What a Duke Dares

Chapter Eighteen

Carrying two brandies, Cam entered the duchess’s apartments. Candlelight flickered over the birds and pagodas on the unfashionable silk wallpaper. The last woman to sleep in these luxurious rooms had been his tempestuous, troublesome mother, who had died when he was seventeen.

The cavernous space could house an army. A crackling fire in the hearth warmed the air. The four-poster bed on its platform looked as wide as a parade ground. By contrast, the woman propped against the piled pillows appeared small and fragile.

Warily Pen watched him cross the acres of floor between door and bed. Nor could he miss how her long, slender fingers curled like talons in the brocade counterpane covering her to the waist.

She’d been as brittle as a dry twig all day. He could kick himself for making his bride so nervous. His clumsiness on the Windhover had much to answer for. He wasn’t unhappy about this marriage, but he was damned unhappy that Pen was. He prayed that he could awaken her passion and make her forget everything except the desire that had raged unsatisfied between them for weeks.

Her glorious night-dark hair cascaded over her slender shoulders. Her white batiste nightgown was sheer as mist. While it tied decorously where her pulse fluttered in her neck, that was the limit of its modesty. Her high, firm breasts pressed against the transparent material.

His hands twitched as if he already touched her luscious flesh. Beneath the crimson velvet robe embroidered with gold dragons, he was naked. And ready.

He felt more uncertain than usual with a paramour. But Pen wasn’t just a paramour. She was his wife. His duchess.

Tonight he meant to convince her that she wanted no lover but him. Any niggle that he didn’t bed a virgin faded as her black gaze burned a line down his body. Her lingering survey might convey caution rather than desire, but his body surged. If her eyes had such power, God help him when she laid those pale hands upon his skin.

“Is that brandy for me?” Nerves added seductive huskiness to her voice.

“Yes.” With a pang, Cam noticed how unsteady her hand was as she accepted the glass. Another reminder to take this gradually. He mustered a reassuring smile and gestured to the edge of the bed. “May I?”

Her lips twisted, not in a smile. “It’s your bed.”

“Our bed. I endowed thee with all my worldly goods today.” His gaze unwavering, he sat. He should have expected this ambivalence. She wanted him, but she was far from reconciled to a lifetime with him.

“Thank you,” she said dully.

“You’re welcome.” Hell, he needed to lighten this oppressive atmosphere.

Her lush mouth glistened with brandy. He burned to lick away the liquor, then drink the headier wine of her kiss. But instinct urged him to go carefully. “Pen, please smile. You’re terrifying me.”

To his relief, her lips curved with faint amusement. “The great Duke of Sedgemoor, afraid?”

“I want to do this right.”

“You’ll manage perfectly well. You always do.”

He didn’t understand the bitterness edging her response, although at least she looked less frozen. “I’ll request a report.”

Trying to read her mind, he stared into her eyes. He’d hoped to find desire. Instead he was shocked to see secrets.

What were they? Would she ever trust him enough to share them?

“Do that,” she said faintly. She lifted her glass and drained her brandy.

“You’re treating me like a dangerous stranger when you’ve known me all your life.” It was the tone he’d use to soothe a half-broken horse.

Her expression didn’t ease. “Somehow that makes it worse.”

He’d expected Pen to take this wedding night in her stride, the way she’d taken bandits and arrogant dukes and hurricanes in her stride. Her fear was disconcerting, troubling. He’d hoped that mutual hunger would carry them through any initial awkwardness. “Pen, we needn’t do this tonight.”

Her skittishness didn’t abate and her fingers tightened on her glass. “That’s astonishingly generous.”

She made it sound like generosity wasn’t in character. His lips flattened with displeasure. “Not really. You look ready to shriek if I touch you.”

She blushed. It always surprised him when this worldly woman went as pink as a peony. “You want an heir.”

“Yes, I do.” His laugh was sour. “But I can wait a day or two for that happy eventuality.”

Her gaze dropped with a shyness that surprised him. “I have a horrible feeling that putting off the evil moment will make things worse.”

