The Reluctant Duke (15 page)

He gave a derisive smile. ‘Try looking at it from my point of view, Lexie. You’re—what…? Twenty-something?’

‘Four.’

‘Hmm. And no doubt in those twenty-four years you’ve read books and seen films that depict lovemaking as being a wild and wonderful experience?’

A delicate blush warmed her cheeks. ‘No doubt.’

Lucan nodded. ‘What if the reality doesn’t measure up to the things they write in books and show in the movies?’

‘It has so far!’

He smiled. ‘You’re doing wonders for my ego, Lexie.’

She eyed him teasingly. ‘Your ego doesn’t need any more stroking!’

He gave a lazy smile. ‘You sound very sure of that.’

Well, of course Lexie was sure of that. She only had to look at him as he sat across the table from her, so relaxed and sure of himself, just like a big, sleepy cat. The untamed variety, of course. Lucan St Claire was a law unto himself and always would be—a man who indulged in sensual relationships without ever becoming emotionally involved.

Which suited Lexie perfectly. She only had this one night with Lucan, and would never see him again—could never see him again—once the two of them returned to London tomorrow.

‘Have any of your other women ever had cause to complain?’ she teased.

He frowned. ‘Lexie—’

‘Don’t tell me—it simply isn’t done to talk about the other women you’ve been to bed with?’

He looked slightly bemused. ‘Believe me, nothing that’s happened with you has ever happened to me before.’

‘Really…?’ She caught her bottom lip between her teeth and stood up to move slowly round the table to where Lucan sat, pushing her robe back over her hips and placing her hands on his shoulders for support as she settled herself across his muscled thighs.

‘That isn’t my ego you’re stroking, Lexie,’ Lucan drawled huskily as she moved slowly, oh-so-slowly, against the rigid hardness of the arousal pressing against his denims.

‘No?’ She gave him a warm and sensuous smile as she continued that rocking movement.

His eyes darkened almost to black as he parted the top folds of her robe to bare the pertness of her breasts. ‘You really are very beautiful here, Lexie,’ he murmured softly, and he lowered his head to lightly kiss each aroused nipple in turn, before concentrating his attentions on just one.

Lexie’s breath caught in her throat. ‘I need you to make love to me, Lucan,’ she groaned achingly, her fingers becoming entangled in the darkness of his hair as she held him to her.

‘Here?’

‘Anywhere!’

Lucan truly had never met a woman like Lexie. So open. So totally honest. About herself and her needs.

The same needs were raging within him—and had been, he now acknowledged, since the moment he’d first met her.

Needs they both became totally lost in as they kissed and touched. Heatedly. Wildly. Lips and hands seeking and finding every pleasure point. Every touch, every caress, driving their passion higher and then higher still as desire
spiralled out of control. As their need raged totally out of control.

Lucan’s hands cupped beneath Lexie’s bottom as he surged to his feet, her hands clinging to his shoulders, her legs wrapped tightly about his waist as he strode from the kitchen and carried her back up the stairs to her bedroom, to lay her gently down on the bed.

Lexie cast aside her robe and watched as Lucan threw off his own clothes before joining her on the bed, nudging her legs gently apart before kneeling between her thighs to part her dark curls and bare her to his dark and searing gaze.

‘God, you’re beautiful, Lexie…’ he groaned, his hands moving lightly across her burning flesh as his head began to lower. ‘So damned beautiful,’ he said achingly, his breath a warm caress against her sensitivity.

Lexie gasped at the first touch of Lucan’s mouth against her heat. He laved her with his tongue, and the sensation, the pleasure, was unlike anything she had ever experienced before. Deeper, even stronger than during their earlier lovemaking.

Her head fell back against the pillows as she felt the onset of orgasm surging through her, burning her, as pleasure ripped through her, seeming never-ending as Lucan drank, lapped up every last vestige of that release before moving up to position himself between her thighs.

‘Take me inside you, Lexie,’ he encouraged gruffly. ‘Take me before I lose my mind!’

Lexie needed no further encouragement, and she curled her fingers about him and began to guide him inside her, inch by beautiful inch. Her delicate folds widened, stretching to accommodate the width and length of him, until he reached the barrier of her virginity.

Lucan was breathing hard, determined to maintain control, to ensure that Lexie enjoyed her first experience of lovemaking.

