A Duke For All Seasons (8 page)

    
Not this time.

    
Who would have thought this complicated, rigid man would be the one to set her singing, blood and bone, body and soul?

    
She yanked off his cravat and worked furiously to remove his sodden jacket and shirt. Bella tasted the bare skin of his shoulder, smooth and wet, and she couldn't get enough of him. His chest was lightly furred with dark hair that whorled around his brown nipples. She raked her teeth over one and was rewarded with a low male growl.

    
He cradled the back of her head with his palm and took her mouth, while she fumbled at the trouser buttons at his hips. Her bare breast pressed up against him, skin on glorious skin.

    
She stopped thinking in complete thoughts and could only register disjointed impressions.

    
Slick. Hard. Wanting.

    
Sebastian pulled out the hatpin and discarded her sad little bonnet. Then he made short work of removing her pelisse and skirt. It was a convoluted process because as sections of her skin were exposed, he caressed and kissed and nipped each needy bit of her. It was as if he were consuming her one delectable bite at a time. She couldn't wish him to stop, however few pieces of her might be left when it was over.  

    
Please God, she couldn't even let herself think of an end. 

    
She plunged her hands into his trousers to hold his shaft. Long, thick, like a column of granite encased in smooth male skin. The very thought of taking him in made her weak and strong at once.

 
   
After he relieved her of her stays and chemise, he reached around her, his muscular arms beneath her bum, and lifted her off the floor. He carried her toward a waiting couch, toying with her nipple with his lips and tongue while he moved toward their goal.

    
He laid her on the overstuffed leather and looked down at her. His hair was wild. His eyes even wilder, glinting with the same lunatic light one saw in a stallion when the mares were in season. His trousers were slung low on his hips, ready to succumb to gravity, his splendid maleness on aching display.

    
“This has nothing to do with anything else,” he said, his voice harsh, ragged with need. He yanked off his boots and let his trousers and small clothes pool at his ankles. “Not the damned envelope or anything I might do about it on your behalf.”

    
“Or your damned contract,” she countered.

    
He nodded curtly. “I realize I can't purchase you, Bella,” he said. “You give yourself to me freely or not at all.”

    
She extended her arms to him, but he caught up her wrists and held her fast.

    
“That means this isn't about what I'll do for your daughter either. I will help you in any case,” he said darkly. “I don't want you to let me take you because you're
grateful
.” He spat the word out as if it left a bitter taste in his mouth.

    
She ached to hold him, to engulf him. She'd go mad if he didn't do something soon. “I'm feeling many things right now, Sebastian. Grateful is not one of them.”

    
He lowered himself and the insanity of lust began.

“No matter how delightful a woman’s company may be in the boudoir, if she complicates a gentleman’s life outside it, she ought to be dismissed and summarily shunned as if she were a case of the pox.”

~ A Gentleman’s Guide to Keeping a Mistress

    
This is lunacy
, Sebastian thought.
Stark, raving madness.

    
But for the life of him, he couldn’t stop. Her silken limbs, her softness, the sweet mound of her belly and the tender triangle of pale red-gold curls at the apex of her thighs—every bit of her called to him like a siren on the rocks.

    
And, unlike Ulysses, he hadn’t had the forethought to order Cobb to strap him to the mast.

    
He reveled in the sight of every secret part of her. He tugged on her nipples, suckling hard and biting down enough to make her cry out. He rubbed his face between her legs, drunk on her scent. Her small noises of need tightened his ballocks and primed his cock to throbbing hardness with each little sigh and every hitched breath.

    
Her hands roamed over him, teasing and prodding. When she bit his shoulder, he sank into her. Some of his past mistresses had complained of his generous size. He slid into Arabella’s velvet tightness slowly in the hope that she could bear to engulf all of him.

    
She hooked her heels at the small of his back and urged him deeper. He rammed himself home, sheathed to the balls.

    
Her eyes flared, but she whispered his name and rocked against him.

    
The whole world went suddenly hot and liquid. Sebastian forgot himself in pure animal joy. At one point, he was vaguely aware that they’d slid off the couch and were coupling on the thick bearskin before the crackling fire, but he couldn’t be bothered to care that the 8
^th
Duke of Winterhaven shouldn’t writhe on the floor like a mindless beast.

    
They rolled in a tangle of arms and legs and Bella ended up astraddle him. He usually preferred to be on top, but when she arched her spine, offering her breasts to him, he couldn’t refuse. He claimed them both, rolling her taut nipples between his thumbs and forefingers.

