Page 27 of A Virgin for the Cruel Duke

He paused. It was something strange and wonderful to be holding his hand like this, a strong competent man who was waiting because she had asked him to, who was letting her hold him back.

“Thank you,” she said, stumbling a little over the words. It was hard to speak what she knew to be true and close to her heart, hard to make herself so vulnerable. “Thank you for tonight. For the party. I wasn’t - I was never allowed to parties when I lived in the Rosenburg Estate. I always longed to attend a dance, see all the lovely sights I heard my sisters speak about. It has been a dream for me.”

She wasn’t sure she could help him understand how much it had meant to finally live the world she had always been cut off from, but he squeezed her hand gently and his eyes were full of warmth when he looked at her.

“You should be taken to any event you desire,” he said firmly. “You will get positively sick of it when we have been in London a while. I shall want to go to every event with you on my arm.”

No one had ever been proud of her before and Elizabeth had to swallow hard around a lump in her throat. “Oh.”

“You are lovely, my dear,” he said more gently, reaching down to brush a curl of her hair from her face. “I am a lucky man.”

She wanted to duck her head and hide from his perceptive gaze, but that felt like running away so instead she gathered her courage and met his eyes firmly. “I also want to thank youfor the gifts,” she said, as steadily as she could. “I know I must have appeared most ungrateful today when you went to so much effort. I have never received gifts that were so valuable before, nothing so lovely and worth so much money. I did not know how to accept them from you. It felt too much.”

He lent down to her. There was a gentleness to him in that moment that she was clinging to with all her might to keep her from pushing him away and hiding once again. “I was glad to get them for you. They were simply to make you smile.”

“Your Grace, they are so expensive!” she protested.

“I value your smiles highly,” Stephen said, his eyes bright.

Elizabeth felt that she must sit down, her knees a little weak beneath her. But she also did not want to move away, she wanted to be as close to him as she dared. She wanted him to hold her, to make her feel wanted and safe and beautiful.

His lips were so close to hers that she trembled.

She could feel the tension in him, the iron will he was using to hold himself back and she realized at last that he truly would not make a single movement until she asked him to.

“Stephen,” she said, her voice hoarse.

“Just say the word darling, if you want me,” he said, so low in his chest that she could feel the vibrations.

“Please,” she whispered. “Kiss me.”

He let go of her hand, and she made a noise of protest, a soft cry that escaped out of her like a wish, but he wrapped both arms around her almost immediately, scooping her up and walking both of them over to the bed where he put her down, his eyes fierce on hers and tangled one hand in her hair, bringing her in for a kiss that seemed to devour her soul.

Elizabeth whimpered. Under any other circumstances it would have mortified her to have that sound escape her lips, but somehow, with his hot mouth pressed against her own, she found she didn’t mind it. Barely noticed it even, as his tongue slipped between her lips and another thoroughly undignified sound escaped her.

They had kissed before. Elizabeth too had done her share of imagining, on nights alone in her room at the old estate, when she was desperate for the love and warmth of another person. But nothing she had conjured up had prepared her for this. How strangely unlike anything else, the sensation of his tongue against her own, or the echoing sensation it pulled from another, lower, part of her. She felt the urge to move, to shift with that aching warmth, to surge up and press the full length of her body against his own, to feel the hardness of his chest beneath the fine evening clothes. To do, she didn’t know what, butsomething.

“Stephen!” she gasped out, pulling back so she could look at his face, to see if she was having the same effect on him that he was having on her. The duke’s, herhusband’s,eyes were dark, pupils large as he looked down at her, but there was concern onhis face too. She didn’t want that. She wanted more of that dark, hungry expression. She wanted his tongue back in her mouth. She wanted more of him.

“Remember, I will stop at any moment should you say the word,” Stephen said. “I will only, tonight and ever, do what you ask of me.” And oh. Oh that did something else to her entirely. Something sharp and hot and wonderful that hurt, and she wanted to cry but she wanted to kiss him more and so she did.

“I don’t know,” she said, between kisses. “What to ask you for.” She might have expected someone else to laugh but he cradled her face tenderly instead and asked, “May I show you pleasure?” Another whimper came out and she nodded, almost frantic. ‘Overly eager’, said the voice in the back of her head that watched and criticized everything she did. It sounded like her step mother. It had no place in her bedchamber that night, or ever.

Her husband smiled down at her as his hands came up, gentle as any lady’s maid, and undid the laces and clasps of her finery. The headdress was already gone, curls mostly loose, all it took was a few pins to have the rest tumbling down around her. His hands brushing her neck as he carefully removed and set aside her necklace, then her gown, her petticoats, her stays, her shift.

“It’s not fair,” she said, voice hoarse. “If I am to be the only one naked.” She blushed at her boldness but her husband, gazing upon her in a way that would be disquieting if there was not so much gentleness mixed with the want, immediately obliged. Elizabeth watched, heat spreading across her chest and up herneck as he shed each layer, and wondered if this was how he had felt as he undressed her.

“Satisfied, wife?” Stephen asked, eyes dancing, and if he wasn’t so enticing, Elizabeth thought to herself, she might find him slappable. Instead she bit back another moan and said, “Well? What now? You said you’d show me pleasure, so what is it you intend to show me?”

It was just short of a demand, and she might be embarrassed by that later, but it seemed to please him because he smiled and closed the gap between them. “With your permission,” he said, moving his mouth towards her throat.

“Granted, granted,” she panted, realizing that her first impression may have been correct after all, and that her husband was, for all of the wonderful qualities she was discovering, a really very annoying person. All the same it was rather hard to care at that moment, because his mouth on her throat sent another wave of shocks through her body, pulsing towards the building heat and slickness between her thighs. Elizabeth cried out and she felt the man smile,smile,against her skin before asking for permission again and dropping his mouth ever lower.

Stephen trailed kisses down her neck, across her shoulder and her collarbones, pausing infuriatingly to ask if he might, if he could, if she would allow it, as he moved to explore each new part of her. Infuriating, and yet it brought a sharp warmth to her chest to have him care so much about her wants and her comfort. Still she was on the verge of telling him to stop asking,that he could kiss her anywhere and she would like it, when his mouth landed on her nipple and he did something with his tongue that made her writhe.

“Oh! Oh good god!” she cried out, and then clamped her hand over her mouth in mortification. Stephen laughed a little, the delight on his face making it clear he wasn’t laughing at her this time “it’s a big house wife, no one will hear you. You may be as… vocal as you wish.”

The implications drew another low moan from her throat and Stephen laughed again from where he held himself over her, the muscles of his chest tantalizingly out of reach of her sudden desire to run her tongue over them. A good thing probably. Though perhaps he would like that. Perhaps she would ask him later what he would like for her to do to him. Heat flooded her face but before she had time to overthink it his tongue swirled around her nipple and she arched up, almost screaming with it.

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