Chapter 8

CHAPTER8

Violet leaned into Xander as he kissed her. Her hands moved of their own accord, going from the piano to his person. She gripped his forearms, desperate to feel something of him through the thin material of his shirt, just as one of his hands crept across her stomach and around her waist. Splaying his fingers wide, he urged her to lean into him, pressing her body against his as he kissed her.

This kiss was even firmer and more demanding than the one they had shared the night before, and it thrilled her. The way he nipped her bottom lip, demanding entrance, she gave in willingly, wanting to feel more of him, to be known completely by him.

When he arched her back on the stool and they ended up at a strange angle, in danger of falling off the stool, he pulled her up sharply.

She made a startled sound into their kiss but didn’t pull away as he somehow kept them connected and turned her to the piano. She ended up sitting on the keys, her body making them chink loudly, as an awful sound of clashing notes echoed through the room.

She hardly cared. All she could think about was Xander, the Dark Duke, and feeling him closer to her. He pressed her body to those keys, bending her on the piano. She could feel every part of his being pressing against her, his tall and muscular figure against her much smaller and curvier one.

When one of his hands moved to her hip, she moaned into their kiss, moving her lips against his own in a sensuous movement.

He changed the manner of the kiss now. Rather than dominating her tongue with his own, he moved their lips together, stealing brushes of her tongue when he could.

His hand on her hip moved to her leg above the fabric of her gown, and he urged her leg to the side, clattering more keys on the piano, so there was a space between her legs which he moved into.

As his hips nestled against hers, shocked, Violet arched into him, feeling the pressure of his hips against hers. This was something she had never explored in her writing, something she had never thought to imagine on those pages of text, but now that it was here, now that it was happening, she felt desperate that her heroine should know this same feeling.

It was a mixture of exhilaration, pleasure, and, of course, rebellion.

As Xander moved against her, his hands going from her waist to her hips once more, setting his body on hers, she felt unmistakably a hardness between his legs pressing against her.

“Hmm!” she murmured into the kiss in surprise.

He pulled back, a mischievous smile on his face as she looked down at their bodies so close together. They both breathed deeply, struggling to catch their breaths as he chuckled lightly.

“Your muse, eh? There are many things I could do to inspire you, Vi, if you ever ask it of me.”

She shuddered with pleasure that rippled up her spine. How she longed to ask him to show her something more, this very moment, as they were pressed against the piano, but she could not.

Her whole body trembled with excitement as a small voice in her head grew aware of a clock chiming over the mantelpiece in the music room. She turned her head toward the clock, straining to see the time in the feeble candlelight.

Xander sighed loudly, clearly noting what she was looking at. As if trying to distract her, he moved his lips to her neck and started kissing her again. Unlike the fierce clash of their lips before, this was softer.

He trailed his lips up and down her neck, a fleeting brush of tongue just beneath her ear that made her lids fall half closed as excitement brewed in her stomach. Her hands curled around the tops of his arms once more, not wanting to leave him, even as she knew she must.

“I… I have to go soon,” she said, eventually.

“I know.”

He still continued to kiss her, though, moving his lips across her neck, then, suddenly, he moved down to her collarbone, hooked a finger around the neckline of her gown, and pulled it to the side, revealing the bare skin of her shoulder. He set his lips upon her skin and nipped it, rather hard this time, but with such pleasure that her toes curled in her shoes, wanting more of it.

He kissed her for another minute or so, then raised himself from her shoulder, looking at what he had done with a self-satisfied smile.

Her eyes flicked down to her shoulder, where she saw a small pink mark.

“What did you do?” she murmured hurriedly. “You marked me!”

“I can be quite… possessive,” he confessed and winked at her, abruptly releasing her and stepping back from the piano.

She staggered against the keys when she lost his touch, in danger of falling off the piano. She caught her balance and looked down at her skin, unsure whether she should be thrilled that the Dark Duke was possessive about her, or whether to be afraid of a maid or her mother spotting that mark. She hastily pulled the gown back over the mark, determined to keep it hidden.

“Come.” He turned and offered his hand to her again. “I shall take you home.”

With her body still trembling, she took his hand and let him lead her out of the room. He helped her into her cloak, neither of them saying a word, and they went to the carriage that awaited her outside.

Xander followed her into the carriage, sitting beside her with his frock coat collar turned up around his neck. Neither of them lit a candle in the lantern that swung above them, and the space filled with darkness offered a sort of freedom again as the carriage jolted down the road, taking her home.

Xander kissed her again. Molding her body to his, she was uncertain how she had managed to live without this feeling for this last year, ever since she met him. Only when the carriage pulled up near her house did he pull back, his head so close to hers that despite the darkness, she could still glimpse the handsome lines of his face.

“You are content with our plan, then?” he asked.

Blinking, she was confused for a minute, before she remembered their conversation earlier that evening. Despite the kisses, despite the heat, this was all a means to an end. The Dark Duke only wanted her for a month or so, to repair his reputation, then there would be no more kisses.

She nodded but could not stay entirely silent.

“Why kiss me at all?” she asked, her voice just a whisper in the darkness. “Why show me all of this if you are merely using me to repair the damage I have done to your name?”

“I believe in enjoying ourselves,” he said, his voice growing deeper. “No harm in us indulging, is there?” His lips hovered over hers again, a silent promise of what more could come. “Goodnight, Vi.”

