I Proposed to London's Wickedest Duke, and He Said Yes novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: The Terms

"I'll tell you in bed," I said.

He took my hand in the dark and we went up the back stairs.

The last of the carriages rattled away through Brook Street.

It was three in the morning, and the house had gone quiet around us, and I found myself shaking.

I had never slept the night in his bed.

His room was bigger than mine, and plainer.

There were green hangings, a great low four-poster, and one candle burning on the washstand.

It smelled of him, of orange soap and ink, and I stood in the doorway and breathed it.

"Lie down," I said.

"Mina."

"Lie down on your back. Please."

He lay down in his shirt and his saffron waistcoat, with his bare hands open on the coverlet.

He looked up at me.

"Tell me what you want," said Gervase.

"No.

"Tonight you don't ask me anything.

"I decide."

His throat moved.

"I have nothing to ask," he said, wonderingly. "For once."

"Good."

I undressed him slowly, button by button.

I took off the waistcoat, and the shirt, and his boots, and laid each one on the chair, and he lay and let me.

His chest rose and fell like the tide.

When I had him bare I stopped at the scar along his ribs.

It was pale and a hand's breadth long, and I had never touched it.

I put my mouth on it.

He made a sound.

"You needn't."

"I do.

"You took this for her.

"I want it to be mine to kiss."

I kissed the whole length of it, slowly, from the hip bone to his armpit.

I felt him shudder under my lips.

"Good," I said. "You are so good, Gervase."

I took off my own gown in the candlelight.

I stood there tall and bare, with my cropped hair and my big shoulders.

He looked at me.

I climbed up over him, and kissed him.

It was a long one, with all the time in the world in it, and when I drew back his eyes were wet.

"Roll me over," I said.

"What?"

"I want your weight.

"Be on top of me.

"I want you to hold me down and look at me."

He turned us with a care that made my chest hurt.

He lay between my thighs on his forearms, with his hair falling round my face.

I opened my legs for him and he groaned, and I took him in my hand and guided him in.

He entered me an inch at a time.

I felt every one of them.

He filled me slowly, slick and thick and hot, until his hips lay against mine and neither of us could go any deeper.

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