The Ice Duchess by Tracy Sumner

Chapter 8

Georgiana pulled him into a frenzied kiss at the bottom of the staircase, where they deposited his coat on the third step. Another against the morning room door, where her cape was left in a puddle on the floor. The last in the hallway outside her bedchamber, where she concluded the unfastening of his waistcoat, and he began fumbling with her bodice strings. A trip from the linen closet to her bed, usually taking three minutes, took ten and left her without thought or plan, her skin, every last inch, sensitized as if she’d rubbed a razor across it.

“Christ,” he said against her lips, his breath churning as if he’d run a race, his fingers trembling where they cupped her jaw. “Which door is yours?”

She wrapped his cravat around his wrist, turned, and tugged him into her bedchamber.

He kicked the door closed, backed her against it, his lips falling to the nape of her neck. He bit gently, and she couldn’t repress her moan. “You’re sure, no servants? My coat, your cape…”

“Only three employed. It’s a small manor. They return to the village each night. Widows do not require companions.” She slipped his waistcoat from his arms and dropped it to the rug. “We’re alone. Completely. Any noise you might like to make—”

He laughed, lifting her off her feet, walked two steps toward the bed, paused, his eyes changing, darkening. With one arm, he brought her down his body, an abrasive slide that had her knees threatening to weaken and leave her in a puddle at his feet. A spear of moonlight splashed across him, throwing his features into a tantalizing mix of shadow and light.

“What’s that look, Dex?” Dear God, had he changed his mind?

He gazed at her, his collar twisted, the top two bone buttons of his shirt undone, the crisp linen parting to reveal a tantalizing smatter of dark hair. His eyes were the pale green of a lily pad, brimming with wonder when they met hers. Delighted and disheveled, he looked charmingly undone. “I’ve never…” He sighed, flexed his shoulders up and back. “Laughing, this lightness of spirit. It’s never been fun. Not like this. I’m unprepared.” He scrubbed his cheeks to hide their flooding with color. “Bloody hell, I think I’m nervous.”

Her own delight was a wild beast charging through her body, dragging her heart away from her. “That makes two of us.” She made quick work of releasing the remaining buttons and sent his shirt to the floor. “But I plan to work through it.”

They disrobed with taunting kisses, whispered words of admiration and pleasure, learning each other’s bodies through layers of wool, cotton, and muslin, then with no barriers at all. He was perfection, she decided, her gaze wandering from his narrow feet to his lean hips, flat stomach rippling with muscle, chest with a gorgeous sprinkling of hair, his entire body sculpted by his work. His career, his passion. She smiled. Maybe she could be his passion for at least one night.

“Do I amuse?” He curved his hand around her breast, cupping gently, his thumb brushing her nipple, circling, while his gaze held hers. Shifting, he blew a moist breath over the pointed tip, the pulse of visceral need catching her by surprise, darting like an arrow between her thighs. How clever, how wonderful.

Sighing deeply, she palmed his cheeks and brought his mouth closer, lifting her body, begging without words. Touch me.

“This?” he asked, his lips hovering deviously before he opened his mouth and sucked the bud inside.

“Dex…” She sagged, but he held her up, walked her back, all the while teasing her nipple into submission with his tongue, the edge of his teeth, fondling, encircling. He moved them to the bed, then startled her by turning to sit and bringing her atop him, positioning her bent legs on either side of his hips in a delicious straddle.

She sank onto his lap, his rigid length trapped between her thigh and his belly. “I’ve never…like this…” Dropping her head to his shoulder, she gasped as he nibbled on a sensitive spot below her ear. In return, she dug her teeth into his skin, the taste of him flowing into her mouth, a richness of feeling out the soles of her feet, absolute domination. His answering groan, hand tangling in her hair and drawing her mouth to his, told her everything she needed to know about how roughly he wanted to play.

About how fearless she could be.

Gathering her courage, she asked for more, felt his low laughter hit her cheek. “Impetuous Georgie.” But he complied, his hand traveling over her breast, hip, thigh. When he came to the moist folds of her sex, he lingered, stroking and taunting, his mouth covering hers. After a breathless moment, he broke the kiss to slide his lips along her jaw, draw her earlobe between his teeth and suck, hard.

