Romancing the Duke (19 page)

So he could get to her.

Now. As fast as his legs would carry him.

Chapter Eighteen

I
zzy stood in the center of the room, frozen in shock. Ransom’s steps came booming up the stairs.

He emerged into the room, breathless and red-faced. A storm of fury had gathered on his brow, and his scar forked from it like lightning. “Izzy, what is it? Speak to me. Are you hurt?”

“No.” She felt horrible for alarming him. “It’s not that.”

“Tell me.”

“It’s this. You did this? You must have done this.”

“Did what?”

“The candles. They’re everywhere.”

She turned a slow circle. At some point since she’d last been in this room, someone had placed a dozen sconces around the perimeter. Each one held a lit beeswax taper. In addition, there were two candelabras on her dressing table, and one on the table beside her bed. The sheer number was extravagant and ridiculous—they filled the space with enough light to rival a star, and their collective heat raised the temperature of the room by several degrees.

Izzy was overwhelmed.

They could only be Ransom’s doing. She hadn’t told anyone else.

She sniffed back a tear. “Downstairs, you berated me for pushing in a chair or hanging a coat. And then . . . this?” She swiped at her eyes. “Ransom, this is just unfair. Why would you go and do something so . . .”

“They’re just candles.”

She shook her head. He had to know these were not just candles. They were caring. He was caring about her,
for
her, and it was such an unfamiliar sensation, Izzy didn’t know what to do with it.

In desperation, she fluttered her hands, as if she could shoo the emotion away. It didn’t help.

“For God’s sake.” He moved toward her. “You’re making too much of this. They’re meant to keep you up here. In your room. Away from me. Every night, you’ve been stealing downstairs in the dark, waking me up before dawn. I couldn’t understand what it was you were missing up here, but I tried everything. Blankets, brazier, writing desk.”

She pressed a hand to her throat. “Those were all your doing, too? I thought Abigail . . .”

He shook his head. “No. I know what you’re thinking, and I’m telling you, it’s not that way. This isn’t how it looks.”

“You had better hope not.” She swept another glance around the candlelit room. “Because this looks . . . sweet. It looks . . .” She swallowed hard. “Oh, Ransom, it’s so romantic.”

He pushed both hands through his hair in a gesture of frustration. “It’s not.”

“It
is.
This is romantic.
You
are being romantic.”

“I didn’t do it on purpose.” His arms went around her. “I just . . . I just needed to keep you up here.” He walked her backward until her knees met the edge of her bed, and they both tumbled onto the mattress. “In this bed.”

He stroked her hair, fanning it out over the pillows, and framed her face in his hands. “But I couldn’t discern what it was you needed to feel safe. I tried everything. Finally, tonight, you gave me the answer. Light. So now you have as many candles as you please. But now it’s gone all wrong. Because you’re here in this bed. But I’m here, too. And God help me, Izzy.” His brow pressed to hers, and his weight settled over her, crushing and warm. “I don’t know how to leave.”

“I know how.” She pushed on his shoulders. “I will make you.”

He tensed. “You will?”

“I will. We can’t do this. Every time we get close, something awful occurs. The weasel bites you, a rock falls on your head, we get trapped with a dead man in a darkened hole. If we do this . . . ? God knows what could happen. The whole turret might collapse.”

He nodded slowly, as if giving it careful thought. “Izzy?”

“Yes?”

“Let it happen.” His lips lowered to hers. “I don’t damn well care.”

L
et it happen,
Ransom thought, pushing her back against the bed. Let God and the devil do their worst.

The castle could crumble to the ground. The world could end. The entirety of the Moranglian Army could show up wearing jingling bells. All that mattered was this. Her, and him, and the light of two dozen candles. The both of them, tangled in this bed.

No darkness. No loneliness. No fear.

And he wanted to be sure she would have no regrets.

“Izzy, I want you. I feel the need to say it. Not to be crude or shocking, but just in case there’s any ambiguity in this situation: Me, atop you, in your bed. You must know I want to . . .”

His mind skipped over all the possible words.
Bed you, tup you, fuck you, tumble you, make you my mistress . . .

“I want to make love to you, Izzy. Very, very,
very
badly.”

