Tamed by her Duke (Seductive Mysteries #4)

Chapter 18

CHAPTER 18

T here was a kind of vicious, killing calm that overcame Caleb on the battlefield. It was something that had kept him—and the men beneath him, once he’d advanced in the ranks—alive. In the face of seeming insurmountable odds, Caleb kept his head.

He did not feel he was keeping it now.

His wife—his Grace—had been abducted and mistreated for years . She’d not gone into the details of her confinement in the mill, but he knew the look in her eyes, the one that said she was seeing horrors even if her tone was steady and her back straight.

The man who’d done it was dead—and good. May he burn in hell for eternity, as far as Caleb was concerned.

But the man behind it, the man who had hidden behind a kidnapper and a madwoman—that person was still free, was still unknown.

Caleb was going to find that man, and he was going to make him regret ever having been born.

“I’ll go to London,” he said, his voice sounding distant to his own ears.

A little furrow appeared behind Grace’s brows. That furrow hadn’t been there when she’d been telling her story. That, too, had told him she’d been elsewhere, not with him as she was now, as she had been when they were quarreling.

“London?” she asked. “Why?”

“Grace, ye just said it—there’s someone else involved in the attack against ye. We need to find him.”

Her mouth dropped open in a little O of surprise, and he found this infuriated him all the more.

“But—” she said.

“No,” he said, cutting a swift hand through the air. This time, she didn’t flinch, and it soothed the parts of him that were roaring for vengeance. “I’ll nae listen to any arguments. I’ll not stand for ye to be in danger, Grace.”

She blinked very quickly several times in a row.

“You’d do that?” she asked quietly. “Just for me?”

In an instant, the roaring was back. Apparently, he had many people to bludgeon back in London, if Grace was this surprised that someone might defend her. Caleb was not the first to have been duty-bound to do so, but it seemed that he was the first to make good on that duty.

“Aye,” he said shortly.

She worried her lip between her teeth. “But—you must understand; anyone behind such a convoluted scheme would have to be very well-connected, very powerful—very rich.”

“And what of it?” Caleb scoffed. “I’ll admit I’m nae terribly well-connected, but I’ve power and money, leannan . I’ll see it done.”

“But—”

“Did I not just tell ye to stop arguing?” he said crossly. “Ye’re my duchess—ye’re my wife. I will protect ye, Grace, whether ye like it or not. Do ye hear me?”

Caleb hoped that his words would be enough to put any such arguments to rest. He was not necessarily confident in this hope; his little wife was far more argumentative than was good for her. But certainly not even she, the quarrelsome little minx, would have to see that he was not just presenting her with the right option—it was the only option. This threat could not be permitted to remain.

But Grace was Grace, so he was steeling himself for argument. This meant, however, that he was prepared for a verbal parry, not a physical one.

Which meant, in turn, that he was knocked soundly back in his chair when his wife launched herself into his lap, threw her arms exuberantly around his neck, and began kissing him soundly.

In the frozen beat after Grace had tossed herself bodily upon her husband, she decided that if he tried to dump her off him again, after saying all those lovely things, she was going to knee him in his sensitive parts.

She’d seen the aftereffects of such a blow that time when Noel Packard had been butted between the legs by a particularly vicious goat. Noel had whined about the pain for days. It had been one of the best forms of entertainment Grace had experienced in all her years at the mill.

Fortunately, after a breath—which Grace determined was permissible, given the surprise of it—Caleb’s lips opened beneath hers as he kissed her back.

Good , she thought smugly. And then, as he drew up a hand to cup her beneath her bottom, using the leverage to pull her tighter against him, Very good.

“For feck’s sake, woman,” he grumbled against her mouth, “can ye never do as I expect ye to do?”

Grace responded with more kissing. She knew her husband’s complaints by now and recognized that this one was halfhearted at best.

She was gearing up to properly commit to the kissing—it really was so nice ; no wonder her friends always looked like such saps when they looked at their husbands—when something occurred to her.

