Dorian’s lips brushed Rose’s face, her throat, the swell of her breasts. His hands ranged over the curves of her hips and bottom beneath the silken skirts. How could she have pursued Gillingham, who was clearly so incapable of appreciating any part of her, mind or body? The very thought offended him.
“Do you still hanker after the world of your romance novels?” he asked, his tongue flickering in Rose’s ear. “Do you still wish that some shy hero with hidden depths had swept you off your feet and carried you off on a white horse?”
His teeth pressed gently at Rose’s throat and she moaned at the back of her throat. Thinking of how she had marked him on their very first foray into sexual pleasure, Dorian was very temptedto return the favor at this moment. Part of him wanted Rose to know, wantedeveryoneto know, that she was his.
“This…what you do to me, is better than any romance novel,” Rose whispered. “Every time you touch me, I want more. I do not care for my old dreams and stories of love.”
“You want my body?” Dorian asked, his voice growing more ragged with each kiss he pressed onto her skin. “You want to be naked in my bed? You want to learn to play every game I can teach you?”
She nodded and then whimpered in mingled arousal and alarm as he unfastened and drew down the already low front of her dress, baring Rose’s breasts to the moonlight and cold air.
“Good, because you are mine, Rose. You are my wife. Do you understand?”
“I am yours,” she gasped as Dorian covered one breast with a large warm hand and then drew the other nipple into his mouth and caressed it with his tongue.
“My wife,” he said again, capturing her lips and raising her leg to his hip to caress her silken thigh under her skirts.
His hand felt softness, warmth and damp fur. Would Rose be wet for him already? A brush of his fingertips and sharp accompanying cry told him that she was. If only there weresomewhere to lay her down, or a wall to support her back, but there seemed to be only cold stone and glass.
Well, Rose was small enough that he could lower her onto his shaft and hold her there if she wrapped her legs around his waist…
“Here?” she asked tremulously. “Now?”
Dorian paused, recognizing that Rose’s shivering was from cold as well as desire and perceiving her vulnerability. She was young and these urges were new to her. Likely, Rose did not yet know how to refuse him when she should. Tenderness slowed his previous lust. He did not need to claim his wife now; he had only needed to be assured that he could.
Restoring her dress to a decent position, he took off his jacket and draped it around the shoulders of his duchess.
“No,” he said. “Later, at Ravenhill House, on a rug before a roaring fire, with all the time in the world.”
Rose smiled and embraced him.
“I am yours,” she said again, without reservation.
“Columbus is a good horse, isn't he?” commented the Duke of Ravenhill as he and the Duke of Ashbourne pulled up theirmounts on the other side of the river at the edge of the Ravenhill estate.
The breath of both men and beasts rose in white clouds in the freezing December air. In the few days since the Carforth ball, the temperature had fallen again and the ground was like iron.
“Very strong too,” Cassius Emerton agreed, patting the flank of the large white stallion he rode. “It felt like I was flying over that last jump.”
“I gave his sister Clio to Rose,” Dorian added conversationally, as they began to trot together along the river path. “Clio is strong too, but easier to control than Columbus. Rose had not done much riding before she came here, but now she is quite the horsewoman.”
“Is that so?” Cassius asked with a smile and a raised eyebrow.
Dorian laughed heartily and shook his head.
“I was speaking literally, Cassius. You know I do not talk like that about my women, not even to my oldest friends.”
“I know,” Cassius nodded, joining him in laughter. “Forgive my teasing, I could not resist so easy a joke. I will say, however, that the two of you seem happy together now, however this marriage began.”
“Yes, I believe we are,” Dorian agreed, thinking back over recent weeks and nodding. “We are happier than I thought we could be, given the challenges you allude to.”
“Then you accept now that your marriage is not a punishment from the gods?” asked his friend with twinkling eyes.
The Duke of Ravenhill groaned, thinking back to that depressing and self-piteous pre-wedding conversation at his club.
“Do not remind me of what I said to you that night, Cassius. As you told me, my punishment has been a comely wife of generous dowry and the sweetest character in England. No, it is no punishment at all to be married to Rose.”
“Luckily, your wife seems equally content,” Cassius observed. “In fact, I have never seen Rose look so well. When I first met her, she could not say two words without Josephine on one side and Lady Madeline on the other to support her. Now, she is very much mistress of her own home.”
