She held up a hand. “If you must know, I’ve been dealing with your friends’ wives.” She whisked out of his hold and backed away, already unbuttoning her gown. “Go to your room—I’ll follow as soon as I’ve changed.”
He hesitated.
She got the impression he wanted to help her with her gown, but wasn’t sure he trusted himself. She waved him off. “Go! I’ll get there sooner if you do.”
“All right.” He turned to the door. “I’ll be waiting.”
The door shut soundlessly behind him just as she recalled she should have warned him not to undress.
“Damn!” Wrestling with her laces, she hurried even faster.
He was not happy. The last weeks had crawled by without any real satisfaction.
It had taken Lady Ashton longer than he’d expected to get here, and then, instead of creating any difficulty for Royce—not even the slightest scene—the damned woman had, so it appeared, accepted her congé without even a tantrum—not even a decent sulk!
That was one thing. Her rejection of him was quite another.
Seething, he stalked out of the west wing into the deeper shadows of the keep’s gallery. He’d gone to her room assuming that, as Royce had declined to share her bed—a fact she’d made light of when, at his subtle prod, Susannah had asked—then the delectable Lady Ashton would be amenable to entertaining him. She had a mouth he’d fantasized about using ever since Royce’s interest had focused his attention on her.
Instead, the lovely countess hadn’t let him past her door. She’d pleaded a migraine and stated her intention of leaving the next day as necessitating a good night’s sleep.
He ground his teeth. To be fobbed off with such transparent and paltry excuses made his blood boil. He’d intended to return to his room for a stiff brandy, but he needed something more potent than alcohol to burn away the memory of Lady Ashton’s blank politeness.
She’d looked at him, and coolly dismissed him as unworthy to take Royce’s place.
To rid himself of the vision, he needed something to replace it. Something like the image of Susannah—Royce’s favorite sister—on her knees before him. With him looking down at her, first from the front, then from the rear, as she serviced him,
If he pushed her hard, she might just be able to make him forget the countess.
Imagining doing to Royce’s sister what he’d planned to do to Royce’s mistress, he crossed the gallery. Susannah’s room was in the east wing.
He was passing one of the deep embrasures slotted into the keep’s walls when the sound of a door hurriedly opening had him instinctively sidestepping into the deeper shadows and halting.
Silently he waited for whoever it was to pass.
Light footsteps came pattering along the runner—a woman, hurrying.
She passed the opening of the embrasure; a glint of moonlight tangled in her hair. Minerva.
Seeing her hurrying about wasn’t surprising, even late at night. Seeing her rush off in her nightgown, swinging a light cloak about her shoulders, was.
He’d been walking back from the countess’s rooms for some minutes; in the pervasive silence he would have heard if any of the staff had knocked on Minerva’s door.
He slipped out of the embrasure and followed at a distance, stopped breathing when she turned down the short corridor that led to the ducal apartments. He reached the corner in time to peer around and see her open the door leading into Royce’s sitting room.
It shut silently behind her.
Despite the obvious implications, he couldn’t quite believe it. So he waited. Waited for her to emerge with Royce, having summoned him to deal with some emergency…
In her nightgown?
Barging into Royce’s bedroom?
A clock somewhere tolled the quarter hour; he’d been standing there watching the door for over fifteen minutes. Minerva wasn’t coming out.
She was the reason Royce had dismissed the countess.
“Well, well, well, well, well.” Lips curving, he slowly turned and walked on to Susannah’s room.
Eighteen
Minerva paused just inside Royce’s sitting room to drag in a breath and steady her nerves.
A shadow across the room shifted. Her senses flared.
He emerged from the dimness, the shadows sliding away; he’d dispensed with his coat, waistcoat, and cravat, and was barefoot, but still had his shirt and trousers on. He set down the empty glass he carried on a side table. He didn’t actually growl, “About time,” but the sentiment invested every stride as he stalked toward her.
“Ah…” She grabbed her sliding wits and hauled them back, raised her hands to ward him off.
He reached for her, but not as she expected. His hands clamped about her head, angled it as he swooped and captured her lips with his.
The searing kiss overwhelmed all thought, submerged every last vestige of rationality beneath a scorching tide of desire. Of passion unleashed; the flames licked about them, crackling and hungry.
She was, as always, drawn into the sheer wonder of being wanted so blatantly, in this way, to this degree. His hands locked about her head, with his mouth, lips, and tongue, he claimed, possessed—and poured so much raw need, unfettered passion, and unrestrained desire into her, through her, that, swamped, submerged, instantly aroused, she swayed.
Her hands flattened on his chest; through the fine linen of his shirt she felt his heat and hardness. Unrelenting, demanding, commanding—she felt all he was beckon and lure. Sensed through her touch and the grip of his hands that amazing though it seemed he wanted her with an even greater passion than he had the night before.
Far from waning, a hunger gradually sated, his appetite—and hers—only grew. Escalated, deepened.
Fingers curling in his shirt, she kissed him back—an equal participant in the outrageously explicit kiss. If he never seemed able to get enough of her, she felt the same about him.
The thought reminded her of what she needed from the night. What more she wanted of him. The others had given her directions, not instructions. She knew what she had to achieve, had known she would have to improvise.
