How to Tame Your Duke(44)

They settled into a pounding cadence, meeting each other at each thrust,  never missing a single beat. Ashland struck so deep it hurt; but the  hurt was a good hurt, compressing her pleasure to an unbearable  extremity, so exquisitely timed that Emilie's climax began to gather in  her loins after no more than a dozen strokes. It wound her tighter and  tighter, this insatiable vise, each thrust more intense than the last,  while Ashland's grip trapped her at the edge of the table.                       
       
           



       

Shove, shove, shove, relentless and perfect, his fierce face, his damp  skin, his want, her want. His rocky voice: "I'm going to come hard,  Emilie."

Her heels dug hard, beating in rhythm. Too much, too much. Her every nerve strained to the point of rupture, reaching, reaching.

"I can't, I can't," she sobbed.

He kept on pounding. "You can. You can. Let it go, love. Let yourself go. Spend for me. Spend. Now."

Shove, shove, shove, and climax burst like lightning. She flew outside  herself, propelled by the white streaks of sensation that shot from  Ashland's stiff flesh within her.

"Emilie!" He shouted her name, gave a final mighty thrust, and wrapped  himself around her, taut and shuddering. A slow groan rumbled his  throat, ending in a noiseless sigh.

For a long moment they remained still, breathing hard, locked together  at all their various points: his arms, her legs, their faces pressed  together, his staff still rigid within her. Emilie was dizzy, boneless.  Without Ashland holding her in place, she might have floated to the  ornate plaster ceiling.

"My God," Ashland muttered. His chest was still heaving. "My God, Emilie."

He lifted his head and kissed her forehead, kissed her nose and her  cheeks. He braced himself on the table and withdrew as deliberately as  he had first slid inside her, wincing as his tip pulled free.

Without speaking, he gathered Emilie up from the table, carried her into  the other room, and laid her on the bed. "Don't move," he said, and he  disappeared through the door.





NINETEEN




The Duke of Ashland stared at his face in the mirror above the sink. His  skin was still flushed, still damp with perspiration; his single eye  glowed back at him, pupil madly dilated. He could still feel the pulsing  aftershocks of climax in his veins, the most thunderous climax of his  life.

Though, to be sure, last week had come exceptionally close, even without  that epic and perfectly matched rhythm he and Emily had achieved just  now.

He smiled.

A well-pleasured man, that's what he was.

He looked down at his tool, which emerged from his trousers still  stiffened, still covered by the damned French letter. He fumbled with  the string, untying it at last, and washed it out in the basin. He  dropped it carefully in a jar and removed his clothes, piece by piece,  folding each one with a soldier's discipline: necktie, shirt, trousers,  stockings. He placed the stack on a chair and went to the bedroom. The  air rasped against his skin, recalling his nakedness at every step.

Undressed.

Defenseless.

Emily was lying on the bed as he had left her, propped by the pillows,  her knees tucked up. One hand lay across her belly, and the other was up  on the pillow, next to her shorn head. He hadn't lit the lamp, and the  light from the room behind him left only the slightest dusky glow on her  skin. He looked at her face, at her round, wise eyes, and for an  instant a chord of bone-deep familiarity struck in his chest.

He knew her.

She was his. They belonged.

In the next instant, Emily bolted upward.

He approached with the silent steps he'd learned in Olympia's training,  the steps with which he approached his prey. The Wraith, they had called  him in the Afghan mountains. He tried to hold her gaze with his, but  her eyes slipped inevitably downward to encompass his naked and  vulnerable limbs, his maimed body, his aroused prick. The beast that he  was.

"Ashland, you're beautiful," she whispered, and held out her arms.

He bent his knee into the mattress. "Wear and tear included at no additional expense."

Her face held an odd expression: wonder, and something like wistfulness. She touched his cheek. "Ashland, I . . ."

"Shh." He kissed her, eased her into the pillows. With his good hand he  drew down the bedclothes and settled her inside. "We have all night.  I've left instructions this time. I'm not expected back until morning."

