Page 47 of The Duke and the Darkness

In the past few days, everything she thought she knew and could depend upon had been destroyed. Her world had inverted, and she was certain about nothing now.Nothing.What was left now that she could believe in?

“Peyton.”

Oh, the pain!How did she make it stop? She pressed her fist against her chest as if she could will her damnable heart to stop and finally end the misery. But it only kept beating, as if it didn’t realize her world had just ended a second time. It took everything she had to crawl out of the ashes last time and survive. Oh God, how would she ever be able to do it again?

“Peyton. Look at me.”

She gasped a trembling breath over numb lips and opened her eyes. Her gaze stung with hot tears as she stared at Devlin, who was little more than a dark silhouette in the shadows. For a moment, neither of them moved, letting the night press in around them in the cocoon of the carriage.

Then, slowly, he held open his arms.

A soft cry escaped her, and the last of the fight seeped away. She didn’t have the strength to refuse the comfort and strength he offered. He was the only anchor she had left.

She carefully slipped from her seat and went to him.

He took her onto his lap and into his arms as she let the tremors overtake her. No sobs came as she clung to him. She was long past the point of tears, either for her father or herself, and her body felt like an empty shell with a hollow void in her chest where her heart had been. All she knew at that moment was Devlin’s solidity, his strength and warmth, and she pressed herself against him to absorb as much of him as possible.

“It’s going to be all right,” he murmured as he nuzzled his cheek against her hair. “The past can’t hurt you anymore.”

Oh, he was wrong! She couldn’t escape it. Tonight proved that. Every time she was certain she’d put a ghost to rest, another rose from the darkness. How many more ghosts would be unleashed to haunt her? “You don’t know that.”

“I do.” He pulled back only far enough to look up at her and tucked a stray curl behind her ear. “Because I’ve been through what you’re going through right now, learning what my father had been part of, discovering the web of lies and abuse he’d created…and I survived.” He caressed her cheek. “So can you.”

Peyton desperately wanted to believe that, as much as she craved the certainty and strength Devlin possessed. Slowly, she lowered her head and brought her lips to his.

He froze, except for the quick catch of his breath. For a moment, neither of them moved, and her heart beat off the agonizing seconds.

Then, his lips moved beneath hers, so softly that the movement was barely more than a featherlight caress, so faintly, she wasn’t certain he was even kissing her back. But her numb body realized what her mind didn’t and allowed his determination to seep inside her, and achingly, his tenderness filled the empty hollow inside her until she trembled.

He lightly trailed his fingers along her jaw to her ear, then down her neck to the collar of the coachman’s greatcoat still engulfing her. His sensuous lips bestowed on hers a string of kisses that weren’t quite kisses, light nibbles that weren’t quite bites, and all of it stirred more feelings of reassurance and trust than desire. She knew the pleasure a man could bring to her and where such kisses could lead.

But tonight, what she needed wasn’t physical release but absolution for the past, and only Devlin could give her that.

She slipped her hand to his nape and ran her fingers through the silky hair at his collar, not to titillate but to simply touch. She couldn’t fight the urge to scrape her nails slowly over his scalp and revel in the solidity of him beneath her hands even as she drank in the wonderfully spicy taste of him on her lips. Her heart began to pound so hard against her ribs that she feared he could feel it…then didn’t care if he did.

He slipped free the first button at her neck, and she didn’t stop him, not even when he slowly undid the next one…and the next. The coat gaped open a little more with every inch his hand moved down her front. She stilled when he reached the button lying at the top of her legs as she remained perched on his lap, but he did nothing more than slip it free as he had done all the others and moved down to the last of the buttons above her calves. Acute disappointment gripped her that he’d not dared totake a more intimate touch. But when his warm hand slipped beneath her hem to rest on her stockinged knee, the resulting thud of need landed between her legs with a shudder.

Devlin broke the kiss and rested his back head against the squabs to gaze up at her. With both hands, he gently took the greatcoat and slowly stripped it off her shoulders and down her back, until it draped over his legs. She still wore her evening dress and all the layers of undergarments, yet she now felt strangely bare, and when his gaze raked over her, from lips to lap, she felt downright naked.

“Trust in me, Peyton,” he cajoled in a husky voice that twined around her like a ribbon, tying them together.

“I do,” she breathed and meant it.

The soft sound was lost beneath the rumble of carriage wheels, but the faint flare of his eyes told her he’d heard.

When he rose up to kiss her, there was none of the tender reassurance of before. This time, she tasted his desire, and she welcomed it, parting her lips and sinking against him with a deep sigh.

The tip of his tongue outlined her lips before slipping between them. Long licks across her inner lip alternated with smooth glides across her tongue and matched the unhurried sweep of his hands to the short row of buttons on the back of her bodice. Her dress loosened with each pearl button he slipped free, and electricity pulsed across her skin at his touch.

She leaned into him, pleading for more. For once, she wasn’t confused about him. She trusted him; he hadn’t harmed her before, she knew that, and she instinctively knew he wouldn’t harm her now.

Her eyes closed with sweet surrender.

He continued to kiss her as his hand slipped beneath her dress to untie her short stays. Desperate for the breath he was stealing away by removing even less clothes than her own maidwould have before bed, Peyton tore her mouth away. But she didn’t shrink from his persistent kisses that found her neck and made her flesh shiver. His lips rested tantalizingly against the pounding pulse at the base of her throat even as his hands brushed lightly beneath her dress and corset. Her chemise might have not been there at all given the way the heat of his hands warmed through it and into her skin.

“Devlin,” she murmured, although she couldn’t have said if his name was meant in protest or encouragement. But when he rubbed his palms over her breasts and made them ache for more, the mewling that fell from her lips was all pleasure.

“You are alive, Peyton.” He lazily strummed his thumbs over her nipples and made them harden against the soft cotton of her chemise. His dark gaze watched his hands as they languidly teased her breasts, as if he had all night to do nothing more than this. God help her, she would have let him. “You’re warm and humming with life, pulsating with it…and so very beautiful because of it.”