Her legs fell open, her hips pushing helplessly against his hand. Muscles in her thighs and arms clenching, she murmured meaningless words into the curve of his neck, damp strands of his hair sticking to her cheek. His skin had caught fire beneath her, burning. Finally, yes, finally, his finger eased inside, slowly, then back again. Patient, he allowed her to find the rhythm, determine the pace. She reached between their bodies, clumsy, indelicate, caught his hard length in her hand, circled, pressed, stroked. Learning the size and shape of him, sleek and solid and long. She’d never imagined touching Arthur in this manner, never considered it.

This was intuition alone driving her.

Hunger, avarice, enchantment.

Blind need, love, desire.

Another finger joined the first as he captured her lips beneath his, his movements on the brink of awkward, too, pleasing her because he was responding to her graceless touch, her body atop him, her breath in his ear, her teeth marking his skin.

The sensation started at the base of her spine. A sizzle, a surge that had her heart racing, her breath lodging in her throat. Dex leaned her back just enough to suck her nipple between his teeth. The stubble on his jaw scraped her, roughly, wonderfully, as he whispered something low and bewildered into her rounded flesh. The sounds she was making, helpless coos of delight, would have been embarrassing in any other arena, but here, in this dimly-lit chamber where Dex was turning her body inside out, it was natural.

She ran her thumb over the rounded head of his shaft, caught the drop of liquid, and felt his body jerk in response.

“So that’s your game, is it? Two can play…that way.” Groaning, he thumbed the inflamed bud between her legs, which needed only a second’s care to toss her into a pool of decadent, haunting pleasure. The world rotated, listed, taking her with it in a dizzying spin as Dex rolled her to her back on the bed, his body flowing over hers, his weight pressing her deep into the mattress. Her vision went gray, her back arching as tremors raced through her, his fingers still claiming her, driving her, making her writhe in ecstasy.

Her cries mixed with his words of comfort and urgency.

Before she’d even landed, reclaimed her breath or reason or time, he was there, tenderly pushing inside her in gradual possession, inch by inch by inch. She quivered, the thrill of her body stretching to accommodate his sending another tiny shudder through her.

“You are,” he murmured against her brow, her hair, her ear, “the most responsive…I never dreamed…” Changing the balance, he lifted her leg alongside his hip, perfecting the fit as they fell into a relentless, sinuous rhythm. Steady strokes, a hesitation, a gradual slide back.

A primal ballet.

She whimpered, clutched his shoulders, swept her hands down his back, nails digging, palms pressing. Teeth and lips, bowing, curving. Tongues tangling. Whispered pleas and tortured apologies, skin slick, quivering muscles, racing heartbeats. Again and again, until her only link to the world was where their bodies were joined.

“Tell me what you want,” he breathed against her lips, his stroke constant, killing her with his control.

She grasped his hips, pulled him into her, fast, hard, not able to tell him what she needed, only able to show him. He dropped his head by her shoulder, sighed, moaned, agreed, his arms going around and under her, lifting her hips as he began to thrust, relentless, moving them up the bed.

Without interrupting his rhythm, he went to his elbow, lifted his head, a bead of sweat running down his jaw, the brutal pleasure on his face sending a fast throb through her core. She bowed into him, drawing him closer, welcomed lurid sensation into her forearms, her belly, the backs of her knees, the soles of her feet. Her body tightened. Alarmed, she looked into his eyes.

Too much, this is too much.

He smoothed her hair from her face, kissed her brow, murmured raggedly, “I’m here.”

His words and the muted slap of their skin, his forceful yet delicate breach, the scent of their bodies mixing with each breath she took, seized every sensation and returned it on a rush unlike any she’d experienced, expanding her universe, then compressing it to a particle of sound, taste, touch. I’m yours, she thought, crying out against his shoulder as the vibrations overwhelmed her, circling from her core to flood her body.

An endless release, one he joined, brow to brow, nose to nose, cheek to cheek, gasping, shaking, clutching.

