And so she did it again, dragging herself over his hard cock, longing for it to be buried inside her. Now that she had experienced such wild fulfillment, she had no wish to settle for anything less. But this…he jerked his hips into her, thrusting…oh,this, too, could make her lose control.
“I promised I would not ruin you,” he muttered against her mouth. “That I would not dishonor you. I want you so damn much, Frederica Isling. More than you will ever know.”
She was close, so close, to reaching her pinnacle thanks to the full swell of his manhood and need humming through her wet, aching flesh. “You have already ruined me,” she said, kissing him once more with an abandon she would worry about regretting later.
He tore his mouth from hers on a groan. “If I don’t touch you right now, I’ll go mad.”
“Yes,” she agreed. Right now, her body demanded the pleasure only he could give her. She needed his touch, too. “Touch me, Duncan.”
His fingers found her, parting her folds, deftly flicking over the swollen bud. He lovingly stroked her, giving her what she needed, until she was straining against him, breathless, the knot inside her tightening. “That’s it, angel. Come for me.”
She could stand no more. The furious rush was upon her, sudden and hard. Her body seized, rocked by dozens of delicious tremors. He stayed with her, increasing his pace and pressure, milking the last of her response until she was drained and limp, sagging against him, her face pressed to his throat above his cravat. She could not speak, so she held tight to him, breathing him in, feeling the heavy thudding of his heart against her.
After a time, he released her slowly to the floor, gently righting her skirts. He kissed her slowly, sweetly, and then he broke away, staring down at her with an intensity that shook her. “I will take care of you from this moment forward, angel. I promise you.”
And perhaps she was a fool, because she wanted to believe him.
*
For the secondtime in as many months, Duncan awaited a duke. But this time, he had summoned Amberley to him. And the duke had come. Finally, after a lifetime of being turned away and ignored. Of being treated akin to a pile of horse dung in the street, he had not only received a reply—terse though it may have been—but he had been graced with the duke’s presence.
He was struck for a moment as the duke stepped over the threshold of his office by the absurdity of it, that he should have had to go to such lengths to obtain an audience with the man who had sired him. That he now held locked in his desk the papers containing the duke’s future. He nodded to Hazlett, who bowed silently and left the chamber, closing the door behind him.
Just that easily, Duncan and the duke were alone.
“Your Grace,” he greeted with a nonchalance he did not feel, bowing.
Amberley shuffled forward with the aid of a walking stick, his large frame hunched over as if each step he took pained him. But though his body had been broken by age and a dissolute life, his eyes—the same as Duncan’s—were clear.
As was the sharpness of his hatred, sparkling in the depths like a knife. “Kirkwood. What is the meaning of this?”
Duncan ignored the ill-mannered demand, strolling to the sideboard and fetching himself two fingers of whisky. “Would you care for some Scottish whisky, Amberley? It is the finest illegal swill money can buy.”
The duke, well-known for his endless thirst for both liquor and cunny, licked his lips, hesitating. “Yes.”
He wondered how much the admission had cost the old bastard. Whatever it was, it was not enough. Nothing would be. Taking everything from the Duke of Amberley would not right the wrongs that had been done to Duncan’s mother. He poured some whisky for his unlikely guest, grinding his jaw to keep the temptation to spit into it at bay.
In silence, he handed the duke his glass. “Seat yourself, if you please, Your Grace.”
The duke’s hand gripped the head of his walking stick as if it were a claw, his arm trembling. “I do not intend to remain long.”
“You will remain as long as I require you to remain,” he said softly, but with enough dark determination for the hardness within him to show.
“Why have you lured me here with the promise of your aid in getting my vowels returned to me?” he bit out.
“Because I alone can assist you with such a feat.” Duncan took a sip of his whisky, savoring its familiar burn. Not as hedonistic as chocolate, but it would suffice. “I am in possession of all your I.O.U.s, Your Grace. A tidy fortune, too.”
“Westlake,” the duke growled with such virulence he broke into a cough. The fit had him doubling over, his whisky sloshing over his hand. “He would never betray me by selling them to you.”
“Ah, but I’m afraid he did.” Duncan walked calmly to his desk, unlocking the drawer and box where he kept all things of value in the club. He produced the neat stack of vowels in question. A staggering sum, all told, not just a tidy fortune as he had indicated. And it was all his for the taking.
But he had found the one thing in life worth more to him than his club, the money he amassed, the power he wielded, and the revenge he could inflict upon the man he would forever blame for his mother’s death. And it was the woman he loved. For her, he would surrender anything. Everything.
“Would you beggar me now, Kirkwood?” the man who had fathered him demanded.
Duncan considered him, amazed at love’s capacity to heal. He did not feel the angry sting of rancor in his chest when he looked upon the duke now. If anything, he pitied the man. He had squandered his fortune and his health, turned his back on a woman and child who were his responsibility, and his only legitimate offspring liked to force himself upon the powerless.
“Tell me something. Did you rape my mother, or is ravishment a crime only your son the earl aspires to?”
