Chapter 13

CHAPTER 13

“ I t is me, Charles,” Madeline made herself say clearly and calmly as she pushed open the door.

It would be ridiculous to run away from her own husband even though her heart was suddenly doing somersaults. She was not an errant child up past her bedtime. She was the Duchess of Huntingdon in her own home, and this man was her husband. They must face one another as sensible adults despite the lateness of the hour and the tensions of recent days.

“You should be asleep, Madeline,” said Charles, rising from the chair at his desk where he had been reading something by the light of a single candle lamp. “I believed everyone else was in bed, including you.”

His handsome face was surprised, but his voice was not unwelcoming. There was no sign of Benedict, thankfully. Madeline did not wish to encounter guests in her night attire, not even her brother-in-law. She was self-conscious even in the presence of her husband. Or maybe, especially in his presence…

“I couldn’t sleep,” she confessed honestly. “Eventually, I thought that a glass of brandy might help and came downstairs to take one. I did not expect to find you here either.”

“I have been restless too,” the Duke confessed, turning to pour two small measures of brandy into glasses from one of the decanters on the oak cabinet behind him. “We both have a lot on our minds, and it has been a strange day.”

Madeline nodded, remembering all too well the awkwardness and confrontation at the dinner table. Perhaps it had bothered Charles more than he had allowed them to see earlier. She hoped not, wishing neither to see him hurt nor for his relationship with her family to be permanently damaged.

“I am truly sorry for Letitia’s behavior,” she said soberly. “It had not occurred to me that she would act in such a way. Please believe that my sister is not malicious, only impulsive and fond of me. Her actions were at fault, but her motives were kind.”

“I believe that. In fact, she rather reminded me of you when you first arrived here.”

The uncharacteristically mischievous expression on his face indicated that this was a joke rather than a criticism, and Madeline smiled in return while accepting the glass that he pressed into her free hand.

“I was rather awful to you, wasn’t I?” she said a little shamefacedly. “It wasn’t fair, and I really did mean it when I apologized. I…really don’t feel that way about you now…”

“I know,” Charles said quickly, having put down his own glass on the desk without a sip, his entire attention seemingly focused once again on Madeline. “We were both wrong in the past. But after the way you defended me today, how could I ever doubt you? No one has ever done that for me before.”

“No one has ever taken your part?” Madeline questioned.

“I suppose I’ve never needed it. When I was younger, I had enough bluster to shout down anyone who gainsaid me. Those closest to me, like Cecilia and Benedict, might stand beside me, but they have no heart for a fight on my behalf.”

“Unlike me, you mean,” said Madeline with a smile. “I’ve never run away from a fight when my cause was just. Most people judge that a fault, especially in a woman.”

“I rather like it,” Charles confessed. “Being defended by my wife was… pleasing to me.”

“Pleasing?” she queried with amusement at this odd wording.

“Very pleasing?” he offered as an alternative, now stepping towards her. “Very pleasing indeed?”

When the Duke raised his hand to caress her cheek, it took all Madeline’s effort not to drop her glass as she gasped his name.

“When you touch me like that, Charles, I can barely stand, never mind think straight. Be careful.”

She tried to speak lightly, covering the physical truth of her words. The Duke gently took away her glass and lamp and placed them both on the desk, the brief contact of their hands only exacerbating the tumult in Madeline’s blood.

“Then shall I show exactly how pleasing I found your defense?” he whispered in her ear, his lips barely touching the skin. “Or how pleasing I find your entire person, Madeline?”

“Charles…”

She was in his arms again then, her husband’s firm jaw and intent brow clearly outlined above her face in the dim lamplight, tender but hungry in the same way she remembered him last night. When his mouth touched hers, Madeline returned his kisses with a passion that seemed to rise from her depths without any conscious thought.

Charles’s hands were stroking the lines of her body and unfastening her dressing gown, allowing him to caress her curves through the thin nightdress beneath.

“What a fine woman you are, Madeline,” he told her with lust-filled admiration. “Your body enthralls me. It could be like the ideal template on which female bodies were designed… Do you have any idea how much I want to possess you?”

“Your touch…is like fire,” she sighed, pressing herself into his hands. “But I want it so much.”

“Madeline, yes,” the Duke said, his words now short and guttural, and then he drew her mouth into another long, deep, and dizzying kiss.

