The Reluctant Duke (13 page)

‘Please just leave, Lucan,’ Lexie advised him wearily now. ‘Go back to your own bedroom and leave me alone in mine. That way we can both leave here tomorrow with there being no regrets on either side.’

Lucan’s jaw clenched impatiently. He could never remember feeling this frustrated in his life before—so incapable of putting a situation right.

It wasn’t helping that Lexie looked so delicately delectable, even edible, as she sat cross-legged on top of the bedclothes, bathed in the golden glow given out by the bedside lamp, the wild darkness of her hair loose about her pale, make-up-less face and the bareness of her slender shoulders. The soft, enticing swell of her breasts, with their deep rose tips, was clearly visible beneath the soft material of her white vest top.

His gaze rose to meet and hold hers as he took a step farther into the bedroom. Followed by another when she didn’t object. Then another. Until Lucan stood beside the bed looking down at her.

‘Do you really want me to leave, Lexie?’ he prompted huskily.

Did she? Did she want Lucan to turn around and leave her alone here? Alone and aching?

No, of course Lexie didn’t want Lucan to leave. She just knew that he should. For both their sakes.

The house had seemed strangely empty after Lucan had left earlier this evening. Giving Lexie time to think—time to realise how attracted she was to him. How she wanted more from Lucan than he was willing to give. Than he was capable of giving. Not just to her, she had realised, but to any woman.

Whatever the reason—possibly a love affair that had gone wrong in his youth, or maybe simply his parents’ broken marriage—she was sure that at some time in the past Lucan had made a conscious decision to shut himself off from emotion.

Except Lexie had seen him laugh several times during the last two days. Usually
at
something she had said or done rather than with her, admittedly, but nevertheless those moments of humour had enabled Lexie to see another side of Lucan. A boyish, softer side it was all too easy to find attractive, even irresistible.

And Lexie didn’t want to be attracted to Lucan. Didn’t want to find him irresistible. What she wanted was to continue thinking of him as the cold and ruthless man she had believed him to be before she’d met him.

And she could no longer do that.

Every time she tried to slot Lucan back into that unlikeable role another memory would come along to destroy it. Lucan teasing her. Lucan laughing huskily. Lucan with pain in those dark eyes earlier today, rather than the contempt she would have expected, as he’d stood in the west gallery looking up at the portrait of his father.

Most of all Lexie couldn’t erase the memory of Lucan almost making love to her.

Lucan might be a lot of the things she had previously thought him to be—arrogant, bossy and remote being only three of them!—but she only had to think of the passion that had flared so unexpectedly between the two of them the previous evening, and again several times today, to know that he wasn’t
only
cold and ruthless.

To know also that her own heated, out-of-control response to Lucan was totally off the scale of any of her previous lukewarm relationships.

‘You’re taking a long time to answer, Lexie,’ he said huskily now.

Because Lexie knew that what she
should
do was repeat her request for Lucan to go. That he should leave her bedroom now, before she made the biggest mistake of her life.

She couldn’t do it!

Just as she could no longer bear even the thought of going back to London tomorrow and never seeing Lucan again.

Her throat moved convulsively as she swallowed. ‘Did you have a pleasant evening with John and Cathy?’

Lucan frowned at this abrupt change of subject. ‘Very pleasant.’ He nodded. ‘They were sorry you were unable to be there because you had gone to bed with a headache,’ he added dryly.

Lexie gave a rueful smile. ‘Was that the excuse you gave them for my absence?’

Lucan grimaced. ‘Well, I could hardly tell them the truth, could I? That you had gone to bed because I had been so damned obnoxious you couldn’t bear the thought of spending the evening in my company.’

‘That isn’t true!’ Lexie protested breathlessly.

‘Isn’t it?’ Lucan moved to sit on the side of the bed, before reaching out to curve his hand against the softness
of Lexie’s cheek as he gazed deeply into her wide blue eyes. ‘Something about you makes me do things, say things—cruel things—that I wouldn’t normally do or say.’ He gave a self-disgusted shake of his head.

‘The fact that I’m infuriating, impossible and stubborn, perhaps?’ she suggested huskily.