For a blank moment, he stared at her, torn between unwilling amusement and outrage. Amusement won. He burst out laughing and reached for the glass twirling so furiously between her long fingers. “You’re a tonic for my vanity.”

She looked tense enough to snap. “I wasn’t trying to be humorous.”

He rose to carry the glasses to the dressing table in the alcove. “That’s what makes it amusing.”

His room was stocked with wine and brandy. Pen had a vase of stringy dahlias like the ones from the church and a brush set that had belonged to his mother. A reminder that his joke about marrying Pen in her petticoat wasn’t that funny. She’d lost everything with the Windhover.

Behind his back, he heard her sigh. She sounded like she carried the weight of the world. Despite his efforts at patience, temper stirred. Blast her, she was a bride. She was supposed to be cheerful. He wasn’t sure what Pen was feeling, but cheerful definitely didn’t describe it.

With a sigh to equal hers, he acknowledged defeat. Tonight at least. He was unreasonable to expect eagerness. His wife had had mere days to recuperate from the wreck and accept a radically different future from the one she’d planned. He wasn’t a barbarian, despite the throbbing weight in his loins. He could give her time to view that future with a tad more optimism.

“You’re tired, Pen. No need to stir early tomorrow. When you’re up, I’ll show you around the house.”

She regarded him with palpable disbelief. “That’s it?”

He straightened his shoulders from their discouraged slump and struggled to smile. Frustration stung like acid in his veins. “I know you won’t believe it, but I’m very happy that you married me.”

To his surprise, the black eyes sparked for the first time today. He had a nasty feeling that this reprieve had lifted her spirits. Just as he had a nasty feeling that he’d spend his wedding night alone with an improving book and a bottle of brandy.

“You’re right, I don’t believe it, but I appreciate your gallantry.” Her jaw no longer looked likely to shatter if she spoke one untoward word.

“In time, you will. It’s been a devil of a ride since we met. We’re both at sixes and sevens.” He spoke what he prayed was the truth. “We’ll get there. Goodwill and kindness will take us a long way.”

Her expression changed, although he was too far away to read her fathomless eyes. Damn it, he didn’t want to skulk back to the ducal chambers. He particularly didn’t want to lie in the big, cold bed alone.

No, he wanted Pen in his arms. He wanted to scale the ladder to heaven that had beckoned since he’d found her again. He wanted to kiss her and touch her and ignite her passions. More than that, he wanted to slide inside her long, glorious body and forget everything except pleasure.

Tonight, want took him nowhere.

He turned toward the door.

“Cam?”

He didn’t turn, partly because he didn’t trust himself not to leap on her, whether she wanted him or not. “Sleep well, Pen.”

“Cam,” she said more urgently. “Wait.”

He frowned at the polished mahogany door before him. Did she know how near he was to breaking point? She played a dangerous game.

He heard a rustle behind him. The thick carpet in a pattern matching the delicate chinoiserie wallpaper muffled the soft pad of her feet.

Every hair on his skin rose at her approach. He deliberately hadn’t touched her since coming in, afraid that if he did, restraint would vanish. Also something about her watchfulness warned him that if he pushed too far too fast, he’d destroy all trust between them.

He’d cajoled her into marriage. For her sake. And for his. He couldn’t claim unselfishness. Now Pen, or malign fate, or demons from hell paid him out for his self-interest.

He clenched his fists at his sides and faced her. She stood a foot away. Every sense was alert to her. Her violet scent drifted toward him. “Do you need anything?”

As she inhaled, her breasts shifted against her transparent nightdress. Dear God, she tortured him.

“I think…” Another excruciating pause before her words tumbled out in a heated rush. “I think I need to sleep with my husband.”

Pen watched blazing excitement replace Cam’s resigned grimness. Despite her invitation, she was still nervous, but her heart gave a great swoop of anticipation as he swept her up against him. He swung her high and strode toward the bed.

“Are you sure?” She’d never heard that raw tone before, even in those fraught, incandescent moments on the Windhover.

Before she could answer, he bent his glossy dark head and kissed her hard and hungry, as if he starved. She kissed him back with despairing abandon. The rich flavor of brandy mixed with the even richer flavor of his mouth.

