Douglas: Lord of Heartache (29 page)

Guinevere gave Douglas no time to think of a reply to her demand, much less to push common sense or scruples from his brain to his lips, before she was kissing him desperately.

“I need you so,” she whispered, tears in her voice even as her hands went plundering under his shirt. She was frantic to touch him everywhere, and Douglas’s ability to think dissolved in moments.

She kissed him, nuzzled him, breathed him in, and in every way possible seemed bent on consuming him with her senses.

“Clothes off,” she begged. “Please.”

A diabolical moral conundrum clamored for Douglas’s attention. He shoved it aside on the realization that, as much as he might wince at the notion that he was making love with a woman legally entangled with Victor Windham, he would regret more denying Guinevere what she sought—what she needed.

And Windham had not, in fact, asserted the status of husband, despite many opportunities to do so.

Douglas obliged Guinevere’s request as readily as he could while the woman was assaulting him bodily. He peeled off his breeches without leaving the bed, and got his cuffs open while Gwen’s chemise went sailing to the floor. She had his shirt over his head in the next instant then resumed her ravenous kisses.

She was on fire, and even as the fire ignited an answering passion in Douglas’s blood, he couldn’t help but sense the desperation in her touch. This was more than passion, more than intense arousal.

Many emotions could drive a woman beyond all reason. Anger, certainly, and fear, and Guinevere was entitled to both, but in her relentless questing hands and her wild eyes, he recognized an old and very personal adversary.

What Guinevere’s body was expressing, in addition to passionate arousal, was intense grief.

That insight allowed him to harness the firestorm of desire burning through his veins, and to gentle his kisses. He caught her hands and held them still above her head.

“Easy,” he whispered. “We have time for this, Guinevere. We
do
.”

As he slowly nuzzled and kissed his way across her chest, over her face, and around her neck, her breathing slowed. She heaved a sigh, and Douglas felt her desperation wane.

“Better,” he said, looking down at her. She was pale, tired, and troubled—very, very troubled. He sensed she
could
not
talk to him now, except to communicate with her body.

“You will explain yourself to me later,” he informed her, rolling them so she was on top of him. Guinevere curled down against his chest to rest her ear near his heart.

The grief still had her in its grip, but she was mastering it. He moved his hands in slow circles on her back, feeling the supple muscles and elegant bones under her soft skin. When he slipped his hand down to knead her derriere, she began to truly relax against him.

Better still, and if this was all she wanted of him, a bit of cuddling and petting, then from some untapped well of self-restraint he’d manage—

Gwen’s tongue touched the pulse at his throat, and Douglas closed his hand around the feminine abundance of her backside.

“Please, Douglas.”

“My love, I can deny you nothing.”

He would regret this—regret the intimacy, the endearments, the ambiguity of their situation, all of it—but he would regret it
later
.

Guinevere arranged her hips so her sex cradled his erection, and she began to move.

The slow sweep of her damp, intimate flesh over his breeding organs put patience almost beyond Douglas’s reach, but at least he could distract her. He slid his hands from her back to her shoulders then trailed caressing fingers across her throat and sternum. When Guinevere’s eyes fell closed, he slipped his hands between their bodies to gently palm both breasts.

Her eyes flew open. “I seem to be inordinately sensitive.”

Wonderfully sensitive. In Sussex, her breasts had been sensitive, but not quite
this
sensitive—not that Douglas was complaining. He lightened his touch to a near whisper and kept his gaze on Guinevere’s face. Her expression said she felt what he was doing, felt it keenly, and thrust along his erection more firmly.

“Douglas?” Her breathing was accelerating, her voice not quite steady.

“Yes, love?”

“I want to be… I want to be on my back,” she got out, head falling back.

“Why?”

She blinked, as if Douglas had posed the question in a foreign tongue. “Why?”

“Yes, why.” Douglas brushed a fingertip across each nipple. “I am reasonably comfortable where I am, you see.”

“No.”

“Yes,” Douglas countered. He was, in truth, not comfortable at all. He was dying, burning, and screaming to be inside her. If he kept her above him, she could control the nature and pace of their joining as she had the only other time they’d had the luxury of a bed. In his present state of near-mindless need, Douglas frankly did not trust himself to show her sufficient consideration if the deed were left exclusively in his control.