So how?
Before she could think, he released her head and drew his hands outward, letting her hair flow through his long fingers. Her cloak slipped from her shoulders, sliding down to puddle in a heap behind her. He broke from the kiss, reached for her body—and she’d run out of planning time.
“No!” Stepping back, palm braced on his chest, she tried to hold him off.
He halted, looked at her.
“I want to lead. For this dance, I want you to let me lead.”
That was the critical point—he had to let her. Had to accept the passive role instead of the dominant, had to willingly relinquish the reins and let her drive.
He’d never shared the reins—not truly. He’d allowed her to explore, but it had always been a permission granted, time and duration limited, all subject to his rule. He was a marcher lord, a king in his domains; she’d never expected anything else from him.
But tonight she was asking—demanding—that he not just share, but cede her his crown. For tonight, in his room, in his bed.
Royce understood very well what she was asking. Something he’d never granted to any other—and never would grant, not even to her, if he had a choice. But it wasn’t hard to guess from whom she’d got the idea, nor what, in her mind and theirs, it meant. What they thought his capitulation would mean.
And they were right.
Which meant he had no choice. Not if he wanted her to wear his duchess’s coronet.
Desire had already locked his features; he felt them grow harder, felt his jaw tighten as he held her gaze—and forced himself to nod. “All right.”
She blinked—he had to stop himself from scooping her up anyway and carrying her to his bed. He could rip away her wits, and her determination, but that way lay failure. This was a test—one he had to take. Easing back, he stretched his arms to either side. “So wh
at now?”
A more cerebral part of him was intrigued to see what she would do.
Sensing his underlying challenge, she narrowed her eyes, then grabbed one hand, swung on her heel, and towed him into his bedroom.
His gaze locked on her hips, swaying naked beneath the near translucent poplin of an amazingly prim white nightgown. None of her nightgowns rated as provocative, but this one, with its long, gathered sleeves and high collar, closed all the way up to her chin with tiny buttons, seemed extreme—and erotic.
Because he knew the body inside the gown so well, the nunlike outer casing only spurred his imagination in picturing what it concealed.
She led him to the foot of his bed.
Releasing him, wordlessly she pushed until he stood with his back to the bed, his thighs against the mattress’s edge. She positioned him in the center of the four-poster, then grasped one arm, raised and slapped his palm to the ornately carved post on that side.
“Hold that. Don’t let go.”
She did the same with his other arm, setting that hand, too, level with his shoulder, against the other carved post. The bed was wide, but his shoulders were broad, his arms long; he could reach both posts easily.
She stepped back, assessed, nodded. “Good. That will do.”
For what? He was utterly intrigued over what she was planning. For all his experience, he’d never considered anything from a woman’s perspective; it was a novel, and unexpectedly arousing experience, arousing in an unusual way.
He’d been aroused from the moment he’d closed his hands about her head, painfully so once his lips had found hers; he would have taken her against the door in his sitting room if she hadn’t stopped him. Although she had, courtesy of her peculiar direction, the fire in his blood hadn’t died.
She trapped his eyes. “Under no circumstance are you to let go of the posts—not until I give you leave.”
Turning, she walked away from him, and the fires inside him burned brighter.
He tracked her across the room, aware of his hunger growing. Curiosity balanced it to some degree, let him wait with some semblance of patience.
Crossing to where he’d slung his clothes on a chair, she shifted things, then straightened; because of the sharp contrast between the shadows cloaking the room and the brilliance of the shaft of moonlight beaming like a searchlight on him, he couldn’t make out what she held in her hands until she drew near.
His cravat. Two yards of white linen. Instinctively he shifted his weight to his toes, about to step away from the bed.
She halted, caught his eye—waited.
He eased back, gripped the posts more firmly.
She uttered a small “humph,” and walked down the side of the bed. The covers rustled as she climbed up, then came silence. She was on the bed a little way behind him, doing something; her gaze wasn’t on him. “I forgot to mention—you aren’t allowed to speak. No words. This is my script, and there are no lines for you.”
He inwardly snorted. He rarely used words in this arena; actions spoke louder.
Then she moved closer behind him. He sensed her rising high on her knees; her breath brushed his ear when she murmured, “I think this might be easier if you.” He sensed her arms rising over his head. “Can’t.” His cravat, folded to a narrow band, appeared before his face. “See.”
She settled the band over his eyes, then wound the long strip multiple times around his head before tying it off at the back.
A cravat made a damned fine blindfold. The material sank across his eyes; he couldn’t lift his lids at all.
Effectively blind, his other senses instinctively expanded, heightened.
She spoke by his ear. “Remember—no speaking, and no releasing the posts.”
Her scent. The brush of her breath across his earlobe. Inwardly he smiled cynically. How was she going to remove his shirt?
She slid from the bed, and came to stand before him. The subtle beckoning heat of her. Her light perfume. The more primitive, more evocative, infinitely more arousing fragrance of her—the one scent he hungered for most strongly, that of his woman aroused and ready for him.
He’d had that taste on his tongue; it was imprinted on his brain.
Every muscle hardened. His erection grew even more rigid.
