“What are you waiting for? Hoping to discover a hidden truth?” he bellowed.
Lucy had spent a sleepless night considering her options. The engagement was inevitable; Mrs. Easterling had made that clear.So the question wasn’t whether she’d marry the duke, but what kind of marriage it would be. If he truly was a cold, officious bore, she’d be miserable. But if there was passion beneath that rigid exterior…. She’d read enough to know that physical pleasure could make even a loveless marriage bearable. Time to find out what type of husband fate had handed her.
She glanced at what seemed to be the outline ofhis personin his pantaloons; the tailoring skimming his slim hips and suggesting a hint of his manhood.
Lucy had always been curious to a fault. It was what had driven her to forbidden books, to midnight explorations of locked libraries, to studying subjects deemed inappropriate for ladies. And now, curiosity warred with self-preservation. The duke was clearly trying to alarm her. The question was: would she let him? Or would she finally get answers to questions she’d pondered for years?
Her mouth watered. Here, in this most unlikely of places, in this most unlikely of situations, was a wonderful opportunity to assuage her thirst for knowledge and see a man at last. Abareman, in all his glory.
His hand had been warm against her cheek. She’d never been touched so intimately before. It should have frightened her. And it did frighten her! But beneath the fear was something else. A flutter in her stomach. A flush of heat. It was what her books had described. Desire. And apparently, her traitorous body desired this ill-tempered duke.
And if this encounter sent him into an apoplexy and he, say, expired on the spot or fled in his carriage instead of dragging her into a disastrous marriage, she would be delighted.
So she set a hand to the front of his falls, right on the silver buttons he’d wanted her topolish. It was a bold move, possibly a stupid one. If he truly was the kind of man who’d force himself on her, she’d just invited him to pounce. But Lucy had always trusted her instincts. And her instincts said this duke was all bluster.
She was rather more adept at divesting a man of his pantaloons than she’d expected. His falls came down most efficiently, and she discovered the next stage of her trials: his smallclothes.
She’d seen illustrations of them before, in those French plates kept in locked drawers, and once, memorably, in a copy ofThe Blushes of Belinda; OR, An Account of Certain Errors Committed After Teathat a fellow young lady had smuggled to a house party.
At last, knowledge of a real manhood was but inches away. Her hands trembled slightly. Years of wondering, imagining, reading. Now the moment was here. She gently tugged at the fabric to pull it down. The anatomical drawings had been detailed, but Lucy realized now that ink on paper couldn’t capture the reality of warm skin and responsive flesh.
“Oh, what, oh!” cried Cockesbrayne, his hand coming to the top of her head as if to steady himself on her seated form.
“Fear not, Your Grace,” she said, watching his undergarments slip lower with rapt attention. “I’ll polish your silver.”
He began to speak, but when the head of his definitely interested cock emerged from the waistband, he let out something resembling a whine.
Lucy patted his thigh. “There now, I’ll look after it,” she said, leaning forward to study the thing more closely.
He had a lovely cock, from what she could tell. It resembled the artistic sketches in the pornographic plates she had studied; the head flushed deep pink, a bead of moisture at the tip. If she wasn’t mistaken, this was the only part of His Grace that was in any way agreeable!
Although the hand in her hair certainly had some appeal. The touch was firm but not rough, guiding but not forcing. When he pressed her incrementally forward, Lucy took the hint and gave the head of the duke’s cock a sweet kiss.
“Oh dear,” he moaned, his hand tightening in her fashionable hairstyle. The sound was vulnerable, almost helpless. Lucy felt a rush of tenderness she hadn’t expected. This supposedly domineering duke was trembling under her power.
Lucy shimmied his smalls down further, revealing his full length and neat nest of hair at the base. She laid the backs of her fingers on his shaft and petted it admiringly. The skin was velvety and hot.
“Miss Ninepence!” he gasped, as if he didn’t experience such ministrations on all days including Sunday. He was a duke, after all, and Lucy doubted that the ladies of the town would deny a man with coin his release! Even one as disagreeable as Cockesbrayne.
Yet Lucy felt a surge of power. She — mere Miss Ninepence of Manchester — had reduced a duke to gasping. This was heady indeed.
Lucy released him, fascinated by the way his foreskin moved over the head when she slid it. But when she brought it up and down experimentally, the duke groaned and grasped her hair, gently guiding her mouth back to him.
“Do you want to be a duchess, Miss Ninepence?” he asked, his voice raspy. The poor man would need some honey in his tea, she thought.
For her part, Lucy was bewitched by the working of a penis and thoughtlessly answered, “Not particularly,” before realizing that so much honesty was perhaps unwise.
Until she heard the man’s offer.
“Very well. I will solve the problem of our forced engagement if…”
She pulled her gaze from his astonishingly handsome cock.
“If you put it in your mouth,” he said, his chest expanding suddenly as he took in a breath. “I’ll do anything, cry off, whatever you want, if you simply—”
Never let it be said that dukes couldn’t be generous! Lucy unhesitatingly leaned forward and slipped the head of his cock between her lips.
Now, this was the part she was unsure about, given that the plates in pornographic books did not move. She looked to the duke for direction.
