Awakening His Duchess (25 page)

Yvette reached back for him, putting her hand on his hip,
jarring him back to the intensity of his need. Her touch was both torture and
temptation. Tempting to forget he hated this woman, tempting to forget her role
in his being made into a slave, tempting to give in to the raging need that had
him inching closer to an explosion.

Damn, he didn’t want her under his skin, but if he allowed
her to touch him he wouldn’t be able to stop the growing need to have her care
about him and she would only trick him again. Her affection in the past had
been an illusion shattered when she thought he wasn’t wealthy. He couldn’t,
wouldn’t risk deluding himself again, but he sure as hell wanted physical
satisfaction—that was all he needed from her.

He grabbed her hand and pulled it out in front of her.
“Don’t.”

His breath came hot and heavy.

“Beau?” she questioned tentatively.

Her uncertainty plucked at the strings of his heart. Damn,
he couldn’t allow that opening. He tucked his chin against her hair. He had to
give her an explanation beyond that he didn’t want her touching him. Like she
would understand the distinction between contact needed for rutting and contact
meant as tenderness. He barked a half-laugh. He wasn’t certain
he
understood, but there had been a division in his mind when he started.

“It’s been too long. I won’t last if you touch me.” He
didn’t want her fingers measuring each scar and questioning him about them.
Most he couldn’t have told her when they were gained. If she hadn’t loved him
before, there was no chance of it now, disfigured and brutish as he was. She
might love his future status and the trappings of the dukedom, but...not him.

“It’s all ri—”

“Don’t talk.”

She made a sound of protest, but cut it off.

Christ, that was the wrong thing to say. He brushed her
cheek gently. “Don’t tell me it will be all right.” He heaved in a deep breath.
“Just let me touch you.”

“Sil vous pla—”

He put his fingers over her lips, stopping the half-hearted encouragement.
After a second her lips pressed against his fingers. He wouldn’t kiss her, but
that didn’t mean he should ignore the response kissing could evoke in her.

He traced his fingertips over her full lower lip and was
rewarded with her soft breath wafting over his skin when she parted her lips.

He concentrated on her luscious mouth until he felt her
breathing quicken, then he ran his fingers down her throat and untied the
strings at her neck. Slowly, as if his need wasn’t driving him, he ran his fingertips
over the scant expanse of exposed skin.

She pressed back against him, no doubt trying to change
their position into some face-to-face affair, which he didn’t want. On their
so-called wedding night, he’d spent hours staring into the dark depths of her
eyes, but he couldn’t do it now. He didn’t know what he’d see and didn’t know
what he was willing to risk her seeing.

He countered her pressure, pushing her shoulder until she
was nearly face down as he fought to shrug out of the heavy dressing gown. Once
he had his arms out of it, he reached for the hem of her nightgown.

She gasped.

Too fast, he warned himself. “I just want to touch your
skin,” he whispered behind her ear. It was a half lie. He wanted far more than
to touch her naked skin, but he’d start with that. He raised the hem of her
nightgown up to her waist and rubbed down her hip and leg, shoving material out
of his way until he’d bared her bottom half. Keeping his hand to her thigh he
massaged her flesh.

She caught his arm and once again he broke her hold and
moved her hands to the bedpost. His voice gruff, he commanded, “Hold this.”

He lowered his right arm from where it rested above his
head, slid it under her neck and skimmed his hand down over her breast. She
arched just enough he was encouraged.

But he couldn’t seem to stop himself from grabbing and
kneading the flesh under his hand. He only hoped the weakness of his right hand
kept his grip from being painful to her. And he couldn’t wait. The rounded bare
globes of her rear nestled against his cock and he wanted, needed to be inside
her before he lost the last vestige of control.

He shook with urgency. He pulled her thigh up, opening her
to his exploration. Reaching between her legs he slid his fingers into her
feminine folds. Miracle of all miracles she was slick and ready. His finger
easily slipped inside her. Her inner muscles clenched around him.