“No,” Guinevere repeated, lurching to the side. She flopped down beside him on the mattress, then—with surprising strength—tried to wrestle him into position above her.

“This once,” she said as he gave up and settled above her, “just this once, I want your weight on me. I love the feel of you, all around me, inside me. Especially inside me.”

And what more might she have told him had they had time to talk and touch at leisure? On the strength of that small grief, Douglas gradually gave her more of his weight, the feel of her breasts against his chest sending tendrils of glory through his body. He sensed she wanted to be
covered
, blanketed with his body, protected by him and yet open to him all at once.

Douglas probed at her sex gently, almost languidly, even as he felt the tension in Guinevere’s body rocket back up. But she must have had some notion of their destination, for she permitted his deliberate pace without protest. When he had achieved a shallow penetration, she moved with him in slow, hungry lunges.

“Hold back,” he coaxed. “Enjoy it a moment at a time.”

She no doubt tried, but her body was too intently focused on its goal, and within moments, she was writhing beneath him, bucking greedily and clutching his wrists as gratification overcame her.

Douglas, from somewhere, found the strength to hold to his deliberate, relentless pace even as Guinevere battered herself against him in the throes of pleasure.

He gave her no time to recover, but added power to his slow, deep thrusts.

“I’ll make you come again,” he whispered, “harder, Guinevere. Hold me, wrap your legs around me and hold tight.”

She did as he bid, and it changed the angle of her hips, allowing Douglas to drive her more steadily toward the next peak.

“Douglas…”

“I know, love.” He thrust into her with a studied intensity that had her flying apart, leaving her keening and helpless in his arms. He sent her further into the maelstrom with deep, powerful thrusts, then fitted his mouth to hers and echoed the rhythm of his hips with his tongue. She drew on his tongue, whimpering her pleasure into his mouth and clinging to him with arms, hands, legs, and… even her sex.

When pleasure had wrung her into boneless torpor, Douglas remained inside her, matching his breathing to hers, nearly afraid to move for the tenuous grip he had on his self-restraint. Gradually, Guinevere’s limbs eased from around Douglas’s body, her fingers went slack in his hand, and her breathing evened out. He lifted his face from the crook of her shoulder to see her slipping into sleep beneath him.

Sleep—or complete oblivion, a mercy to which she was entitled.

Leaving her was difficult, heart wrenching, sexually frustrating, and possible only because she did not rouse. When Douglas stood fully clothed by the side of the bed, he unfolded a comforter from a rocking chair by the fire and tucked it around her. Guinevere slept on, drifting further toward dreams, and—Douglas hoped—real rest.

He left her room, boots in hand, and sat on the top step to put them on.

“Now what am I to make of a man who steals from my cousin’s room without his boots on?” Greymoor’s tone was pleasant, aggravatingly so, as he sat on the steps next to Douglas, his expression innocently curious.

“You don’t know I was in Guinevere’s room,” Douglas replied, “and I defy any man to remain comfortable with a pair of well-fitted boots on his feet all day, particularly when it is this cold out.”

“The temperature is dropping,” Greymoor agreed. “At least outside.”

“Do you have a point, Greymoor?”

“My wife seems to think I do, but its substance defies my recollection. Now, what had Gwennie so out of sorts earlier in the stable?”

“I am honestly not sure.” Douglas pulled on his second boot but did not rise. “She went to her room and fell asleep before we had a chance to discuss it.” He had not quite lied for his lady, though it was a near thing. “I suspect the good duke threatened her somehow.”

“She didn’t strike me as angry. Coercion would anger her.”

“She is terrified,” Douglas concluded, certain of it in his very bones. “I suspect the duke threatened her through Rose.”

“Moreland threatened to take Rose?”

“At the least. He had given Rose a pony by the time I got down to the stables, but alas, she was supposed to keep her pony at dear Grandpapa’s, of course.”

“Are we to threaten the duke right back?”

