the breakup with Anne, Lady Elizabeth presented him with a charming proposition. It seemed her husband was keeping a mistress and she’d recently discovered that fact. She sought Nicholas out strictly in retaliation for her husband’s wandering ways. They’d slept together twice before Elizabeth made the dreadful mistake of leaving Lord Banberry. Her express intent was to divorce her husband, marry Nicholas, and become a duchess.
He was brutal when breaking off that affair. Hearing Elizabeth’s plan during their third time together at his London townhouse, Nicholas dragged the lady out the front door, clad only her chemise, with her hair unbound. Hailing a hansom cab, he gave the driver instructions and within fifteen minutes, he was tossing Lady Banberry onto the same bed as Lord Banberry and his current mistress. As squeals of indignation rose from the women and bellows of outrage sputtered from Lord Banberry, Nicholas calmly informed the man he should take his wife in hand. If Lord Banberry couldn’t control the lady, he should get rid of either her or the mistress, because obviously he could not handle the demands of both. To Elizabeth, Nicholas’s only words were this, “I’ll never marry, madam. But if I did, it would not be to a woman who cuckolds her first husband while attempting to secure a second.”
The last he’d heard, Elizabeth was in seclusion, hustled out of London and hidden somewhere in the country. Lord Banberry kept his mistress.
Nicholas considered Grace now. What sort of entanglement would he need extraction from if he accepted her offer?
“I shall have my horses and my home. That's all I want,” Grace stated firmly. “All I shall ever want."
She stood determined and rigid. Nicholas supposed she’d not had an easy time of it over the past year. Living life on her own, in her own time, she'd been abruptly reeled in by society’s constricting ribbons. Her well-meaning guardian believed every girl shared the same burning desire of finding a husband in the ballrooms and parlors of London. It was natural she balked at any restrictions. She wanted the familiar life known as a girl, a world revolving around horses and her own desires. Grownup matters did not exist in that idyllic world.
Nicholas retreated to the other side of the massive desk, sinking into the leather chair.
Fear, more than anything, made Grace think she wanted nothing other than an isolated life of horses and an empty manor house. Fear left her reluctant to see outside the safe confines of Bellmar Abbey, past its pretty, broken stone fences. And for all her outward bravery, it was fear that made her seek affections from a horse’s warm muzzle in the palm of her hand rather than a man's lips upon her mouth.
Nicholas knew all about empty, desolate existences. Eventually, slowly, surely, Grace Willsdown would shrivel away in that lonely world.
If he allowed himself to indulge her offer, there was no question he would drown in his lust for her. He would want more than one night, and she would not be able to give more. Bitterness made his voice intentionally cruel. It was time to end this foolishness.
"You are a reckless, feather-brained chit. Never in a million years would I allow such valuable property to slip through my fingers for such a paltry price."