She was two feet away. With his hands locked on the posts, she was out of his reach.
“Hmm. Where to start?”
At his waistband, then head down.
“Perhaps with the most obvious.” She stepped into him, plastered her body against his, drew his head down, and kissed him.
She hadn’t told him he couldn’t kiss her back. He ravaged her mouth, seized a first taste of what he ached for.
For one heady moment, she clung, caught, helpless, in the passion he’d unleashed, her body instinctively sinking against his, yielding, promising to ease the ache in his groin, offering pleasure and earthly delight…
He sensed her find her feet, digging in so she could stand against him. On a gasp, she wrenched back. Broke the kiss.
Unable to see, he couldn’t follow and reinstate the exchange.
She was breathing rapidly. “You’re hungry.”
An indisputable fact.
He smothered a growl as her body left his, clenched his jaw to quell the impulse to seize her and haul her back.
From his shoulders, her hands trailed slowly down, over his chest, over his abdomen, provocatively assessing. One paused at his waist; the other continued on, to, through his trousers, outline his erection, fingers tracing across the broad head before her palm flattened, warm and supple, over the throbbing length.
“Impressive.” She gripped, then removed her hand.
He bit back a hiss. His fingers sank into the posts’ carving.
“Wait.”
She left him, got back on the bed behind him; her hands gripped the back of his shirt at his waist, yanked it free of his waistband. Without freeing the sides or front, she slid her hands under the fabric, pressed her palms to his back.
Ran them—slowly—over him.
Over his back, up and over his shoulders, around and across his chest. The peaks of her breasts rode against his shirt-clad back. Her knees bracketed his hips.
She was still fully covered. So was he, yet with his sight gone and his other senses alive, her blatantly possessive caresses seemed infinitely erotic.
He was a slave and she his mistress, intent on possessing him for the first time. He sucked in a deep breath, chest swelling under her hands. Splayed, one on either side, she ran them slowly down from upper chest to waist.
They hovered for a long moment.
She drew back, warm palms and fingers trailing back over his sensitized skin, withdrawing from under the fall of his shirt, now hanging loose all around him.
Blind, he turned his head the better to sense her.
Noting the movement, Minerva smiled; sinking back on her ankles, she picked at the side seam of his shirt. “Did you know that the best tailors always use weak thread in their shirt seams, so if the shirt catches or tugs, the seam gives rather than the material?”
He stilled. She gave an experimental tug; the seam gave with a satisfying sound. Tugging, she opened the side and sleeve seams to the laces at his cuffs. The laces undone, with a wrench she had one side of the shirt hanging free.
She repeated the exercise on the other side, then swung off the bed and sauntered up before him. She flicked the hanging ends of the shirt. “I wonder what Trevor will think when he sees this.”
Decidedly pleased, she unknotted the loose laces at his throat. Excitement flashed through her as she lifted both hands, found the front center seam. “Now, let’s see…” She ripped.
The shirt parted all the way down the front.
“Oh, yes.” Eyes feasting on his bared chest, she let the ruined halves fall to frame the heavily muscled expanse. Bathed in silvery moonlight, every powerful ripple and curve sheened, every line of bone was gilt-edged.
He breathed in, muscles tensing. His hands gripped harder.
Slowly she circled and climbed up on the bed again. Close behind him on her knees, she caught the shirt at the shoulders, drew it back and off, tossed it on the floor.
Although his back was in shadow, there was light enough to see. The long muscles, the supple, powerful planes, the quintessentially male sculpture rendered in muscle and bone and hot taut skin. She traced each feature. His tension built. Pressing against his back, she touched her lips to his shoulder, trailed her fingers around and reached for his waistband.
His stomach pulled in, letting her fingers slide past the band as she slipped the buttons free.
Lips curving against his shoulder, she drew the halves of the front placket wide, releasing his erection; careful not to touch, she grasped his trousers, edged them over his hips, down his thighs until they fell to the floor.
Leaving his body displayed naked in the moonlight, arms wide, muscles bunched as he gripped the posts. The only thing he still wore was the blindfold.
Drawing breath through lungs suddenly tight, placing both palms on his shoulders, she stroked slowly down, following the long muscles bracketing his spine to the slope of his rear; pivoting her hands over the tight cheeks, she slid them still farther, pressing against the mattress to reach and caress as far as she could down his thighs.
His head tipped back; his breath shuddered.
Retrieving her hands, she gripped the sides of his waist, eased her thighs wide, fitted herself against his back. Her cheek to one shoulder blade, she sent her hands around, down; lids falling, she found his erection, closed her hand about the rigid length.
He breathed out, short, sharp, as she squeezed and released. With her other hand, she reached further, caressed his heavy testicles, cradled them, fondled.
Royce’s lungs locked tight, his body as rigid as his erection as she worked him with one hand, with the other weighed his balls, assessed, played. The sense of possession escalated. Head back, he gritted his teeth against a curse.
He’d felt nothing like this. Ever before. Sight cut off, he was functioning on touch, and imagination. Her lascivious acts conjured the image of a sultry, sirenlike seductress who owned him. Who could make free with his body as she wished, with total impunity.