The sensations rippling ceaselessly through Madeline’s body were distracting enough that she only faintly registered the slight ripping of her nightgown in Charles’s eagerness to reach her naked breasts. It felt faintly unbelievable that she should be there in the study in such a clinch with him at all, but at the same time, it felt utterly right.

She cried out as Charles’s hand reached for the hem of her dress and slid caressingly up her trembling thighs, settling at their apex, his fingers brushing against her soft, slippery folds before withdrawing.

“Yes…” he breathed. “You are so ready for me, and I am more than ready for you.”

Instinctively but uncertainly, Madeline let one of her own hands travel down Charles’s body to his groin and press lightly on the hardness she found there.

“You do that to me,” he told her and then abruptly slid from her grasp and sank to his knees, raising her nightdress with both hands.

Madeline gave another louder and more bewildered cry as her husband pressed a firm and lingering kiss on her Mount of Venus, his tongue actually darting into her slit and caressing the swelling pleasure nub that crowned it. What was this ?! It was certainly a new act to Madeline, both in body and imagination.

Amidst the shocking, dizzying pleasure, the Duke’s hands ran purposely about her thighs and buttocks as he kissed her, stroking her flesh, holding her close to him, and opening her private places for access by his tongue.

Her next cry of startled sensation coincided with a loud creaking of wood that made her start and pull back automatically, fearful that someone was about to enter the room. But when she looked at Charles, he was almost laughing although still on his knees before her, his lips moist and slightly open.

“The wood paneling in here often creaks at night,” he explained. “Do not take fright at that. Or was it the ministrations of my tongue that disturbed you so much?”

“I am sorry,” she responded, feeling her face aglow with arousal, confusion, and over-excitement. “I did not want you to stop… I mean, I did not wish to prevent you from…whatever you were doing. I am your wife, and you may have me as you wish.”

“Oh, I intend to,” her husband assured her with lust-filled green eyes, rising and kissing her lightly as he spoke. “But it will be for your pleasure as much as mine. You know that now, don’t you?”

Madeline nodded, her limbs unsteady as he re-tied her dressing gown around her ruined nightdress and put the candle lamp back into her hand.

“Hold tight,” said the Duke and unexpectedly swung her up into his arms, a gesture so smooth and unexpected that she was lost for words and could only throw her free arm about his neck for stability.

“What are you doing?” she managed to ask as he carried her from the study as though she weighed no more than a child.

“Taking you to bed,” Charles answered. “It seems to me that tonight is as good a time as any to fulfill our conjugal responsibilities.”

“Is it?” Madeline asked, sensing the powerful beat of his heart close to hers.

“It is past time,” he said shortly. “I should have done this long ago…”

Madeline rested her head on his shoulder, panting and breathless from his caresses in the study and the thought of what was still to come.

“Tonight, I want you naked,” the Duke announced as he set Madeline on the bed in his room, warm and breathless. “I must have every inch of your delightful body at my fingertips.”

Charles’s hands lost no time in fulfilling his wishes, stripping off her dressing gown and pushing the ripped nightgown from her shoulders. Madeline could not deny him and did not want to, glorying in the touch of those strong, sensitive fingers and the firm, knowing mouth trailing after them.

“I want you, too,” she managed to gasp, pushing at his jacket and stock then reaching for his waistcoat buttons with uncertain fingers. “I want your skin on mine, Charles.”

“You shall have me,” he almost growled, tossing those outer items of clothing aside and then helping her to pull up and discard his shirt. “You shall have all of me tonight, Madeline, until you are completely satisfied.”

She kissed him again, running her hands over his well-muscled torso, warm from both their embraces and the exertion of carrying her all the way upstairs. Her husband was a strong man in every sense, and his strength attracted Madeline all the more.

God, what was she doing? Of their own volition her fingers had found the waistband of his trousers and begun to open the buttons.

“Madeline,” Charles uttered her name in a voice that was now low and animal, evidently excited even further by her eagerness for him. “You know that you’re mine, don’t you?”

His lower garments were gone now, kicked away with the same impatience with which he tugged away and discarded her nightgown.

“I’m yours,” she breathed, lying back, naked and vulnerable on the Duke’s bed, her heart hammering with the anticipation of what would come next.

His substantial manhood jutted towards Madeline, drawing all her attention for a moment as he followed her gaze.

“Have you never seen a naked man before?”

