Page 57 of The Duke's Stolen Heart
“Malcolm,” she said. “I need to stand up.”
“Yes. Of course.” He did not take his eyes from the gems at her neck as she stretched her aching legs and shook out the magnificent silk of her skirts. When he finally met her gaze, Antonia felt the full weight of the Heart’s Cry curse. Once a whole had been broken, the two halves could never be reunited. No amount of clever metalsmithing or lapidary polish could bring the facets together. That power belonged to the earth, to time and history stretching beyond mortal memory.
“My given name is Princess,” she mumbled, embarrassed as ever. Worse than naming someone was letting them name you.
“Apt.” Malcolm stood slowly, his large presence taking up all the space in her tiny room. He cupped her cheek in his hand. She nuzzled his palm, seeking comfort. “You have the bearing and the beauty of one.” His hand curled around the nape of her neck, drawing Antonia against his chest. “You deserve to be treated as one. You always did.”
“Stop,” she pleaded. “You’ll makemecry.”
“They aren’t worth a single tear.” Havencrest’s mouth found hers, and they were kissing, openmouthed and raw with need. “You, Princess, deserved to be kept in silks and jewels.” He brushed his lips to her forehead. “As you are now.”
He lifted the hem of her skirt. Antonia wanted him, but more than their physical connection, she needed more.Give me a sense that you understand it was never about gold.“What I wanted, Malcolm, was freedom. When I was fifteen, my mama married. He never liked me, and I never liked him, either. I stole my first necklace that day. I was stupid about it and got caught.”
Havencrest squeezed her breast through layers of gleaming silk. Antonia gasped and arched into him, ruching up her skirts to straddle his thigh. “What happened?”
“I spent an afternoon in the pillory and had my arse switched.” Her hands had fisted around his lapel as she let the words out in a rush. “I was fortunate they didn’t brand me.”
Havencrest tensed. His arms both caged and shielded Antonia. He inhaled in the scant space between their bodies. “That will never happen to you again. I swear it. I’ll see to it that Bow Street is called off. I’ll find a way to convince my grandmother not to tell them about you. Toni, my princess, I promise to keep you safe.”
He stroked her, and Antonia shuddered with need. For touch, yes, but also for connection. Never, in all the fantasies she wove for herself in the years, had she imagined she would find it in the arms of an arrogant lord in a foreign land. But then, her life had always bent and twisted toward the incredible. Antonia had always pushed and pulled until it looked more like the one she wanted.
But all she had made was a tangle of wires sharp enough to draw blood.
“You can’t protect me from what I have wrought, Malcolm.” She arched into him as he pressed his hot, open mouth down her neck. Her curls unwound and draped over them in a curtain. The pathetic fire in the coal grate sputtered. The air crystalized with cold but it didn’t matter, because his long body was hot beneath hers. She loosened his cravat and flung it aside.
Malcolm shifted back onto her tiny, sagging cot, his back against the cracked plaster wall. It was a travesty that they were doing this here in her bolt-hole and not in his sumptuous bed, yet in a way, it was felt right too. Familiar, if not comfortable.
“I never expected to get as far as I did with my deceptions,” she confessed. One shirt stud popped free. Antonia set it on the windowsill. Chill air nipped her fingers. This felt important, now that she had scaled unimaginable social heights and dared to do the impossible. Or, at least, the highly inadvisable. “I have spent years believing I was one step from being caught. I barely stayed ahead of the magistrate in New York. When I forged my papers to come to England, I vowed to stop. But I never had enough money to afford it. Even while I stayed on with the Kilpatricks and then the Evendaws, there was a constant outflow for things like gloves and calling cards and ribbons that were never necessary but expected. I slipped back into stealing without meaning to. I had no choice.”
Malcolm’s hands were busy beneath her skirts, unfastening loosening, stroking the outsides of her thighs while she worked his shirt free.
“All I want is to stop running,” Antonia whispered as she placed the final silver stud beside its fellows and parted the placket. Beneath was a cambric undershirt, through which the pale, flat discs of his nipples were visible. He shifted forward. Muscles bunched and moved as he divested himself of the white linen. Antonia leaned back to let him move. Petticoats and stockings puddled around their bodies. Her loose dress slipped down over her shoulders, leaving her naked but for the skim of greige chemise down her body.
Malcolm’s hot, dark gaze glittered brighter than any diamond. His hands cradled her upper arms as she kissed him openly. Then, it was her turn to explore him with her mouth and tongue and inhale the scent of leather and the hint of bay rum that lingered on his skin. The scattered hair on his chest was rough against her tongue as she licked her way down his bare chest. Confronted with the barrier of his trousers, she sat back on her heels. Malcolm leaned back against the cold wall that barely separated them from the howl of wind outside. The long edge of the cot pressed into her stomach as Antonia stroked his cock. Thick thighs supported her forearms as she unfastened the flap of his trousers.
“Toni,” he groaned as she freed his stiff member from its nest of wool and small clothes. His cock was so thick her fingers could hardly close around it. Already slick with desire, she ached to be filled. They had one opportunity to be together like this, and she was determined to make it last. She tapped the head against her lips. Malcolm spasmed. His hands came up as though to push her away, but instead he buried them her hair. Softly encouraging without forcing.
Antonia parted her lips and swept her tongue over the head as she grasped his length and stroked. A hoarse grunt told her how much he liked it, so she did it again before angling her mouth over his tip. His stomach contracted interestingly. Antonia placed the palm of her free hand over his belly button and pulled him all the way into her mouth. Deeper. Muscles worked, and a fascinating wet sound filled her ears in an echo of pleasure yet to come.
She popped off to give her aching jaw a rest. Malcolm’s eyes had half closed in blissful agony. Satisfied, she rocked back onto her heels again.
“Come up onto the bed.”
“It won’t support us.”
“Then we’ll crush it,” he declared huskily. “Let it break.”
Silently, she passed him a square of paper. Wordlessly, Malcolm applied the sheath. When he had finished, his hand disappeared beneath the hem of her chemise to position his cock at her entrance. Antonia settled herself over his hard length, paused, rose up, and took him all the way inside with a harsh gasp of satisfaction. Malcolm’s hands were hot iron bands at her waist as Antonia sank down over him again and again. A minute shift of her hips to find the right place, and—
There.She clamped her nails down on the triangular muscle that ran between his neck and his shoulder above his collar bones. “Harder,” she begged.
A sly smile touched the corner of his mouth. “How is this?” His palm slid over her low belly until his thumb stroked down the apex of her sex to the bead.
“Yes,” she exhaled as pleasure tightened a hard grip on her core. A few quick strokes, and Antonia’s breath came in jagged pants. Unbidden, her back arched and she cried out.
But he wasn’t done. The rough burr of his voice in her ear was accompanied by the texture of stubble against her cheek. Teeth closed over her earlobe. Antonia closed her eyes and tried to gather the tattered bits of reason.
He kissed her, and Antonia’s head dropped to meet him. Their tongues met, and teeth clicked as he drove into her again, this time pounding her from below. The bed creaked in rhythmic protest. Pressure gathered and tightened. His thumbs found the undersides of her breasts. Then the tips. A tug and a roll between pinched fingers, and she was slamming her hips frantically in time with his while wild sounds emanated from her throat. Half syllables burst out of her as everything wrenched at once in a pulse that overtook her entire body. Malcolm swelled within her, lost control.