When she floated back to Earth, she couldn’t speak, could only draw him into her, embracing his body and his seed, wondrously glad he hadn’t left her. This, this, was unlike any experience of her life, unlike any dream, any fantasy. She realized how much she loved him, how incredible they were together, how it was going to destroy them both when she left.

She mentally stepped away and was lost, bereft.

Oh, Georgie, what have you done?

Dex rolled to his back and pulled her with him, tucking her against his chest, angling her knee over his belly, wrapping them in a moist, molten package. “I may never recover,” he whispered, his voice breaking, throat raw. His lids fluttered, long lashes dusting his golden skin. “I hope not, anyway. My God, are you perfection. Are we.”

She blinked back a salty sting, the lapis on the night table sitting in a puddle of moonlight, a steady glow in the darkened bedchamber. Dex’s breath evened out, his fingers falling loose from where they’d been secured around her waist.

She could spend this time deciding what to do, what to say, how to go on with life, but right now, she’d accept the harmony and tenderness invading her soul. Breathe deeply of his scent and tangle her body with his.

Accept what he offered if only until morning.

* * *

He woke slowly, the silk sheet an invigorating caress, a subtle abrasion against sensitive skin. A gust through the window he’d cracked open after they made love before the hearth whispered over his body, the chill crisp and calming. A floral scent—lavender?—and woodsmoke permeated the room, the bedding they lay tangled in, her hair, a wild, flaxen mass covering her face and his. A slice of spring in the middle of winter.

He elbowed to a half-sit, stretched, yawned, depleted in the best of ways.

And Georgie…

Dust motes fluttered through the flickering rays of dawn to shimmer over her. She lay on her side, arm tucked beneath her cheek, chest rising and falling in a bottomless, exhausted tempo.

They had worn each other to the bone.

The first time in his life he’d utterly surrendered himself. And the last if, when she awoke, she got dressed and left him, as he feared she planned to do.

Lifting his fingers before his face, he inhaled their scent, lush and earthy. The memories of the night were razor-sharp, bringing with them arousal so robust, Dex was left with the choice to wake her for another round or walk it off. Drawing the sheet to her shoulders, he gave it a neat tuck and slipped from the bed, searched the room until he located his trousers in a wad under the chaise lounge along with one of her slippers. Good enough, he resolved and tugged them on, because he’d no idea where he’d tossed his drawers in the frenzy.

He prowled the room, gathering clothing, lighting candles, stoking the fire into a blaze that would quickly chase out the chill. He also looked for clues to solve the mystery of the Ice Countess, the Georgie he didn’t know but feared.

I was supposed to be her first, he reasoned with irrational venom, dusting the heel of his hand over his heart, conflicted, jealous, guilt-ridden. What an utterly masculine bit of idiocy the statement was. Possessive to the extreme. He knew she wouldn’t like it, although he couldn’t help but feel it.

He’d always felt it.

Startled by his perplexing emotions, he paused at the window, staring into the snow-shrouded distance, the Derbyshire hills and valleys he loved almost as much as he loved her. “No one understood how to touch you,” he whispered and trailed his finger through the mist his breath was painting on the pane. “How to make you come alive.” This much about her he’d figured out. A soft approach with Georgie was vital. He’d relinquished control, let her hold the reins, drive his carriage. She’d been abused, her confidence shaken, her sense of self destroyed. At a time in life when one was discovering oneself, she’d been thrust into a relationship with a man old enough to be her father, a heartless man from the little she’d imparted, a man Dex would gladly kill if he stood before him.

She hadn’t known herself fully until he’d taken the time to show her.

Dex hadn’t known himself, either. Honestly, he hadn’t.

Watching her sensuality flower and bloom had been nothing short of the most magical sexual experience of his life. Part of him had bloomed with her.

Glancing at the bedside table, he noticed the jewel beetle he’d stolen from a German museum sitting among other personal effects. The lapis, a hair clip, a crimson ribbon, an olive-green glass bottle. He wondered if this was all she’d have of him. A damned chunk of stone and a filched fossil. He sank to the window seat, his oath muttered against his closed fist so as not to wake her.