Cam had wanted her as a mistress, not as a wife. Cam desired her. Cam would never love her.

With his lips plundering hers and his arms lashing her close, she hardly remembered why any of that mattered. What mattered was that he touched her with mad desperation and he held her as if she was the only woman in creation.

She was doomed. But this was a doom of heated caresses and fevered moans and kisses that made her head swim with pleasure.

He’d kissed her like this on the Windhover before he’d broken her heart—yet again—with his insulting proposition. After those heady moments, the wild rush should feel familiar. It didn’t. She felt as if she’d never been kissed before.

The world dipped as he set her on the bed and lowered over her, shrugging off the crimson robe. She had a far too fleeting glimpse of his long, lean body before he caged her between his arms, his bare chest filling her view.

Dizzy with unprecedented, overwhelming excitement, she gasped as his weight descended. Automatically her legs parted to cradle his hips. She started up against him when she felt the insistent pressure against her belly. Huge. Demanding. Inescapable.

His mouth devoured hers, then nipped and licked her neck and shoulders. Roughly he shoved the frail batiste aside until he could kiss the ball of her shoulder and the line of her collarbone. He rushed her into a turbulent current of passion that permitted no pause. She flowed into his demands. She didn’t want to think. She just wanted to feel.

Her heart thundered so loudly that she hardly heard the sharp rip as he tore the nightdress away.

“Cam!” With her last modesty, she tried to cover her sex and her breasts. Everything happened so quickly. She hadn’t come to terms with one sensation before another crowded to replace it.

“Let me see you,” he groaned, staring down with glittering green eyes. “I’ve dreamed of seeing you.”

She knew his dreams had involved passionate possession and nothing more. But she had no defenses against his pleading. Shaking with nerves, she lifted her hands away and buried them in the rumpled sheets.

“You’re so beautiful,” he said, bending his head to her breasts.

When he suckled, she cried out at the heat rocketing through her. Arousal tightened and coiled, making her writhe. With unsteady hands, she grabbed his forearms, fingers digging into the taut muscles. Once before, he’d pushed her to the edge, but this time, her responses were stronger, deeper. She could hardly think. This was like living inside a furnace. He’d burn her to ashes. All the time he muttered words that she’d heard so often in her fantasies.

You’re so beautiful.

You’re like fire in my arms.

I’ve wanted you so long.

I want you. I want you. I want you.

He rocked against her stomach, setting her blood shifting like the tides. She edged closer to an exquisite pinnacle. The musky smell of aroused male overwhelmed her. The torrid intimacy astonished her, even if in her imagination, her body had thrilled to his hands and lips and voice ten thousand times.

Oh, what wicked things he did to her. Arching, she bit him on the shoulder, wanting him to know a fraction of this painful joy. He jolted under the rough caress and bit her nipple hard enough to make her shake like the dice in a gambler’s cup.

Like his kisses on the Windhover, this mating held little tenderness. She didn’t want tenderness. Tenderness would cut too close to her lonely soul.

He raised his head and gazed at her blindly. His pupils were so enlarged, his eyes were as black as her own. The skin across his face looked too tight to contain the hard, exquisite bones: so male, so strong, so noble.

Fleetingly her aroused trance receded and she stared lost into his face, knowing she’d remember this moment as long as she lived. The burning gaze. The powerful arms straining beneath her clutching hands. The weight against her belly. The vulnerability betrayed in the line of his mouth. A vulnerability that she knew he’d deny.

She saw something else too. Something that pierced her like a sword. For all Cam’s excitement, there was a distance behind those brilliant eyes. He might want her to yield unconditionally, but if he felt anything beyond physical urgency, it remained forever locked inside him.

As he tightened his hips and plunged into her, she released a broken sob of anguish.

Pen’s harsh cry pierced the air, but it was too late. As he seated himself full length, Cam felt the delicate membrane tear.

Appalled realization crashed down and he went utterly still. Beneath him, Pen lay stiff as a board. All the lithe looseness had vanished the moment he took her.

Incredulity and shame battled inside him.