Lucan wished those were the
only
things he thought of this woman! Unfortunately, Lexie’s actions also showed her to be loyal—he knew it was loyalty to Premier Personnel that had made her agree to come to Mulberry Hall with him in the first place, courageous in the face of Lucan’s displeasure, which had been known to make grown men quake in their shoes. Lexie was also intelligent, witty, feisty and so beautiful that just looking at her now intensified his arousal to almost painful levels.

‘No.’ He gave a rueful shake of his head and raised both his hands to place them gently against her temples and smooth back the silky dark hair from her face. ‘It’s because I want to make love to you so much I can’t think straight,’ he admitted huskily.

She moistened her lips with the tip of her delicate pink tongue. ‘You do…?’

Lucan nodded, unable to break his gaze away from those parted lips. ‘Lexie, I want—need—to make love to you so badly at this moment that I can’t think of anything else!’

Lexie’s heart leapt, thundering in her chest at the admission, and her skin was suddenly warm and ultra-sensitive as she felt the touch, the heat, of Lucan’s hands as they threaded lightly in her hair. As she saw the raw hunger burning in his eyes, in the tense, raw angles of his face.

A hunger that was echoed deep inside Lexie.

Even more deeply than the knowledge that making love with Lucan, to Lucan, having him make love with and to her, was exactly what she shouldn’t allow to happen.

‘S
AY SOMETHING
, Lexie…!’ he groaned achingly.

‘Shh,’ she soothed huskily, as one of her hands moved up to cup the side of his face.

A hot, quivering awareness coursed the length of her arm and down her spine as she stared up into the heat of Lucan’s eyes.

Her breasts were tingling in anticipation as she imagined Lucan’s hands, his mouth, on her there, the nipples hardening to a burning, sensual ache, and there was a low throbbing between her thighs as she felt herself swell there as those delicate tissues became damp, wet in invitation.

She wanted Lucan to make love to her. Wanted to make love to him. Just once wanted to touch, to caress, to taste every single beautiful inch of him…!

Her gaze continued to hold his as she moved up onto her knees and slowly raised her hands to touch his chest, so close now she was able to feel his hard warmth and the rapid beat of his heart through the thin wool of his sweater.

It wasn’t close enough. Lexie wanted to touch the bareness of Lucan’s skin. To feel the quivering response of his flesh against her fingertips and palms, her lips and tongue.

Her gaze continued to hold his as her hands moved down
to the bottom of his sweater to slowly, oh-so-slowly, pull the woollen garment up and above the flatness of his defined stomach to his muscled chest.

‘Lexie? ‘ Lucan questioned again gruffly.

‘Please don’t talk, Lucan.’ She placed gentle fingertips against his firm lips. ‘It always ends up in an argument and one of us always says the wrong thing.’ She turned her attention to the light dusting of dark chest hair ending in a V at the base of his stomach before disappearing beneath the waistband of his denims.

His skin was so hard and muscled beneath the touch of her fingers—testament to the fact that Lucan didn’t spend all of his time in a boardroom! Lexie was drawn, tempted to touch the tight buds hidden amongst that dusting of silky dark hair.

She glanced up at Lucan when he drew in a raggedly sharp breath as her fingertips grazed across them. ‘You like that…?’

‘Oh, yes…!’ he encouraged achingly, cheeks flushed, a nerve pulsing in the rigidness of his jaw, hunger burning in the depths of those dark, dark eyes as he continued to look at her from beneath lowered lids.

Her head slowly lowered so she could taste Lucan there, and his hand moved up instinctively to cup her head, his back arching, lids closing, as her lips skimmed across his chest. The air was cool, arousing, as it brushed against the residue of moisture left on the surface of his skin from those caressing lips and tongue.

Lucan released her only long enough to pull his sweater up and over his head, before tossing it down onto the carpeted floor, his body on fire as Lexie’s arms now moved about his waist, her hands a fiery caress against his shoulders and down the length of his back as she continued to kiss and caress his chest with her lips and tongue.

Lucan wanted—needed—to touch her, too.

Lexie gasped hoarsely as one of Lucan’s hands cupped beneath her breast, over her vest top, and the soft pad of his thumb lightly caressed that aching tip, sending rivulets of pleasure down her body to pool, burn, between her aching and needy thighs.

Lucan was breathing raggedly as he pulled back slightly. ‘Lexie, let me look at you,’ he said hotly.

