The Duchess War (The Brothers Sinister) Page 24

  “All I had to do,” he said fiercely, “was think of you, and I’d be hard as a rock. God, Minnie, keep doing that.” He’d never thought of her doing this—pleasuring herself—but it was by far more arousing than any of the scenarios he’d dreamed up.

  “I need a little more.” Her eyelashes fluttered. “Would you like to help?”

  His throat was dry. “I’d love to. How?”

  “Touch me.” She curved her hand around one breast. “Here.”

  He leaned down and cupped her breast, slid his finger along the curve of it.

  “More. Harder,” she urged him.

  So he took the coral bud of her nipple in his mouth. She let out a little moan as he did so, her whole body arching next to his. That moan—that brought his arousal roaring back to life. His cock went from mildly interested to fully engaged.

  “Yes,” she moaned. “Please. Just like that.”

  He licked her first and then nibbled lightly at her. Her moans grew louder.

  He set his other hand over hers, on her sex. He could feel her touching herself, could feel the bed swaying with the rhythm of her fingers. She’d been lightly moist when he entered her; she was wildly slick now. Slick and glorious. Her fingers were pushing harder; harder; his own played alongside hers, glorying in the smooth silkiness.

  “Do you want to know the first time I thought about you?” he asked. “That first night we met. God, that encounter played out so differently when I imagined it again. A woman with a voice like yours, a figure like yours, encounters me alone behind a davenport? I thought about you on your knees, fastening those clever lips of yours around my cock. And I wanted you.”

  She came with a fevered cry. Her whole body shuddered in waves of pleasure. For a moment, it felt as if those waves were traveling through him, too. When she was done, he could hardly think. His entire body screamed in demand. He didn’t ask. He didn’t talk. He simply spread her legs farther apart and pushed inside her.

  This time, he sank into her depths in one solid thrust. This time, he could feel the difference in her body. The little shuddering waves that still traveled through her clutched at his cock. She was slick from want.

  He pressed her hand back into place. “Don’t stop,” he said hoarsely. “Keep doing that.”

  Her hips rose to his. Her hand continued its motion, an added stimulation at the base of his cock. He could feel her pleasure all around him, first ebbing, and then gathering again as he took her. And as if the dam had been broken to bits with her first orgasm, this time she came quickly—in scarcely a minute, her release a scalding hot wash of pure lust that had her clamping down on him.

  He couldn’t have enough of her. He pounded into her again and again, each thrust better than the last, each one building, building to a crescendo that washed over him in fierce waves. It was almost painful, his second release. It was messy and slippery and wrong, and it felt so, so damned right.

  He’d had no intention of taking his virgin wife twice in one night—especially not after that disastrous first time. He’d lost all control the moment he’d watch her touch herself between the legs. There had been something about that, something that had touched a deep and primal urge inside him. He’d stopped thinking altogether.

  The second time had been everything he’d hoped for and more.

  Afterward, he kissed her and she kissed him back. She was all softness around him, melting into him. This was what he’d wanted—this joining.

  “Robert,” she said eventually, “I had rather assumed that…being what you were, that you were fairly experienced. Are you?”

  “It depends what you mean by experience,” he said carefully.

  She didn’t say anything.

  “By the time I was old enough to get experience, I had some notion what my father was like. I didn’t want to be like him. So I had to be certain—absolutely certain—that I wasn’t forcing anyone into anything.” He felt his face burn. “And then I also had to be sure that I wasn’t like my father, led only by my cock. Lust makes me stupid. I had to be sure it wouldn’t make me selfish, too.”

  Still she didn’t say anything.

  “There were a few house parties where…matters were quite close, and would have come to the point, had I allowed things to run their natural course. But I always came up with a reason not to. She was interested in my fortune, not myself. She thought she might get an offer of marriage out of it. It never seemed honest, to take a woman who wanted a duke, when I was just me.”

