Authors: Elizabeth Essex
“You will have to let me be the judge of that, Your Grace.”
“I will let you be the judge of everything, Claire. If only you will stop calling me Your Grace.”
He was so, so dear. “All right then, Tanner.”
“And I must ask you to stop talking in this familiar manner, for if you do not, I fear I shall very much have to kiss you again.”
She hoped her smile was blindingly brilliant—she needed to encourage this lovely teasing flirtation. “I was rather hoping you would.”
“You, Lady Claire Jellicoe,” he said as he tugged her hand to bring her nearer, “are a very clever minx.”
“Your poor Grace. Are you only just discovering that?”
“Yes. But as you have noted, my dear Lady Claire, I very much like discovery.”
Their lips met alone in the middle of space, in the middle of the room, in the middle of the night. She leaned toward him just as he leaned toward her, balancing themselves carefully, holding themselves in quivering check, lest they disrupt their tenuous conclusions with their rising passions. And passions there were.
The moment his lips met hers, she fell into the kiss just as if she were falling into a dream—plunging in headfirst, tumbling weightless in the dark, silken pleasure. He moved to angle his head, turning to fit himself to her, so she could take the taut, pillowed curve of his lower lip between hers and taste the brandied tang of his mouth.
She closed her eyes and opened to him on a sigh. But she was not passive; she did not wait for him to pleasure her. She took what she wanted as well, kissing and licking and nipping and sucking with fervor and skill and abandon, until he was on his knees before her.
“Claire.”
“Yes.” She was looping her arm around his neck, tethering herself to him so he would hold her the way she wanted to be held.
“I need to say, before there are any more fathers, and lawyers, and men of business, and representatives to estates, that I would be honored—deeply, wholly honored—if you would consent to be my wife. I wanted you to know—you alone—that I should like nothing more.”
Claire did not answer. She did not say “yes” or “of course.” She was equal to the honor of the moment and only took his hands between hers.
“I want to do it properly,” he said in another uncharacteristic rush. “Before anyone starts any nonsense about scandal, and having to because it’s the right thing. It is the right thing, but I’m the Duke of Fenmore, Claire. No one could make me do anything that I don’t want to do. So I wanted you to know that I
do
want to marry you. I do want it, with all my heart.”
He was so solemn that she wanted to do him the honor of answering him properly. “Your Grace—”
“God’s balls, Claire. I’m proposing. Don’t you think you could call me by my Christian name?”
“Well, I hardly think
Tanner
qualifies as Christian. And I’d like to meet your sister. Perhaps we should invite her for the wedding?”
“Yes.” His relief spilled out of him on a rush of air. “There will be a wedding, will there not?”
She was so happy she could only nod, and he rose and kissed her again to seal their bargain. “Good, because I very much fear I love you.”
His words were a torrid whisper, falling like warm rain upon her face, emboldening her, encouraging her. But she inched toward him slowly. So slowly, like time pulled into taffy, stretching and stretching, until
she
was stretched as far as she could, up on her tiptoes to try to reach his lush, curved lips. Because she wanted this moment to last.
But the promise in his gaze was so sweet it was worth the wait, and when at last the first butterfly brush of her lips fluttered against his she closed her eyes on a sigh of sweet relief.
His lips were taut and yielding and moving only very slightly beneath hers. Waiting for her. Waiting for her to do as she wished. So she took her time. She kissed him slowly, pressing her lips onto his gently, and then not so gently. Exploring the plush firmness of his mouth. And when his lips fell open on a raggedy breath, she took the taut plushness between her own and tasted him just a little.
He tasted of brandy and coffee and cinnamon and rain. And hunger. Hunger for her. Hunger for her love.
This was Tanner kissing her, in all his raw earthiness, not the cool, cerebral Duke of Fenmore. This was Tanner trying so hard not to do too much, or press too hard. But his need—his need drew her near, even as his hands were clenched in fists by his sides.
