Desperate Duchesses

  She cleared her throat.

  “Yes?” His fingers slid forward again.

  It felt so good—too good. She jumped to her feet. “My turn to draw a piece!” She sat down hurriedly, avoiding his eyes. He uncoiled himself, leaning forward, all taut male muscle. She snatched a piece and then stared down at it.

  His hand plucked the piece from her fingers. “Another double four,” he said. His eyes smiled at her, and suddenly that melting feeling Roberta felt from the touch of his fingers was there, even without being touched. She blinked at him.

  “You’re going to have to make a spinner,” he said. Quietly. As if it were an ordinary invitation.

  Roberta looked him over. In the candlelight, Damon was all golden skin and shifting muscles. Her father always said there was only one reason to act impetuously: if she really wanted something. Roberta had heaped scorn on her father’s maxim, given that following his whims was so frequently antithetical to the mores of polite society.

  But now she saw the wisdom of it all.

  What she wanted was to lose her inconvenient virginity to Damon. Then she would marry Villiers and embark on a life of reckless sophistication. But at the moment…

  “I can see that you are likely shy,” she said.

  “I am?”

  “It’s difficult to expose yourself for the first time.”

  “The first…”

  She was standing up, and his voice trailed into silence. First she pulled off her stockings. They dropped to the ground, frail and silken, with a gleam like trapped sunshine. Damon’s eyes followed them with some fascination, she thought.

  She waited until he met her eye again, and then slowly, slowly, she began unlacing the front of her gown.

  He didn’t move. In fact, he looked as frozen as a man might be who was trying to lure a fawn into eating from his hand. But Roberta didn’t feel like a fawn. She felt like a powerful woman doing exactly as she wished. Her bodice gaped open as she bent to pick up her glass.

  He turned slightly red. Roberta took a drink and surreptitiously checked his breeches…yes. He was interested. Very, if that look in his eye were any indication. She bent to put her glass down again, thought about kissing him, and decided that she might as well get rid of her gown first. So she gave an easy roll of her shoulders.

  It fell to the ground, all embroidered silk and gold lace. “It was heavy,” she told him. He didn’t look as if he would disagree; his eyes were eating her up.

  “Those stays are heavy as well,” he said.

  “They lace in the back.” She turned around and waited.

  He must have leaped to his feet, because she heard a bang, as if he knocked against the table, and then his long, clever fingers were at her back. She held the stays against her and turned around before she let them fall to the floor. The bodice of her chemise was extremely low, the better to accommodate the neckline of her gown. In fact, it barely covered her nipples at all. And it was made of fine lawn edged in lace.

  “Your next move would surely be a spinner,” Damon said. His voice was smoky, almost sleepy. He pulled his breeches down and put them away.

  Roberta was afraid to look. Her heart was thudding against her ribs, dancing a rhythm that she hardly knew and yet recognized with an age-old wisdom. That same wisdom was in her smile as she put her arms around his neck and then, still without looking, brought her body against his.

  He made a muffled sound, like a groan, and his lips were in her hair and his hands were against her back.

  “Buttercup,” he whispered, “there’s no going back from this. You do realize that, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” she said. She’d discovered his ear and was doing exactly what he’d done to hers earlier: kissing it and then, daringly, touching him with her tongue.

  “No,” he said, and put her away.

  Roberta grinned at him. He was having male scruples, no doubt. She’d watched her father wrestle with those for years, and in her opinion, the wrestling always ended up in the same way: her father did exactly what he wanted to. Her job was to make sure that Damon wanted to do exactly what she wanted.

  So she lifted her arms and started pulling pins from her hair. It had been coiled and curled and pinned all over. She pulled pin after pin, and he said nothing. Finally her hair tumbled beyond her shoulders. She bent over and gave it a good shake to get rid of the powder.

  Damon stared at Roberta’s sweet little bottom as she bent over and had the feeling of a man drowning—with nary a soul to throw him a life buoy. Kissing Roberta was one thing…but her virginity? He’d never done such a thing.

  He could only do it if he were intending to marry her.

  But she didn’t want to hear that yet. She was giggling, and the sound went to his heart and his blood sang with joy.

  She was his, whether she wished to acknowledge it or not.

  Roberta straightened up and turned around. Dark red curls tumbled all over her bare arms, but it was those crazy arching eyebrows and dark plump lips that caught his heart. No one could say that she looked innocent. Hell, after growing up with Selina, she probably knew more about bedding than he did.

  Except…he remembered the stunned look on her face when they walked in on that couple tupping in the sitting room.

  She was an enchanting mixture of innocence and sophistication.

  “I shouldn’t do this,” he said, knowing the truth of it. “It’s not right, Roberta.”

  “What’s not right?”

  “Bedding you. I can’t do this. I can’t take your virginity when you’re not married, and you’re in love with someone else, even engaged to him.”

  Her eyes turned a shade darker blue and Damon instinctually felt that was a bad sign.

  “Why?” she demanded. “Do you think that you’re taking advantage of me?”

  “You don’t understand the ways of the ton. Hell, your father was crazy to let you come to Jemma’s house. She’s no fit person to take care of a young woman. She’s married, Roberta. Married. And playing chess with—” Too late he remembered that Jemma was playing chess with Roberta’s fiancé.

