Gayle Wilson - His Secret Duchess

Apparently, however, Mary Winters had no interest in his existence. Indeed, she seemed to be totally unaware that such an illustrious figure as Lieutenant Colonel Lord Nicholas Stanton had deigned to grace her father’s simple parish church that morning. And so, of course, motivated at first simply by boredom and his enforced inactivity, Nick set out to change that situation.

In the next few weeks, his father grew suspicious of Nick’s desire to attend service. The duke began to fear that the recently passed dangers of his wound or the disastrous influence of some Methodist evangelist might be responsible for his son’s unprecedented religious zeal.

It did not, however, take Vail long to realize that something more in keeping with Nick’s normal temperament had occurred. He had only to focus his lorgnette in the direction the straightforward gray gaze took each Sunday to find that the object of Nick’s devotion was not the promise of celestial paradise, but something more tangible, more earthly, and far more apt to cause trouble. He spoke sternly to his son and was surprised by the tenor of his answer.

“Trifle with her?” Nick repeated, incredulous at his father’s fear. “Good God, sir, look at her. Who would dare to trifle with Mary Winters?”

Recognizing the serenity of spirit and the cool intelligence in the girl’s blue eyes, attributes that Lord Stanton had already acknowledged, the duke was forced to agree.

“Mary,” Nick whispered finally, more plea than protest. But her lips lingered only a heart-shattering moment longer over the coarse hair that arrowed toward his achingly responsive body. He closed his eyes tightly at the sudden desertion of her mouth, knowing that her retreat was far wiser than his acquiescence had been.

Having spent three years on the battlefields of the Iberian Peninsula, he had come to find Mary today, well aware that he might never see her again, might never be allowed to make her his. Even now, he should be on his way to rejoin his regiment He had told her three hours, and under the untutored tenderness of her slender hands and the sweetness of her lips, those moments had slipped away, melting from his possession like snow in summer.

He lay, eyes still closed, listening to the sounds of approaching evening, the coo of the doves, the rising breeze disturbing the stillness of the leaves above his head, all the while desperately trying to will his body back to control.

“Nick,” Mary said softly, her voice coming from above him now. He opened his eyes, and then, despite the knowledge that there was only madness in the act, he found himself unable to close them again, unable to deny what she offered.

Mary had lowered the bodice of her gown and her chemise, holding the soft muslin protectively over her breasts with her fingers, the stains at their tips almost startling next to the pale delicacy of the fabric. Her eyes held his, her lips unsmiling, a tangle of dark curls over the bare ivory of her shoulders.

Then, as he watched, she lowered the garments, exposing for him the flawless perfection of her breasts. He lay unmoving, his breath stopped by wonder. Slowly, her eyes never leaving his, she raised the fingers of her right hand and placed them under one rose-tipped peak, her thumb stroking downward over the swell of smooth skin.

He was not aware of consciously directing the movement that brought his mouth to replace her trembling fingers. It was not planned or ordered by his brain. Something far more primitive was responsible for the placement of his lips over that small captive. Her breath shivered out against his hair, stirring in the golden softness, sobbing with the movement of his tongue, drawn slowly over and then around the nipple she had so trustingly given to his worship.

She hadn’t known that his mouth would feel like this, hot and moist and demanding, his teeth teasing the hardened bud his tongue created. Something was happening inside her body, moving, too, reaching toward him now, as her breast had sought out his caress. Unfamiliar and unknown, it responded to the incredible sensations of his mouth suckling the sensitive area no man’s eyes had ever seen before. No one but Nick. She was his, and it was right that he know before he left.

His tongue floated across the valley between her suddenly aching breasts, her heart fluttering underneath its heat and moisture, the trail it left branded on her skin by the very air. Her hands held his head, pulling it down against her chest, wanting his touch inside, where she ached. She made no protest when he turned her, laying her gently on his cloak, the coarseness of the wool against her bare back.

He leaned above her, propped on his elbow, the gray eyes studying the slender body before him. He touched the base of her throat, finding the small pulse. His long fingers were dark against her paleness, hard and callused against the soft translucence of her skin. They feathered lower, until, as hers had earlier, they stroked over the rose nipple that centered the milk-white globe.

Watching his eyes, she put her hands on his shoulders to urge him downward until the golden hair on his chest grazed over her too-sensitive flesh. Instinctively he moved above her, never allowing the hard muscles to contact her softness, choosing instead to torture them both, almost touching and then not, so close she could feel the heat of his skin beneath the softly tantalizing brush of hair.

It was not until her small hips arched upward into his, shockingly intimate, that he allowed his arms to close around her, locking her against the straining wall of his chest. She arched again, her body into his, demanding, this and more. Far more than she knew. Far more than he had ever intended. But not more than she wanted. And now, more than he could deny.

Her fingers, caught between their bodies, found, as he held her, the flap of his trousers, and frantic with need, she sought to free him from their restraint.

“Mary,” he said, his voice denying, but she didn’t listen.

He was leaving, and she, too, knew the dangers he’d face. Hers was a conscious decision, undeterred by all she had been taught, by all that she had truly believed until the reality of his danger intruded. Nick was hers, and her body demanded the fulfillment of that ownership, despite the denial of society’s mores, of her religion. This was hers and his. And might never be again.

She touched the unfamiliar contours of his body, desperate, urging him to finish what they had begun. What could no longer be denied.

“Mary,” he whispered again, his voice hoarse and agonized with need, with want, with pain.

“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes.”

Again, her small hands entreated. Country-bred, she had no sophistication and no longer any hesitancy. She could taste the salt on his skin as the strong brown column of his neck rested over her lips. And finally, after she had touched him a long time, his hands joined hers to help with what she sought, to guide and to direct.

The air was shocking against her uncovered body, cold and invasive, but she wanted it, as she wanted the invasion that followed. Painful and tearing. She gasped her shock into the shoulder that strained against her mouth and heard his voice again whisper her name.

He turned his cheek against her face, the slight roughness of his beard burning her skin, his movements frenzied and uncontrolled. His hips drove above her a long time, and from within her pain, from its dark center, something began to form, to open like the tight-furled bud of a rose releasing into the afternoon’s sun.

She wasn’t sure of the feeling at first, at the edge of pain, and then beyond discomfort. Into something else. Pulsing and growing at the heart of his body’s driving caress. Expanding like the silk of the balloons she had watched them fill that summer in the London pleasure gardens. Filling with heat that couldn’t be denied, that couldn’t be contained by the pull of the earth’s gravity, until all at once, whatever had been there floated upward, soaring as the balloons had, out of her control.