That control didn’t come easy. Lucan was raging inside as his shaft surged, pulsed with the need to take what was already his!

He leant his weight on his elbows as he looked down at her. ‘I don’t want to hurt you! ‘ he groaned.

‘You won’t.’ There was complete trust in her eyes as she gazed up at him.

He rested the dampness of his forehead against hers, breathing deeply through his nose. ‘I might—’

‘You won’t,’ she repeated with certainty.

Lucan’s chest swelled at her complete faith in his ability not to hurt her. ‘Hold on to my shoulders,’ he encouraged huskily, and he drew his thighs back slightly before thrusting those last few inches, breaching the barrier of her virginity as she took him fully inside her.

Lucan heard Lexie gasp, felt her body tensing as her fingernails dug briefly into his flesh before she relaxed again, allowing the softness of her inner folds to wrap around him. Hot, so very hot, and velvet-soft. He grasped her hips, his mouth capturing hers as he began to thrust slowly, rhythmically inside her.

Pleasure engulfed him as his thrusts deepened, hardened, drowning Lucan in pleasure, in ecstasy unlike anything he had ever known before. He felt his release building, higher and higher, and Lexie’s keening cries told him that she was fast approaching her own climax.

Her legs wrapped about his waist as she tensed beneath him, tightening around him as her orgasm ripped through her, those clenching spasms taking Lucan with her. And
he felt the heat of his own release surge down the length of his shaft and burst inside her in hot and never-ending pleasure.

‘Wow…’ Lexie breathed weakly long minutes later, when she finally found enough breath to be able to talk at all. Her hands moved in a long, slow caress across and down the broad width of Lucan’s back as he lay still, above and inside her.

Lucan chuckled huskily. ‘That was—’

‘Please don’t burst my happy bubble by telling me I was rubbish at it!’ she groaned.

‘—incredible!’ he finished softly as he moved up on his elbows to look down at her.
‘You’re
incredible, Lexie,’ he assured her gruffly, his expression serious as his hands moved to cradle either side of her face. ‘Did I hurt you?’

‘No.’ Lexie had felt only a small pinch of pain, brief and quickly forgotten as she became caught up in the pleasure of having Lucan deeply inside her.

Lucan didn’t look reassured. ‘You’re probably a little sore?’

Lexie still felt full, completely filled by Lucan, and it certainly wasn’t a painful feeling. The opposite, in fact, as her sensitive inner muscles continued to spasm and clench pleasurably about him.

‘Not at all.’ She reached up to gently smooth the dark hair from Lucan’s brow. ‘In fact, as soon as you’re able, I would like to do it all over again!’

‘Greedy little baggage,’ he murmured admiringly.

‘Mmm.’ Her legs tightened about his waist. ‘I intend keeping you exactly where you are for the rest of the night! ‘ She wasn’t about to waste a single minute, a second, of the one night she would have with Lucan.

He gave a rueful shake of his head. ‘Your honesty is overwhelming.’

Lexie stilled. Her honesty…?

She had been completely honest about her enjoyment of their lovemaking, but about everything else…?

Lexie hadn’t been honest with Lucan about any other part of her life!

She didn’t work as a temp for Premier Personnel—she helped to run it with her parents. It wasn’t true that there was no other temp available to send to the St Claire Corporation—Lexie had deliberately decided to go and work there herself for three days, in order to settle her long-held curiosity concerning the St Claire family itself. Most especially about the head of that family, Lucan St Claire.

Well, she had done a lot more than settle her curiosity about Lucan. A lot, lot more.

‘Lexie…?’ There was a dark frown between Lucan’s eyes as Lexie slid her legs down the backs of his thighs to rest her feet on the bed. Her hand fell limply back to her side. ‘Are you having regrets, after all?’

Not the sort Lucan obviously meant—but, yes, Lexie
was
having regrets.

Lots of them. Mainly she was regretting that she had ever begun this dangerous subterfuge. Because if Lucan ever found out exactly who she was, her connection to Sian Thomas, then he really was going to hate her.

Lexie didn’t want Lucan to hate her. And she didn’t still hate him.

How could she ever have thought she could make love with Lucan—physically take what he had to give—the pleasure she had already glimpsed so fleetingly on those other occasions when he had held her in his arms and
kissed her—and then just walk away without there being any repercussions to herself?

How could she have been so naive? How could she have been so stupid not to have realised she was already in love with him…?