He held her open as he positioned his cock and then thrust
into her. She moaned as he drove as deep as he could go. Wave after wave of
pleasure threatened to undo him. Resisting the urge to rock until he was done,
he stilled. It wouldn’t take much to send him over the edge. Instead he rubbed
his fingers along the now taut flesh encircling him. Finding the place where
she mewed and her insides tightened, he rubbed in a slow circle.

He didn’t have time to get this wrong. His release was held
back by the thinnest of barriers. He couldn’t fumble around believing he was
doing the right thing to make her come and risk being in the wrong spot.
“There?”

“Oui,”
she said on a strangled note.

“English, damn it!” he growled in her ear before he licked
the sensitive spot behind it. It wasn’t kissing.

“Yes, more.” Her hips rocked and the slight friction sent
jolt after jolt of pleasure down his spine and into his cock where they were
joined. He plucked at the tightened tip of her breast as she strained, her heel
digging into the mattress, the sheets wadded in her hands.

His breathing harshened like a bellows furnace pumping air
into a fire capable of melting lead. Hers too, only without the rasp of his.
His every movement hinged on hearing a response from her, the cadence of her
breathing, a wince to indicate he was being too rough, the twist of her hips.
Each time she responded in a way that was good his lust climbed higher until it
was an aching conflagration of need and want.

He’d forgotten how good this could feel, how right, or was
it just her?

No. It couldn’t be that it was Yvette making him burn. It
was just the act with a woman...with her. Her tropical and womanly scent
tickling his nose, her panting and moaning, her twisting hips all built his
fire as if she were gunpowder tossed into the flames of his desire. How could
it be
her
who made him mad with desire?

“Please, Beau. I...want...to...touch...you.”

“Later,” he muttered. “Just come for me, sugar.” Now, before
he totally lost it.

“Beau,” his name became a moan on her lips.

At least he knew she wasn’t confusing him with her second
husband. But the thought flitted away as he silently urged her to hurry. The strain
of holding back was killing him and he knew he couldn’t last much longer. He
pressed his mouth to her shoulder, sinking his teeth into her flesh then
soothing the nip with licks. Still not kissing.

Hot passion swirled under his skin and throughout his body
and he could no longer stop the fire in his loins. He rocked into her as her
female flesh tightened around him. She moaned into her release. Thank goodness.

Her rhythmic pulsing around his cock triggered his own
release and he groaned. For a moment there was nothing but the flash of pure
pleasure roaring through his veins. His body quivered as his seed pumped into
her as if he were pouring his soul into her. The intensity sucked his breath
from his body and left him light-headed. He’d never experienced a release this
powerful before.

Even now in the aftermath as his breath heaved in and out
and the pleasure relaxed his body he wanted to turn her toward him and taste
her sweet lips, caress her gently, and whisper words of love.

He didn’t love her. He didn’t even like her. Surely it was
only the sexual deprivation coming to an end and the long interval since the
last time he’d been with a woman. It had nothing to do with Yvette. He
struggled for the distance other men seemed to achieve with ease. Damn it to
hell, he wasn’t going to love her.

Yvette stared at the far wall, trying to understand why she
only felt this magical with Beau. Her body still pulsed with a lingering
pleasure and his groan still echoed in her ears as she wished she hadn’t been
so caught up in her own little death to miss the beginning of his.

As much as she thought the experience ten years ago was
wonderful and perfect, this time he had driven her to a powerful place she had never
found with Henri. With her French husband she’d only ever experienced a mild
relief, but Beau’s insistent touch built her pleasure until she had soared
higher and faster than she thought possible.

His touch made tendrils of remembered satisfaction curl
through her.

Yet he hadn’t even allowed her to touch him. Or talk. “I
missed you so much,” she whispered tentatively into the darkness broken only by
their breathing.

He withdrew. He yanked down her nightgown and rolled to his
back.

His loud rasps echoed in the room.

The callous ending cut through the haze of her lingering
pleasure. What was the matter with him?

