7

The Duke of Blackflint had Arabella on her back so quickly, she wasn't sure how it happened. He held himself over her, looked down at her.

"I believe it was already your turn," he said, amused.

"But now I want to—"

"Please me?" She nodded. He was holding his body away from hers, but the heaviness of his cock pulled it down to graze her mound. She squirmed, wanting to feel more. Who was she? She didn't recognize herself at all anymore, but the truth was ... she liked this. All of it. Being wanton. Being entirely in the duke's hands.

"How will you please me?" he asked.

"With—my mouth, I thought, as you did, and my hands—"

"And you know how to do this for a man?" He was teasing her, she could see.

"No, but I thought I could . . . experiment."

He smiled at her as one would a pupil who had given the wrong answer. And deliberate, hard, he ground himself against her. "I find I'm feeling a bit too urgent to be toyed with by a novice, pet," he said.

Her eyes lit with understanding. "Then ... tell me. What you want me to do." By the flash of heat in his expression, she knew she had read him right.

"Tell me," she said, her voice honey now.

He looked pleased. He leaned down to her, kissing her slow and deep. She could taste a lingering trace of her arousal, fresh, tart, and marveled that only moments before, this man had used that shocking tongue to send her to the angels.

He slid up her body now, allowing his cock to drag over her stomach, and, straddling her, rose to his knees. He was barely touching her body, to her consternation. His cock lightly brushed between her breasts. He shrugged out of his open shirt, and she saw that he did indeed have scars on the lean expanse of his chest and stomach—not gruesome, as the stories had claimed, but certainly real battle wounds, slashes that had been stitched up. One over his left nipple, another across his belly below the navel.

What happened to you? She'd never ask it.

He reached down to her face, ran a finger over her mouth, then pushed inside. "You are so beautiful," he said, and there was something in his tone that sounded like a warning. "Such pretty lips," he murmured, and pushed another finger in. "Show me how you suck, pet."

She did, sucking his fingers, her eyes locked to his face. A slow smile spread over his features. "Good girl. A little harder. Very good."

He pulled his hand away, wet from her mouth, and wrapped it around his cock. She watched as he stroked himself, slow and hard. It was remarkable to watch, and the position he kept her in, under him as he knelt over her, made her feel nervous, trapped and thrilled at once, the feelings merging into something new and strange, something that filled her body with restless need.

"I could spill now," he said. "I could have spilled a hundred times while I was tasting you. You require an exceedingly high level of self-control."

He moved up farther over her body, now. His knees against the sides of her breasts, his cock directly above her as he stroked it roughly.

"Open your mouth, sweetness," he said.

She wanted to, and she was a little afraid—he was a large man, and she was thoroughly at his mercy, just as he had warned.

He must have read her hesitation, because he said, quieter, "Trust me, Bella. I would not hurt you." That smirk reappeared briefly. "Except to give you pleasure. At your express request."

She felt an odd shift, when he said it. Trust me . Something in her, beyond reason, heard it. He had pulled her out of the rain on the verge of collapse, brought her here, where he could have done anything to her. But she had been safe—she had been the one who asked for this, for everything happening now.

Something passed between them, then. Serious and frank. Vulnerable. It made Arabella's heart swell in her chest in a way that almost hurt.

You won't have this again.

There was this night. And then she would leave his world. And whomever she encountered in her new life, whatever pleasure or intimacy she might find ... it would not be this. This night, this man ... were singular.

A sharp tenderness welled up in her, looking up at him. And a sense of lightness—a complete surrender to the position he now had her in, quite pinned to the floor. I would show you no mercy, he'd said. There was a dark delicacy in that. Placing herself in his hands. Trust me. She hadn't trusted many in her lifetime—why would she? Her father was unscrupulous, the ton were snakes, and men who came courting pled interest in her, when she knew their hearts were set only on money and connections.

But she did trust the duke.

He must have seen it in her expression. Because his eye widened, and a flush came over his face. His scar stood out white against the deeper color. And something in his gaze softened.

"Please," she whispered. Inviting him.

He guided his cock to her lips, and she parted them. He eased the tip into her mouth. The skin was velvet and very warm, and tasted clean, a little salty. She caught a drop of moisture on the tip of her tongue, and swirled it around the crown.

He groaned. Watching her intently. "That's it. Take a little more."