‘L
EXIE
, what’s wrong?’ Lucan frowned when she could only stare up at him in shock. ‘Talk to me, damn it!’ He grasped her shoulders and shook her as she didn’t respond.

Talk to him? Lexie wasn’t sure she would ever be able to talk to Lucan again, let alone coherently. She was in love with him! Had fallen in love with Lucan St Claire—the man she had always hated. The one man who believed he had every reason to despise all her family.

Lexie had heard it said that there was a very thin line between love and hate.

How could this have happened?
Why
had it happened? What mad and vengeful god—goddess—could have wished this upon her?

‘Lucan—could you move?’ Lexie pleaded desperately as the food she had eaten earlier rose like bile in the back of her throat. The feeling grew worse as she was totally overwhelmed by Lucan’s close proximity. By the fact that his body was still intimately joined with hers. ‘Now, Lucan!’ she begged. ‘I—I think I’m going to be sick!’

Lucan barely had time to disengage and roll to the side before Lexie stood up to dash madly—nakedly—to the adjoining bathroom. The door slammed shut behind her, followed seconds later by the sound of forceful retching.

Lucan fell heavily back against the pillows to stare
sightlessly up at the ceiling, feeling slightly nauseous himself at the possibility that it had been their lovemaking that had made Lexie ill.

Had he hurt her, after all?

Was she in so much pain it had actually made her physically sick?

Or was it something else? Possibly the realisation of what had just happened between the two of them had affected her so dramatically?

Lucan sat up, only to come to an abrupt halt and feel a painful wrenching in his gut as he saw the smear of blood on the sheet beside him in evidence of Lexie’s innocence.

Lucan’s expression was grim as he stood up to pull his denims on over his nakedness, before padding across the room barefoot to knock softly on the bathroom door. He turned the handle. ‘Lexie…’

‘Don’t come in here!’ Lexie cried desperately as she realised Lucan’s intention. Wasn’t it enough that Lucan must know she was in here throwing up the food and drink she’d had earlier, without the added humiliation of having Lucan see her actually bent naked over the toilet? ‘Go away, Lucan,’ she instructed him crossly. She glared across to where she could see Lucan—as he must surely be able to see her!—where he stood on the other side of the partially opened bathroom door.

‘Do you need any help—?’

‘To be sick?’ she scorned. ‘I don’t think so, thank you very much! Just go away and leave me alone,’ she repeated impatiently.

‘I can’t do that—’

‘Of course you can.’ Lexie turned to grab a towel from the rack and wrap it about herself before standing up. ‘It’s
easy, Lucan. You just close the damned door and turn around and walk away!’

‘No.’

‘What do you mean, no?’ Lexie flushed the toilet before marching across the bathroom to wrench the door open and glare up at Lucan. At Lucan so sexily attractive dressed only in faded denims that Lexie’s knees went weak just looking at him!

His chest was so broad and muscled, his stomach so flat and toned, and those denims rested on narrow hips above long and muscled legs. Shifting her gaze quickly back to Lucan’s face wasn’t really any help either, when his hair was still slightly mussed and falling sexily across his forehead. His eyes were dark and full of concern, and that firm mouth was just asking to be kissed.

Well… asking to be kissed if Lexie’s own mouth hadn’t felt so unpleasant after she’d been so thoroughly sick!

She turned back into the bathroom and crossed over to the sink to brush her teeth.

‘I mean no, Lexie,’ Lucan repeated firmly behind her. ‘We need to talk.’

‘We don’t need to do anything of the sort!’ She rinsed her mouth with water before turning to look at him. ‘I’ve obviously eaten something that disagreed with me—’

‘Cheese and biscuits?’ Lucan drawled sceptically.

Lexie glared up at him. ‘Something!’ She pushed past him to cross the bedroom and pick up her robe from where it had been thrown onto the carpet earlier.

Lucan leant against the bathroom doorway and watched her through narrowed lids. The dark wildness of Lexie’s hair just added to the deathly pallor of her cheeks, but neither of those things detracted in the least from how sexy she looked, wearing only a very inadequate bath towel, with
the swell of her breasts visible above and her legs bare and shapely beneath.

His thighs stirred in renewed arousal as she turned away to slip her arms into the robe, before pulling the towel off and tying the belt firmly at her slender waist. Her breasts were outlined against the silk material as she turned to face him.