What a Duke Dares

Chapter Thirty-Four

My darling, you took such a risk coming here.” In the drawing room of the Russell Square house, Harry flung his arms around Sophie. Outside, everything was quiet. This wasn’t an area that bustled after dark.

“I know.” Trembling with innocent fervor, she pressed against him. “If my brother finds out where I am, he won’t send me to Northumberland, he’ll send me to the moon.”

“When I got your message, I couldn’t believe it.” Harry kissed her softly, then returned to taste her more thoroughly. Her sweet, floral scent made him feel like he’d overindulged in champagne.

“I couldn’t stay away.” Sophie was supposedly at a lecture at the British Museum with a party of friends. At least so she’d told her brother. She’d cried off at the last minute and made her way to this house.

He stared into her face. Guilt darkened her lovely eyes.

“The lies make you feel bad.”

Her jaw firmed. “I’d feel worse if I didn’t see you. Since I promised to consider Desborough’s proposal with a view to acceptance, James hasn’t been nearly so watchful.”

“Which makes you feel worse.”

A hint of her delightful smile curved her pink lips. Pink lips he wanted to spend an eternity kissing. These stolen meetings wore on him too. “I’m hopeless, aren’t I? I pursue a romantic intrigue, but I can’t bear secrets. Yet secrets are at the core of an intrigue.”

Harry laughed, although only the lowest worm in creation would tarnish this girl’s honesty. Then he asked the question that always made him want to smash his fist into the wall. “How long do we have?”

She stroked his face. “A couple of hours.”

“I’ve got things to tell you.” He caught her hand and brought it to his lips. If she kept touching him, any hope of sensible discussion would vanish like dew in sunlight. Or perhaps, given his heated reaction, like paper in fire.

“Talk later. I want to kiss you.”

He smiled at her, dazzled by her beauty and ardor. “Sweetheart, if I kiss you, I’ll forget I’m a gentleman.”

“I’ll remind you.”

He regarded her with a cynical eye. “I don’t trust you.”

“Of course you do.” She pouted theatrically.

The sight of those rosebud lips pursing heightened his arousal. He stifled a groan. He must return Sophie to her brother’s house a virgin or know himself a blackguard.

Love could be hell.

He gave in, as he was always going to, and kissed her. Her mouth opened immediately. Because she’d teased, he’d expected her kisses to tease too. But she responded with wild abandon.

He had enough trouble controlling himself when she was playful. When she acted like the uninhibited woman who haunted his dreams and left him waking ashamed and needy, his principles collapsed.

He tore his lips from hers. “Sophie—” he protested, hands clenching in her blue silk dress.

“Don’t stop,” she begged, ripping clumsily at his neckcloth.

He went rigid. All over. And told himself to stop before he did something irrevocable.

Since those torrid moments in that woodland glade, he’d struggled to keep their physical interactions light. That day, the dangers of unrestrained desire had been agonizingly apparent. The problem was that he didn’t feel light with her. He felt like significance weighted every moment.

But Sophie Fairbrother was pure and good. No man had the right to sully her outside the bonds of marriage. Harry must hold back even if he disintegrated into a million smoking embers.

He grabbed her hands. “Sophie, no.”

Her expression was urgent. “I think about you all the time. I think about the things you’ve done to me. I think…” She licked her lips and he closed his eyes and prayed for strength. “I think about the things I’d like you to do.”

“Darling—”

“You want to do more. I know you do.”

“We can’t,” he said in despair, stroking her wrists until she pulled free.

“We can.” She tugged his neckcloth off and tossed it over a chair.

God give him strength. She intended seduction. Then where would they be? Leath would want his guts for garters. And rightly so. “Sophie, you’ll be ruined.”

Damn it, he should pack her into a hackney right now and send her back to Leath House where she was safe from over-excitable young men. But still he stood, breathing her scent as though it kept him alive.

“I don’t care,” she said stubbornly, tearing at his waistcoat buttons. Whatever happened tonight, he’d emerge looking like he’d fought a bear single-handed. “Tonight we have time.”