“Wait,” she said, sitting bolt upright. Caleb’s grunt objected to this. “You said you’re going to London.”

His scowl was profound.

“I also said I’m nae going to argue about it, Grace?—”

“No, no, not that,” she said dismissively. His fingers clenched against her bum, which she enjoyed quite a bit. “I meant—I want to come with you.”

His eyes narrowed and he got a stubborn look about him, so she kissed the look away and then—though it was a challenge—forced herself to pull back before she got carried away again.

“I’m coming with you,” she said sharply.

“Oh, aye, fine ,” Caleb said. He sounded exasperated and seemed very much a man who was giving in merely to humor her, so that they could return to more enjoyable activities.

Grace didn’t care. Being humored was just another way of getting what she wanted, as far as she was concerned.

And besides—she wanted to get back to the enjoyable bits, too.

She did, it was true, get a bit twitchy with nerves when she felt Caleb grow hard beneath her.

“I…” she said, not sure what she wanted to say from there. She didn’t exactly want to remove herself from his lap but remaining felt rather dangerous, though that danger was laced with excitement, not fear.

Caleb’s arms around her tightened, taking the decision out of her hands.

“Hush,” he told her, voice gently chiding. “There’s naught to say, aye?”

“Yes, all right,” she breathed, letting herself relax against him as he kissed her way down the column of her throat. He was fully dressed while she was only in her dressing gown; when he tugged at the tie that held the garment closed, cool air rushed in, and her nipples pebbled against the fine material of her nightgown.

She’d worn the scandalous one again, the one that had been part of her trousseau.

“Jesus Christ,” he breathed, drinking in the sight of her.

“No, just Grace,” she quipped.

That ferocious frown. “If ye’ve enough thought in yer head to make jokes,” he said sternly, “then I’m no’ doin’ my job.”

Her smile became a gasp as he stood, lifting her into his arms with the same ease that he’d displayed the night prior. This time, however, he didn’t let her tuck her head demurely into the crook of his neck. Instead, he pressed his mouth to a soft, tender spot behind her ear and nipped and licked at it as he strode down the hall to her bedchamber.

He put her down like he was sorry to let her go, his hands lingering over her hair, her face and briefly—thrillingly—the valley between her breasts.

When he pulled back, he did not go far. He stood, his hands moving up to his cravat.

“Stay,” he ordered her. “Daenae move. Not one inch.”

As if Grace could. She was far too transfixed by the sight of his hands as they deftly unwound the long strip of fabric from around his throat, revealing him by increments. His throat, the bump of his Adam’s apple, bobbing as he swallowed. The slightest notch of collarbone.

This was, alas, all she was destined to see, as Caleb paused his deshabillement to take the cravat, still warm from his body, and wrap it around her eyes, knotting it securely at the back of his head.

“What—” she asked, even as her body seemed to sink, even more deeply against the cushions, seemed to grow even more languid and comfortable, with her eyesight denied her.

“Ye daenae need to look, leannan ,” her husband murmured, grazing a touch—the back of his fingertips, she realized—against her jaw. “Just feel, aye? There’s naught else to concern yerself about, not just now.”

There was something about that promise—that she didn’t need to worry, that she couldn’t worry, if only for a little while—that called to something Grace had long since buried deep within her. How long had it been since she’d trusted that things were going to be all right—since she’d trusted someone else to render them so? Had she ever felt that kind of trust?

But Caleb had said it, gruff and impatient and utterly him.

I will protect ye, Grace, whether ye like it or not.

Just now, she found she liked it quite a bit.

And so she focused on feeling as he guided her limbs out of her dressing gown, then her nightgown. She hummed her approval as he explored her with his hands, feeling the scrape of calluses against places that seemed uncommonly sensitive: her ribcage, the inside of her elbow, the curve of her calf.

It was somehow easy to be patient like this, when all she had to do was feel, and when everything she felt was just so lovely. The bedding was cool and crisp. Her pillow was soft and perfectly molded to her head. And Caleb was there, warm and reassuring.