But it wasn’t that he didn’t want to touch her. It was that he didn’t want to frighten her. But without laying a hand on her, he took possession of her mouth with such thoroughness it took the breath from her. It was a kiss and more. It was a claiming. It was hot and wet and hungry and everything, everything that he was, and everything that he had so obviously held back when they had kissed before.
And she knew she was done for. He was it for her. If she lived to be a hundred and ninety, there would never be another person in the world who could come close to filling the Tanner-shaped mark upon her heart.
And because he would not touch her, she touched him. She let her hands slide up the smooth contours of his sleekly muscled arms, feeling the strength and pliancy of his flesh and bone. She caressed the warm skin of his neck. She looped her hands around his neck and at last—at last—as if he had been waiting for some sign, some signal from her, his arms cinched around the small of her back and pulled her flush against the warm wall of his chest.
“Yes,” he said unnecessarily. “You are in charge.”
She did not feel as if she were in charge. She felt at the mercy of the intoxicating pleasure that filled her up from the inside. But he was right. She was not an animal. She had a choice.
“I’ll stop,” he said at the corner of her mouth. And he pulled back from her, he stopped kissing her, just to prove it.
“No,” she said immediately. “No, please.” Kissing him, being in his arms, felt good and right and natural. And she wanted more than kissing. She wanted to be his and make him hers irrevocably. She wanted to exorcise the ghost of Rosing. “I want him gone. I want to replace every thought of him with something better. With a man so far his superior—”
He stopped her with the press of his lips to hers, and she tightened her hands around his neck, leaving him in no doubt that this was what she wanted. This was what she needed.
The warm scent of starch, from his evening clothes, rose and mingled with the warmth of their bodies finally touching. The chill was banished by the bonfire of his attention.
She pulled herself closer, turning her head, angling to get closer to him in every way possible. And then he picked her up and he was walking with her, moving backward until he came up hard against the edge of the bed a few feet away.
The force of their movement and the weight of their bodies carried them down until he was flat on his back. He settled into the soft cotton mattress with a sigh of glad relief, and the tempo of their kissing changed, to one of ease and slow delight. His hands traveled in an unhurried meander, up her back to her nape, taking their time, learning the feel and way of her. Savoring her like ripe summer fruit.
And she was savoring him as well, learning the brandy-bright taste of him. Exploring the shape and size of him. She was laid all along the length of him, from his chest all the way down the long length of his thighs, and even with her mouth next to his, her feet just barely passed his knees. He hitched himself sideways, and carried her with him, so that his boots were twining around her skirts. But all thoughts of feet and boots, and if she ought not let her sturdy half boots on the counterpane, were lost when his hand came up to cradle her jaw and turn her head to an angle more to his liking so he could kiss her again. And again.
The kiss went on and on and on—tongue and teeth and lips and love, and everything, everything she had ever thought she could want from him, was there, at her mouth.
His fingers were spearing through her hair, scattering pins onto the counterpane—scattering her thoughts and inhibitions until there was nothing but feeling, and need and hunger.
He kissed her mouth and her lips and her chin and her cheeks, and she felt beautiful and cherished. She kissed his perfectly shaped lips and along the long line of his jaw, and down the length of his aristocratic nose, and felt powerful and curious. He smelled of soap and bay rum and cedar and spice. She drew her hands along the high planes of his cheekbones delighting in the smooth feel of skin over the slight rasp of his close-shaved whiskers.
Her hand was at the neck of his shirt, laying waste to his impeccable cravat, pulling his button so she could trace the long line of his collarbone with the tips of her fingers.
And then, she had the strangest, strongest urge to kiss him there, at the hollow of his throat. And so she did.
His skin felt cool after the heat of his mouth, but she could feel his pulse beating strong and sure under the warm cover of his skin, and he made a sound of such pure animal pleasure and encouragement. And she found herself wanting to do it again, to make him sigh with her kiss, and explore the architecture of her body with his lips and tongue and teeth.
He turned his head to the side, as if to grant her an invitation to explore the long, long slide of his neck under the edge of the shirt. To nip and worry at the spot where the sinuous tendon met the broad plane of his shoulder. To lave the sensitive spot on the top of his shoulder.
