Winning the Wallflower Read online

  “We’re really going to do this?” she whispered.

  “Will anything other than the threat of scandal persuade your mother that I am a worthy candidate for your hand, now that you’re worth a fortune?”

  She shook her head, her eyes fixed on his.

  “Then the answer is yes.” A smile eased the firm line of his lips and he held her even more tightly to his chest. “I couldn’t stop now, Lucy. I feel like Ulysses, come home to find Lucy—his Lucy—waiting for him.”

  His voice burned with desire and that other thing. Love.

  Lucy buried her face in his chest and let herself be carried over the threshold into her childhood room.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve made love before?” he asked, too casually, as he placed her on the bed. A very narrow bed, she thought for the first time.

  She shook her head, registered the flare of pure joy in his eyes. “I suppose that you have?”

  “Yes.”

  Her body seemed to be burning with an uncomfortable prickling heat. He stood next to the bed and silently stripped off his coat, then his waistcoat and shirt. His chest was broad and muscled.

  Lucy’s fingers trembled to touch him, but before she reached out, he was bending over, pulling off boots and tossing them to the side. Then his hands were at his waist . . . And then he was naked.

  He stood there and let her look at him. He was gorgeous, perfect, and yet there was just a trace of uncertainty in his eyes. It gave her courage; she rose up on her knees and pulled her nightgown over her head.

  His gaze swallowed her. It was ravenous, dark, possessive. Lucy smiled from under her lashes, then put her hands on her hips. “Well,” she purred, “do you like what you see?”

  Cyrus took a deep breath. Lucy was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Her breasts were ripe and beautiful, heavy for such a slender body. And between her legs . . .

  The sound that broke from his lips was deep and hungry. “Are you sure?” he asked, because it had to be said. “We can wait until we’re married.”

  She smiled, a ravishing curve of rosy lips. “You did say that you wanted to put off consummation of your marriage for at least a few months. Perhaps a year?”

  “I was a fool,” he said, the noise rasping from his throat.

  But she gave him a severe, straightforward look that snapped him to attention. “We may have a child who is born less than nine months from our wedding.”

  He shook his head. “I have a special license. I’ll marry you tomorrow.” He felt as if the words were torn from his chest. His entire body was roaring with desire. But he had to go slowly, do this right. She was a virgin. She was his virgin. She was his future wife.

  She was—she was everything to him.

  “But I wouldn’t care if the world knew how much I loved you,” he said, the words leaping from some place deep in his heart. “I wouldn’t even care because I—I want you more than anything I’ve ever wanted in my life.”

  She reached out and caught his shoulders, pulling him toward her. “In that case . . .”

  He lowered himself onto her, marveling at how a woman could be so delicate and curvaceous at the same time. At the touch of his body she instinctively bent her knees, cradling him.

  “That’s it,” he whispered into her mouth. He rocked against her as he ravished her mouth, thrusting his tongue into her softness. “I’m going to come inside you like this, Lucy,” he said hoarsely. “Hard and fast.”

  She made an inarticulate sound, and he slid a hand down to her breast. He couldn’t take her fast, for all he said so. It would hurt. She would be hurt.

  So he disciplined his body, reminded himself they had all night, and slid down to her breasts. He had to discover what made her writhe under him, what made little cries break from her lips.

  The answer was everything. Wherever he caressed, licked, suckled, she responded. She was a twisting, hot flame in his hands, gasping, touching him, always in motion.

  Finally she found her way between his legs. When he felt her touch, he groaned. “Lucy!”

  “I like it,” she said, and the hunger on her face drove him up another notch until he wasn’t certain he could make this a slow and tender occasion that a deflowering ought to be.

  He ran a hand over her flat stomach, around the curve of her hips, dipped into the tiny patch of blond hair between her legs. She was wet and open. At his touch, she gave a little shriek, and her hand tightened on his erection, so much that he had to fight to keep control.

  He stroked her once, twice, lowered his head to her breast, stroked her once more and then eased a finger inside—and she broke. She came with a cry, her hands flying around his neck, her body pulsing around his finger.