“We already did.”
And
who
was
this
“we,” and when had Douglas become part of it?
“I explained to Westhaven the ducal finances would be summarily unraveled were his father to misbehave. Fairly offered to see to that.”

“The good viscount comes in handy. Has good taste in sisters, too.”

Was
the
man
never
serious?
“He does at that. I put the message into Westhaven’s hands, though I’m not sure it will reach the duke with sufficient clarity.”

And this bothered Douglas. Like a loose tooth, his mind couldn’t leave this niggling, irksome thought alone. He felt the pull of it, the same way he’d rifled the morning’s correspondence, half-searching for a carping, whining letter from his mother, despite knowing her incapacity.

“What do you mean, the threat won’t be made clear to Moreland?”

“The duke and his surviving sons have an odd relationship. They love him. They also despair of him, and at times, despise him. I don’t know Moreland’s sons well, though if I had to guess, I’d say Victor’s life has been made a misery by the duke, and Westhaven’s and Lord Valentine’s not much better. Part of Westhaven would dearly love to see his papa brought to heel by financial difficulties.”

“The duke sounds like a right pain in the arse. Nonetheless, I don’t see what we can do about him until Gwennie tells us what he’s up to.”

“Guinevere is fast asleep. She’s sleeping a lot lately.”

“Probably tossing and turning all night,” Greymoor reasoned with apparent unconcern. “Missing Enfield, away from her routine, worried about Rose. She has a lot on her plate.”

He gave Douglas a pointed look, which Douglas returned with a bland stare.

“How is my darling niece, anyway, and her dear mother?” Douglas asked, rising and heading down to the first landing.

“Thought you would never ask. My Lucy is the most intelligent female ever born to man, or, I suppose, woman, technically speaking…”

While Greymoor trailed Douglas down the stairs and prattled on about his prodigy step-daughter, Douglas paid attention with only half a brain. Something was stuck in his mind, something more unsettling than Guinevere’s pallor and fatigue and her reticence about the duke’s mischief.

He sorted through his recollection of their most recent encounter, all the while nodding and agreeing at the appropriate moments in Greymoor’s panegyric about the Incomparable Infant Lucy, and then it hit Douglas.

“This once,” Guinevere had said. “Just this once” she had wanted the experience of Douglas loving her while she lay beneath him on her back.

This
once
? The sense of roiling panic that had taken up residence in Douglas’s middle condensed into something closer to full-out riot. Why this
once
? Had the duke stooped to threatening Guinevere’s life?

“My lords.” A liveried footman stood at the bottom of the stair, holding a salver bearing a sealed letter. “For you, Lord Amery.”

Douglas tore open the missive, scanned the brief contents, and passed the epistle to Greymoor. Curses welled, along with hopeless frustration and grief.

More grief.

“Come.” Greymoor took Douglas by the arm and led him into the cozy family parlor. “Your countenance is more serious than usual, Amery. Has Victor stuck his spoon in the wall?”

Behind the insouciance of Greymoor’s question, there lurked… concern. It steadied Douglas, and comforted.

“I will be returning to Amery Hall.” Greymoor did not start in reading the letter; he instead watched Douglas with an alertness that belied all the man’s usual drollery. “I’m off to bury my mother, it seems.”

Now Greymoor scanned the letter. “She may yet rally.”

Douglas wanted her to, wanted her to regain all her faculties and survive to whine and complain at him for years to come. “She won’t. I have forgiven her whatever missteps she holds herself accountable for, and Mother would not want to linger as a helpless invalid. I must make haste for Amery Hall in any case.”

“Not tonight, you won’t.” Greymoor went to the sideboard and poured a stout two fingers into a glass. “It’s cold as hell out there, and you just traveled that distance on Friday. Get a good night’s sleep, set your house in order, and start out at first light. I’ll alert Fairly and Heathgate that we’ll all need to keep an eye on Gwennie, and you get back as soon as propriety allows.”

Greymoor’s suggestions made sense, and yet Douglas felt he ought to argue with the man, protest the need to repair to the family seat even in the dark of night. “I am abruptly both cold and tired.”

Also, apparently, bereft of dignified self-restraint.