How to Tame Your Duke(45)

"Yes," she whispered, looking entirely subdued.

"Good, then. And now I'm going to make love to you for the rest of the  night, exactly as I said I would, because I don't break my word, Emily.  You're going to lose count of the number of times you spend. You're  going to forget your own name, whatever the hell it is. You'll be  begging me to stop. And when you wake up in the morning, I want no more  talk about holding back, about waiting, about leaving things be. I don't  want to waste another minute of my life without you by my side, in my  bed, across my table. I shall order my carriage and take you to your new  home, and I shall spend the rest of my life endeavoring to make you  happy." He lowered his head to lick her breast. "Understood?"

She didn't say yes, but she growled, a low feminine purr of a growl, and  Ashland decided it amounted to the same thing. He bent over her with  fingers and lips, with tongue and teeth. He lingered over every curve  and fold and angle of her body, studied and pursued her every gasp of  pleasure, until she hummed like a well-tuned instrument under his  caresses. Until she was shuddering and crying his name. Until her lithe  body arched and her wet flesh vibrated with release. And before she had  drifted back down to earth, he began all over again, doing things to her  he had only dreamed of doing to a woman before, lost in the miracle of  Emily.                       
       
           



       

When at last she could take no more, when she was begging him to stop,  he rose and fetched the sheath from its jar and took his own pleasure at  last, shoving his prick deep into Emily's luxurious wet grip. She  wrapped her arms and legs around him and urged him on, and he couldn't  last, she wouldn't let him last. He spent in violent spasms and sank  atop her, inhaling the scent of sweat and sex and Emily. He imagined, in  that instant, that he'd been released from purgatory at last and  allowed through the gates of heaven.

* * *

Emilie opened her eyes to a perfect pitch blackness. For a long and  panicked instant, she could not place herself in the universe. Where she  was, who she was.

She breathed slowly, allowing her mind to rise up naturally from its  velvet depth of sleep. A warm scent invaded her nose, rich and intimate  and muscular. Such a gorgeous, familiar scent: She craved more of it.  She closed her eyes again and filled her lungs, and as she did, she  became aware of the heavy weight lying across her ribs, the steady  breath stirring her hair, the solid mass radiating heat next to her  skin.

Ashland.

Her breath tripped, and started again.

By the good Lord, he felt heavenly. That was his scent, his warmth  surrounding her. That humming feeling of well-being in her limbs had  come from his hands, his lips, his attentive and tireless lovemaking.

How often had they come together last night? She could not quite  remember. On the table, that first time, hard and fast and exhilarating;  and then again on the bed, after he had wreaked rapture on her body  until she could scarcely move. They had fallen asleep for an hour or so,  and then Ashland had risen and ordered a late cold supper and fed it to  her himself, with sips of champagne here and bites of paper-thin ham  there, with kisses and caresses and laughter, until at some point they  were joined once more, rocking together in a lazy rhythm, whispering  unspeakably dirty words back and forth. He had taught her all the names  for his male organ pressed inside her, all the names for her own female  parts, all the names for the act in which they were engaged, until her  blood ran so hot she couldn't think. He had turned her over and finished  them both off in a frenzy, her back against his front, his teeth  nipping her neck, like animals. Afterward, he had curled his big body  around hers and caressed her with his broad and loving hand. More sleep,  and then one of them had begun again, she couldn't remember whom, or  perhaps it had been mutual: a mutual waking and lovemaking followed by  mutual collapse.

He was still collapsed. She listened to his breath, his heartbeat in the  intimate black night. Was that the very faintest hint of a snore? She  smiled and hugged the sound to herself. She rolled her memory back and  recalled it all again, from start to finish, clarifying the details.  Cataloging. Four times, then. He had made love to her four times. Four  glorious, pounding, breathless times.

No wonder contentment seemed to roll off his unconscious body.

Four times tonight, once last week. Five times altogether. It wasn't  much, really, to last her a lifetime. But she would remember each one.

The darkness in the room was not yet subsiding. It must be well before dawn.

She had to leave.

Before she could tempt herself into another minute, and another five,  she lifted Ashland's arm from her middle-his right arm, with its rounded  end that seemed so natural to her now, a normal and beautiful part of  Ashland's body. At one point last night, during one of the slow and  sleepy interludes between congress, she had asked him what it felt like,  his phantom hand. He had nudged the end of his arm along the underside  of her breast, lifting the soft plumpness, and said, "As if it wants to  touch you, and can't."

Her heart contracted again at the memory. She sat up, laid his arm  carefully in the sheets, and drew up the bedclothes, hardly daring to  breathe for fear of waking him. The ever-wakeful, ever-watchful Duke of  Ashland.

He didn't stir.

She slipped out of the bed and the bedroom. The sitting room was  chilled, the fire nearly out. Her skin, accustomed to the cocoon of  warmth she'd shared with Ashland, prickled with goose bumps. She drew on  her clothes, shivering, and crept from the room, leaving her blindfold  and her false chignon on the mantel behind her.

She wouldn't need them anymore.

* * *

Freddie was waiting for her in the stables, as he'd insisted. He lay  curled in a pile of straw in the corner, snoring peacefully. She changed  into her men's clothes, packed her dress in the knapsack, and shook his  thin shoulder gently.

"Did you tell him?" Freddie scrambled for his spectacles.

"No."

He swore. "Where's your pluck, Grimsby? He's not going to take your head off. He loves you."                       
       
           



       

"He doesn't love me. He's never claimed to love me."

"Well, of course he wouldn't say the word out loud." Freddie snorted.

"I took off the blindfold and my hair. He didn't recognize me. I didn't  have the heart to tell him outright." She led the way out of the stable  and into the snow, three inches deep and building. "I just couldn't."

"Women," he said.

They trudged in silence down the deserted road, guided only by the dark  lumps of buildings along the way. The snow glowed faintly on the ground,  a ghostly landscape. Emilie walked with her head bent downward, and  still the stinging flakes caught her cheeks, her eyelids.

At the Anvil, they collected their horses and paid off the stableboy  generously. "Pardon the observation," said Freddie, swinging up in the  saddle, "for I'm not well versed in these sorts of matters, but you  don't seem particularly happy. All things considered."

"I don't know what you mean."

"Again, I speak without experience, but aren't women in love supposed to  be beamy and delighted and that sort of thing? You look rather . . .  downcast." He paused delicately as they turned into the road.  "Everything all"-cough, cough-"all right?"

"Quite all right. We . . ."

He flung up his hand. "God, no. No details. This is bloody awkward enough as it is."

"I wasn't going to give you details. For heaven's sake," she added,  blushing at the recollection of those details. "I only meant to say that  we were quite in accord. But of course it can never happen again."

"Why not?"

"Because tomorrow morning, or rather this morning, after breakfast, I'm going to tell him the truth."

"Thank God. He'll rant and storm, of course, but at least things will be  out in the open. No more of this ridiculous secrecy. Tramping through  the snowy roads in the dark of night, dodging foreign agents." Freddie  blew out his breath, causing a mad swirl of snowflakes around his face.

"Freddie." She looked down at the dark smudge of her hands on the reins.  "Don't you see? I won't be able to stay here any longer. Disguised,  disgraced. An unmarried woman . . ."

"Oh, Pater'll fix that straightaway, I'm sure."

She didn't answer. How could she? They rode along in silence, the horses  keeping to the obscured road by instinct, moving briskly in eagerness  to be home. The air was cold and sharp with snow; it sawed Emilie's  lungs at every breath.