    
Bella groaned and tilted her pelvis against him, her wetness slicking his belly, as she set an urgent rhythm in their joining. They strained against each other, driving each other to aching fury. He slid a hand down and thumbed her most sensitive spot, luxuriating in her responsive warmth.

    
“Oh,” escaped her lips and she stopped moving to let his fingers whip her into a shuddering frenzy.

    
His balls clenched when she started panting. She sang an incoherent song of lust in short gasps and soft cries and deep moans. She cupped his face with both hands and stared into his eyes, daring him to look away. Then her body stiffened and her insides rioted in deep spasms around his cock.

    
A gentleman would withdraw, but Sebastian was past feeling human, let alone like a man who followed any code of “oughtness.” He arched his hips and his release pounded into her.

    
All that was right in his world was wrapped up in this woman, this joining, this bond that made them one flesh.

    
He could no more sever their connection than he could order his heart to stop beating.

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The man beneath her bared his teeth in a feral grimace. As she’d hoped, Sebastian Blake had finally lost control of himself. He was wild and fierce and magnificent all at once. Bella reveled in his bone-jarring release almost as much as her own. She squeezed all her inner muscles and reached around herself to fondle his tight balls, willing his joy to last as long as possible.

    
When the last pulse died, she collapsed onto his chest, content to gasp for breath and listen to his heart thunder beneath her ear. There was still much she didn’t understand about Sebastian, how he’d come to be so self-contained when there was a raging fire inside him clamoring to burst out, but her body knew him now.

    
And his knew her.

    
It was a start.

    
“Well, Your Grace, that was...” She licked his nipple and blew a steady stream of air across it while she searched for the right superlative. “...monumental.”

    
“Your Grace? You dispensed with that formality during our first meal together and this is no time to resurrect it.” His belly jiggled in a deep chuckle. “Is ‘monumental’ a reference to my size?”

    
She gave his chest a playful swat and met his gaze. “No, though you are most impressive. I was thinking more in terms of why people erect monuments—to stake a claim of remembrance.” She kissed his neck. “If I live to be a hundred, Sebastian, I will not forget you.”

    
He stroked her hair from root to the long tips, his fingertips running along her spine and staying long enough to trace a small circle just above the cleft of her bum. His chest rose with a deep inhalation. “And I’ll remember you, Bella.”

    
“Good.” She rose up a bit and met his gaze. “And in case your next mistress asks, my eyes are brown.”
   

    
“My next mistress? Dare I hope that means you’ve consented to become my
current
mistress?”

    
She forced a laugh. Why had she started the conversation down that road? The thought of him having a ‘next mistress’ bothered her more than she wanted him to know.

    
“You may hope, but you’d be wrong,” she said, twirling the ends of her hair around one of his nipples. “I’m your lover, Sebastian, as I promised I’d be. But since you made it clear this isn’t about anything beyond this moment, I still won’t sign that contract.”

    
She leaned down to kiss him. What started as a playful brush of lips quickly became a passionate challenge. He rolled her over and pinned her beneath him.

    
“The contract benefits you as well, you know,” he said when their lips finally parted. “Why do you insist on thwarting me?”

    
“Because someone needs to.”

    
Evidently, he was the sort of man who responded to a challenge. He’d started to soften inside her, but now his maleness roared back to life. She rocked her hips beneath him, welcoming a second round of loving.

    
“You’re a powerful man, in every sense. You give a command and it happens.” The ache that had been so lately assuaged started deep inside her again. “But it’s not good for you, you know. No one should be in total control of every aspect of their life.”

    
“And you’ve decided to be the one person I can’t command.”

    
She smiled up at him and squeezed him with her inner muscles again. “As I said, someone needs to.”
 

    
He withdrew and stood over her, still rampantly male. Looking up at the hard lines, the corded muscle and smooth skin of him made her resolve waiver a bit.

    
“Have I offended you, Sebastian?”
 

    
“No. I simply want to take my
lover
,” he emphasized the word with a verbal caress, “to the bed in this hunting lodge.” He bent down and scooped her up into his arms as if she were feather-light. “Unless, of course, she objects to down pillows and satin sheets.”

    
“Not at all.” She draped her arms around his neck. “We find ourselves in complete accord.” Bella nipped his earlobe. “This time.”

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Sebastian and Arabella dallied in the hunting lodge for the remainder of the afternoon while rain fell in blinding sheets beyond the leaded window panes. They took turns tormenting each other with need, withholding and giving release. Sebastian rode her hard, pounding into her from behind while she balanced on her knees, clutching the iron headboard to remain steady. They both growled out their pleasure in unrestrained joy. Then after a brief respite, he joined his hard body to hers a third time with such heart-stopping gentleness, her insides melted with tenderness for him.