My American Duchess (23 page)

T
rent had always chosen mistresses for their beauty and intelligence; none, though, held a candle to Merry. His wife’s face and figure made him feel more savage than nobleman. He would like to throw her over his shoulder, take her off to a cave, and lick her from head to foot. Especially now, when her cheeks were flushed and her lips swollen from his kisses.

The women he’d bedded to this point had been skilled courtesans. In turn, he considered himself a punctilious lover, satisfying them once or twice before he allowed himself to come, always sheathed in a condom to prevent a child born out of wedlock.

This time he didn’t have to slip on a wrinkled French letter, let alone tie it so tightly that it left a red mark for hours after.

What’s more, he liked his wife. Who would have thought
that
would make such a difference?

“We shall consummate this marriage,” he said, “and then we shall stay married for sixty or seventy years.” He kissed the tip of her nose. “I do want to make one thing clear. Had you been engaged to anyone other than Cedric, I would have stolen you from your fiancé the first night we met. You have been mine since the moment we met on the balcony.”

Merry pressed a kiss on his lips. “Then you are mine by fiat,” she told him, and a sweet smile echoed in her eyes. “I claim you.”

The thick length of his cock was pressed against her leg and he was harder than he’d ever been. Another look at her rosy lips and smiling eyes, and the ache in his groin deepened.

“What is that noise?” Merry asked, turning toward the sound.

“Footmen are filling the tub in the bathing chamber, through that door.” Her maid must have assumed that she would want to wash off the dust of their journey. He wanted to make love to her just as she was, with the perfume that was Merry after sleeping. The most erotic scent in the world.

But she was a lady and a virgin. She was looking back at him now, desire in her eyes, but a wary shyness as well.

Trent washed quickly in a wooden bath brought to his room. It was novel—and delightful—to hear light voices of women filtering through from the bathing chamber next door. When Merry laughed, it sounded like music.

An hour later, the sounds from the other side of the door had finally ceased. He decided that sufficient time had passed that he might pay a visit to his wife’s bedcham
ber. He tied his dressing gown tightly, knocked twice, and strode through the connecting door.

Merry was curled on her side on top of a snowy sheet, her inky hair spread across the pillows. He warned himself for the tenth time that he had to be slow and disciplined. This wild urgency he felt had to be kept in check.

“Good evening,” she said, as he walked toward her.

Through the frail stuff of her gown, he could see the dark rose of her nipples, the shadow that embraced the curve of her breast, another tantalizing shadow between her legs.

“God,” he said, the sound coming from his throat like a tortured whisper. “You’re exquisite.”

Her smile deepened.

“I would like to remove my dressing gown, but if you’d prefer, I could do so beneath the sheets.”

“What are you wearing under it, Your Grace?”

“Nothing.”

He saw her throat ripple as she swallowed. “You said that we are to be married sixty years. I suppose I’ll grow accustomed to the look of your knees.” She looked adorably shy but willing.

“Not just knees,” he said, casting aside his dressing gown. His wife looked him over slowly. It was hard to tell what she was thinking. His body was unlike most gentlemen’s, and certainly unlike Cedric’s, not that he believed she’d ever seen a man naked.

Still, he didn’t resemble the sleek Greek statues one saw in museums. He liked to take vigorous exercise, spending entire days on horseback riding around one or another of his estates. His thighs were muscled . . . hell, there was nothing sleek on his body.

He was all lumps and knobs of muscle, with a few scars
to boot: a white one across his right leg, a darker scar on his abdomen where he had tripped on a scythe as a boy.

Lust was pumping through his veins with a rough rhythm that told him that his control was gone, torn away during the journey in which Merry had slept. He had stroked her cheek, her hair, and the curve of her hip while she dreamed peacefully against his shoulder.

Now he followed her gaze down to where his thick, heavy cock strained toward her. “You’re all dash-fire,” she breathed.

Trent didn’t have the faintest idea what she meant, but he understood the wanton desire in her voice, particularly when the edge of her tongue peeked out between pink lips.

He took a step toward the bed but before he could join her, Merry sat up and began pulling up her nightgown. Her generous breasts moved, swaying gently, and he froze in place.