  He looked up at the ceiling, felt her hand on his body, and shrugged.

  “I think,” he said carefully, “that given the amount of use I put my left hand to, I really shouldn’t qualify as a virgin. I’ve had scores of sexual experiences. Just…not with other people. I wasn’t saving myself for marriage.”

  Just for you.

  He didn’t say it. It seemed too raw, too close to the heat of intercourse to share.

  Sex with Minnie wasn’t what he had imagined intercourse would be like in his romantic daydreams. That had been too much of flowers and moonbeams, cold and perfect and clean.

  This…this was warm and messy, and he wanted it again and again and again with a ferocity that he couldn’t quite comprehend.

  “Did we do it right that time?”

  She snuggled against him. “Oh, yes,” she said dreamily. “Very right.”

  He made a note: If she yawned in his arms afterward, he’d done a good job. A nice goal to have, wearing out his wife. Her eyelids drooped, and he felt a fierce sense of pride wash over him.

  He’d told her that he had no expectation of love.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t believe in love. The thought of love was like water in the desert. Now there was a stupid cliché, one that made him think of a man in ragged clothing staggering through the Sahara, searching for an oasis among the sand dunes.

  But the Antarctic was a desert, too—a cold desert, one made dry because water there turned to ice the instant it hit the air.

  So he believed in love. He’d always believed in love. He’d been surrounded by water all his life; it had simply been frozen solid. He’d loved as hard as he dared and watched it freeze before his face. It was no surprise now when he checked his feelings and discovered that he loved her. The surprise was that this time, when he dared to take a sip, he found water instead of ice.

  He could have wept.

  “That,” he said to Minnie, “was really…honestly…the most awe-inspiring event that I have ever taken part in. And I want to do it again.”

  “Tomorrow,” she murmured. “We have nine more days, after all.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  BEFORE THE SUN FOUND THE HORIZON, Minnie woke to feel her husband’s lips against her neck, his arms around her. She’d slept the sleep of sated exhaustion; vaguely, she was aware that she was still tired. But it didn’t matter. If she was tired, it was a good sort of tired, the kind that took delight in the feel of his body against hers, his hands running down her ribs with possessive intent. It felt more like a dream than a waking. She was warm and his touch was sweet.

  If last night had been a discovery, this morning was about exploration—about fitting her hands into the curve of his back, about running her hands down his chest and then up again, noting the sensitive spots. The heady, insistent eagerness of the wedding night had been replaced with a sense of quiet wonder.

  She was ready by the time he slid inside her. This morning, his thrusts were a gentle rocking, a full-body kiss, one that coaxed her orgasm from her in stages, rather than wresting it from her by force.

  When he’d finished, he leaned his forehead against hers. “Good morning.”

  The sky was beginning to turn pink. She couldn’t have had a full night’s sleep, but she didn’t want to drift back into dreams. She wanted to capture this moment and stretch it forever.

  “Good morning.”

  He hadn’t let go of her.

  “You know,” he said, “I’m absolutely raven
ous. If I’m remembering right from my last trip, there’s a little bakery down the street that should have something out even now.”

  By the time they’d dressed, the light of morning had flooded the streets below. The hotel they were in—some fancy affair; on the previous night, the name had been the last thing on her mind—let out onto a wide avenue. A park, ringed by a metal fence, stood on one side. Stone buildings with cunning façades marched down the other. Robert led her down a side street past the park. His little bakery was, in fact, a café that overlooked the River Seine. Not just the Seine; their hotel was in the heart of the city, steps from the Île de la Cité.

  A few months ago, she would have never imagined coming to Paris with a husband. She wouldn’t have dreamed of a hotel that was scarcely a quarter mile from the Notre Dame cathedral. This was grander than even Lydia’s wildest imaginings—but no. Thinking of her friend gave Minnie a pain deep inside.