She pulled back from him, breathing heavily, as she knew now she would have to alight from this carriage, seemingly unaffected by his presence, and sneak back into the house without being seen.

He raised her hand between the two of them and rather than kissing the back of it, as any gentleman might have done in a formal situation, he turned her hand over and nipped the inside of her wrist. It was such a playful action that she smiled, in spite of the worry she now felt.

What exactly will happen in the next month if we continue to indulge? Am I prepared to lose my virtue? All for… being closer to him?

She could not answer her own question.

“Goodnight, Xander.” She forced the words out of her lips and stepped out of the carriage, releasing his hand at the last possible second, with their fingers brushing together.

On the drive, she stood for a moment and turned back to face him.

She could no longer discern his features and saw only darkness. As if he were some sort of figure made merely of shadows, not flesh and blood at all, he melted back into the interior of the carriage and disappeared.

* * *

Violet took the gown off her body, slipping it down her shoulders. She had lit just one candle to keep her company in her chamber, and in that apricot-tinged light, she turned to the mirror to examine her body. She shifted the shoulder of the chemise to look at her shoulder.

She’d heard of such marks before from her sister, but never had she expected to experience one herself. The Dark Duke had indeed marked her, but in a place she could easily keep covered. It was a subtle, secret marking.

Possessive… that was what he had called himself.

That shudder of pleasure raced up her spine again, and she turned away from the mirror. She changed in silence, shedding her chemise and pulling on her nightgown. Carrying the candle close to the bed, she stopped merely a step away from it and stared at the covers.

Having kissed Xander so much this evening, it was only natural for her to wonder what more they could do together, what more he would want from her, and what more she would yearn for from him.

For a second, briefly, she imagined the two of them tangled on the bed together. She saw him pulling at her nightgown, desperately trying to access her body, then she saw him reaching between the two of them and the way she moaned against his lips, thrilled at his touch.

Violet walked away from the bed. She surely could not sleep yet, not when her body still thrummed with excitement after his touch.

She moved to the writing desk in the corner of her room and laid the candle on the surface. Reaching into the bottom drawer, where she kept all her writing hidden from her mother, she pulled out the last few pages she had written for The Dark Duke.

Sitting down in the chair, she hurried to prepare her ink, quill, and blotting paper, then drew the paper toward the candlelight to see what she was doing. Dipping her quill in the inkwell, she raised it to the page, trying to write what would happen next.

A scene came before her, one that flowed naturally.

The Dark Duke, as if he was made of shadows, walked into the ballroom. While other gentlemen and ladies drew light, he drew darkness, and it was that sense of blackness that taunted her, that made her want to see more of him. Straining to see through the heads of the people, to catch one more glimpse of him, she abandoned her party and moved through the crowd.

She became lost in a sea of feathers thrust into ladies’ updos and such shining black tailcoats that she was almost blinded by the candlelight reflecting off the material and the bright, gleaming buttons. Disorientated, she ended up near the dancers, and when she looked around, she found the Dark Duke was gone. He was not where she had thought him to be.

“Are you looking for me, My Lady?”

Turning on the spot, she flicked her head around, finding he was in the shadows of the room once more. Leaning against the wall, he looked up from his wine glass, his eyes meeting her own.

She opened her mouth to speak, and…

Violet paused, lifting her quill.

“What does she say?”

The words hit the air around her, but there was no answer. Her mind could conjure nothing at all, and she looked down at the blank page before her, feeling how vacant it was.

It was ready to be filled with beautiful words, but she could not think of what to say at all.

“Oh, this is hopeless.”

She tossed the quill down, making a mess of her blotting paper as her eyes fixed on the spot where she had stopped mid-sentence. She did not know what these two characters should say to each other, for nothing they could say would amount to anything as powerful as what had happened between her and Xander that night.

“Reality is better,” she said aloud and then pushed away from the desk in anger.

She paced up and down, trying to find something to say. After a little while, with the moon moving across the sky beyond the windows, to show that night was indeed slipping away, she tried to return to her writing. She tried to find something more that could be said between her characters, but still, it would not come.

With nothing that could be written, she crumpled up the paper in anger and turned to the fireplace. Finding it wasn’t lit, but completely empty, she muttered and cursed in anger, then turned back to the candle.

She placed the tip of the paper to the flame, watching until it was truly on fire, the words she had written so far singeing into blackness. Then she tossed the ball into the fireplace.

Her written words vanished, along with the rest of the empty page.

Turning her back to the fireplace as the scent of ash filled the air, she dropped her shawl onto a nearby chair and clambered over the bed, hiding beneath the covers and pulling the blanket up over her head.

The deal was that she would help repair the Dark Duke’s reputation, and he would help her finish her story, but what if the exact opposite was to happen? What if he was such a distraction to her now that he had actually made it impossible for her to finish the story at all?

Finding she did not want to know the answer, she closed her eyes beneath the covers and prayed for sleep to come fast. She was not prepared for how in her sleep, the strength of heated dreams hit her. In those dreams, she was not alone in her chamber as she struggled to write.

A dark figure made of shadows watched her from the corner of the bedchamber, and when she looked up from her page, he crooked a finger toward her, and she went to him.