Page 47 of A Duke in Disguise
In a moment of inspiration she took hold of his cravat and pulled him close, a quick jerk, a meaningless show of force against a man whose very power was the force that kept them apart. She heard him suck in a breath of air, watched his eyes darken impossibly further. Then she tugged his head down to hers and took his mouth in a kiss.
Ash’s heart slammed against the walls of his chest as Verity led him to her bedroom, then pulled him close for another kiss. The linen of his cravat was harsh and taut against his neck, and he wanted it tighter. He wanted a bite of pain to take away from everything else he was feeling.
“I said take it off,” she whispered into his skin.
Willing his hands not to tremble with anticipation, he pulled off his cravat, but she kept hold of one end, passing the length through her hands again and again, contemplatively, as if coming to a plan. He shivered.
Coat, waistcoat, shirt, trousers: he flung them all into a pile and stood naked before her. He wanted to go to her, to pull the dressing gown off her shoulders and get rid of whatever shabby shift she had on beneath it. But plainly she wanted to be in charge tonight, and he wanted that, too, so he waited, watching as she pulled that strip of linen through her hands.
“Get on the bed,” she said, and so he did. He lay back against the bolster and cushions, never taking his eyes from her. “Hands over your head,” she said, approaching him, wielding that cravat as if it were a weapon.
He hesitated only a fraction of a second, not from fear or indecision but from the blunt force of the realization that this thing he had scarcely let himself imagine, this fantasy that had dwelt only in the most secret corners of his mind, was about to come true. Then he raised his arms. She rewarded him by kneeling on the bed beside him, her weight causing the mattress to dip slightly, angling his body towards hers. He felt the fabric wrap around his wrists: a threat and a promise. As she leaned over him, binding his wrists to the bedframe, her breasts, uncorseted beneath her shift and dressing gown, brushed across his lips.
“Plum,” he whispered, his voice strangled.
“Shh.” She tested her knot and ran her fingers down the length of his bound arms. The touch was equal parts soothing and agonizing. He was naked and tied up and completely at her disposal, and surely that thought should not be half as appealing as it was. But she was looking at him with an expression of frank appreciation, almost wolfish desire, and whatever perversions they were about, at least they were about them together.
“Look at you,” she said, caressing his shoulders and then rubbing a thumb along his stubbly jaw. “All for me.”
“All for you,” he said, as if it were his part in the litany. He had known for ten years, for the entirety of his adult life, that he and Verity fit together, belonged together, and there was no dukedom, no title, no inheritance that could change that. And like this, at her mercy and under her gaze, he hoped she could see that. Her fingers trailed lower, over the muscles of his chest and the sensitive skin of his nipples. He suppressed a groan.
“Don’t,” she said. “I want to hear it.” She pulled off her dressing gown and then she was only in her threadbare shift, as insubstantial as cobwebs, as translucent as a cloud. He wanted to touch everything the shift hinted at: the heavy curve of breast, the swell of her hips, the nip of her waist. He wanted to put his hands all over her, but she wasn’t letting him, and that, for whatever backward reason, made it even better, made the sight of her sharper, more acute. He pulled at his bindings, trying to get his mouth closer to hers.
She responded by pulling the shift over her head and bending forward, letting her breasts skim his lips. He took a nipple into his mouth, heard her sigh of relief as he swirled his tongue around the pebbled flesh. His cock, painfully hard, got only harder when he realized there was nothing he could do about it. He couldn’t touch himself, and Verity was kneeling over him in such a way that even when he bucked his hips, he couldn’t do anything to achieve even the slightest friction. He groaned, and she gave him an approving smile.
“Poor Ash,” she said, crawling down his body. “Poor, poor Ash. Here you are, about to get a fancy title and an entire estate, and there’s nothing you can do about your own cock.” She crawled lower, then shoved his legs apart. He could feel her breath on his skin, could see her nipples brushing the fabric of the quilt. Following his gaze, she brought a hand to her breasts, toying with them, as if weighing them in her hands. He pulled at his bindings, mainly to reassure himself that he really couldn’t get free. He couldn’t; he was tied fast and sure, going nowhere, at her disposal.Hers.