Ransom had never used those words before. She couldn’t know that, but he did.

“I . . .” Her fingers went to his hair. “I want you, too. So much.”

Her shyly voiced admission redoubled his heart rate.

It was after midnight, and he was tired. Normally, his vision would be shot at this hour. But with all these candles, and the extreme nature of their evening, he had enough sight remaining to him that he could make out the dark aura of her hair against the white linen. And most lovely of all, her wide, red smile.

“You’re so beautiful.”

He turned her onto her side and began tugging at the buttons down the back of her frock. She’d changed out of the soiled, torn red silk and into one of her everyday frocks. Even though the buttons were larger and the fabric easier to manage, his fingers didn’t work too cleverly. It took him ages just to undo the first three or four buttons.

“Undressing you was easier when you were unconscious,” he said.

She laughed. “It was probably easier when you weren’t drunk.”

Right. He supposed he could have blamed his trembling on the whisky. But in reality, Ransom knew better.

He was dashed nervous. Because this would be his first time in a long time, and it would be her first time ever.

And because this was Izzy, and he wanted it to be good.

With a curse, he gave up on buttons for the moment.

“Izzy.” He cupped and kneaded her breasts through the linen of her frock. “I can’t be patient. Not right now. Let me pleasure you.”

He found the slit in her drawers and widened it with a swift, decisive rip of fabric. He pulled her to the edge of the mattress and knelt on the floor at her feet. Then he pushed her skirts and petticoat up, bunching them around her waist, and hooked an arm beneath one of her legs, spreading her wide.

There. Now he could touch all of her. Taste all of her.

“Ransom?” She struggled to sit up. “What are you do—?”

He laid his tongue to her core.

“Oh.” She flopped back against the bed. “Oh.”

God, she was sweet. Sweet and pink and musky and Izzy.

Izzy, Izzy. My own.

His cock throbbed vainly in his breeches. As he licked her, he freed it with one hand and began to stroke. Shameless, lewd. Bringing himself off right there on the floor while he pleasured her? But this was what she did to him. She reduced him to a panting, needing beast with no care for civility or etiquette. And she liked him crude and profane. She’d told him so.

On the bed, she writhed and wriggled. “Ransom. Ransom, are you certain this is—”

He raised his head just long enough to say: “Yes.”

He worked his way over and around all her most sensitive places, taking time to accommodate and make adjustments.

She gasped his name and clutched at his hair, holding him fast to her core. God, he loved it when she touched his hair.

He increased his efforts, licking all along her folds, then sweeping back to the swollen bud at the crest of her sex and suckling hard, flicking his tongue back and forth.

She shuddered and moaned, arching off the bed and spasming under his tongue.

Yes.
Yes
.

Come for me. Me, and no other.

As her climax broke, he slid his tongue inside her, needing to be in her, in some way. To possess her. Her intimate muscles convulsed, pulling at him. Begging for more.

He hurried to rejoin her on the bed, fitting himself in the cradle of her splayed thighs. His cock brushed against the soft, dewy heat of her sex. He could be inside her in seconds.

But once he was inside her, there would be no taking it back.

He pressed his head to her shoulder and released a heavy sigh.

“Ransom?” She pushed up on one elbow. “What is it? Is something wrong?”

“I
don’t know,” he said. “That’s for you to decide.”

Izzy stared at him, her vision hazy in the aftermath of that beautiful, beautiful pleasure. Surely he wasn’t changing his mind
now.
The broad, smooth head of his erection lay against her thigh—hard and hot and eager.

He said, “I’m just drunk enough to think this is my most brilliant idea in ages. But I’m not too drunk to stop if you don’t feel the same.”

She was sober, and she knew very well that this might not be the most prudent idea. But something felt right about it, all the same. This wasn’t impersonal lust. They understood each other. She was likely halfway in love with him, and he cared for her, too. He might never say it in those words, but this very room was ablaze with the proof.

Besides, a girl like Izzy didn’t have the luxury of being choosy with her nights of wild passion.

This happened tonight, or never.

“I don’t want to stop,” she said.

