One Dance with a Duke (Stud Club #1)

His movements jerky and agitated, he stripped himself of his waistcoat. He flung open a trunk, pulling out a set of clean linens and snapping them open to cover the narrow cot. As if he’d be able to sleep.

He strode to the table to light a fresh candle. When his fingers refused to work the flint properly, he cast the damn thing away. Swearing quietly into the darkened room, he tugged at the buttons of his breeches placket, untucked his shirt, and stopped postponing the inevitable. Bracing one hand on the table, he freed his aching erection with the other. He was still hard as a pike, and primed for release.

Oh, God.

Her br**sts. Her hips. Her mouth on his. Her softness and heat. Her little mewls of pleasure. The sound of his name from her lips. The taste of her skin. Her br**sts again, because they bore repeating. And those ni**les … God, she had the most pert, luscious ni**les he had ever—ever—laid eyes or thumbs or lips upon. And the look on her face, when he’d carried her to the bedroom. Bewildered, mussed. Half-naked and fully aroused. She was there, right now, in the bed. He could join her. He could have her under him. Surrounding him. Gripping him tight. Panting and writhing and—

Sweet. Holy. Merciful …

Behind his eyelids, the world went searing bright. Gritting his teeth against an involuntary cry, he came in a frenzy of brisk, tight-fisted strokes, spurting jet after jet into a loose fold of his shirt. His breath grated in and out of his chest as he clutched the table’s edge for support.

After a minute, he straightened, pulled the soiled shirt over his head and cast it aside, then flopped onto the cot to savor the numb, joint-loosening sensation of release.

Release, yes. Relief, no. For she was still fewer than six paces away, and he could be hard for her again in a matter of three minutes. Perhaps two. Don’t ponder it overmuch, a throb in his groin warned.

The evening really had not gone as planned. Well, it had gone as planned, up to a point. The cards, the wager, her br**sts in his hands … all these he’d counted upon. He’d only meant to give her a bit of skillful stroking. Not too much. Just enough to loosen the tension in her body and offer a taste of the pleasure they could share. Just enough to prove he could be trusted, and keep her wanting more.

Well. This was clearly a different endeavor from horse-breaking.

In his best imaginings, he wouldn’t have guessed that Amelia would respond to him so passionately. He couldn’t have dreamed how strongly he’d respond to her. As a younger man, Spencer would have counted it with great pride, the fact that he’d taken an inexperienced lover from clothed and uncertain to half-naked and teetering on the verge of climax—all in under ten minutes. But the triumph rang a bit hollow tonight, as he realized his victory came with a forfeit.

He was left wanting more, too.

Not just more pleasure, more heat, more skin … although he did want all those things, and desperately … but more Amelia. He wanted to sit at the table and watch her worry that plump lower lip with her teeth as she embroidered. He wanted her to tease him for his reading choices. Most of all, he wanted to catch her staring at him, when she thought he wasn’t looking.

And he wanted the look in her eyes to be fondness, not fear.

He stared hard at the connecting door, as though he could swing the warped panel on its rusted hinges by sheer force of will.

Come to me, Amelia. You crossed a ballroom to confront me while hundreds looked on. Open that door tonight.

But when dawn came, he awoke alone.

God had a very cruel sense of humor.

Here Amelia was, the newly minted Duchess of Morland, arriving at Braxton Hall in all its early summer splendor. Through the square carriage window, she spied endless acres of rich farmland dotted with neat barns and cottages, then a pleasing expanse of rolling green parklands, and now, as they neared the Hall, a wall of towering, manicured hedges that must contain equally well-maintained gardens. Of this prestigious, lovely, verdant estate she was now mistress.

And she was a shambles.

Amelia had never traveled well. The rolling motion of a carriage always nauseated her, and she felt the effects even more strongly in warm weather. Their first day of travel hadn’t been too distressing, but the farther they went from London, the worse the roads became. Late spring rains had left this particular dirt lane rutted and uneven, so that she had not only rolling to contend with, but violent jouncing as well. She ached all over, her muscles stiff from long hours of bracing herself on the seat, and her head throbbing with a persistent, dull pain. Her gown—a sensible chocolate-brown traveling habit two years past its fitting—was wrinkled and coated with a fine layer of dust.

She was the sorriest-looking duchess to ever live, she was sure of it.