  Lucy clung to Cyrus as ripple after delicious ripple turned her body to fire. When they finally eased, she fell back limp, feeling a sudden prickling of sweat over her whole body.

  And Cyrus smiled at her. For once she didn’t even care that he was feeling like the king of the forest. He deserved it. “I’ve never felt like that,” she said, unsure if she’d move her legs again.

  That wicked grin of his widened, and his fingers moved again. And just like that, her legs fell apart in an unspoken invitation. She tried to tug him on top of her, but he was far too heavy for her to budge.

  He shook his head. “This time is about you,” he said. “Slow. It has to be slow.”

  She groaned. “Oh God, you’ve made a plan, haven’t you!”

  “I’m going to tell you that poem first,” he said, laughter shaping his voice. Then he stroked her again. “You’re so plump and juicy,” he whispered.

  “That’s no poem,” she managed.

  But he wasn’t listening; he suddenly shifted, sliding down her body until his dark head appeared between her legs. One lick tore the plan from her mind. Another and she began pleading with him, her hands knotted in his hair.

  “You must,” she dimly heard herself crying. “You must,” but he wouldn’t . . . and then she was wrenched apart by a series of convulsions that shook her like a leaf in the wind.

  And then, when she was still in the grip of fire, he reared over her and muttered something. She tipped her hips upward, begging silently, and he thrust.

  He felt huge, like a deep fever that burned in her blood. “Does it hurt?” he asked between clenched teeth.

  “Not at all,” she managed, dazed.

  “I can’t stop,” he said, the words torn from his throat.

  She pulled him toward her and he drove into her again, and again. “I love you,” he gasped, but she wasn’t listening. Her body was spiraling, every part of her concentrating, waiting . . . waiting.

  He pulled back and then thrust so hard that the bed banged against the wall. She dimly heard a groan from Cyrus—no, too triumphant for a groan—more like a roar, but she was flying, lost in a storm of heat and joy so acute that she had lost all strength in her limbs by the time it finally passed.

  Minutes or hours later she realized that Cyrus was lying on top of her, his whole huge body pinning her down.

  “Hello,” she whispered, turning her lips to a sweat-dampened neck. “You’re heavy.”

  He rolled off with a groan and then walked over to the pitcher of water sitting beside a basin. He washed her and she let him perform that most intimate of services, almost too relaxed to move. She simply lay and watched as he washed himself and then stretched out beside her on the bed.

  She rolled onto one side, propped herself up on an elbow and looked at him.

  “I love you,” she said, pressing a kiss against his chest. It gave her a twinge in the heart, a little ache, just to see his eyes. He looked sleepy . . . happy. Very happy. And he was smiling in the way she had been so certain he would never smile.

  “Damn, that was good.”

  Her smile widened.

  “It didn’t hurt you at all, did it?”

  She shook her head. “Not very ladylike,” she said, remembering the way she clung to him, crav
ing and begging.

  The look on his face made up for any twinge of humiliation.

  “You were perfect,” he said, satisfaction ripe in his voice.

  “You were not able to follow your plan. You lost control.” She ran a finger over his nipple and then flashed a look at him. “I loved that.”

  He had his arms behind his head. “I shall do it again if you keep doing that.”

  She let her fingers wander down a washboard flat stomach.

  “I meant to recite a poem,” he said, his voice taking on a deep undertone.

  “It’s not too late. Tell me now,” she commanded, wrapping her fingers around him.

  “ ‘Some think an army of horsemen, some think an army on foot . . .’ ” he began.

  She laughed softly. “You’re reciting poetry about war?” She experimented with moving her hand. The experiment was evidently successful, because Cyrus responded with a gasp, his hips thrusting slightly.

  “That’s the only poem I know. It goes like this: ‘Some think a fleet of ships in the dark of night is the loveliest sight.’ ”

  “Wait,” she said teasingly. She had inched down his body. She had her hand curled hard around his erection, and she bent over to examine it more closely. “Who wrote that poem? I’d like you to start over.”

