Page 41 of A Most Improper Duchess
Arley bucked into her body, slightly slipping against the floor, then held still. Eyes closed, his grunt spread into a low growl. Vivianne rolled her hips to settle lower so that he filled her, almost so deep it hurt. He scrabbled at her chemise, and she tugged it over her head. He pressed deeper, and she gasped at the sensation.
Arley gripped her a little tighter. She rocked in time with his movements, ignoring the bite in her knees where the wood rubbed as the pleasure he brought to her body pushed out discomfit. Vivianne leant forward, her palms flattened against the dancefloor beside his head. Arley licked a nipple, then grasped her hips and thrust with wild abandon.
‘I don’t care about your story. As long as you are mine, and only mine.’ He cupped her neck and tugged her closer, bestowing greedy kisses on her mouth, her neck, her chest, nipping her skin just a little. ‘Fucking you is like nothing else. I lose myself in you.’
‘Not fucking. We dance.’ She rose his length, pulsed over the tip of his cock until he rumbled with want, then thumped down. He grunted, his expression pained ecstasy and loss. Faster and more frenetic, they bumped against each other. Arley slid his hands beneath her skirt. Soft, lithe, he stroked her inner thighs with his thumb, before pushing into the space between them to rub her clitoris. Pleasure burst from the nimbleness of his fingers. Vivianne arched to give her gasp free voice as the thrumming beauty of the lost sensation of joining for fun, for desire, rattled and woke.
‘Dancing, are we?’ Faster his fingers moved and every part of her prickled in a racing surrender. ‘Dance for me. Perform your solo.’
Vivianne suppressed a breath. She tried to push down the strumming, racing, tenderness from his fingers, from his body inside her, from the gentle ebb and the heady torrent that battered.
Arley pushed himself up to half sitting and almost too rough, grasped a fistful of her hair and wrenched her close for a kiss. ‘If not for me, then with me. Let go, my love. Come undone. Let me catch you.’
He was the music of the orchestra, humming beneath her body, coursing through her limbs, guiding every motion and shaping every breath. His kiss set her chest to expansion, and she inhaled his sweat, his freshness, his aching. The intimacy of skin on skin set her body aflame, and Vivianne fell into the embrace, the burning and the ricochet of bliss. ‘Mon amour,’ she said as she clenched her thighs against his, and he grunted a reply into her neck, and with a nip of her earlobe, she tumbled into its beauty, warm and unfettered. Every place of their connection pounded like a bass drum, every racing breath was a melody through her veins. What sweet oblivion, to be bathed in the shattered shards of light cast by the chandelier with the man she loved beneath her body, and she let herself be carried away. Arley tightened his hold, the two of them tense and trembling as they shivered into their completion. Her name erupted from between his clenched teeth, and she arched into his hold as his name spilled from her lips. ‘Arley, deeper. Arley, faster. Harder.’
Just one dance, just one partner, just one duke, for now, for always. Arley shuddered as he spent, his gasp a mirror to her own, and they stayed locked, trembling, exchanging huffs of air and feathers of kisses. He rolled back against the parquetry, and Vivianne collapsed against his chest. He brushed his fingers down her spine. Vivianne drew an invisible line between the men of her past and the man of her future. Just him, with his steady breaths and demanding mouth. Just him, forever.
‘I’m not sure that particular dance has ever been done quite so brazenly in this room before,’ he said, then kissed the top of her head. ‘I love how you fit against me. Like you were carved for me. My petite ballerina.’
Vivianne turned her face up and kissed his jawline. He sighed his contentment against her chest.
‘Arley?’ she whispered into his neck.
‘Hmmm?’
‘I love you.’
The words felt different in English, felt somehow more defined, more formal. Three separate words, each little syllable moulded of itself, of no consequence alone, but when linked, they felt like a surrender.
‘Noje t'aime?’ He chuckled. ‘I love you too, Vivianne. It baffles me beyond reason, but I do.’
He shuffled uncomfortably, and as they separated and dressed, they filled the space between them with small talk and kisses.
‘After we are married, do you think we could go home?’ she asked, trying to hold the lightness of the moment.
‘You want to see the estate?’
‘Non, non.’ She shook her head with a laugh. ‘One day, yes, but I mean my home.’
He took up her hand and hid a kiss in her palm. ‘Where is home?’
‘Bretagne.’ She stared at the frescos without seeing them, instead imagining the clear sky, and how it ran into the horizon of the sea and there was no way of telling where one ended and the other began. ‘Brittany. Near the sea. I have always been too scared to return to my parents. Maybe they will forgive me if I have a husband. Even an English one,’ she added with a deflecting laugh, before the sadness returned. ‘I would just like to know if they are alive.’
‘After Lords finishes sitting, we can go anywhere you like. Do you need help with your ribbon?’ Vivianne turned, and he cinched the bow at her waist. ‘Are you ready, for the company launch? Do you have everything in hand?’
‘You don’t trust I can do this?’ She spun to face him, her words more an echo of her own doubts, but she saw the uncertainty in his eyes.
‘I worry. There’s a lot riding on this. More than the company. I’ve never realised until now, but men are judged by their wives.’ He turned her to face him. ‘I have a real chance this year to live up to my father’s legacy. To achieve what he could not. I never had much time with him, and I suppose, I always thought I might make him proud, if I could do what he could not.’
‘I understand,’ she tugged at his coat lapels and closed them over, before fixing his buttons. ‘I know what it is to have a dream.’
‘I believe you can.’ He smoothed her hair back from her forehead, before planting a kiss. ‘You’ll be my perfect duchess.’
As she left the ballroom, Vivianne gave it one last sweep. Tables along the wall, bright ribbons, French champagne and the chandeliers blazing. She would ask Cecil what music the English liked and find those who could play it well. She could do this. She would be the duchess he needed her to be.
Chapter Nineteen
Thenotehadrequesteda meeting at the Hog and Thistle. Close to the docks, it smelt of the Thames, as if the ale had been brewed from its water. Winton sat in one of the central tables. A small cluster of empty tankards already dotted its surface.
