Page 78 of The Duke Undone

She felt. She felt his fingers close on her nipple, hard, then his thumb as it brushed the sensitized bud. The breath whooshed out of her. His other hand slid up her back, over her shoulder, down the outside of her arm, his callused fingertips lightly rasping the skin. She felt the press of his knuckles as he bunched the chemise in his hand.

“Lift your arms,” he said huskily. She lifted them, and he pulled the chemise over her head. She opened her eyes to see his dark head lowering over her. Then she felt his mouth close on her breast. She moaned, pressing into him, gripping his shoulders. Something was tightening inside her, a ribbon pulling taut, connecting the beating sensation in her breasts to the beating sensation between her legs. His hand cupped her buttock, squeezing. She wiggled against his chest, panting.

“I would have kissed your breasts,” he said, releasing her nipple, lifting his head. His mouth glistened. “I would have kissed your quim. I would have made you whisper my name. I would have waited until you begged for it.”

He began to wind a ringlet around his finger, tighter and tighter.

“Only then would I have taken you.”

He looked into her face, eyes glittering with an expression she couldn’t decipher.

“But it wouldn’t have been like that,” he said, releasing her, smoothing her hair down with his palms, then pulling back. “Because I was too drunk to know my arse from my elbow. It wouldn’t have been what you deserve.”

She swallowed, tried to steady her breathing. What he was saying—it wasn’t rejection. But he had stopped. He wasn’t stroking her. He’d lowered his arms.

It felt like rejection.

“But you prefer it that way.” She looked down. His hands were plucking at the bedspread. Large, strong hands. “Drunk.”

“No.” One of his hands rose, fingers lifting her chin. She looked into his face.

“At brothels, you don’t have to kiss anything,” she said. She’d heard that kisses bored men. Chatter from factory girls. She didn’t doubt they knew what they were talking about. They lived and worked in cramped quarters, were always repelling advances. Men wanted one thing only.

He hadn’t seemed bored, kissing.

“You enjoy brothels,” she said bitterly. He did enjoy them. Why else would he go? He’d told her he used to drag his brother out of them. But now? His brother was gone. She didn’t realize how tightly she’d clenched her jaw until his thumbs massaged the joints by her ears. She sighed as the ache intensified.

“George was involved with the Rose and Myrtle, heavily involved.” His eyes held hers. “I’m sure you read the articles. It caters to wealthy men with . . . quirks.”

She thought at once of the Feast of Venus, those twelve dildos made with Academy plaster.

“He procured young girls for the madam. He matched girls to those quirks.”

His thumbs kneaded her jaws harder.

“He had favorites himself. One of them he kidnapped, dragged away by knifepoint in the night. I had it from the madam herself. She kept that tidbit from the reporters. She didn’t want her establishment to seem utterly depraved.”

He grimaced, and for the first time, she saw the fine lines that fanned from his eyes.

“He could have paid her. She might have gone willingly, but that wasn’t the game he was playing. She was the wench to his pirate. He stole her, and he stole the commodore’s boat.”

He didn’t need to rehash the finale. She suddenly doubted he could. The muscles in his face had tensed. His strong bones seemed to come forward. He looked annihilated.

“Sometimes I fear that’s where Effie ended up, someplace like that, like the Rose and Myrtle. Some devil making her pay for George’s sins.”

“You don’t believe that,” she breathed.

Life came back to his eyes.

“No,” he said. “But I go sometimes anyway, to brothels, and I look for her. To remind myself of what can happen to women in this city.”

She said nothing. She would not soothe him. How like a man, to need such reminders. A woman lived it every day, lived under the threat of male predation.

He didn’t frequent prostitutes, but he hadn’t been able to rule out the possibility that she was a prostitute, and that he’d gotten so drunk he’d paid for her services. He’d let his father warp him until he didn’t recognize himself. Maybe she saw him more clearly than he did.

She shifted restlessly. He pressed his thumbs into the hollows below her cheekbones. Tension she held in her face, her forehead, her scalp, started to relax. But the other tension—the beating need lower down in her body—did not release. She sat beside him and leaned to kiss the base of his throat, where the pulse beat quickly. This confirmation—that he wasn’t unaffected, that he, too, felt this hunger—emboldened her. She began to undo the top buttons of his shirt. He caught her hands, brought them down to the bed. She flushed. She felt chastised. But she also felt the devil of her untutored desire running, running all through her.

“That’s enough.” He sighed, and there was regret in his voice. “Before . . . you were falling asleep on your feet.”