Page 84 of Duke in Darkness

Even in the coolness of the bedchamber, her body was a furnace about to explode. Her cheeks were flushed, a light coating of perspiration made her skin glisten, and between her legs, hot, fragrant juices dripped onto her inner thighs. But Gabriel would make her wait. Make her beg for his tongue, his fingers, his cock. Break her with pleasure.

A soldier’s woman wanted it that way.

Just when she was ready to disobey and turn her head, his big hands clamped around her hips, moving slowly to cup her ample bottom. Then he gently parted her nether cheeks, and she gasped. Would he kiss her there again, in that forbidden, intoxicatingly sensitive place?

A low cry tore from her throat. For it wasn’t his tongue spreading wetness around, but his thumbs. Delving between her legs, coating themselves in juices, and returning to gently circle her back entrance. A lifetime of rules said that she should halt him at once. Yet each time he circled, each time he pressed as though he meant to penetrate her there, a sizzling jolt of dark, compelling pleasure shot straight to her core.

“Gabriel…” she gasped.

“Yes, Lili?”

She spread her legs further apart to offer him easier access, so he might fully introduce her to this deliciously naughty act. But he continued to tease her, around, around, press, until a frustrated shriek escaped. “Gabriel.”

“Oh, you want…my thumb in your backside, sweet? While I fuck your soaked cunt…with my cock?”

Both? Never in a thousand years would she have thought of that. Being penetrated in two places would surely be too overwhelming. And yet every pleasure he had introduced her too had been better than the last…

“Yes,” Lilian said fervently, panting with need, her fingers flexing on the embroidered quilt of the bed. “I want that. Your thumb in me. And your cock.”

“Very well, madam wife,” he gritted out.

Gabriel circled her back entrance with his wet thumb twice more, then he pressed in, firmer than before, and her tight ring gave way. It burned a little at first, but soon it felt good. Very, very good.

“Mmmm.”

“You like that?”

“More,” she begged, as her knees shook and threatened to buckle.

He laughed, a sound of pure delight. “My duchess is wicked.”

But Gabriel obliged, and as his thumb eased further into her bottom, he nudged the entrance to her cunt with his cock, coated the head in her slickness, and thrust hard.

Lilian screamed. It was almost too much, the way his cock and thumb both stretched her, separated and yet rubbing together, but the sweet ache intensified the wondrous pleasure. A cataclysmic orgasm approached like a runaway cart and she wanted it, wanted it more than her next breath.

“Please,” she begged. “Please let me come.”

“You beg so nicely, Lili,” said Gabriel as he thrust faster and harder.

Mindless with pleasure, Lilian’s forehead dropped onto the quilt. “Feels so good when you’re inside me. Filling me so full. And when you come…knowing you might be giving me a child…”

A primitive growl sounded behind her, and abruptly he withdrew both his cock and his thumb. Lilian cried out at the shocking loss, but seconds later she lay on her back, her husband kneeling between her spread thighs.

“You really want my baby? Not just duty?”

“Yes,” she said nodding, so there could be no misunderstanding. “More than one. A nursery full. Sons and daughters with dark hair and dark eyes. Just like their papa.”

Gabriel closed his eyes briefly, his throat working hard. “Blonde hair and blue eyes. Like their mama.”

“Or a combination,” Lilian added, smiling at the thought, and just as swiftly as he’d withdrawn, her husband moved and thrust inside her again.

Rough, untamed soldier.

“Wrap your legs…around my waist,” he said hoarsely, bracing himself on his elbows. “Hold me tight.”

Tears of joy spilled down her cheeks as she curled her arms under his and gripped his shoulders. Now he was a hot, brawny blanket, the hair on his chest teasing and scraping her nipples as his cock plundered her, and she sobbed at the raw, intimate perfection of their union. Faster and faster, harder and harder, they rocked and ground against each other as one, until the maelstrom exploded and a violent orgasm wrenched an abandoned scream of ecstasy from her throat. Yet he didn’t stop, just thrust again and again, intensifying the pleasure and making it last and last, until his guttural roar echoed in the bedchamber and his seed gushed inside her.

Gabriel collapsed on top of her and Lilian clamped her arms around him, stroking his hair, his shoulders, his neck, anywhere she could reach. And in that moment of perfect sated peace, she couldn’t halt the words that again tumbled helplessly from her lips: “I love you.”