“How do you know?” He tried to resurrect the teasing, but the question emerged as a strangled yelp.

“I don’t,” she snapped, sounding frustrated and so desperate, his bones dissolved with longing. At this rate, he didn’t have a hope in Hades of resisting.

“Sophie, I can’t deflower the Marquess of Leath’s sister.”

To his surprise, a knowing smile curved her lips. Blazing sensation incinerated scruples when she placed her hand on the front of his trousers. “If you mean you’re incapable of deflowering Leath’s sister, I doubt that’s true.”

He choked and despite every dictate of the code he followed, tilted his hips to increase the glorious pressure. “What the devil is a man to do with you, Sophie? I thought you’d be nervous.”

Lashes flickering, she glanced down to where she touched him. She didn’t look frightened. She looked like she anticipated a wonderful treat. Harry’s blood pounded hard and heavy as though he’d swallowed a big, noisy drum. Whatever his head commanded, his body prepared for pleasure.

She curled her hand around him. “You’ll think me a wanton.”

“I think you’re beautiful. You know that.” His voice lowered to a growl. “And if you don’t stop touching me, you’ll find you’ve taken on more than you can handle, my girl.”

He grabbed her hand and, ignoring the howling protest of the devil who conspired against every ounce of goodness, he pulled her away. Then he released her. Even holding her hand threatened his resolve.

When he caught the purposeful glint in her blue eyes, he was smart enough to be nervous. In fact, he was bloody terrified.

Because of course, Sophie had an ally. The devil inside Harry that had slavered after her from the first.

She seized the lapels of his coat and pulled him closer. “Let me do what I want, Harry.”

The innocence in her eyes made her brazen statement more provocative. He tried to fight, but they both knew that his honor hung by the slimmest thread. “I’m trying to protect you,” he grated.

“I know you are.” She stared at him like he was Sir Galahad complete with Holy Grail. An impression that sat oddly with the inferno of desire blinding him to everything but Sophie.

“Then let me keep you safe,” he said on a frantic plea.

“I’m safe with you.” She placed her hand on his shirt, where his heart thundered with love for her.

He shook his head. “No. You’re not.”

She didn’t seem to hear. Instead her hand crushed the fine material as she brought him closer. He kissed her, not holding back for the first time since that close call in Wiltshire. He caught her sweet face between his palms and plundered her mouth, sliding his tongue between her lips in imitation of the act he burned to complete. He finally gave himself permission to touch her the way he’d imagined. He shook with the bliss of it.

Even now, he held back from undressing her. Until she stole the initiative. Unsteadily she shoved her bodice down. He caught her breasts as they tumbled forward. He pressed and stroked and kissed the impudent tips. She tasted like flowery honey and her perfume filled the air like a musky garden.

He was past denying her. This moment had been ordained from the instant he’d caught her crying in the moonlight. He couldn’t fight his desire. Not when her desire was just as ravenous.

The tension leached from him. Frantic nips and licks and kisses steadied to leisurely exploration. He even found the control to unlace her gown without tearing the delicate material.

He wasn’t ashamed of what he did. With love this powerful, there was no sin, however the world viewed what happened.

“Let me undress you, darling,” he whispered between kisses on her satiny neck.

She raised her arms like a small girl. Tenderness flooded his heart. Tenderness that made his hands shake as he pulled her gown over her head and laid it carefully on the chair.

She took less trouble with his coat. It crumpled onto the floor. She was impatient. But like him, her wildness gradually faded and in its place, a glowing calm lit her eyes to sapphire.

Carefully he unfastened her corset. After he’d slipped it off, he pulled her shift over her head.

She stood naked, every inch of pale, perfect skin flushed with gold from the fire he’d lit before her arrival. Her breasts were round and firm, crowned with rose-pink nipples. The firelight created mysterious shadows around her nest of dark blond curls.

He stepped back and drank in the sight. The emotions flooding him were complex, difficult to define. Joy. Desire. Those went without saying. But there was also the heady realization that he claimed this girl. After tonight, they were forever linked.