He hadn’t treated her with gentle consideration the way he
had on their wedding night. He’d been completely different, rough and pushy.
Still there were moments—when he’d touched her cheek, when he’d made certain
she was ready to receive him—his gentle consideration came through and blended
the two disparate images she had of Beau into one man.

His urgency had only made her want him more. Clearly her
pleasure had been important to him, but the complete lack of tenderness was not
like him—or at least not how she remembered him. She struggled to separate the
two lovers—the young gentle loving Beau and the rough older Beau—from each
other. Were they not one and the same?

She scooted away and rolled onto her side to face him then
lifted up, bracing on one hand to lean over him.

He placed his forearm over his eyes as if to block her.

“Beau?” She lifted her hand to place it on his chest. She
lowered her hand, unable to resist touching him.

He jerked and then fisted his hand around hers.

“Can’t you sleep now?” he muttered as if he was dealing with
an unruly child.

Her blood turned cold.

Realizations whizzed through her leaving gaping holes in
their wake. “Even now you do not want me to touch you,” she said in a low
voice. “You do not look at me.”

He sighed and lifted his arm away from his eyes. He held her
gaze a minute before his blue eyes shifted away toward the fire that had chosen
to flare into life. “I’m tired.”

But his explanation didn’t sit well with her. It was more
than his being tired that had him disliking her touch, not kissing her at all,
not undressing her.

“What was this?”

“Sexual intercourse,” he answered succinctly, his voice
tightening.

“Non.”
She shook her head.

It couldn’t be just the act, just a coupling like a man
would have with a whore or a woman he cared nothing about. The exchange had
meant so much more to her. She couldn’t have enjoyed it so thoroughly if she
thought it merely a physical thing. Her stomach tightened and she jerked her
hand away from his chest.

She wanted to believe that he hadn’t just copulated with her
to please his father or get more heirs. She wanted to believe that he loved
her. “
Pourquoi?
Why?”

He scowled at her. “You said all right.”

She shook her head and then twisted away. She’d thought it
was all right because she thought they’d come to an understanding and were
going to salvage their marriage, not that he found her a convenience or simply
wanted more heirs.

“
Non
, not this...this empty thing.” Her hands shook.
She drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around them. His coldness would ruin
the memories of his love. “You will not use me so.”

“Don’t pretend you didn’t enjoy it.”

“Because I thought you cared about me,” she hissed, but as
she replayed the coupling in her mind, even his term of endearment was suspect.
After the grueling work he would have done at the plantation, would he think
sugar a precious thing or a commodity to be despised? She shook as a blackness
ate at her insides. “I thought you still loved me.”

“You thought wrong.”

The silence burned in her ears. He had just used her body as
if to scratch an itch.

“What did you expect, Yvette?”

“I thought when you understood I did not do this poison thing
to you...” Or did he still believe that she had asked the bokor to poison him?
“I thought you cared about me.”

He blew out impatiently.

She turned around to glare at him. “Is there nothing left of
the Beau who loved me?”

“Not much,” he agreed too easily.

“Is there no hope for us then?” she asked.

His mouth tightened. “I’ve spent the last nine years hating
you. I doubt that is going to change.”

Her ears buzzed. Her chest felt as if it had been cleaved in
two. A machete slicing her open couldn’t have hurt worse. Once again she’d
allowed him past her defenses. Would she never learn? She had to stop hoping.
Hoping only left her vulnerable and bleeding. “Get out of my bed,” she said in
a low voice. “Get out and don’t ever come back.”

Chapter Fourteen

Beau wasn’t ready to leave the bed. For one thing he hadn’t
caught his breath yet and for another his dressing gown was on the floor where
he’d flung it in his haste to be rid of it. Not that it mattered if Yvette saw
the profusion of scars on his back, he just didn’t want to deal with any more
of the past tonight.

She glared at him. Then she shoved his shoulder. “Get out!”

“Stop it, Yvette.” Beyond exposing the reams of scars, he
didn’t want to leave her bed. For a moment when she’d come apart in his arms,
he’d felt capable and triumphant as if he were a whole man once again. The
feeling was flitting away too fast. If he lingered he could perhaps recapture
it.