The Duke Is Mine

She wriggled again, thought about that blissful feeling he gave her before all of this started. It wasn’t fair to leave him without it. She wasn’t afraid of pain. Or rather, she didn’t believe in being afraid of pain.

“You should start again,” she said. In truth, she was afraid, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t courage.

He looked unconvinced.

“Now,” Olivia elaborated. “You can move back and forth now.”

Slowly he withdrew. Oddly enough, once he was gone, she felt empty. Ridiculous, really. Then he was there again, slow this time, very slow. Part of her just wanted him to go fast, get it over with. Another part was entranced by the slow invasion. It did something . . .

She found her breath hitching, and her back arching a little.

“Better?” he asked, quietly, but she could hear the gruffness in his voice.

She nodded.

“Again?”

She acquiesced.

He pushed in, slow and steady. It wasn’t comfortable. Not at all. But it was bearable. The rough sense of friction was even rather pleasant, for some strange reason.

And there was a trace of anxiety in Quin’s eyes, pinching away some of his pleasure.

“I’m starting to love this,” she said, giving him a big smile. “I could do this all night. I’ll probably—”

“Liar,” he growled, biting back the smile in his eyes. “I know this is hell for you, but Olivia, it is heaven for me. I never imagined anything could feel the way you do.”

Braced on his forearms, he looked down at her, eyes heavy-lidded, slumberous with passion.

Olivia let the gladness of it fill her heart. She arched her back, moved toward him. It was an awkward movement, but he understood.

He threw his head back, eyes closed, and thrust forward fast and hard, once, twice, again . . . Just when Olivia started to think that perhaps it wasn’t quite so horrible, Quin made a sound, a brutal, dangerous sound, and thrust into her a final time.

If he had fallen on top of Georgiana like that, like a felled tree, he might have killed her.

The good news was that because she had never taken to a lettuce diet, Quin felt exactly right falling on top of her. In fact, Olivia tightened her arms around his neck to keep him in place. The terrible burning between her legs seemed to have lessened, too. In fact, it felt rather tingly and almost comfortable down there.

It was so intimate. He was part of her. They were connected, two people, put together like a jigsaw puzzle that couldn’t be put asunder. The thought made her a little teary.

“Quin,” she said softly, turning her head, feathering kisses along his cheekbone. She wanted to share this ecstatic, perfect, most intimate moment.

He was asleep.

Olivia started laughing, and the giggles bubbling up her chest woke him. “Sorry, love,” he said, voice dark with sleep, and shifted to the side. “No place to wash,” he mumbled.

His eyes closed again. He was out.

Olivia tore a strip of her ruined chemise and cleaned herself up as well as she could. There wasn’t very much blood, which was truly surprising. From the way she felt, blood should have gushed out of her.

But no.

She reached for the second blanket, pulled it over the naked body of her first lover—her only lover—curled up against his side, and settled herself to sleep.

Her body was throbbing and tingling in an unfamiliar way that made it hard to settle down. So she started thinking again about the blasted lady with her needle.

That was a ridiculous description for something that was more like a battering ram.

But . . .

There was something overwhelming, wonderful about the experience. It made her feel—

Absurd, she told herself, curling tighter.

No human can own another. Possessiveness? No.

She must have misunderstood the look in Quin’s eyes. She wasn’t even his wife yet.

Still, she fell asleep thinking about the way he looked at her as he thrust: ferocious, hungry, possessive.

Mmmm.

Twenty-one

The Definition of Marriage

Quin woke very early in the morning, as he often did. But he realized immediately that nothing else about this particular awakening felt familiar. Normally he woke on a soft, pristine bed, arms curled around no one at all.

But now he lay on a rough, hard surface, arms curled around a soft, sleeping woman. What’s more, dawn light, unfiltered by draperies, bathed his face, and it sounded as if some tipsy birds were singing into his ear.

Suddenly the world—and recognition of just where he was and with whom—flooded back into his head. It was Olivia whom he had clutched all night, as if afraid she would escape. Olivia, whose laughing eyes and silly sense of humor and wry intelligence surprised him and delighted him . . . and made him mad with lust.

Olivia was his. Somehow he’d managed to find a woman who was the opposite of Evangeline.

Evangeline had played the virgin, but in truth, wasn’t.

Olivia had played an experienced woman, but in truth, wasn’t. For a moment or two he puzzled over what precisely had happened between her and the saintly Rupert, but then he let it go. She would never tell; she must have promised Montsurrey.

If only he had known . . . He had thrust into her, believing that she was used to shaking the sheets with her fiancé, thinking she was a woman long pleasured. His former wife had trained him to it. To be blunt, making love to Evangeline had been like riding the public highway.

Making love to Olivia was all different, and not just because of physical differences. Every moan and shudder she gave seemed to ring changes in his own body.

And through it all came a wild sense of possession. Olivia was his, all his. No other man had ever touched her the way he had. The ferocity of his possessiveness was astonishing—and not logical.

He lay there for some time, listening to a thrush sing, and thinking about the kind of betrayal that makes a man desperate to find a woman who loves only him. Olivia’s virginity was the most beautiful gift she could have given him.

His arms tightened even thinking of it. He had caused her physical pain, and he felt terrible for it. But knowing that he was the very first . . .

He shook the feeling away; it was illogical. It didn’t matter how many men a woman had slept with. He had told himself that after Evangeline—on their wedding night—had detailed her many exploits (which had begun with a footman at the tender age of fifteen). He had been right.

None of those men had changed the essential Evangeline, or the way he’d felt about her.

But still, that glow—that ferocious, animalistic, possessive glow at the bottom of his heart—didn’t fade away. He dismissed it as being akin to poetry: unaccountable, illogical.

Poor Olivia was undoubtedly sore after the events of the previous night. He eased her onto her back, then took his time caressing those creamy, soft, intoxicating curves. She slept on; he began embellishing his touch with a kiss now and then. She stirred a few times, but it wasn’t until he had a hand exploring the delicate skin on her inner thigh, while his mouth inched closer to a sweet pink nipple . . .

She woke up.

She didn’t murmur a greeting. Instead she sat straight upright and shrieked, “Ohmygoodness, where am I?”

Quin wasn’t very good at answering questions at the best of times (unless, of course, they had to do with mathematics). Instead of answering, he reached up, pulled that luscious bundle of female flesh down onto his chest, and kissed her. Which made a feeling of possessiveness rage through his body again.