  His breath caught again. “A Greek poet named Sappho.” He started over, his voice hoarse, catching on a word now and then. “ ‘Some think an army of horsemen, some think an army on foot, some think a fleet of ships in the dark of night is the loveliest sight.’ ” Lucy bent yet closer, and licked. His body lifted clean off the bed, a groan breaking from his chest.

  She raised her head. “Next line?”

  “ ‘But I think the loveliest sight on this dark earth is whatever one most desires.’ ” Then, with one swift motion, he flipped her on her back, nudged her legs apart, and thrust inside.

  “In case there is any question in your mind,” he said, cupping her face with his hands. “What I want, what I most desire, the loveliest sight on this dark earth, is you.”

  A sob rose in her chest, but it didn’t spill over then, not for long minutes. Not until they had stilled, and his heavy weight came to rest on her again.

  “When you were a child,” he asked, kissing away her tears, “did you ever suck the sweet center of a honeysuckle blossom?”

  She was still trembling, and she could not find words.

  “That’s what I want to do to you,” he said, his mouth drifting over hers in a gentle caress. “I want to find your sweetness and take it all for myself. I’m very possessive. In fact, my sisters hated me in the nursery.”

  She managed a shaky question: “Why?”

  “I would not let them play with any of my tin soldiers, even though I was too old to play with them myself. They were mine, you see. I wanted them all to myself.” The last few words came out evenly spaced, spoken from some fierce place in the gut that he didn’t even know was there. “You’re mine too. I won’t share you, not the way some gentlemen do. I’ll never look aside if you take a lover, Lucy. Never.”

  “No lover?” she whispered, her voice delicately sad.

  Cyrus registered the teasing in her melancholy, the honesty that was at the core of her person, but even so, his vision darkened. “Never,” he said between clenched teeth. “I’ll never share you.”

  She smiled up at him, tears gone. “Just how did you manage to convince the world that you are such a thoroughgoing gentleman?” she asked, the teasing evident now, ringing through her voice like bells in the rain. “I daresay that everyone I know would acknowledge you to be a consummate gentleman without thinking twice. And yet . . .”

  “I am a gentleman,” he said, pulling her close again so he could put his cheek against her hair. “Except with you.”

  “So . . . no lovers. For either of us.” The thread of joy in her voice calmed him as no words could have done.

  “Never.”

  EPILOGUE

  “What did Papa do next?” the young—very young—lady demanded, twisting on her stool with excitement. “This is my favorite part!”

  “He forgot to behave like a gentleman,” her mother said, shooting a look of mock reproach at her husband, though she couldn’t help smiling. Even with his hair showing a touch of early frost at the temples, Cyrus looked more handsome every year.

  “Papa never forgets that,” Beata’s brother Samuel piped up. “ ’Cause he’s a duke, and that’s better than being a plain old gentleman.”

  “Nothing is better than being a gentleman,” Cyrus said, stooping down and swinging his five-year-old son onto his shoulder.

  “Except that one time when you weren’t,” Beata pointed out.

  “A gentleman—and a duke—may dispense with the rules of gentlemanly behavior only when?” Cyrus asked Samuel.

  “Only when a dastardly worm insults a lady!” Beata declared, cutting her brother off.

  “That’s when,” Samuel agreed, weaving his hands into his father’s hair. “Can we play horse, Papa?”

  “No,” his mother said, reaching up for him. “Come here, Sam-my-boy. You can see perfectly well that Nanny Grey is standing in the doorway. It’s not polite to keep her waiting.”

  On his feet, Samuel galloped over to his nanny, circled her with a great whinny, and took off up the stairs.

  “He’s so loud,” Beata said disapprovingly. “Now finish the story, Papa. You promised.”

  Cyrus grabbed his wife’s hand and pulled her down to his lap. “Well, there we were at a masque given in honor of our wedding; it was our very first appearance as a married couple.”

  Lucy leaned back against his shoulder and enjoyed the quiet pleasure of having Cyrus’s large body envelop her, his arm holding her tight.

  “And Mama was wearing . . .” Beata prompted.

  Cyrus dropped a kiss on Lucy’s ear. “Your mother was as lovely as only she could be. It seems to me that she was wearing a gown of sapphire blue silk. She looked utterly delectable.”