Lexie’s hands shook slightly as she sat back on her heels to pull the vest top over her head and discard it, her cheeks becoming hot as Lucan looked down at her semi-nakedness with dark and hungry eyes.

Her breasts seemed to swell under the intensity of that gaze, the already puckered nipples hardening to ripe berries against her otherwise pale skin. Asking, begging to be in the heat of Lucan’s mouth!

‘You’re so beautiful, Lexie.’ Lucan’s breath was a warm caress against those aroused nipples, and his hands cupped beneath both her breasts to hold them up in sacrifice to his tongue as he paid homage to first one sensitive peak and then the other.

Lexie could only cling mindlessly to his muscled shoulders as sensation surged through her and down her, to clench in hot, sweet pleasure between her thighs. As Lucan sucked one of her nipples strongly, deeply into the heat of his mouth, that pleasure became a burning ache as she felt the need to have Lucan inside her.

‘Lucan…!’ Lexie groaned that need as her fingers became entangled in the dark thickness of his hair, holding him to her as her back arched, lifting her breasts and tilting her nipple deeper into the heat of his hungry mouth.

Lucan drew on her hungrily and allowed his hands to move to her waist. Lexie’s skin was like silken velvet beneath his touch as he pushed the waistband of those loose-fitting
pyjama bottoms lower down her thighs, exposing her pelvic bone and then a silky triangle of curls before he sought the tiny centre of pleasure between her legs.

Lucan stroked it, again and again, and Lexie’s breath caught in her throat in small needy groans as each stroke brought her closer to release, but never quite close enough.

Her body tensed as she trembled in anticipation. ‘Lucan, please!’ Lexie’s hands tightened in his hair as she shifted slightly, legs parting wider, her hips arching into him in a more urgent plea.

His mouth left her breast, trailing heated kisses upwards along that silken slope, and he was able to feel her trembling response as his tongue rasped against the sensitive cord in her throat and then up to her mouth. His other hand tangled in the heavy thickness of her hair, holding her as his mouth claimed hers, his tongue surging hotly into her mouth, capturing Lexie’s keening cry of pleasure as she found her release.

She had barely recovered when his fingers surged inside her. Her muscles clenched, holding him there as they thrust into her slowly, rhythmically, giving and at the same time taking all she had to give. His mouth left hers and returned to claim the ripe berry of her nipple in that same dancing rhythm, once again sending her over that plateau of sensual pleasure.

‘Oh, God—oh, God—oh, God…!’ Lexie’s head dropped forward onto Lucan’s chest minutes later, her fingers clinging, digging into his muscled shoulders, as the pleasurable ripples of release continued to shake her body.

Lucan’s lips were a sensual caress along the line of her jaw as he gently eased his fingers from inside her, teeth gently biting the softness of her lobe before his tongue
stroked the shell-like shape of her ear and his fingers once more circled that throb between her thighs.

Lexie trembled, her back tensing, as she felt a quiver of response deep inside her. ‘I can’t,’ she groaned weakly. ‘Lucan, I really can’t…’

‘You can,’ he encouraged softly, and moved back slightly so that he could help her to lie down on top of the bedclothes, remaining up on his knees as he lightly gripped the waistband of her pyjama bottoms and began to slide them down her thighs, over her knees, before pulling them fully from her body and dropping them beside the bed.

Naked now, bathed in the golden glow of the bedside lamp, Lexie felt as well as saw the way Lucan’s dark and devouring gaze moved slowly, hungrily, over every inch of her naked body—her breasts, the flatness of her stomach, curvaceous hips and thighs.

He looked every inch a pagan god as he knelt above her, his hair falling wildly across his brow, eyes dark and stormy, his face all harsh and yet sensual angles, his chest and shoulders hard and with rippling muscle.

‘Take off your denims, Lucan,’ she encouraged huskily.

His eyes glowed warmly in challenge. ‘You take them off for me,’ he invited gruffly.

Lexie swallowed hard as she slowly moved up onto her haunches, unable to look away from that dark and compelling gaze. She reached out for the button fastening at his waist, feeling the quivering response of his stomach muscles as she inadvertently touched bare flesh before managing to slowly slide down the zipper, realising as she did so that there was no way she was going to get the body-hugging denims down over his hips and muscled thighs without help from Lucan.