"Thank you, Simmons. That will be all."
Percy had delivered the entire, complicated household litany of instructions without breaking eye contact with Eleanor. The look she returned was not exactly full of desire, but intense. They stood just so without speaking until all sounds of the household faded and they were indeed alone in the duke's fashionable Mayfair townhouse.
Finally, he felt safe to speak. "What brings you out so early, Captain?"
"You know why I'm here, you snake of the lowest form of vermin on earth."
That answered his question. She was not in his house to beg his forgiveness and continue their glorious, heated love affair. "I have no idea of what you could possibly be upset about. I've done nothing, I've said nothing."
"Then what in the name of all that's holy isthis?" She slapped him hard in the face with one of the wretched gossip sheets he so detested.
He hung his head. "I'm sorry, Eleanor. I have not read the thing. Could you please give me a shortened version so that we can mend whatever damage has been done?"
"There you go, the high and mighty haughty duke and darling of the ton. You want me to give you the shortened version as if I'm one of your servants? You think I'm one of you servants?" She reached behind her and produced and large, embossed copper pot he'd had imported from Italy to hold maps and other rolled up whatnot in his office.
She slung the heavy pot toward his head as if it weighed nothing. When it bounced off his forehead and shattered all the crystal tumblers on his tantalus, his anger began to smolder.
"Eleanor, I must ask you to stop and talk to me, like a civilized adult, not some savage pirate on the high seas."
"Oh, I'm a savage pirate now? I may be savage, but I certainly saved your worthless hide out there on the high seas where no one else would have come to your aid."
While she gave her impassioned speech, Percy reached behind him to retrieve his trusty umbrella where it was drying in a corner. He held it in front of him, and thrust it toward her like a sword. Another one of his many mistakes in their relationship.
She wrenched his "weapon" from his grip and used the heavy carved handle to batter him mercilessly until he was forced out into the hallway. When he turned to run toward the lower level kitchen at the rear of the townhouse, she followed, raining fierce blows to his back and neck with the damned umbrella.
* * *
El nearly stumbledand half fell down the last few steps to the lower-level kitchen in Percy's townhouse. Her momentary falter was all Percy needed to tear the umbrella from her grip and fling it into the pantry. While knelt over to catch her breath, he nimbly raced to the row of gleaming pottery stored on shelves near the basement level windows.
He grabbed one of the larger ones whilst she crept to the huge sharpening spinner that currently held all of the wicked sharp knives in his kitchen. She curved her lips in a smile just before he hurled the large bowl toward her head. When she ducked behind open shelves full of cooling pies, the bowl crashed into a cherry pie instead. The dark red filling shot out of the warm crust and covered her, making her look as though she'd been slashed by a mad man.
Percy yelped, and El let out a shriek. She knew he'd think he'd slashed her with his inane pottery toss, and she wasn't about to disabuse him of the notion. He rushed to her side as she'd known he would and when he was close enough to touch, she slashed the back of his hand with the knife she'd grabbed and jumped back as quick as a cat and ran to the far, shaded side of the kitchen where cheeses lay in bowls covered by linen, the better to age. Knowing they were still in the soggy, pliable stage, she grabbed a handful from one bowl and pitched the gluey mess toward his head. The cheese made a direct hit, covering his eyes and blinding him momentarily whilst he worked to wipe off the mess.
She used the seconds gained to race back to the sharpening wheel to find a cleaver. But Percy was faster and slammed his body onto the floor a split second before she expertly threw the cleaver, only to have it slam into the wall behind where he'd been standing seconds before.
Instead of assuming the she-cat still had any feelings at all for him, he suddenly had an epiphany. She was actually going to kill him this time. He reached the knife sharpener at the same second she selected a long butchering knife. He grasped a second one without thinking, and then the two of them stood in the midst of broken crockery, stabbed walls, and the carnage of pie destruction. Each held a blazing sharp blade that could end the life of the other...and neither of the two blockheads were about to back down.
Even a slight rustling sound from the top of the darkened stairs back toward the main house failed to distract them. This was a fight to the death. There was no time to deal with an errant mouse invading the kitchen.
* * *
Percy wasthe first to throw down his knife. He now had some of the pie filling on his shirt which he ripped off to bare his chest to the only woman he'd ever be able to love...the only woman he'd everbeenable to love. He moved as close as he dared until the point of the knife she still brandished pricked at his skin and a small stream of blood trickled down to where dark blond hair showed just above his waist.
His cock apparently cared not whether Percy lived or died, because the damned appendage refused to lie down and wait for doom to arrive. No, his cock had decided to ride out to meet their fate, bobbing a welcome to the deadly, flaming haired attacker. Her curls had tumbled down out of whatever hairstyle she'd contrived earlier in the day and she looked like what he imagined the Amazons of old must have looked like to their victims just before they breathed their last breaths.
Instead of putting him out of his misery, she ripped off the bodice section of her dress, and then tore apart the remaining skirt. She knelt in front of him and carefully unbuttoned his trousers before taking his cock totally in her mouth and claiming a long, hard suck on the head.
He wished she'd get it over with and sink a knife into him then, because he didn't think he could survive much more of her idea of loving. His knees buckled before he reached down and roughly lifted her to him. He took a savage kiss before turning and sweeping all the broken pottery and utensils from the huge center table in the kitchen.
Percy lifted her up onto the table as if she weighed nothing, and then followed her onto the cold marble top. He covered her with his body even as she frantically pushed at his with her oh-so-clever fingers so that she could continue her own stubborn method of seduction.
He struggled with her until he'd sheathed himself fully into her quim. Eleanor gave a half-hearted angry grunt followed by something he could have sworn sounded like an angel's sigh. He'd never personally heard an angel sigh, of course, until that very moment. But now he'd never forget the sound.
Many hours later, when both of them were covered with sweat and pie filling, and night had fallen, Percy rallied to climb off the damned hard marble and find them tumblers of water, He lighted a candle and marveled at the angel ruling his kitchen from the marble-topped table.
"Marry me," he demanded suddenly.
"I could never be a duchess."