“Thank God.” He sounded relieved as he pulled at her buttons and laces. His fingers moved more easily now. “For a moment there, I thought the attempt at decency would come back and bite me. It usually does.”

“Decency?” She slipped one arm free of its sleeve. “I should be terribly disappointed if you were decent. I’m expecting you to be wicked indeed.”

He freed her breast and bent to suckle it. “I’ll do my damnedest. It’s been a while.”

However long it had been, he hadn’t forgotten how to make a woman twist and writhe.

He pressed a finger inside her. Then he added another finger to the first, stretching her with an exquisite fullness.

“Ransom . . . hurry. Don’t you want—”

He pressed the heel of his hand against her mound, rubbing her in just the right place as he stroked his fingers in and out. Deeper, and deeper still. Before long, she was arching off the bed to meet his thrusts.

He bent to suck her nipple, and she moaned at the decadent heat of his mouth.

“Yes,” he murmured, sounding triumphant. He swirled his tongue in ruthless circles, and the sweet tension began to build between her thighs again.

He withdrew his fingers and sat up on his knees. He pulled his shirt over his head and cast it aside, then worked to undo the remaining closures of his breeches. Izzy thought about asking if she could help, but he didn’t seem to need assistance.

When he’d wrestled free of all his garments, he rejoined her on the bed. He dropped reverent kisses along her neck, her chest, her belly. She felt worshipped.

Then he moved between her legs, and his hips pushed her thighs wide.

“Wait.” She stroked his shoulders and chest, exploring the firm, sculpted contours. “I . . .” She nearly lost her courage. “I want to see you. Touch you.”

He sat back on his haunches in wordless invitation.

Izzy looked. There it was, in all its magnificence. Dusky, proud, alarmingly large. Jutting out from a thatch of dark hair and straining toward her.

She was entirely unaware of the protocol when becoming acquainted with a man’s rampant sex organ. Did she reach out and give it a handshake? Touch one finger to the tip? Bid it a polite howdoyoudo?

In the end, she decided to ask for guidance. She put her hand in Ransom’s. “Show me how to please you.”

The words alone made him moan. He took her hand in his and curled her grip about the base of his erection. Then he guided her, teaching her to stroke him, up and down. She loved the feel of him in her hand. The soft skin sliding over rigid flesh beneath. Curious, she brushed her thumb over the tip and was delighted to find it silky and sensitive.

He squeezed her hand, preventing her from indulging in any further explorations.

“Did I do something wrong? Is there something else I should do?”

“Nothing wrong,” he whispered, lacing his fingers with hers and pressing her hands back to the bed. “Nothing else. You’re perfect. Just be there. Just be you. Lovely, lovely Izzy.”

She felt the smooth, broad crown of his erection prodding at her entrance.

And then he was
inside
her.

She cried out. She couldn’t help it.

“Am I hurting you?”

She bit her lip. “A little.”

“Sorry.” He pushed forward, sinking an inch deeper. “So sorry.”

She struggled to breathe. He was just so foreign and . . . and just impossibly large inside her.

“I’m going to take this slowly.” He dropped little kisses on her lips. She could taste the whisky in them. “Until I can’t anymore, and then I’ll probably take it hard and fast. I’ll apologize now. Words might be beyond me then.”

“It’s all right,” she whispered. “I understand.”

She didn’t, really, but she assumed she’d figure it out along the way. She was still struggling to adjust to the feeling of him inside her. The fullness, the stretching, the heat. He glided smoothly in and out, sinking a little deeper each time. Eventually, his body met hers, holding there a moment before retreating to do it all again.

Soon the pain of their joining receded, and she began to enjoy the friction of his hard, male body against hers. His legs, coarse with hair and dense with muscle, rubbing against her sensitive inner thighs. His chest pressing against her breasts.

This wasn’t so bad anymore. It was rather nice.

He lifted up on his arms. His face twisted. “Izzy. God. I . . .”

Right. So this would be the “hard and fast” part now. She was glad that he’d warned her.

He shifted, and his hips spread her thighs to a new, wider angle, holding her open for his thrusts. He drilled deep, working in and out of her body at a furious pace. It hurt her. It excited her. It pushed her to the verge of . . . of something unknown.