She had already learned he had eleven siblings. He enjoyed singing and throwing knives. He was an expert marksman and a self-described middling prizefighter. His brother Mr. Gavin Winter was an undisputed champion in that arena. The notion of Damian facing anyone with his fists made Mirabel ill. It seemed such a dangerous, aggressive sport. His favorite sister was named Gen, though he also loved his five other sisters, who were legitimate Winters. He had excellent luck at the tables. He had never been wed, and nor had he any children.
For her part, she had confessed to Damian that she was one of five children—four daughters and one son. Her elder sisters had married, although not as well as she had. Here, she spared the details of her having become the Duchess of Stanhope. Her younger sister had never wed, and she was Mirabel’s closest friend and beloved confidante.
“Octavia is the unwed sister, then, I trust,” Damian guessed.
She was impressed he possessed none of the accompanying disgust which ordinarily accompanied the knowledge that a woman had failed to marry.
Then again, perhaps that was only Mirabel’s mother who possessed that particular disgust.
“She made a wise decision,” Mirabel said. “Married women possess no rights. She is free to live with me as long as she likes, and there is no one to treat her cruelly or to tell her what she must and must not do.”
Damian stilled. “If he were alive, I would call him out.”
The vehemence in his voice left no question. He was speaking of Stanhope.
“But if he were alive, I never would have met you,” she pointed out, casting her mostly empty plate aside. A few strawberries lolled on the porcelain. “I would never have dared to come to a place like Lady Fortune, or to meet with a man like you, when my husband was alive. The repercussions would have been too damning.”
They still could be, which was why she took care with her identity. Though it felt increasingly like a burden she carried about.
“Did he beat you?” Damian asked, the question stark and bitter.
“He hit me sometimes,” she admitted. “Especially when we were first wed. I was not… He told me I was not biddable as I must be.”
She had learned quickly how to conduct herself to avoid inciting her husband’s wrath. She had fashioned herself into the perfect duchess. One who did everything the duke required of her, never questioned him, offered an opinion, or did anything that would bring shame upon his family name.
“Fuck him.” Damian’s abrupt words, cutting through the silence, were guttural. Filled with venom. His eyes were on her, dark and intent. “He did not deserve you.”
The depth of his emotion took her by surprise. And humbled her. Made her eyes burn with suppressed tears. Octavia had told her as much, but hearing it from Damian was somehow different.
She swallowed. “Thank you.”
“No thanking me.” He was on his knees, crawling toward her now, over the pillows he had mounded on the floor, not stopping until there was no more distance remaining between them. “Do not thank me for observing the truth, the obvious. Your husband was a shit sack. And now, I must make amends.”
She would have laughed at the termshit sackhad he not been so serious. So genuine. Her heart pounded. He reached her, still on all fours, and pressed his lips to hers. Her arms wound around his neck, holding him to her. He caught her lower lip in his teeth and gently tugged. Passion was a lustrous, heady warmth, snaking through her. Filling her with a strange sense of euphoria.
Mirabel bit him back, nipping at the full succulence of his lower lip in the same fashion as he had done to her. Her hands tugged at his hair. She wanted the heaviness of his lean, muscular body atop hers, wanted the divine sensation of him entering her, filling and stretching her. She wanted to inhale his scent every moment of every day, impossible as it was. They had spent their nights together in a frenzied blur of bliss, but still, his every action only made her desire him a hundred times more.
“On your back, Mira,” he growled against her lips.
It was not a request but a command. She did as he asked, settling herself upon the pillows. The soft, feathery mounds contoured to her body. She scarcely knew she was upon the floor—there was no hardness beneath her. She felt, instead, as if she were inhabiting a cloud.
Damian moved until he was situated at her feet, where her ankles were yet pressed firmly together. She lay there as he had asked, watching him, trusting him.
She opened her legs for him without his request or gentle guidance, knowing all too well the pleasure to be had at this beautiful man’s hands. Her gown lifted, her petticoat and chemise traveling along. The coolness of the late-spring air, tempered only by the glow of the low fire in the hearth, glanced over her most intimate flesh. Her skirts went higher still, all the way to her waist. Mirabel allowed her legs to fall farther apart. His eyes fell hungrily upon the skin she had revealed to him.
She felt not a bit of shame as his hands closed on her ankles, gliding up her calves. Not a speck of embarrassment as he murmured sweet praises to her and kissed his way past her knees. His mouth was a hot, welcome brand upon her bare flesh when he traveled beyond her garters and stockings.
If he was going to feast upon her as if she were the food they had just consumed, he would find no complaints from her. Indeed, she longed for the soft flick of his tongue over her most intimate flesh once more. He pressed a kiss to her inner thigh, getting ever nearer to her pulsing, aching center.
His head lifted. He plucked a strawberry from her abandoned porcelain plate on the carpets.
She watched in rapt fascination and confusion, wondering what he intended to do. Indulge in dessert? Pleasure her? As it happened, she did not have long to wait or wonder, for his head dipped low, and he kissed a trail up her right thigh, all the way to her mound. He kissed her there, lightly, gently, almost as if it were scarcely a kiss at all.
His tongue flicked over the throbbing bud of her sex. But then, he left her, kissing the inside of her left thigh, and in place of his mouth upon her bud, she felt instead the light brush of something curved and plump, its surface studded with an unusual texture. It brushed over her pearl, manipulating her with light pressure. Not nearly enough.
Her hips thrust, a sigh leaving her. He was being too gentle. Too soft. She wanted more. Harder. She wanted his tongue, but she also wanted his manhood, stiff and long as she knew him to be, deep inside her.
“Be calm, Mira, else you shall mangle my dessert,” Damian said, his sinful baritone cutting through the calm stillness of the room.