Incredulity. Shame. And unforgivable pleasure.

Because lying here, the strongest sensation was pleasure.

“Pen?” he asked shakily. He loathed that he loved being inside her. He loathed that his deepest physical nature wanted him to stay. With clumsy tenderness, he brushed back the hair clinging to her damp face.

“Pen, I’m sorry.” His apology was thick with regret and raging arousal.

“Finish,” she forced out in a guttural voice that he didn’t recognize. “For God’s sake, finish.”

Every muscle in her body hardened against him as if her very skin rejected him. The hands that circled his arms were tight as manacles. She breathed in broken little gasps.

Damn, damn, damn.

“I’ll hurt you,” he said, frantic with remorse.

“You’re hurting me now,” she snarled, nails digging deep enough to draw blood. The sting was the least he deserved.

He’d been so tragically, fatally, criminally wrong. Why the devil had he listened to the vicious lies? Hell, if anyone knew not to credit spiteful tattle, he should.

Like a coward, he buried his head in the warm nook between her neck and shoulder. What he’d done was reprehensible. The result of arrogance, prejudice, stupidity, and selfish lust. Not to mention lacerating jealousy of her imaginary lovers.

But he’d wanted her so badly that he’d been blind to the signs of inexperience. Her skittishness on the journey. Her volatile reaction when he’d suggested an affair. Most of all, tonight’s crippling nervousness.

All this knowledge came too late, too late.

He’d been so convinced about the string of lovers. Whereas everything he knew of Pen declared her fastidiousness. Sod it all, at nineteen, she’d been too fastidious to marry him.

The compulsion to finish beat in his blood. His heart crashed against his ribs. Every hot clench of her body awakened shudders of delight.

His mind insisted that her body tightened to expel the invader. His mind insisted that he must withdraw, beg forgiveness, leave her alone. His mind insisted that he’d never make recompense for his actions tonight.

Even so, he lingered. Drew the scent of hot, aroused Pen into his lungs like incense. She smelled like the woman he’d kissed, but different. As though lilies suddenly blossomed on a favorite rosebush. As though he’d worked some deep change in her, beyond the mere matter of two bodies colliding in pain and pleasure.

The crackle of the fire played soft counterpoint to her panting distress. Somewhere outside a night bird called, a high, melancholy sound that echoed her cry as he’d entered her.

Gradually she gave him what he waited for. Her shocked rigidity softened. So infinitesimally that unless he’d tuned his attention to her so closely, he’d miss it.

She was woefully removed from squirming urgency. But she was no longer so tense that she’d likely break if he made the slightest twitch.

Every muscle howling for release, he rose on his arms. He opened his eyes and saw her bite her lip to stifle a protest at his movement. Hell, he knew he hurt her. Guilt sliced at him like razors.

She stared up at the tester, embroidered with gilt Rothermere unicorns. Tears trickled from the corners of her eyes to soak the black hair spread around her like tangled silk. Compared to her ashen cheeks, her lips seemed startlingly red, bruised with his kisses.

“For pity’s sake, end this.” Her demand rasped across his nerves. “I want this over.”

“My dear—”

He faltered into silence. After his ruthlessness, he had no right to speak endearments. His lips brushed hers in a kiss meant to comfort, but her nearness defeated him and he deepened the contact. He tasted tears.

Dear God, he was a swine. Self-disgust struggled to rise above his craving to complete the act.

Gingerly, he retreated. Her breathtaking tightness made every inch excruciating and rapturous. Then very carefully, he eased inside, hearing her muffled grunt of surprise at the unexpected smoothness. She didn’t stiffen against his invasion, although he caught the flinch she tried to hide.

Brave Penelope.

He moved again, gently, although the need to lose himself shook good intentions. He hooked a hand beneath her knee, bending it to aid his entry.

Another withdrawal. Another careful thrust. Rewarded with a sigh, this time conveying something other than discomfort.

He shifted again and again, desperate to grant her some scrap of pleasure to make up for his sins. But with every moment, control frayed.

On a long groan, his hips surged forward and his seed flooded his wife’s virgin womb.