“Not like this,” she answered immediately, instinctively reaching out towards him as he sat down beside her and then paused. “I’ve seen little boys, of course, and youths bathing in the river. But I did not know men could get so…big.”

She would have withdrawn her hand if Charles had not taken it in his own and slowly placed it on his shaft as he lay down beside her.

“For you,” he said. “All for you. Every inch.”

His words made Madeline throb inside with the same rhythm she could feel under the smooth skin of his organ as she held and then stroked it. He closed his eyes with an expression of appreciation for a few moments before taking her hand away.

“But first I must finish what I began earlier, mustn’t I?”

Kissing her lips, her throat, and her breasts, Charles moved further down her body, parting her thighs and taking his place between them. Madeline shut her eyes for a few breaths, expecting to feel the pain women talked of experiencing on their wedding nights. The size of Charles made some discomfort seem inevitable, but instead of pain, there were only more soft kisses.

The Duke kissed his way assiduously down Madeline’s belly and then her thighs before returning to her furred mound and reapplying his lips and tongue as he had done in the study to greater effect.

Secure in the locked space of the ducal suite, Madeline cried out without self-consciousness now, abandoning herself to her husband’s intimate kisses, wherever he chose to bestow them. The movement of his lips and tongue was purposeful, whether flickering or licking more forcefully and when his mouth was joined by his fingers sliding deep into her slit and rubbing her inside, Madeline felt the irresistible tides of her climax gathering.

With deep shudders, she moaned and writhed against him as the waves of pleasure passed through her and then receded. Madeline opened her eyes to his salty kisses on her lips and the touch of his long, hot body along hers on the bed.

“Now you are truly ready,” he said, and she felt something hard and hot rubbing against her tingling womanhood, sliding teasingly in the wetness of her folds until Charles reached down with his hand and directed it against the entrance to her body.

“Oh, Charles!”

The head of his organ was already embedded before Madeline grasped that this moment had come. Then Charles’ manhood was entering and stretching her with joyful inevitability as she panted and gasped for it in unison with his grunts of lustful relief. At last, he was entirely inside her, and Madeline buried her face in his shoulder, overwhelmed with physical and mental sensations, all very far from pain.

It felt both unbelievable and unbelievably good to finally be filled by her husband, the warm weight and scent of his skin both a comfort and a distraction. Wriggling slightly, unable to be still in her present position, Madeline’s every slight shift only increased her consciousness of Charles’s penetration.

When he began to move, it was almost unbearable, each thrust filling her simultaneously with anxiety that he would withdraw and longing for him to fill her again to the utmost extent. Soon, Madeline heard her own voice actually pleading that he do so and felt him comply rhythmically and forcefully, shaking the bed with their combined passion.

A second dramatic climax seized her, her arms and legs clutching at Charles’s sweat-damp body, still working vigorously between her thighs as he voiced his own ecstasy. For long moments, Madeline felt they were suspended together between heaven and earth in blissful throbbing union.

After physical joy had ebbed into peace, Charles withdrew from Madeline’s body and lay alongside her, a deeply satisfied smile on his handsome face.

“That was worth waiting for,” he commented and then frowned at Madeline’s expression. “What is it?”

“Your neck…Oh, I didn’t mean to do that…”

She reached out and touched the red mark she had unknowingly left at his throat at the height of her pleasure.

Charles touched the mark and Madeline’s hand with a laugh, unable to see but feeling the source of her consternation.

“Are you sure you didn’t mean it? This seems like revenge to me. Now we match. Actually, I think you may have left teeth marks…”

She joined in his laughter, shaking her head.

“No, but I think you must wear your stock high when our guests arrive.”

“Or everyone will know that I belong to you, just as you now belong to me,” he said, touching the fading mark on Madeline’s neck. “Is that so very bad?”

“I belong to you,” Madeline murmured, the words having new import as she pressed her damp thighs together. “You belong to me.”

In the aftermath of their congress, she knew she was truly Charles’ wife now and the potential mother of his children, heirs to the Duchy of Huntingdon.

“Still, words alone mean nothing, do they? Luckily, I have the entire night to demonstrate this truth to you with my actions. You will not forget it easily after tonight.”

Charles’s kiss and the glint in his emerald eyes as he spoke sent a fresh thunderbolt of desire into Madeline’s depths.

She knew that nothing would ever be the same again.