“Oh, are you planning to make me smile anytime soon?” she asked coquettishly, batting her eyelashes at him.
“It might make you smile,” he agreed, as he pulled himself up above her, bracketing her with his arms on either side.“Or... It might make you scream.”
Madeline welcomed his move, spreading her legs apart to accommodate him. He held the soft flesh of her waist and slid inside her wet heat.
“T-that is the way to do it,” she murmured, as he moved over her in a slow, deliberate rhythm.
They had made love so many times over the past few days and nights that doing it again felt like second nature. He lowered his mouth on hers, nudging her lips open until their tongues clashed. It had become his favorite way to converse with her. All this.
“You are so beautiful,” he rasped, as he pulled away from the kiss to trail lower down to her breasts. She whimpered when his tongue touched her nipple and moaned when he sucked it hard.His duchess was like a feast to him. Too beautiful. Too sweet. Her fingers tangled in his hair, urging him to take more of her. He only let go to move on to her other breast all the way, slowly moving them toward oblivion with his long and deep thrusts.
With her like this, all his jealousy flew away. He knew that she was his and he was hers. Then, he straightened himself, pulling her legs over his shoulder to thrust into her deeper and faster.
Kenneth kept his eyes locked onto Madeline’s, daring her to keep those pretty eyes there. She took his challenge and locked in even as her eyes glazed from pleasure.
Kenneth wanted to show her that she and Malcolm had been wrong about him. He was a well of emotions, but he just had to keep them at bay. While he did not have the flowery words of a romantic hero in one of her novels, he had other ways to confess his undoing. His body continued to drive into hers, feeling the faint beginnings of her fluttering around him, squeezing him tight. This? It was all her doing. When he could be sitting upright in front of his study table, he was pumping her deeper into the mattress. Deeper into whatever it was they had. Madeline had conquered the Duke, and now she possessed the man.
“I... I cannot think clearly when you look at me like that,” Madeline gasped, even as she tugged him closer with her legs. “I... It is too—”
“There is nothing to think about at this moment,” he growled. “Just look at what you do to me. Tell me, can a statue do that to you?”
She looked at him with fierce devotion, one that broke the last of his defenses. She reached to touch his cheek, and he rested it on her palm, so gentle compared to the almost violent movementsof his hips, rolling over hers, as he let himself get lost in her. He felt her body tighten around his cock, the familiar pull that led to her reaching her shattering crest. This time, she was no longer shy about screaming. In response, he thrust a few more times until he felt his own climax tear through him.
Kenneth’s breathing was ragged, mingling with Madeline’s soft pants. It was a risk to reveal oneself through sex, but all he felt was satisfaction and peace afterward, with her.
Only with her.
He shifted onto his side and looked down at his disheveled wife, at the flush still high on her cheeks and the smile spreading slowly and lazily across her face. He found himself matching it before he knew he was doing it.
“You look like Napoleon,” he whispered.
“W-what?” she asked languidly. “I look like a cat?”
“You look like someone who gets what she wants.”
“Ha.” She stretched beneath the sheets, unrepentant. “Perhaps I have.”
He brushed a damp curl from her temple, letting his fingers linger. “I like looking at you, Madeline.” It was a small thing to admit, and yet the words felt enormous in his mouth, far easier than the ones still lodged somewhere beneath his ribs.
She caught his hand and held it against her cheek. For a moment, she simply watched him, and then her expression turned thoughtful, almost grave.
“You know,” she said softly. “You do so much for everyone’s happiness. Malcolm’s. The children’s. Even mine. You carry theburden and responsibility for all of us. But you never seem to ask what would make you happy.” Her thumb stroked the back of his hand. “You ought to, Kenneth. You deserve that as much as anyone.”
Her kindness reached a place in him that he kept guarded, and it pained him to be called a good man when there was a truth he had buried for two years. She believed he deserved happiness, but he did not. Malcolm believed Roberta had simply grown tired of him and left, as did the rest of the world, and Kenneth had allowed them all to go on believing it.
His brother was already a broken man. Malcolm spent his days at the bottom of a bottle, mourning a wife he thought had abandoned him, and somehow that grief had not yet destroyed him completely. Kenneth feared what would happen if he learned the truth.
What would it do to Malcolm to discover what had really happened? Would it be the thing that finally broke him beyond repair? The man was only now beginning to find his way back to his children, to himself. Kenneth did not know if Malcolm could survive the weight of the truth on top of everything else.
And yet he could not keep holding Madeline, listening to her call him deserving, while his brother suffered for something Kenneth had hidden from him. He owed Malcolm the truth, however much it might wound him.
I must talk to Malcolm soon. I only hope the truth will not destroy him.
Chapter 26
“Pass the potatoes, please, Tristan,” Cathy said good-naturedly. “Unless you mean to have the entire bowl for yourself.”
The bowl did look like it belonged to the Duke of Baxter, as it sat too close to his plate.
