Page 43 of Five Nights to Claim His Duchess

She continued, eyes fluttering open to find his gaze fixed upon her with rapt intensity. He watched every flicker of expression as she pinched one breast and circled that sensitive spot between her legs, her body beginning to writhe under her own touch.

Then he rose slightly, drawing up his nightshirt. Diana’s breath caught. It was the first time she had seen a man’s privates—his manhood thick and flushed a deep pink, rising proudly from a nest of dark hair. She stared, transfixed, as he wrapped his hand around it and began to stroke with long, firm pulls. His head fell back on a groan.

For a moment she faltered, fingers stilling. Their eyes met across the heated space between them. He continued stroking his length, jaw tight with pleasure.

“Duchess,” he gasped, “you like what you see?”

She drank in the sight of him—well-built arms corded with muscle, powerful bare thighs, the masculinity of him—and something wild surged within her. She sat up, closing the distance, and took his lips with her own in a kiss as hungry as any he had given her. He stroked himself harder as she kissed him, tongue meeting tongue with bold urgency. The sight of his hand moving over that thick shaft made her positively feral, a desperate heat flooding her core.

“Your Grace,” she whispered against his mouth, still kissing him between words, “may I touch you?”

He kept stroking, breath ragged. “If we start this, Duchess, it might not be as simple to stop.”

Her heart thundered. She looked down at his manhood again and felt a surge of want so fierce it stole her breath. “I accept.”

She kissed him deeply once more and wrapped her hand around him. It was searing hot, pulsing with life, so thick her fingers barely met around its girth. She began to stroke in imitation of his movements, tentative at first, then surer. He groaned into her mouth, grabbing a fistful of her hair as his tongue dipped hungrily between her lips.

“Am I pleasing you, Your Grace?” she asked, still stroking, voice tremulous with desire.

“Very much,” he rasped. “Very much.”

He kissed her again, then his free hand slid between her parted thighs. Two long fingers replaced her own, pressing firmly against the swollen pearl at her center before slipping lower and thrusting deep into her slick heat. Diana cried out against his mouth at the sudden, exquisite intrusion. He curled those fingers inside her, stroking a place that made bright sparks burst behind her eyelids, while his thumb circled the sensitive bud with relentless precision.

The dual sensations nearly undid her. She trembled violently, hips jerking against his hand, yet she did not stop stroking him. Her fist moved faster along his thick length even as the bed began to shake with the force of his fingers working inside her. He broke the kiss only long enough to press his mouth to the shell of her ear, breathing hot and ragged against it.

“That is it, Duchess… take your pleasure. Do not stop your hand.”

She could scarcely breathe. Every thrust of his fingers sent fresh waves of heat getting hotter and tighter in her belly. Her thighs quivered; her whole body shook. Still she stroked him, determined. He kissed her ear again, then the sensitive place just beneath it, murmuring praise that only heightened the frenzy.

The pressure built beyond bearing. The bedframe creaked beneath them. Her free hand clutched at his shoulder as her body tightened around his thrusting fingers. He groaned against her ear, his own hips beginning to rock into her fist.

“Duchess,” his voice strained. “I fear I cannot hold it in.”

His voice shattered her. Pleasure crashed through her in pulsing waves, her inner muscles clenching around his fingers as she cried out. At the same instant his manhood pulsed strongly in her grasp; he spent with a deep sound, hot seed spilling over her fingers while his hand continued to work her through every last tremor.

They remained locked together for long moments afterward, both trembling, both gasping. His forehead rested against hers. Diana’s voice, when she finally found it, was shaky.

“How did I do, Your Grace?”

He gave a breathless laugh and drew her closer still, pressing one last lingering kiss to her ear.

“Duchess,” he murmured, “I had better become a far better husband, so that I might earn a great many more such rewards.”

“Duchess. After all we have just done, you ought not to suffer yourself to be embarrassed.”

His voice came from just behind her ear, and her heart went over like something dropped. They were both soaking in the copper bath.

She had no business being embarrassed. That was the maddening part. There was not a thing left on her that he had not already seen, and touched, and made her forget her own name over, not an hour since. Yet there she sat in three feet of hot water with her knees drawn up and her arms crossed and her whole face burning, because it was one thing to come apart in the dark and quite another to sit in a bath with the man in the candlelight and be looked at.

His arms came round her from behind and settled at her middle, and the water shifted and slapped gently at the copper, and she let out a breath she had not known she was keeping.

“I agree to it,” she said suddenly.

He bent his head. She felt his mouth graze the top of her shoulder, and the whole of her leaned back into him before she had thought about it at all.

“Agree to what, wife?”

“You said you would show me pleasure.” Her voice came out strange. “You have kept your part of it. Every night. And you kept your word about Bella when I could not see how it was to be done.” She swallowed. “So I shall keep mine.”