She wiggled until she could free her gown from under her bottom. Then, in one sudden gesture, she drew it over her head. Her face turned pink, but she remained still.

Something primal rose in his gut as he saw her naked for the first time; suddenly Trent understood the sly language of a lady’s skirts.

Merry let out a shaky giggle. “You look as if you’ve never seen a woman’s knees—or the rest of her—before.”

“I’ve never seen my wife’s knees—or the rest of her—before,” Trent said hoarsely, finally moving onto the bed. His weight settled onto her with a feeling of rightness that spread through his veins like wildfire.

Merry gasped, then curled her arms around his neck and gave him her intrepid American grin, the unreserved expression he’d never seen in an English ballroom.

“Aunt Bess told me that bedtime is when married couples frolic,” she whispered against his lips.

First they should discuss the act in a restrained, gentle
manly fashion. Right. He cleared his throat and moved so that he lay on his side next to her. “Do you understand what we’re about to do together?” His voice came out like a growl, but Merry didn’t flinch.

She turned on her side as well and smiled again, surprising him. Hell, she would probably always surprise him, no matter how long they lived.

“I do. Not that Aunt Bess was a font of information other than her explanation of”—she waved her hand—“the essentials. Did you know that ducks can only copulate in running water?”

When she was nervous, Merry dropped facts like an oak did acorns. “Don’t worry,” he said, putting his hand on her hip and just letting it rest without moving. “The first time may not be wonderful, from what I’ve heard. But it will improve.”

Her eyes drifted down his body like a caress, even though there was nothing soft about him, nothing refined or gentlemanly. He was all muscles and tendons, corded power. Cedric’s distaste for his “burly” chest popped in Trent’s head.

Merry seemed unintimidated by his size and power. Her eyes were fascinated, small teeth biting her lower lip and turning it crimson.

There was something vivid and present in her, perhaps owing to her origins or perhaps just to her fearless person.

The thought made him grin and he moved closer so he could kiss her mouth. Even that brush with her silky lips shot molten fire down his limbs.

He ran a hand over her belly. She shivered at his touch, and he bent to taste her, running his lips along the curve of her breast. “You have glorious breasts,” he muttered.

“My governess, Miss Fairfax, said that I glittered like a cheap trinket. She thought they were much too large.”

“Miss Fairfax is an idiot,” Trent said thickly. He’d reached a rosy tip, leaving him no choice but to lick it.

Merry gasped and rolled on her back. She made an achy little sound in the back of her throat, so he licked her again.

“Do you like that?” Trent managed, reasonably coherently.

Merry moaned by way of reply, which made him, impossibly, even harder. He lifted his head to inquire just what information her aunt had managed to pass on, but a hand wound into his hair and held him in place.

After that, Trent gave in to a primitive self, and couldn’t seem to shape words. Or maybe words just didn’t matter. He suckled her, listening to Merry’s breathing catch and quicken.

It wasn’t until the fingers caressing his chest began to slide south that he caught her hand and pinned it above her head.

“You can’t touch me,” he said hoarsely. “The frolicking will be over before it starts.”

Merry nodded, her eyes trusting, no understanding of how provocative he found her submission. He was the first to touch her . . . everywhere.

The first to kiss her breast. Her stomach. A bit lower. Her eyes widened, but she didn’t move. In fact, when his cock jerked against her leg, a shiver went straight through her body.

Mine
, he thought, feeling drunk with heady pleasure, with the impulse to claim his woman—so much so that a warning chimed in his mind again. He wasn’t a primitive, after all. It was essential that he made the bedchamber—the frolicking—pleasurable for his bride.

Merry lay beneath him, her skin like milk and honey. Everything about her pleased him, every hollow and curve, tint and texture. It took every ounce of self-control he pos
sessed not to fall on her, spread those creamy legs wider, and bury himself in her softness.

Letting go of her hand, he kissed his way down her stomach and a little lower.

“Jack!” she cried, as he nuzzled a curl at the top of her legs. “Jack, what in tarnation do you think you’re doing down there? That sort of thing is not proper. I’m
certain
of it!”

