Page 40 of The Scandalous Love of a Duke
‘Being here is nonsense.’ His afternoon of dalliance suddenly soured. Doing this was beyond foolish. It was ridiculous escaping and hiding here with a woman who could never be anything to him beyond this. She was no courtesan, nor was she one of the she-wolves of elite society. She had been his childhood friend.
He cast the thought aside. He refused to rationalise this, and he refused to think of consequence, or future. This was about escaping.
‘Being here is folly.’ She smiled and yet he could see his words had let reality encroach into the room. She knew as well as he did that she should not be here. ‘Did you choose the location for that reason?’
If she was trying to make him laugh, she did not succeed. He kissed her instead, his fingers gripping her upper thighs. He was hot again and aroused in moments.
He liked the way her lithe body curved and undulated against him when he kissed her. There was no falsehood or façade with her. Every motion was instinct and natural need.
Her slender fingers braced the sides of his head as she kissed him back, while the apex of her thighs pressed against his groin.
It would be so easy to bury himself inside her and take her completely. He would not, but he broke the kiss and said across her lips, ‘Shall we go for a second round?’
She nodded, her teeth biting her lower lip. Then she said, ‘You are very bad, now, are you not? As a boy you were well behaved.’
‘My grandfather taught me how to be bad. He was a very good teacher.’ If it was self-mockery, he hid his emotions now too well for her to see. ‘But if I was really bad, Katherine, you would no longer be a virgin.’
Her eyes shone. ‘I am bad too. I shouldn’t be here. But I choose to be…’
‘You should be. I have wanted you like this since the day of the funeral.’
‘And I have wantedyoulike this since I saw you swimming in the lake before you even went abroad.’ The words were obviously spoken without thought, and regretted the moment they were said. She turned pink.
My God, how beautiful.
But then he realised she was moving to rise, and his grip on her thighs firmed, holding her still as he digested her words. Had she just said she wanted him before he had left?
‘But you have probably had a hundred women like this anyway…’ A note of jealousy had crept into her voice.
What was this?Her revelation had somehow turned the steady ground beneath his feet to shifting sand. He felt a bitter hard barrier of denial slip over him, covering the emotion which gripped in his stomach and his chest. He no longer knew how to feel – how to respond. ‘Are you fishing for compliments?’ His voice had turned cold. He could not force warmth back into it. All his emotions were shuttered away, out of reach. He could speak the truth though. ‘In fact the number of women I have probably had is more, but none like this, Katherine, and none like you.’
‘Flattery will win you nothing,’ she taunted, trying to cover her tracks and hide her vulnerability. She could not hide her emotion though.
‘It has won me this tryst with you.’
‘You did not win it!’ she replied, clearly hurt. ‘I am giving it to you.’
She tried moving again, but once more he stopped her. ‘Wait.’ She had wanted him when he was one and twenty, little Katherine Spencer.
‘You watched me swimming, in the lake?’
He felt as though his innards were tangled up somehow. He remembered that day. His grandfather had held a ball in his honour, before packing him off abroad. All his friends had come to stay for the house party. They had swum naked in the lake because it had been hot.
John had been preoccupied, engrossed in himself as he had tried to come to terms with the changes planned for his life. If he was honest, he had not even noticed her in the day, and she had not been invited to the ball. She had not yet come out, even though she had been of age. Phillip had come though, with his parents, but not Katherine.
She was blushing harder.
‘I am flattered.’
‘Do not be, it was just a childish infatuation.’ Her gaze had dropped to his throat.
His fingers lifted her chin. ‘You do not convince me. Have you carried a torch for me ever since?’ He was suddenly desperate to know, though he knew his voice only implied the merest interest.
‘No!’
But the answer was yes, he was sure of it. Her voice lied but her body said it, soft and moulded to his, warm and wet between her thighs.
‘I am giving it to you’. That was why this innocent young woman had agreed to this immoral liaison. She was right, she should not be here, but she was, and she was because she cared for him, because she had cared for him for all the years he had isolated himself. For all the years he had kept people away because of their barrage of false affection. All that time she had been here waiting for him.
