Page 52 of Duke in Darkness

“Can you feel me?” he rasped. “How deep I am?”

Lilian tilted her hips, her legs like a vise around him. “More.”

“So tight. Stuffed full. Come for me, sweet. That’s it. Want to feel your greedy cunt…milking my cock.”

His wife screamed again, her head thrashing on the pillow as her channel pulsed around his cock, and the bedpost creaked as her bound wrists strained. Forcing his cock further in, Gabriel let out a low roar as the intense pressure that had built and built at the base of his spine exploded into the pure ecstasy of climax, and his seed gushed inside her in vicious, wracking spurts.

Utterly boneless, Gabriel collapsed on top of her. Just for a few moments, knowing she couldn’t see his scars thanks to his shirt and breeches, knowing her bound wrists prevented any accidental touching. Lilian felt soft and warm under him, her silken skin damp with perspiration, her heartbeat rapid as she attempted to catch her breath. Even the thought of withdrawing his cock from its blissful haven was unacceptable.

“Oh my,” she whispered, cheeks flushed. “So that is how…”

“A soldier fucks his woman,” he finished for her, reaching up to twist a lock of her hair around his finger and brush her jaw with it. “And it’s never, ever…once.”

Lilian moaned, her cunt fluttering around him, her nipples stabbing hard against the fabric of his shirt. “Yes. Oh yes.”

WHEN LILIAN AWOKE to the rays of a weak sun high in the sky, she was alone.

Despite the fact that she’d woken the exact same way every morning since she’d been judged old enough to leave the nursery, for the first time it felt wrong.

Incredibly lonely.

How could Gabriel have left without so much as a farewell, even a kiss, after what had happened in this bed? The wicked things he’d made her say. Begging him to kiss her nipples and lick between her legs. Begging him to take…no, to fuck her. All while she lay spread out for him, naked and bound, not like a proper duchess, but a pirate’s captive.

A soldier’s woman.

It had been so very naughty. As she’d fallen deeper into the fantasy, his control, his orders, the way he’d introduced those delicious sparks of pain to enhance her pleasure had been unbearably exciting. Yet even though she’d completely submitted to him, had obeyed his every command, called him by his first name, and welcomed him inside her body not once, or twice, but three times…he hadn’t stayed. Sometime in the night he husband had decided she was no longer of use to him, and had left her without a word.

Sitting here alone in her bed, sticky and sore between her thighs…that delight when he’d called her Lili, the intimacy when he’d lay on top of her and played with a lock of her hair, seemed so very far away. Now she just felt like a pair of shabby, unwanted boots.

Miserably, Lilian glanced across the room. The bedchamber somehow held no warmth, even though a fire burned brightly in the hearth, and a thick quilt covered her. If she weren’t so desperate to use the chamber pot, she might well remain in bed all day. Eventually, she shoved the sheets and quilt away, and hurried from the bed to relieve herself. On the way back she passed her looking glass, and froze.

“Good heavens,” she mumbled, her mood sinking further at the near-unrecognizable and disheveled naked woman staring back.

Her unbound hair looked a tangled mess. Her lips and nipples puffy and swollen. And while the marks didn’t hurt, her skin was covered in raw, red patches, and fingertip sized bruises. The previous evening she’d reveled in the evidence of Gabriel’s possession, his jaw rasping her breasts, the wicked nip of his teeth, the way he gripped her hips as he’d teased and tormented and taken. But now, in the cold light of day, without reassuring words or a smile to bolster her spirits after the unfamiliar and overwhelming sexual excesses of the night, she just looked tawdry. Used. Unattractive.

About as far away from a proper duchess as it was possible to be.

“Your Grace?”

Lilian practically flew across the room and dived back into bed, pulling the covers up to her neck. “Yes, Dawn?”

“Ah, you’re up,” her maid said, smiling as she entered the room with a tray of covered plates. “I popped my head in a few times, but you were tucked up tight and fast asleep. I didn’t have the heart to wake you.”

Heat scorched across Lilian’s cheeks. Indeed, she had never slept so deeply. If she hadn’t been so exhausted, perhaps she might have heard her husband leaving. “Is that tea and toast?”

“And blackberry jam. I thought you might need some sustenance before dressing.”

Oh no. Her face must surely resemble a tomato now. “I, er, need a bath. A proper bath in the copper tub, I mean.”

“If you are sure,” said Dawn quickly, her gaze darting away.

Lilian frowned. There was something not quite right here, like her maid wanted to say something but kept biting her tongue. “Of course I’m sure. What on earth is the matter?”

“Nothing! Ah, nothing at all, ma’am. How about I pour you some tea? Hot tea cures all ills, I always say.”

“Dawn.”

The older woman sighed, and put down the teapot. “Downstairs is in an uproar. Everyone heard what happened at the Castlereagh ball, that His Grace punched that other man unconscious. Others are saying he hit you also, and that is why you were crying, and why you didn’t go downstairs for breakfast this morning.”