  “I think sweets are delectable, not mothers,” Beata said with a little frown. “If I understand the word correctly.”

  “Your mother is not like other mothers,” Cyrus said. “She is always delectable.”

  Lucy tilted her head back so she could smile at him, and he dropped a hard kiss on her lips.

  “She wore the emeralds too,” Beata prompted. “The necklace and the earrings, the set you gave her for your wedding, and that I’m going to inherit someday.”

  “Not for a long time, you greedy child,” Lucy said. “I’m afraid that the Duke of Pole lost his composure—”

  “Because he’s a dastardly worm!” Beata squealed.

  “And said something quite unrepeatable,” Lucy continued. “And your father—who is ordinarily the most punctilious of men—hit him on the chin so hard that His Grace actually flew up in the air, hit the refreshment table, and brought it all smashing down with him.”

  “Cakes everywhere,” Cyrus said lazily, tracing patterns on Lucy’s neck with a finger. “The floor was covered with petit fours.”

  “It’s a good thing Samuel wasn’t there,” Beata said. “He would have crawled around and eaten them right off the floor. He’s so disgusting.” She said it with a shudder, of course.

  “Then the duke sat up—” Cyrus said, taking over the story.

  “There was plum pudding smeared in his hair,” Lucy put in.

  “Pole looked around in a rather dazed way—Have you noticed that I can’t seem to finish a sentence around the two of you?”

  Lucy wrinkled her nose at him. “You don’t really mind, do you?”

  “Yes,” he said, looking almost serious. “I lose all my dignity when I’m at home. People never interrupt me when I’m at Lords, I’ll have you know.”

  “Your dignity was never all that you thought it was.” This time Lucy kissed him, caught in a wave of tenderness and love . . . and something else too.

  He saw instantly and his eyes brighte
ned. One hand slipped under her bottom where Beata couldn’t see. “A quick nap before we leave for the ball?” he whispered in her ear.

  “Mama! And then the king said . . .” Beata prompted.

  “He wasn’t the king yet; he was only regent in those days,” Lucy said, pulling herself together. “He said: ‘Damme, but we’ve all been waiting for you to do that.’ ” Cyrus was caressing her bottom in a way that was positively sinful. She leapt from his lap when his fingers threatened to wander farther afield.

  “Then the king kicked the bad duke; don’t forget that part, Papa!”

  “Let’s not exaggerate, Beata. It was more like a nudge with the royal toe,” Lucy said, shaking out her skirts.

  “And that’s when the king gave Papa a dukedom all of his own,” Beata said, with a sigh of utmost satisfaction.

  “Actually, it wasn’t until a year later,” Cyrus murmured. He had risen. “Time to go back to Nanny Grey, young lady. It’s nearly your bedtime.”

  Beata hopped to her feet. “I love that story,” she said, with the bloodthirsty joy of a child. “Because then the dastardly worm went off to America, and fell in a pond, and drowned. Just like the end of a fairy tale.”

  “It was four years later, and the duke had drunk altogether too much brandy,” Cyrus corrected. “So his end had nothing to do with the plum tarts or the emeralds.”

  “It was because he was a worm,” Beata said, dancing to the open door. “I hope the ball is lovely, Mama.”

  She looked over her shoulder, but her mother and father were entwined in an embrace so tight that they didn’t hear her.

  It was a bit annoying, but then it also made her feel happy in the bottom of her stomach. She trotted up the stairs, planning what kind of man she would marry someday.

  Someone who looked like a pirate, she thought.

  Although . . . maybe a man who looked like Papa. Papa was handsome and severe and proper and not at all like a pirate.

  But there was something very nice about him, all the same.

  A NOTE FROM ELOISA

  Are you curious about what happens to Olivia and her cheerful, but rather less than intelligent, fiancé, Rupert? Olivia’s story is called The Duke Is Mine, and it publishes on December 27, 2011. Olivia is one of my bawdiest—and yet sweetest—heroines ever. If you’d like to hear an account of the Summers ball that opens this novella, but from Olivia’s point-of-view, do check out the three-chapter excerpt that follows this letter!