“Improprieties are proper within marriage,” he told her, stroking his tongue over a sweet bit of pink flesh. Merry had been tugging at his hair, but she froze.

So he licked that soft spot again. She smelled like flowers and pleasure and sin all at once.

His wife squealed, and the sound of it was so enchanting, so innocent and yet so pleasured, that some part of his heart that had frozen years ago melted a bit.

“Do you like this, Duchess?” he whispered a moment later. Merry’s legs were twisting under him, and her hands, still clenched in his hair, were holding him in place rather than pushing him away.

“Don’t you dare stop,” she whispered. He blew gently against her honey pot and she let out a ragged moan.

“I still think this—” she began breathlessly, but Trent didn’t want her to think about proprieties or anything else. His finger breached her most intimate, most private spot and Merry made a desperate sound in the back of her throat. His balls tightened to the point of pain.

Damn it, he couldn’t possibly lose control now, could he?

His body answered that question. He would spend like a mere boy at the first sight of a woman if he didn’t regain control.

Merry’s eyes opened.

“You’re soft and rosy, and everything I’m not,” Trent said.

He moved up, just enough so that he could suckle her breast again, at the same time he slid his hand down past a silky tuft of hair. A gasp broke from Merry’s lips as he thrust a broad finger inside.

Slowly he caressed her in little coaxing circles, watching as her white teeth bit down on her lip, as she made little panting noises in the back of her throat, as her hips began moving irresistibly, her hands tightening on his forearms.

“Jack,” she whispered.

His tool had never been harder in his life, but he waited until she broke, crying out, her fingernails digging into his skin with the strength of the waves of pleasure that jerked her body against his. He swallowed her cries like a starving man, half his body lying heavy on hers so he could feel every pulse and shudder.

As her helpless trembling quieted, Trent didn’t stir a finger, waiting so she could enjoy the last quiver of pleasure. Her skin was damp and curls clung to her forehead. Her legs were flung apart in abandon, her hair spread across the pillow, her closed eyelashes dark against the high flush in her cheeks.

He had never had anything that was truly his. Cedric had battled him for the house, for the estate, for his parents’ love. By the time his mother and father died, he hadn’t much more of a relationship with them than he had with the butler—in fact, it could be argued that he and Oswald had a better relationship.

But Merry was
his
. In a queer way, he was even glad that she hadn’t known who she was marrying.

She was with him now, in this bed, because she wanted to be, not because she wanted to be a duchess. If she hadn’t wanted him, she would have taken passage to Boston in a rage.

That was one thing he knew about Merry: she didn’t lie. Her cries of pleasure were as real as the scolding she gave him in the carriage.

It took her long moments to open her eyes, but she was his bride, his virgin bride, and he refused to ruin her experience by leaping onto her. Into her.

When at last her eyelashes fluttered open, she peered at him and said, “Unless Aunt Bess is much mistaken, the evening is not supposed to end there.”

A smothered bark of a laugh burst from his throat.

“When I first met you, I thought you looked like a man who hadn’t laughed in years.”

He slid one of his legs between hers, nuzzling her neck, drinking in the faint perfume of flowers that clung to her skin. “I hadn’t.”

“You’ve laughed three times tonight,” she said with satisfaction.

He couldn’t help himself: his hand went back between her legs and a rough moan caught in his throat, because she was drenched and ready for him.

“It’s my turn,” Merry whispered, giving him a gentle push. “You told me not to touch you, but that’s not fair. I want to, and you’ll simply have to put up with it.”

Trent had never felt anything like his urge to be deep inside his wife. Somehow the idea that he was the first was making him crazed, possessed. But he forced himself to lie back and allow Merry to drop kisses on his chest.

Her fingers were velvet caressing him, more enticing than if the most celebrated courtesan in the world had him in her grasp. Merry touched his nipple, and a shiver went through him, as if a stone had struck a lake.

He watched as she traced the muscles that laced his chest, leading to a stomach carved by hard physical work,
the sort no duke ought to do. The kind he had always done, in an effort to separate himself from his mother’s perfumed boudoir and his father’s brandy-soaked nights.