When he finally laid atop her, bare skin against bare skin, she felt so hazy with languid pleasure that she could not manage more than a wordless murmur of encouragement.

“Ye know,” he said, nose skimming along her collarbone, the slight prickle of whiskers on his chin teasing the skin at the very top of her breast, “if I’d known this was all it took to make ye so agreeable, I’d have done it straight away.”

“You are an awful man,” she said, but the effect was diminished by the moan that came from her as he shifted so that she could feel the hot brand of him, ready against her thigh.

“Am I, then?” he asked lightly, fingers coming to play where she, too, was ready, slippery and wanting.

She bit her lip and shook her head, not truly denial, but encouragement.

“No,” she gasped as he slid a probing finger inside her. “Not awful at all.”

Except perhaps he was a bit awful, she amended a few minutes later, when those slow, deliberate movements stopped feeling soothing and started feeling like torture .

“Caleb,” she whimpered.

“Daenae rush me, leannan ,” he said, voice thick. “I’ve waited for this, as ye’ll recall. Let me have my pleasure.”

This was, Grace thought, all very well and good—except, naturally, for the part where she was going to combust like a firework and burn down this ancient castle they called home.

Lacking the mental clarity to articulate this, Grace groped blindly, seized a handful of her husband’s hair, and used it to try to yank him toward her. He, in return, bit her shoulder—not hard enough to hurt, not really, but hard enough to send a jolt through her that nearly sent her tumbling into her crisis.

It wasn’t quite enough, but her reaction was obvious. As she gasped and clenched, her husband let out a stream of Gaelic that was very obviously swearing, even if she couldn’t understand a word of it.

“Jesus, Grace, Christ, you marvel,” he gritted out, breaths coming sharply between each word. “Fine—ye bloody win—I cannae wait?—”

He lined himself up against her, then pushed slowly forward, the stretch uncomfortable at points, but never so much that Grace stopped aching for more. She tried to grasp at his shoulders, to pull him toward her faster, but he seized her hands, pressed her wrists beside her head, used the grip as his own leverage to move at his own speed.

When he was fully inside her, their bodies pressed together, one of her knees tossed insouciantly around his waist, she heaved in a breath.

“My goodness,” she said.

It was silly and missish as a thing one could say while in the midst of being taken for the very first time, but Caleb let out a little laugh that sounded almost fond and pressed a featherlight kiss to the very bottom of her earlobe.

“Aye,” he said, before drawing back and thrusting into her with force.

Grace saw stars—blindfold be damned. The carefully stoked fire of her ardor surged as though he’d tossed kerosene atop it, and with each merciless thrust little whimpers tore themselves free from her. Her mouth fell open; her head tipped back.

“Yes,” he told her. “That’s right, that’s my girl. Let me feel ye.”

And she did, for he shifted just a bit, the angle changing ever so slightly, until somehow, he was pressing against the sensitive places both inside and outside her body, all at once.

She screamed. She fell.

He kept moving within her as the pleasure plagued her, and her own ecstasy had only just started to wane when he called out his own, pressing his mouth to her neck to muffle his roar of satisfaction.

They came together, boneless, sated. He released her wrists and pressed a kiss to each spot where he’d held her.

“Let me—” he began, shifting his weight away.

“No,” she said. “Stay. Please.”

She didn’t know if she was allowed to ask for this, but she couldn’t stop the words in time.

He hesitated. “Aye. I’ll stay.”

He settled his weight, his head coming next to hers on the pillow. She could feel his breath flutter against her jaw. She didn’t move a bit, not even to remove the blindfold, as if believing that, if she stayed perfectly, perfectly still, time would not notice her and this moment could last forever.

Sleep tugged at her, however, the nerves and confession and lovemaking all too much for her body to go without rest, too. As she drifted, she clung to one terrible, selfish thought, sent up a fervent prayer that she had not conceived, had not yet given her husband the heir he so desired—if only so she could have this for just a little bit longer.