The sound she engendered from him was a surprised rumble of a laugh that vibrated and tumbled through her, emboldening her, urging her on, until she had kissed her way up the side of his neck, and had taken the soft, vulnerable skin of his earlobe between her teeth.
She bit down gently at first.
“Claire,” he said, and his voice was strained and happy and wondrous.
And then she bit him not so gently.
The sound that burrowed out of his chest was a low growl of satisfaction that accompanied first his coat, and then his waistcoat to the floor. And the next thing she knew, he had rolled her in his arms until she was below him and the force and weight and strength of him bore into her.
“No.” The word flew out of her mouth before she could stop it or wish it back. Embarrassment and confusion singed her skin, but Tanner was true to his word—he stopped.
He didn’t ask what was wrong. He didn’t need to. He was the kind of person who saw and listened and watched with different eyes. He was the kind of person who understood.
Before she could say another word, he had reversed their positions once more, but this time he sat up, with his back leaning against the pillows at the head of the bed. And with his hands at her waist, he guided her up until she sat upon his lap, with her legs to either side of his.
But he kissed her so sweetly, and held her so lightly that she was too beguiled by his attention to think about the awkward exposure of her position. And with her seated thus, her hands were free to roam and play over his body, and delve beneath the open neck of his shirt. To trace the rather miraculous musculature of his shoulders and upper chest.
He was a lean man, long in the bone, and knit together in graceful, sinuous lines, flowing from one supple muscle to the next, and she wanted to see him as well as feel the sleek skin beneath her hands. She slid her hands under his shirt to drag her fingers up over the strong lines of his ribs, and as if he had been waiting for her signal, Tanner reached down, and in one fluid motion shucked the linen over his head.
There he was, bare from the waist, his skin as golden and glowing as a navvy who worked in the summer sun digging ditches all day. This strange duke of hers was beautiful in his wild, barely tamed way.
And he was wild in other ways, too. He urged her to lean into him. To let the weight of her torso settle upon him, and let the soft muslin fabric of her gown brush against the bare expanse of his skin.
“Yes,” he praised her when she did. “Ah, yes.”
And the delicious frisson of her body against his filled her with a sort of giddy, mad delight that urged her closer still. That urged her to let her body rub against him as she kissed him.
His hands fanned open against her back, encouraging her forward, holding her weight so she could play with the unruly, tousled curls that fell across his forehead. So she could kiss his temples, where his pulse beat against his skin, and all along the wicked slide of his cheekbones.
His mouth was wandering down the side of her neck, sending little pinpricks of pleasure shooting like wayward stars under her skin. So she threw her head back, anxious to encourage him, wanting the bursts of bliss to continue to rain down within her.
And it did. Her skin was on fire with a hundred points of fire and light. Everywhere he touched, everywhere he kissed across the top of her bodice, her skin flared into impossible awareness. Each spot was more sensitive than the next. More full of exquisite feeling than she had ever imagined.
She was, after all, nearly twenty years of age, and she had kissed and been kissed by more than two fellows in her day. She had thought herself quite sophisticated—sophisticated enough to go walking with the likes of Lord Peter Rosing in the dark.
She was in the dark now, but this was nothing like that. This was nothing like anything she had ever experienced before. This was her Tanner whose care and attention and love could not be denied. Would not be denied.
Not by her.
Not now. Not ever.
His mouth roamed lower across the slight swell of her breasts, and she all but held her breath. Beneath her layers and layers of clothing, behind gown, and stays and chemise, her nipples contracted in anticipation, tightening into exquisite peaks of sensation against the thin lawn fabric.
Her body was bending toward him of its own volition, toward the glorious pressure of his clever mouth. Her hands speared their way into his hair, and she was holding him there, silently urging him to please, please end the lazy torture and—
His lips—his clever, clever, supple lips—found her nipple through the fabric of her gown and closed down around it, and she felt such blissful heat blossom out of her chest that she thought she might faint from the pleasure.