  She had her hands on her hips. “Jemma, whom I adore, by the way, and am not in the least jealous of, is playing chess with Villiers. To whom I am engaged to marry. Villiers told me that my chastity was unattractive, and that he didn’t give a damn who I had slept with, as long as I don’t give him a cuckoo to raise. Damon, do you know how to prevent conception?”

  “Yes,” he said, “but—”

  “Good. Because so do I, but my understanding is that male participation makes it much more effective.”

  His mouth fell open. “You know?”

  “Selina lived with us from the time I was fourteen to the time I was sixteen. I loved her. She gave me a great deal of advice, sister to sister.”

  He snapped his mouth shut. “You had sisterly conversations with Selina Trimmer.” He wrenched his mind away from the Tête-à-Tête report of Selina’s latest party, in which it was reported that she had filled her bathtub with vintage champagne and invited several guests to watch her bathe. It was also reported that two of them joined her in the tub.

  “Do you need some education?” Roberta demanded, hands on her hips.

  “What did you learn?” He shook his head. “Forget I asked that. The point is, Roberta, not how much you learned from Selina, but how much I would take away from you by making love to you.”

  “Perhaps you’re right,” she said. “You’re practically a family member, after all.”

  “Yes! Your cousin.”

  “I shall find someone else,” she said. “In case it isn’t clear to you, Damon, I shall not be carrying my inconvenient virginity to bed with Villiers. After all, I’m in love. I wouldn’t bore my husband with such a task, and if you don’t feel like taking it on, there’s no point in crying over it. I shall simply find another man who is more eager.”

  Damon almost laughed at that. He’d never felt so damned eager to do anything in his life.
In fact—

  She was laughing at him. Still a little angry, but laughing. Christ, she was magnificent. Her chemise was of fine lawn, and it barely skimmed her leg, stopping just above her rounded kneecap.

  “You go to another man only when I’m dead.”

  She clearly didn’t realize that he’d just declared himself. “I realize that you are used to women tripping over themselves, trying to woo you into marriage,” she said, eyes sparkling. “But don’t you understand that I’m not like them? I don’t want your ring, or your money, or your title.”

  “Because you have Villiers.” Saying his name aloud steadied Damon.

  She nodded. “You need to understand that. I’m a terribly hard-headed woman, and I always have been. You can ask my father. I knew the moment that I saw Villiers that I wanted to marry him.”

  “Why?” He had to ask. “And don’t say because you’re in love. I’m not a big believer in love at first sight, and I’m not entirely sure that you are either.”

  “It doesn’t matter how you put it,” she said. “I look at Villiers and I know exactly what sort of marriage we will have, and it’s exactly the sort I want to be involved in. He is controlled.”

  “Controlled?” Damon was stunned. “You’re marrying Villiers because he’s controlled?”

  “He will never embarrass me. He will never launch into gushing flights of emotion. He will never write a poem to my toe, or any other part of my body. He will never weep.”

  “Well, you’re right about that,” Damon said. “It could be your funeral, and Villiers would just stand there with that snarling little smile of his.”

  She walked over to him and put a hand on his arm. She didn’t even seem to feel the slightest bit of embarrassment at being in her chemise, nor at the fact that he was next thing to naked. She truly wasn’t a normal virgin. Whatever that was. “Villiers is right for me. And I am lucky that he recognized the same in me. We will be an excellent match and I think we’ll live together happily for years.”

  Damon’s teeth were so tightly clenched he thought he might break his jaw. “Fine,” he managed. “Married bliss. I see it. You and Villiers will get old together except—hold on a moment!—he’s already old, so I guess you’ll be a happy widow.”

  Her eyes turned a dark navy again, and every bit of native caution he had in his body warned him that was an even worse sign.

  He was right.

  “You’re an ass. I have no idea why you are being such an ass, but I’ve learned over the years that men are impossible to understand, and so I shan’t try to fathom you. There’s something I want from you, Damon.”

  His mouth went dry. “There is?” Every inch of his body knew exactly what she wanted, and those same inches were straining to satisfy her.

  With one swift gesture, she pulled her chemise right over her head and tossed it to the side. Then she looked at him, and for just one moment, there was a flash of uncertainty in those beautiful eyes of hers.

  That was enough. Every ethical sense that Damon had in his entire body melted like sugar in hot water.

  “You’re sure, Buttercup?” He had her in his hands when he said it, his palms sliding over her round derrière.

  “I choose you for my first experience with men,” Roberta said, sounding far too logical for the moment.

  He almost said something about her first man being her last, but he caught it back. She didn’t want to hear it yet. She was hanging onto the dream of a controlled marriage.

  Obviously, it was up to him to teach her the bliss of losing control.

  He shut the thought off and dragged her against his chest. Little Miss Inexperienced Know-It-All was about to find out what it was like to actually sleep with a man, as opposed to talk about it.