  Instead, she concentrated on everything old and beautiful, everything bright and new. The colored awnings; the elegant buildings; the small flock of pigeons that came to roost near them as they ate, cocking their heads in interest at the croissants that Robert obtained from the baker.

  The pastries were so good, warm and buttery and flaky, that Minnie almost didn’t want to share with the birds.

  But as they were throwing the remnants of their breakfast to the cooing pigeons—trying to make sure that the intrepid little brown birds on the side got a few crumbs as well—a small boy with a crutch limped up. A beaver cap was pulled over his head, not big enough to cover too-large ears.

  He should have been too young to have that calculating look in his eyes. But age had nothing to do with the necessity for cunning. He took a limping step toward them, leaning heavily on his crutch. The wobble in his stride was too exaggerated to be real. Some things, one didn’t need to translate.

  Minnie’s fingers closed over the bracelet at her wrist.

  His eyes flashed in calculation once more. If he’d been planning to pick their pockets while they tossed bread, he switched to another strategy just as swiftly.

  “A few centimes, Monsieur,” said the boy in passable English. He took off his cap and swept it toward Robert. “A few centimes for the cripple.”

  How he’d pegged them for English… Well, she supposed it wasn’t hard to figure out. They’d been talking to each other, after all.

  Minnie had rather expected Robert to brush the urchin off, but he stopped and pulled out a purse. Without saying a word, he reached in and took out a coin. She saw the glint of gold as he flipped it toward the boy.

  The boy’s fingers flashed; he grabbed the coin from the air in reflex. But his mouth dropped open when he looked at what he’d caught. His crutch fell from his grasp; unheeding, he stood staring.

  Robert let go of Minnie’s arm and took two steps forward. He bent down and picked up the crutch.

  “Next time,” he said in his English-accented French, “don’t drop your stick. Another man might not have understood this was an act and would be less forgiving.”

  “M’sieur.” The boy looked again at the coin in his hand before taking the crutch from Robert and scampering away without any sign of disability.

  “You knew he was faking the limp?” Minnie asked.

  Robert shrugged. “It seemed likely.”

  “And you gave him—what did you give him anyway?”

  “A twenty-franc coin. I doubt he’s ever seen one in his life.”

  Twenty francs. That was worth almost a pound. For a street urchin, that sort of bounty was worth months and months of begging.

  “Why, when you knew he was lying?”

  He gave her a little smile. “Frauds need a helping hand as much as anyone else. I know all about that.” He glanced toward the street where the boy had vanished. “Especially when it’s done like that.”

  “You know about telling lies for money?” Minnie felt a smile come over her. She stood, brushed the crumbs off her gown, and strode over to him.

  “Indeed. Some of my first memories are about lying for money.” He tucked her hand into the crook of his arm and they began to walk. On the left, a wrought iron rail separated their path from the Seine. The river drifted by. Minnie refused to believe its waters could be brown and dingy.

  “Really?” She huffed in disbelief. “What trinket did you want to buy?”

  “No trinkets.” He flashed her a smile and patted her arm. “It’s rather an amusing story. You see, my parents married under…odd circumstances. My father convinced my mother he loved her. She believed him; my father could be most convincing when he put his mind to it. But her father knew a bit more of the world, and he suspected that dukes didn’t fall into passionate, life-altering love with wool-merchants’ daughters who had enormous dowries. Not on a few weeks’ acquaintance, at any rate. So instead of handing over a vast sum of money to my father upon their marriage, he put it all in trust, to be paid out so long as my mother was happy.”

  Robert had retrieved an extra bag from the baker. He opened it now and passed her a bun—crisp and golden and warm—and took out one for himself. This he began to apportion into pieces, tossing them over the iron rail for the ducks.

  “This does not sound like the beginning to an amusing story,” Minnie said dubiously.

  “Well, the background information isn’t very funny, I suppose.” Robert frowned and broke off a piece of crust. “But the rest of it is, I promise. In any event, to summarize: my father hadn’t any real money of his own, and my mother controlled the rest. So when she came to visit—”

  “Your mother would visit? Was she not living with you?”