"Ashland, I can't. I . . ."

He kissed her lips and stopped her words. "Nothing lies between us  except your own pride. Just accept me. Accept us." Another kiss. "After  last week, after what happened just now, how can you deny what exists  between us? Besides"-another kiss, this time in the hollow of her  throat-"having ravaged the virtue of my proper and virginal young  companion, I have no honorable recourse except marriage."

She laughed at that, a melancholy laugh. "You're a duke, Ashland. You can do whatever you please."

"Not so." He settled her into the shelter of his body and propped  himself up on his elbow. His fingers drew lazy figures along her skin.  "I can't quite seem to convince you to become my duchess. I don't know  why. A life of squalid luxury, a faithful husband in your bed. Granted, I  shall never make a particularly decorative figure on your ballroom  floor, but at least you'll have a ballroom floor."                       
       
           



       

Emily stared silently at his face, while the word husband swelled and echoed in the air between them.

She reached up and untied the black leather mask from the side of his  face. He didn't flinch, didn't so much as flicker as she drew it away.

She leaned forward and kissed his empty socket, on the lid sewn shut by a  long-ago surgeon. "I adore every inch of you. Whatever happens,  whatever becomes of us, Ashland, remember that." She kissed his  shattered jaw, his scarred cheek, his ravaged self. "Every inch of you."

He went still under her featherlight caresses. "That sounds rather like a  farewell. Best of luck, old chap, and thanks for the memories."

"I want you to promise me something, Ashland," she said, with her lips against his throat.

"Anything."

"When you know. When I've told you everything. Promise me you won't hate me."

"Emily." He put his finger under her chin and looked into her eyes. What  beautiful eyes she had, round and blue, improbably young. Guileless.  And filled with emotion, brimming with feeling, matching the love that  overflowed his own heart. "I could never hate you."

She drew in her breath. "Ashland, there's so much I haven't told you. About me, about my past. Who I am."

"There's so much I haven't told you. The things I've done." The men I've  killed, and how I killed them. He steeled his brain and forced the  thoughts away.

Emily found his stump and covered it with her hand. Under the warmth of  her touch, the ache dulled almost to nothing. "But that was long ago.  This is now. Who I am now."

"As I told you already: You're Emily. That's all I need to know. The  rest is just so much rubbish. I knew my wife's ancestry clear back to  Dutch William, I knew every detail of her life, and what use was it? I  never knew her at all."

"Perhaps you don't know me at all."

Ashland swiveled his gaze upward to scrutinize the ceiling. He lifted  his finger to tap his chin. "Let's see, then. Are you a murderess?"

She snorted. "No."

"Forger?"

"Oh, do be serious, Ashland. I'm trying to . . ."

He snapped his fingers. "I've got it. The proprietess of a house of ill repute?"

She picked up a pillow and lobbed it at his face. "And what do you know about those?"

"Well, you recall, I was in the . . ."

"Army. Yes, I recall." She relaxed back into the pillows. Her skin was  still pink, still warm and glowing from frantic carnal intercourse. With  him.

Ashland assembled his face into sternness. Clearly he was going to have  to take the upper hand, to clear away all her feminine doubts and  scruples. A rather overwhelming proposition, after all, marrying a duke.  He could understand her shock. Her trepidation, even. And perhaps he  hadn't handled the bit about the house and the money with the  appropriate degree of tact. Ladies tended not to see such things in a  practical and rational light. "It seems I haven't made myself properly  clear. I don't give a damn if you were born to the meanest family in  England. I don't care if you've fled some crime of the most dastardly  nature. It doesn't bloody well matter to me if your past reeks of  scandal, if you're living under an assumed name, if you're a modern-day  Jacobite under sentence of treason. I intend to marry you, and I'll  fight every court in the land, I'll damned well bury any scoundrel who  dares to say a word against you." He captured her wrists and lowered his  head to kiss her, deeply and thoroughly, until they were both gasping  for air. "Is that clear enough for you, duchess?"