He slid farther in, holding himself at the base with one hand, gently cradling her head with the other. She ran her tongue under the ridge of the crown, and he shuddered out a breath, and tensed his whole body against the pleasure of it.

And suddenly she understood for the first time that power was a shifting, layered, slippery thing. He was atop her. Pushing his cock slowly into her mouth—a tableau in which one could easily mistake her for powerless, entirely submissive to his will.

She was far from that.

Every slick caress of her tongue. Every change in pressure from her lips. The effect her slightest movement had on him was fascinating in its ferocity. Was this not power?

It was fair to say that she was at his mercy. But he was also very much at hers.

And she loved it. The coarse intimacy of it. Feeling him, smelling the clean musk of him, learning the things that made him tremble.

He was holding himself still now, breathing tightly, his face a mask of concentration, of thinly restrained need.

"Can you take more of me, beauty?" She responded by opening wider, inviting more of him in. Filling her mouth with him. He moaned. Then took her hands in his, moved them to the outsides of his thighs.

"Hold me here. If it is too much ... " He squeezed his hands over hers, showing her what to do, how to alert him to ease back.

Now he moved both of his hands to cradle her head. "More," he said, voice thick, and she sucked him, lay her tongue flat and full against the underside of him, as he began to move in and out. "Sweet Christ," he muttered. "Yes, like ... God, like that ... "

She glided her hands up his thighs, around to feel his hard buttocks, as he moved faster, shallower, in and out of her mouth. The indecency of it made her feel hot and liquid everywhere.

"That sinful mouth ..." He said, his voice tight, his hips moving rhythmically, his buttocks flexing under her hands. " ... you have me ... so close ..." A growl tore from him. "How ... shall I give you my seed, pet?" Wickedness lit his face as he stroked a hand over her cheek, still sliding his cock in and out in short, quick movements. He ran his finger over her stretched lower lip. "Here? Will you drink me? Or will I paint your pretty face?"

She knew she should find his words appalling, but they thrilled her. Her cunt throbbed. She wanted to hear more. Even as she wanted to drive him beyond words.

So she was pleased to see he was struggling to speak, struggling to ride the edge of control. "So ... good ..." he rasped, his fingers clenching her hair as he pushed in deeper, giving her as much of him as she could take.

And then he was abruptly pulling away from her, taking his deeply flushed cock in hand, stroking fast as he knelt over her. "Watch me, angel," he whispered, his breath jagged.

As if she could tear her eyes away. He stroked hard, root to tip, twice, thrice, and then, with a shuddering groan, threw his head back, beautiful one-eyed creature, god of pleasure, as he found his release, his seed falling hot over her breasts.

He let his head drop, panting. Swaying. Exhausted from the bliss.

Arabella sat up. Feeling his liquid cooling on her skin. Her pulse was dancing fast. She felt unaccountably moved, to have seen him in his surrender.

He blew out an exhale. And looked at her, taking in what he had done. He raised a hand to her breasts, trailing his fingers through the pearly wet on her skin.

"Why is it, with men," he said, wry, "that we cannot stop at taking pleasure. That we need to mark you. To make you ours."

He'd meant it lightly, but hearing the words sobered him. His face was serious, contemplative, as he moved his fingers over her breast, spreading his sticky wetness over it.

And then he was pulling her into his lap like she weighed nothing at all. Pressing her naked body, her breasts slippery with him, against his bare chest. Burying his face in her neck.

She wrapped her arms around him. Felt her heart squeeze.

This was the problem. She'd fancied herself enamored of the fierce, piratical duke when she first met him as a girl of fifteen. She had fantasized about earning the intensity of his gaze. And then she grew up, and her father made a deal with the man, and she discovered he was cold, and distant, and, in his polite way, harsh; he was nothing like the romantic, scarred figure she'd dreamed about. She realized she'd been a silly child. She had fallen in love with a man she'd made up in her head.

But this man.

Naked, warm, damp, pressing his scarred cheek into her shoulder as he breathed in the scent of her hair, his strong, still-trembling arms tight around her— this man.

He was real. He was right here. And he was not cold. Not at all. He was hot, and frightening, and rough, and gentle, and, deep under the surface, full of feeling. And she wanted this reality so much more than that fantasy.

Just a few hours left , she thought. And it was a knife.