He was fit for no one. Georgie had ruined him, utter destruction.

He hoped she’d be happy when she realized this.

“Is foul language part of the seduction? I think I like it.”

He snapped his head up, embarrassed and provoked. The sweet, teasing fire in her eyes only brought him closer to doom. His emotions were tender, his chest aching. He debated, then decided touching her right now would be a mistake and stayed where he was.

“Merry Christmas, Dex.”

Christmas. He’d almost forgotten.

“I didn’t separate from you the first time,” he shocked himself by saying, thinking he’d love nothing more than to have a child with her, but if he admitted this, she’d run back to London like he’d lit a fire beneath her lovely bottom. “A risk for which I humbly apologize. I was overcome with—” He laughed, his temple knocking the window frame before he located her gaze again. “Hell, I couldn’t think, I could barely breathe I was so taken with you, with us.” He shrugged, scratched a nonexistent itch on his chest. “I have no words. I told you I wasn’t charming, not by half. This impressive speech proves it.”

Georgie tucked her bottom lip between her teeth in a move he grasped meant she was reasoning something out. He believed she wanted to laugh, which might not have gone over well. “Did I say I minded?” she finally whispered, sitting, letting the sheet plunge to her waist.

This was his first view of her in abundant light, and his pulse skipped, his mouth going dry. His childhood friend and the woman he loved melded into one. He fell hard, like a boulder over a cliff.

“I have five days until I return to London,” she said after a strained silence, her gaze sweeping from his bare feet to his neck and back again—the heat of her regard turning him to ash.

At least she seemed as entranced with his body as he was with hers.

His heart skipped a beat, two, as his blood raced through his veins. But he didn’t move, didn’t blink. If she wasn’t going to give him what he wanted—forever—he was going to make her construct the dwelling they were set to momentarily settle in and beg him to visit. “Five days for what?”

A long sigh left her with the rise and fall of her shoulders. “You’re frustrated because I’m not yielding to your wishes for once. The girl tripping along behind you is all grown-up, Dex. She has her own needs and wants and, yes, wishes now.”

“After last night, I’m well aware. Very grown-up, indeed.” He produced a phony yawn when his stomach was twisting into knots. “We’ve gone over this in triplicate. I’m resigned, not frustrated. I adore your tenaciousness, except when it gets in the way of what I want. There, I’ve admitted it. I like to get my way.”

“An impasse, because I do, too.”

“Then, the farce continues.”

Georgie plucked at the sheet, looking like she was considering snatching it to her neck if they were going to argue. “You make finding a duchess sound as appealing as tossing out the contents of a chamber pot.”

“That about covers it.”

Sliding off the bed, Georgie crossed to him, her naked body a glorious thing in the bracing, pearly light of dawn. She had a knowing luster in her eyes only a woman of proficiency can obtain. He’d given her this and now felt like prey being tracked by a more cunning animal.

“What can I do to wipe away your fierce glower?” she asked with the barest hint of a smile. Enough of one to send her dimples roaring to life, the ideal time for them to appear, damn her. “My Christmas present to you.”

His gaze sharpened, his body tightening. “I don’t know. What can you?”

Going to her knee, she gathered his cravat from the rug and looking up at him, pulled it through her fingers. “How good are your knots, Dex?”

His breath left him in a rush. “You’d let me do this? Control you in this way?”

She wrapped the length of snowy-white silk around her fist, gave it a firm tug. “I trust you. You’re my closest friend. Everything between us flows from that reality.”

Slipping a hand beneath her elbow, Dex pulled her to her feet, his intent gentle but possessive as his mouth captured hers. Love was a dull blade carving him in two, but he could not, would not, admit it. Suffering to last a lifetime lay down that path.

Georgiana’s arms went around his neck as he turned and pressed her to the wall. His cravat fluttered heedlessly to the floor. They didn’t need it. He needed nothing but her.

“I’ll take the five days,” he whispered against her lips. “And your Christmas gift.”

But he couldn’t help but think as he lost himself in her—andwhen it’s over, I’ll release you even if it kills me.