Then she bent her head and licked the head of his cock, her tongue warm and wet and different from anything he had imagined.
“Verity,” he groaned. “Oh God.” Her hand was wrapped around his shaft, and she was regarding him with the intent curiosity she would devote to a new book or an interesting argument. Then she sucked lightly on the head and he cursed. There was nothing for it but to swear himself blue. He couldn’t touch the soft strands of hair that fell onto his thighs, he didn’t dare move his hips to bring himself further into the sweet warmth of her mouth. He held himself impossibly still and gritted his teeth as her lips closed around his length.
“You like this?” she asked innocently, raising her head to face him. Her eyes were bright with amusement.
“It’s tolerable,” he said, because that was the game. “I’ll endure.” He let loose another volley of profanity as she drew him into her mouth again, because he could take the game only so far. He gave himself up to her, let his mind be consumed by pleasure, by sensation, by Verity.
When his muscles started to hurt with the effort of not thrusting into the slick warmth of her mouth and his wrists chafed against the crisp linen, she pulled off him and came to straddle his thighs. Her lips swollen and her hair a mess, she looked at him carefully, as if to assess whether he wanted this as much as she did.
“Be my guest,” he offered, gesturing with his chin in the direction of his cock and speaking with as much sangfroid as a man could while bound to a bed and tortured to within an inch of his life by the woman he loved. “Have at it.”
She teased the head of his cock against her soft, wet center and he let out a strangled groan. Finally she had mercy on him and sank onto his length, enveloping him in that velvety heat. He watched where their bodies joined, watched his cock disappear inside her, watched the sway of her breasts as she sighed when he was fully seated. She moved her hips and moaned and that was the end of his self-control. He bucked his hips up into her, because even with his hands tied and the unspoken rules of this game between them, he could not hold back any longer. He needed relief, he needed more.
She responded by leaning forward, her hand braced on his shoulder, her breasts tantalizingly close to his mouth. He reached up and captured a nipple between his lips, and was rewarded when she made a sound of undiluted pleasure. He kept going, kissing and thrusting and doing everything in his power to wait, just another minute, just a little more.
“Ash,” she breathed. “Ash, I can’t. I need more,” she said.
“Touch yourself,” he said, and then she was clenching around him. The force of her climax nearly brought on his own. “Now, Verity,” he said, urgent. She lifted off him and he watched himself spill in her hand.
“Plum,” he groaned when his breathing returned to normal. “You are going to kill me. I think you might already have done.”
“Pity,” she said, leaning over him to untie his wrists. His hands, once free, felt light and strange, as if they didn’t belong to him. She wiped her hands on the cravat and threw it aside. “I think I could go again.”
“Come here.” When she didn’t move, he tapped his chest. She got the message then, and crawled up his body, kneeling over his chest. He pressed his mouth to the apex of her legs, swirling his tongue around the place where she had touched herself. Her taste, her scent, her wetness against his lips, the soft whimpering sounds she made as she tangled her hands in his hair—he felt unspeakably grateful to be this close to her, to be able to show her with his body some fraction of what she meant to him. At that moment, he knew he’d never choose to be apart from her, he’d do whatever it took, whatever she needed. He stroked inside her, slow and deep, and something he did must have been right because she swore.
“Do that again,” she breathed. “Please, please.” She was begging him. And the idea of Verity Plum begging for anything was enough of a novelty to make him smile against her skin as he moved his fingers inside her, drawing another litany of oaths from her.
Afterward, she collapsed beside him, her head pillowed on his shoulder and one leg flung across his hips. She had pulled the bed quilt over them, and they were cocooned together, warm and close in a single drafty room within a house that maybe, once upon a time, had been their home.
Later, after they had dressed, and were standing by the door of the cold, darkened shop, making lazy conversation to avoid saying good-night, she reached into her pocket and produced a folded sheet of paper. “I’ve been meaning to give you this. Nate left it on my desk before he left, along with a note saying I could print it if I wanted. You’ll see straight away that I couldn’t do anything of the sort. But it’s Nate at his most Nate-like. It felt good to hear his voice. It’ll be a while before we can expect a letter, and I thought you might like to be reminded that you have friends.”
