For Love of the Duke(88)

Jasper’s fingers caressed her moist center and she arched her hips, struggling to open her eyes.

He broke their kiss, and she moaned in protest, mourning the loss of him.

“You are so beautiful,” Jasper rasped out. He inserted a finger in her center.

Her eyes slid closed at his words, and he continued to caress her. Those words, when uttered as they were, hoarse with passion, Katherine found she believed him.

“Do you like that, Katherine? If you tell me you do, I shall give you more than you’d ever imagined.”

More than this volatile storm raging through her?

“I do,” she cried. “That is, I do,” he teased her nub, and she caught her lower lip between her teeth. “Oh, goodness. I do, like it, Jasper. Please,” she implored. She could not survive this passionate torture, no matter how much she reveled in his ministrations.

Jasper lowered her to the mattress and followed her with his body.

He inserted his shaft inch by agonizing inch. Beads of sweat dripped from his brow.

Heat filled her at the hungry desire reflected in the near black of his emerald stare.

Jasper’s breath grew labored, and then he plunged deep inside her.

Katherine cried out, and then he began to move. Her hips rose and fell to match his steady, rhythmic thrusts.

I love you. I love you. I love you.

Katherine didn’t know if the litany filled the air around them or merely rang inside her head.

But she loved him.

He thrust again.

With a savage intensity that terrified her.

He withdrew.

And her heart would belong to him.

He plunged deep.

Forever.

Katherine’s body stiffened, and then she exploded in a burst of flashing colors of the Vauxhall Gardens fireworks she’d once viewed.

Jasper’s muscles went taut beneath her fingers. His face contorted in a paroxysm of rhapsody and agony, and then he spilled his seed inside her body as she convulsed around him. He collapsed, and braced himself above her until he could once again breath, and then rolled away from her.

A sated smile tugged at her lips and she curled against her husband’s side.

Jasper’s arm hovered a moment about her, and then he pulled her close.

With the fire’s embers popping in the hearth, and the cool winter air howling against the windowpane, Katherine drifted off to sleep



A deep rumble pierced the edge of Katherine’s consciousness. Her lashes fluttered open. She yawned and blinked back the thick fog of sleep.

She struggled to adjust to the dimly lit room as she tried to sort out her whereabouts.

Another bear-like rumble caught her notice, and she looked around.

Her gaze alighted upon her husband sprawled on his back, a broad arm draped over his brow, his lips slightly slack in his slumber.

She flipped onto her side and studied him. How very unguarded, how very uncomplicated he appeared with the hard, edge of wakefulness stripped free.

He shifted, drawing her attention to his broad, muscular chest covered in a spriggy mat of dark curls. She hesitated, and then caressed the delicate wisps of hair. She jumped as he broke into a sputtering snore.

Katherine lay back down, knowing she must have the world’s silliest smile upon her lips, but she’d not been able to stop grinning since that morning, when Jasper made her his wife in every sense of the word.

And he’d made love to her, again.

In all her nineteen years, she’d not known joy such as this.

I love him.

Her smile fell. Jasper hadn’t returned those very important words. There would always be Lydia. His heart would forever belong to his first, beautiful, paragon of a wife who’d masterfully completed tapestries that still adorned the walls of the castle.

But perhaps…she rolled back to her side, and examined him—perhaps just a small sliver of his heart remained alive, and that tiny sliver could one day belong to her.

Jasper shifted on the pillow. His smooth, even breaths indicated he still slept.

Her gaze snagged upon the faintest scrap of fabric concealed beneath his pillow. Pale green like mint leaves, the cloth had a familiar look to it. Katherine hesitated. Her gaze moved between Jasper’s closed lids and the hint of green.

Mother had despaired of Katherine’s unrelenting inquisitiveness. The whole ‘curiosity killed a cat, thou hast mettle enough to kill curiosity’, business.

Katherine inched closer to the head of Jasper’s enormous four-poster bed. Breath held to make sure he still slept, she lifted the edge of his pillow.

And froze.

Her heart pounded loud in her own ears. She shoved the corner of the pillow up and reached for the familiar, long-forgotten reticule she’d thought to never again see. Katherine held it in tremulous fingers, as her heart beat with a greater sense of urgency within her breast, the steady thumpthumpthumpthump filled her ears, confused her thoughts.