  Chapter 30

  He had spread out the huge silk skirts of her gown and put her on it, but she wouldn’t stay there. She was supposed to lie back and let him gently introduce her to the fruits of pleasure while she trembled and shrieked, “No, no!” In fact, experienced matrons had done that on occasion, because he was the kind of man who thought that every inch of a woman tasted good.

  But Roberta?

  She did squeal, and even squeak, but he hadn’t heard a single “No, no.” Sometimes he couldn’t understand exactly what she was saying, but it sounded an awful lot like “Yes!”

  So he let a bit more guilt slip away from him, and turned back to nuzzling her breast. What she liked best was when he sucked her nipples into his mouth. He kept doing that, and then pulling back and shaping her breasts in his hands, and even giving her little bites, and nibbles, until she was all calmed down—of course, he wasn’t; he’d never been harder in his life—and then he would suckle her again and her back would rise just like that, and she would start gasping and crying. He didn’t even want to think about what would happen when he made his way down her body.

  He was sliding his fingers there now, slowly because so often ladies didn’t want to be touched, or rather, they had no idea what they wanted.

  But he wasn’t getting much resistance from Roberta. He slid his fingers a bit lower, flicking her nipple with his tongue so that she didn’t notice what he was doing. But then she shocked him because one of her beautiful slim legs slid up and she sobbed, “Damon,” and her knee fell open.

  And if that wasn’t an invitation?

  Damon was a man who considered making love to be a work of art. You prepared the canvas (kisses) and then threw on some background (special attention to certain parts of the body) and then you painted the main event. With your brush, ha ha.

  In other words, he never made love without generous attention to the woman, and in general he believed that she should come before he did.

  Which must be why he found himself absolutely mad in this case, unable to stop himself. Because Roberta had the sweetest, reddest, most—

  He couldn’t stop himself. He couldn’t. He was poised over her and she curled up against him with a little puffing wail of desire and even though he was a man who never came before the woman…

  He did.

  He thrust where no man had been. Into her plump sweetness, and the only thing he had enough self-possession to do was rub a thumb over her breasts at the same time.

  Her eyes got huge, but he wasn’t thinking, he couldn’t think. His entire body was concentrated on the most glorious sensation of his life, on the sleekest, wettest, tightest experience of his life—

  She wasn’t saying “yes,” anymore, but Damon didn’t know it. He threw his head back and plunged forward a few times, almost sobbing at the exquisiteness of it. It was all too much, though, and he came with a muffled groan wrenched from his chest.

  He collapsed on top of her but managed to catch most of his weight on his elbows. “Oh God”—he was babbling—“you were—that was—Roberta, are you all right? I’m sorry.” She didn’t look angry, just kind of perplexed. “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?” he said, feeling a rush of protectiveness and affection such as he’d never experienced before. “You’ll see, Roberta. Just let me have a moment to gather my strength and next time you’ll…see…”

  He closed his eyes to recover his strength.

  Roberta St. Giles found herself lying next to a sleeping man.

  She looked down at herself. There was no sign of blood, which was reassuring. She’d heard various stories about gushing blood and then the opposite, from Selina, who told her that women over the age of twelve never felt a thing.

  “Surely not—under twelve?” she had asked. There was something closed about Selina’s face that didn’t allow her to finish that question.

  Roberta sat up. Her body had a faint tingling sensation about it still. The whole experience was quite interesting, really. She looked down at Damon. He was peacefully sleeping.

  She was no longer a virgin. That statement meant about as much to her as she had thought it would. Virginity, like many things connected to men, was obviously vastly over-rated. And frankly, so wa
s sexual intimacy.

  No wonder Villiers didn’t care if she’d had previous experiences. It was all a matter of a minute at most. Yet there was something alarmingly intimate about it, for all its speed.

  Damon’s shoulder, for example. He was lying on his side, and his shoulder had a beautiful curve. She ran a finger along it. What she wanted now was a bath. There was a sticky feeling between her legs that she disliked. And, in truth, the experience wasn’t entirely comfortable. In fact, she likely wouldn’t do it again until marriage.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, touching his face. The angle of his cheek was beautiful. For a moment she thought about kissing him again; somehow, he’d started touching her breasts, and they’d never really kissed, and that was her favorite part of it all.

  But if she kissed him, he might wake up. And though it was kind of him to offer, she didn’t feel like doing that again.

  So instead she teased her gown out from under his body, holding her breath when he seemed as if he might wake up. When she got it free, she stood up and wrapped the gown around her like an enormous towel.

  The servants in her father’s house had been used to all sorts of extraordinary behavior; she could only hope—and in truth, expect—that Jemma’s servants were equally imperturbable. There was one footman standing in the hallway, so she gave him a smile and sailed up the stairs.

  Once in her room she dropped her gown and rang the bell. Her maid appeared, looking rather sleepy, and quite surprised to find her mistress wearing a dressing gown. After all, she couldn’t have removed her stays by herself.

  “Ellen, I’ve left some of my clothing in the yellow sitting room,” Roberta said, not wasting breath on feeble explanations. “We should probably send someone to fetch it, but not yet.”

  Ellen nodded, showing that she was just as well trained as Roberta would have expected. “Would you like a bath, my lady?”

  “Absolutely,” Roberta said. “Thank you.”