I Proposed to London's Wickedest Duke, and He Said Yes novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Connecting Door

On the wedding night Mina decides she means to enjoy the wicked man she married; he kneels, asks her to tell him exactly, and praises every sound she makes until she comes. He will not take his own pleasure, and at dawn she finds him at the window with a letter he won't open.

I had written the terms so they said nothing about the bedchamber, and I had done it on purpose.

At eleven that night I sat on the edge of the Duchess's great bed in a lawn nightgown.

I pressed my hands between my knees and watched the door in the wall.

I was twenty-four years old and a virgin.

I had married the wickedest man in London, and I meant to enjoy it.

He knocked twice, softly.

"Come in," I said, in a voice I did not recognize.

He stood in the doorway in his shirt and a dark dressing gown.

Every ring was gone from his fingers, and his flaxen hair hung loose.

His bare hands looked strange and young.

"Your terms," said Gervase, "say nothing about this."

"I know."

"I've come to ask what you want."

"You've a reputation," I said. "I'd like to make use of it."

Something moved across his face and was gone.

"Then tell me exactly," he said.

"I'm not a mind reader, and I would rather get it right.

"Tell me what you want, and I'll do that."

The room was very quiet.

I was suddenly aware of my own heartbeat.

"Kiss me," I said.

He crossed the floor, and I stood up, and he put both hands in my cropped curls and kissed me.

It was slower than the one in the drawing room.

His mouth opened mine and his tongue touched mine, and I heard a small noise and realized it was me.

"Good," he murmured against my lips. "That's it. Again."

I pulled him in by the front of the dressing gown.

When I could think, I took hold of the hem of my nightgown and pulled it over my head and dropped it on the floor.

I stood there in the candlelight with my arms at my sides.

"I'm too tall," I said. "I'm all bone and elbow.

"I've no softness, and my hair looks as if I cut it with a bread knife.

"I wanted you to know before you looked."

He looked anyway.

He took his time about it.

"You're long," he said at last, quietly, "and strong, and I can see you breathing.

"Your shoulders are the best thing I have seen in nine years.

"Thank you for telling me.

"That was good, Mina. That was very good."

I hadn't known a body could flush from the inside.

"Where do you want me?" he said.

I sat down on the edge of the bed and opened my knees, and my face burned.

"There," I said. "With your mouth.

"I read about it in a book Kitty shouldn't have."

"Show me where."

"My pussy."

My voice cracked on the word.

"My clit, I mean. I want your mouth on my clit."

"Good girl," said the Duke of Tarrant, very low.

"Say it again."

"Put your mouth on my clit."

He went down on his knees on the carpet.

He took my thighs in his bare hands and spread them wider.

I felt the warmth of his breath on me before anything else.

Then his tongue touched me, one slow flat stroke, and every muscle in my body jumped.

"Oh God," I said.

"Tell me."

"Slower.

"Yes, like that. There. A little higher."

"Here?"

"Yes. Yes, there, don't stop."

He didn't stop.

He licked me in long, careful strokes, and when I moaned he made a low sound against me that I felt in my teeth.

His thumbs held me open.

"You taste," he said, against me, "like something I had given up on."

I did not know what that meant, and I did not care.

My hands were in his hair, and my hips were moving on their own.

"Look at you," he murmured. "Look how wet you are. Good.

"You're doing so well. Show me what you need."

"Harder," I said. "Your tongue. On the, there, right there."

He closed his lips around my clit and sucked, and white heat ran down my thighs and up my spine.

"That's it," he said. "Give it to me. I want to hear you."

I heard myself.

I made sounds I would not have believed of a baronet's daughter, loud and broken, and I kept saying his name.

"Gervase.

"Gervase, I'm going to, I'm going, oh, fuck, don't stop."

"Never.

"Come for me.

"Good girl."

I came.

It broke over me in waves, my back arching off the bed and my thighs clamping on his shoulders.

I clutched a double handful of his flaxen hair and rode his mouth through all of it.

When it was over I lay back with my pulse in my ears.

He kissed the inside of my knee.

He kissed my hip bone, and laid his cheek against my belly, and I felt him breathe.

My whole body felt rinsed.

I propped myself on an elbow and looked down at him.

His dressing gown had come open and his shirt was damp, and under the linen he was hard.

I could see the whole shape of him, thick and straining, and my mouth went dry.

"Your turn," I said, and reached for him.

He caught my wrist gently.

"Not tonight."

"Gervase."

"I want to earn that.

"I would like to have you ask me for it, some night when you aren't quivering from the last."

"That is not how a rake behaves."

His mouth twitched.

"Then I'm a poor one," he said.

He kissed my palm, tucked the counterpane around me, and went back through the door in the wall.

He left it open a hand's width.

I fell asleep with the candle still lit, wetter and happier than I had been in my life.

At dawn I woke and the bed on the other side of the door was empty.

I found him at the library window in his shirtsleeves, with the early light on his face and a letter in his hand.

It was addressed in a small, tidy hand, and the postmark said Bath.

He wasn't reading it.

He was holding it.

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