A Duke of Her Own

“Landry.”

He snorted and his hand slid down another few inches, hovering. Eleanor just stopped her hips from arching toward him. Inside, she kept thinking, Please, please, please…

“Leopold,” she whispered. “Leo.”

He turned his head and caught her in a kiss, an erotic, dizzying kiss that was so absorbingly like a conversation that she didn’t even realize at first that his hand was between her legs. Then it all blended together into the taste of his tooth powder, flavored with something—cinnamon, perhaps—and the smell of him, and the dancing, sleek power of those wicked fingers.

It wasn’t until after he made her arch so high that water rolled off her body, until she cried his name aloud, until her body flared into brief, blazing perfection, that she remembered Gideon.

Gideon was back. He was in love with her. Why was she lying in a bath waiting for a different duke to prowl illicitly through the door?

What sort of woman did that make her?

Obviously Leopold was wasting no time thinking about Gideon, or his own fiancée, for that matter. Before her knees had regained strength, he bundled her out of the bath, wrapping her in a towel. She swayed on her feet, her body still singing with pleasure, her mind confusedly trying to sort through her moral iniquities.

“No going to sleep,” he muttered at her.

“That felt so good. I could do it all night.”

He laughed. “Just what a man most wants to hear.”

“Untrue,” she said, opening her eyes. He had put her on the bed and was rubbing her hair dry with a towel.

“I assure you that it is.”

“Men don’t want their wives to be too desirous,” she said flatly. “I believe it makes them nervous.”

“Never having been married, I couldn’t say. But just in case you’re right, I’m glad we’re not married,” Villiers said, throwing aside the towel and standing back as if he were a pirate about to ravish a fainting maiden.

“Don’t be like Lisette, and pretend that rules don’t matter,” she said, raising her head and then letting it flop back down because he wasn’t looking at her face. “They matter. We’re not supposed to make love like this without marriage, because marriage matters.”

“I agree. It does.”

She studied him for a moment, but he had bent over so he could run his lips over her ribs, and tease the curve of her breast. He wasn’t following the conversation very closely.

“Immoral, illegal—and yet so—beautiful.” She sighed.

“Come on, princess.” Villiers pulled her upright.

She hadn’t realized that he was wearing a wrapper. It was deep black velvet, embroidered with pearl arabesques.

“I don’t like this garment,” she said, tracing an embroidered design with her finger.

“I didn’t buy it for you.”

She eased the thick velvet apart in the front. Suddenly she wasn’t in the least sleepy. Leopold’s chest was broad and ribbed with muscle. He didn’t say a word, so she put her face against him and just inhaled.

He smelled wonderful. Faintly of starched linen. But also of decadence, and privacy, and plain dealings.

Even better, of private sin.

She slid her hands inside the robe and the fabric fell over her arms, too thick, too luxurious. “I don’t like this wrapper,” she murmured. She found his nipple and licked it. The tiniest shiver passed through his frame.

“I didn’t ask for sartorial advice,” he said. He managed to sound indifferent, but she wasn’t fooled by him any longer. Leopold had perfected a blasé, ducal manner. But he wasn’t indifferent.

“You care,” she said, nipping him with her teeth because he had done the same to her. And, she discovered, he liked it as much as she had.

So she slid her hand down to his bottom. It was firm and muscled and about as different from her rear as it could possibly be. She kept kissing him, exploring all the curves and angles of his body, the places that made him suddenly draw in breath, or sway toward her.

A brutal-looking white scar marked his right side. “Your duel?” she asked, tracing it with her fingers.

“It doesn’t seem large enough, does it?”

“For what?”

“For death.”

She reached out and pressed her lips to the mark. “I’m so glad you didn’t die.”

“At this moment,” he said, and the fervency in his voice couldn’t be mistaken, “so am I.”

She sipped and nipped and experimented until he was muttering something that sounded like a prayer or a curse, but with her name tangled in…and then with a quick twist, she rose and pushed him back on the bed.

“I need to—” he gasped.

“Not yet,” she said, grinning.

“Enough practice for you,” he said, grabbing her wrists.

“I—” He seemed intent on getting up, so she cut him off. “There may not be a tomorrow, Leo. You know that.”

He shook his head as if to clear it. “What are you talking about?”

“My mother, Anne, and I will leave for London in two or three days at the most.”

His grip tightened. “You can’t.”

She waited a split second and realized he wasn’t going to say more. “I must,” she said, pulling out of his grip. He let her go, of course.

But she wouldn’t drown in the sudden bleakness that threatened to engulf her. It wasn’t as if they were in love, that unshakable, unalterable thing. She could alter, and she would alter. Once she had slaked herself with him.

His brow was drawn, and he looked as if he were trying to coerce his foolish male brain into figuring out what she was thinking. So she slid down to her knees, which put her right where she needed to be.

He tasted hot, and male, and faintly like soap. Even putting her lips on him made heat shoot to her groin. It wasn’t because of his taste, or the fact that he felt like heated honey against her lips.

It was the power of it, if she were honest. Leopold obviously stopped thinking, was unable to think. Every time she tightened her lips, he let out a groan. In just a few minutes he seemed to be struggling for breath. Every time he groaned, a scalding wave of desire washed down her legs.

Suddenly his strong hands caught her and he pulled her up to face him. All the cool self-possession was gone from his face, from his eyes. He kissed her urgently, desperately, falling back on the bed and pulling her on top of him. The French letter took a moment and then she slid down, taking him as if they had always belonged together, as if the rhythm they forged was the rhythm of life.

She braced her arms on either side of his head and looked down through the screen of her hair. “I know why you wear such elaborate clothing,” she told him.

He wasn’t listening. Instead he thrust up, his fingers biting into her shoulders. She fell for a moment into voluptuous, toe-curling pleasure, and then recovered. “It’s because you’re hiding your eyes,” she whispered.

“What?”

“You don’t want anyone to see your eyes, so you dress like a peacock.”

He grunted and thrust up again, sending a shock of white heat through her body. “I suppose you think you’re very clever?”

“I am very clever,” she said. “For example, it takes a clever woman to figure this out…”