  “No, most of the time she was not. I don’t think I saw her for the first three years of my life.” He scratched his chin. “If she’d been living with my father, the trust would have paid out—those were the terms. My mother controlled the money by her presence. She didn’t want my father to get a penny, and so when he told her that she would have to live with him in order to see me, she told him to go to hell.”

  Minnie thought back over her conversations with his mother. She’d said all sorts of things, but not this. It explained a great deal, though. Far too much, in fact. This was not turning out to be anything like an amusing story. Minnie blinked at her husband, but he had a little smile on his face, as if this were all part of some joke. He tossed bread blithely in the air and grinned when the ducks squabbled for it.

  “So, in any event—”

  “Wait just one moment. Your father didn’t let your mother see you for the first three years of your life?”

  “Correct.” He frowned and broke off another bit of crust from his bun. “He didn’t have any control over the money under the terms of the trust, but legally he did control me. So…” He shrugged again, as if this were perfectly normal. “One can’t blame him for trying.”

  One couldn’t? Minnie could.

  But Robert simply threw bread into the water and kept talking.

  “By the time I was four,” he continued, “they’d worked out an arrangement. My mother’s father gave a handful of factories to my father so he could keep his worst creditors at bay.” He glanced at Minnie. “Graydon Boots was one of those. In return, my mother was allowed to see me for a few days twice a year. I would desperately try to be good when she came—so good that this time, she wouldn’t leave. My father, naturally, supported me in these endeavors. When I was six years old, his brilliant plan was this: I would pretend that I couldn’t read, presumably because in my father’s straitened circumstances, he could not afford a tutor. He was sure that would break her down.”

  Minnie cleared her throat, which seemed strangely tight. “Did it?”

  “Almost. I played the most pitiful urchin ever. I pretended not to know my letters. I stared blankly at pages and shrugged. I started to recite my alphabet, but skipped letters L through P. I counted to one hundred for her and transposed the sixties with the seventies. I added five and six and came up with thirte
en.” He grinned at her. “And my father was right—it almost worked. After a few days, she dashed off a letter to her father, ordering him to send another trunk with her things. She ordered a primer from a local shop. And every afternoon, she would take me in her parlor, and she’d sit me down and we would go through the alphabet. She was very severe about it—regimented, even. We were on a strict schedule.”

  “You did…” She couldn’t contemplate a duke’s son not knowing how to read at that age, but then, she couldn’t contemplate a duke growing up and never seeing his mother, either. “You did already know your letters, didn’t you?”

  He gave her a nonchalant shrug. “Naturally. There wasn’t much else for me to do besides read. After three days of pretending ignorance, I was already chafing at the bit, wondering when I could get back to finishing Robinson Crusoe. But it was working—she hadn’t left yet. When we got to M-is-for-Mouse, I changed it to M-is-for-Mama. She gave me this look—this stern look with her lips pressed together—and demanded to know why I’d said that. I told her it was because I didn’t want any mice about, but I liked having her there.”

  How he could smile, when Minnie’s heart was breaking, she didn’t know.

  But he shook his head in what looked like quiet amusement.

  “Apparently, that was slathering on the need for pity a little too thickly, because she shook her head and then said that today, we would not be learning the alphabet any longer; she had some very important, very private letters to write, and I was going to have to play quietly by myself. She handed me some paper and a pencil, and told me to amuse myself drawing.”

  “I can’t believe that didn’t melt her heart.”

  “Oh, no. By that time, my mother was a hardened soul. And she knew just how to appeal to me. Very important, very private letters—she repeated that twice. Naturally, I could not resist the urge to get a peek at them. She wrote them sitting next to me, while I pretended to sketch birds. Her very important, private letter said, over and over again, ‘Clermont should go bugger himself.’”