From the first, he’d pledged himself to her. But tonight when he introduced her to sensual pleasure—dear God, let him be adequate to the task—the promise went deeper than the ocean.

She was his and he was hers.

Somewhere in all the solemn eternities filling his heart lurked gratified satisfaction. That Harry Thorne stood with Sophie Fairbrother. That Harry Thorne had the privilege of touching her.

Her brilliant eyes met his and he knew that she made the same vows. When she slid the pins from her hair, her grace made his heart falter to a besotted stop. The shining mane cascaded around her bare shoulders, playing hide and seek with her breasts.

Harry swallowed to shift the emotion jamming his throat. “You’re so beautiful.”

Her self-confident smile set his soul singing. He caught a glimpse of the striking woman she’d become. “You’re wearing too many clothes.”

With a carelessness in marked contrast to his fussing over Sophie, he kicked off his shoes and ripped away shirt and trousers, casting them wherever they fell.

Slowly he moved forward. Outside, London continued on its busy, ruthless, crowded way. Inside this room, a golden bubble of love enclosed him with Sophie.

He buried his hands in her hair and tipped her face up. Her lips parted and her eyes sparked with excitement.

In a daze, Pen let Cam lead her up the elaborate marble staircase. None of this made sense. She’d been so convinced he was furious. Yet he’d just called her magnificent. Not only that, he’d kissed her so sweetly, if she wasn’t careful, she’d persuade herself that he loved her.

When of course he didn’t.

She needed to remember that. Something almost impossible when he stared at her as if she’d brought him the sun for his lantern.

He swung her bedroom door open and drew her inside, pausing on the threshold for another heart-stopping kiss. She responded helplessly. How could she do otherwise? She loved him and somewhere during this topsy-turvy night, he’d lowered his barriers against her. She didn’t dare put a name to his feelings, but this untrammeled passion felt different. Less calculated. Less a triumph of skill over emotion.

Glittering green eyes transfixed her. His voice emerged as a hungry growl. “No games tonight, Pen.”

“I don’t—” she began, although she knew exactly what he meant.

He kissed her again, sucking her lower lip into his mouth and flicking it with his tongue. Arousal spiked. The blatantly earthy kiss set her aflame.

“Let’s start again, as two people who desire each other.” His smile conveyed a warmth that she hadn’t realized until now had been absent. “Hell, as two people who like each other.”

“I’ve always liked you, Cam.” What a coward she was. She used his lukewarm word when lukewarm was as far from her feelings as London was from Tahiti.

“I wanted to cheer tonight when you told that old cat to go to blazes.”

“I thought you’d hate me for making a scene.”

“I’ve never felt so proud. If you could have seen yourself, fire all but shot from your eyes. If you weren’t on my side, I’d have been quaking in my boots.”

She smiled. “Nothing frightens you.”

An unreadable expression crossed his face as he drew her toward the center of the room. “You do.”

She touched his face. Usually, fearing she’d betray herself, she curtailed affectionate gestures. “Yet you say you like me.”

“I’m damned glad you married me.”

He didn’t love her. But tonight he committed to her in a way that he never had. She should be satisfied.

“So am I.” She was astonished to realize that she meant it.

He was surprised too. “Are you?”

She felt like she stood naked in sunlight. The radiating heat reached to her bones, thawing the chill in her heart. “I meant what I said. You’re an exceptional man and I’m proud to be your wife.”

“Darling—” He sounded like her declaration touched him beyond words.

She decided to rescue him. He wasn’t accustomed to expressing emotion, but it was clear that he pledged his loyalty and affection. It wasn’t enough, but it was a lot. “Now take me to bed.”

He looked happier. She’d long ago realized that sensuality offered him an escape from self-containment. On a physical level, he held nothing back. His soul had always been the closed kingdom.

But staring into his eyes, she was astonished to see that was no longer true. Tonight the gates to his deepest heart lay open. He trusted her. For Camden Rothermere, that was as close as he’d ever venture to love.