Page 81 of The Captive Duke
“Hush.” She looped his arm across her shoulders and curled down against him. “I’ll stay here for now, but you must hush.”
He rolled up on his side, pulled the sheet up over them, kissed her shoulder, anchored his arm around her middle, and hauled her against his body.
And then did as she’d commanded.
Gilly woke to two sensations, the first easy to identify: warmth. She was half on her side, half prone, and Christian lay along her back, a ducal blanket, his leg snugged up to her bottom and insinuated between her calves. His naked, muscular, hairy male leg.
The second impression was harder to classify, and not strictly of the body: she was safe. He held her securely with an arm about her waist, and he’d put himself between her and the door. She faced the windows, faced the pure blackness of that hour between moonset and sunrise, and knew a sense of peace that surpassed anything she’d experienced since her wedding.
And then his hand, his damaged left hand, moved. He shaped her breast gently, and Gilly both felt and heard him sigh. His breath whispered over her nape,and she hoped he’d merely been moving in his sleep, reliving a minor marital pleasure.
Except to her, it wasn’t minor.
And they weren’t married.
His hand moved again, with more purpose, and more heat spread through Gilly, from low in her belly and between her thighs. She put her hand over his to stop him from further caresses.
“I thought you were awake.” His voice was a rumble in the darkness, right behind her ear. “I’ll stop if you wish it, Gilly, but only if you wish it. This is where fancying a fellow can lead, for a widow with the courage to indulge her pleasures, and I’m almost sure you do fancy me.”
He opened his mouth over that place where her shoulder and neck joined, while Gilly tried to think.
And failed. She wanted him; he desired her as well. They were of age, neither one was married, and he was no longer nattering on about his honor, or hers, or—
He set his teeth on her and scraped a slow slide out to her shoulder. She closed her eyes and savored the feel of Christian holding her close, savored his heat and the strange sensations—part need, part desolation—that must be inchoate desire.
The desire she would examine soon, but first, Gilly gave herself a moment to enjoy the pleasure of revenge.
Greendale might have been a decent husband. Gilly hadn’t been his first wife, he’d been experienced, and he might have relied on that experience to show her consideration.
He’d shown her shame, misery, and mishandling, and now—now—Gilly was in bed with a man who knew how to cherish, how to go slowly, how topleasure. She hoped the knowledge had Greendale spinning in his grave and trying to claw his way out of hell.
Christian shifted, and the loss of him along her back and side was physical and emotional both, and then he was back, nudging her flat onto her back and shifting his weight over hers.
“Spread your legs, love. Make a place for me, or tell me to sleep on the balcony.”
“Don’t go.” She was sure of that much, sure she didn’t want to be alone in this big bed, but as for the rest… She was wicked to want it, to want him, but also…right. Right that they join, though he wasn’t speaking of marriage.
Nor was she ready to raise the topic with him.
“Stop thinking, my lady.” He hitched up on his forearms, so his body caged hers, and evidence of his arousal, hard and warm, lay against her belly.
“I can’t…” She couldn’t see him, couldn’t read his features in the darkness. “Don’t rush me.”
He might have laughed silently. His belly bounced against hers, they were so very, very close.
“Haste is the last thing on my mind.” His lips brushed against her temple, then her eyes, her brows, her chin, and occasionally, as if it were just another feature, her mouth.
“You like this darkness. You like learning me by feel.”He would also like having his scars invisible to her, which Gilly understood better than he knew. Feeling very bold indeed, she nuzzled at him until she found his mouth with her own. “I like it too.”
She sensed endless patience in him, and so she learned at the age of almost twenty-six how to kiss a lover. Such kisses involved tongues, lips, taste, feel, and soft, needy noises that had her pressing up into his body, into his arousal, and wanting to consume him with her hands and her mouth.
“Now who rushes whom?” he asked.
Was he laughing at her? “If you can manage ducal grammar, I’m doing it wrong, aren’t I? I thought so. Tell me then what I must do. I’ll do as you ask, as you say.”
Please don’t leave me.
She hadn’t been able to get free of her husband’s attentions fast enough, had dreaded the man’s every touch, his every visit to her bed. With Christian, she wanted to surrender herself to an eternal night.
