Dukes By the Dozen

“Ah.” Her words seemed to strike him with force—his head tipped back—before he leaned closer. So close she could see the glint of his grey-green eyes, dark and piercing, regarding her with an intent that was as thrilling as it was mesmerizing. “Had you rather be my compulsion?”

Something darker and too needy for caution stirred within—a volatile mixture of pride and unadulterated want. “Lord, yes.”

Their lips seemed to meet with an elemental force, gravitating together as if both ends of the Earth had simultaneously tipped them into each other’s arms.

Yet once met, the second touch of his lips was less urgent, far more tentative. He slid his hand along the line of her jaw carefully, in the way a man raised a too-full glass to his lips—slowly so as not to spill. As if this were more than a mere tasting of flesh. As if he were offering his trust—his very self.

“Beech,” she said, because there was nothing else she could think to say, nothing that would communicate the riotous mixture of want and apology that made her feel hot and needy and unworthy all at the same time.

But his lips were smooth and taut above the soft brush of his beard, and he tasted of brandy—just wicked enough to entice. She wanted to drink him in, gulp him down, until she was intoxicated by the possibilities he promised.

She fisted her hands in his lapels, pulling him closer. Holding on to him the way a drowning woman clings to a lifeline.

He met her desperation with a merciful lack of reserve—slanting his mouth across hers and kissing her more deeply, searching with his lips and tongue, pushing his hand into the twisted arrangement of her hair, scattering the pins to the upholstery.

His thumb fanned along her cheek, and he kissed her with heat and abandon, drawing her out, thawing the chill of the winter night. Warming her in a way that nothing else ever had. Everything else faded, until there was nothing but the longing for the feel of his mouth on hers, and the pleasure so strong and sharp it nearly took her breath away.

Oh, Lord, how she loved kissing. Loved the give and take. Loved the sensual abandon. This was her true ruination—this hoydenish, hungry neediness. This unbecoming, unladylike affinity for passion.

Oh, how he kissed.

The rough texture of his whiskers rasped against her skin as he arched her head back to kiss down the curve of her throat. His teeth slid down her neck to worry and nip at the hollow at the base of her throat.

And all she wanted was for him to go lower. “Lord, Beech. Please.”

“Devil take me, Penelope,” he breathed against her skin.

The devil had clearly already taken them both. Because she did not care that they were in a freezing carriage, eloping to only Beech knew where. She did not care that she had abandoned everything she held dear—what was left of her good name and every last shred of her tattered reputation—to go away with him.

Because sometime in the past hour, she had fallen heart over head in love with Marcus Beecham, and she no longer cared anything for her name or reputation. She cared for him.

And so, she would give him the love and affection he so clearly needed, and so clearly deserved. She would give him her love until she had no more to give.

Or until he came to his senses.

Whichever came first.

CHAPTER 9

THE CARRIAGE BEGAN TO SLOW. “Warwick Court, Your Grace,” John Ramsey called from the box.

Marcus was obliged to stop kissing his duchess-to-be and attend to the practicalities of his elopement. “You’ll want to bring that fur, Pease Porridge—it’s snowing something fierce.”

“I am certainly Pease Porridge Cold and rather stupid to come away in nothing but my gown and evening slippers.”

He instinctively took her chilly hand to chafe warm and found himself at a disconcerting loss to do so—he could not do so with only one hand.

The realization shocked him anew, because for a moment there, he could swear he had felt it—pins and needles of feeling along the whole of his missing arm, from elbow to fingertips—alive and reaching for hers.

But the feeling faded into an empty ache. An empty, ravenous ache he needed to assuage. As soon as he got her safe and warm.

“Your Grace!” If his secretary was astonished to see his employer ushering a young woman with no cloak and no chaperone over the doorstep of Warwick Court, he hid it well. “You must be perishing from the cold.”

“We are indeed, Martins.” The snow had begun to fall in earnest, slanting down at such a rate that he and Penelope were covered from their dash from the carriage. “It’s a bitter night. My betrothed will require some warmed wine, if you would please alert the household. No—belay that.” Marcus had wanted to begin as he meant to go on—Penelope would be his wife as soon as he could find a clergyman to make an honest man out of him—but until he was sure of the special license, it were more prudent to keep the whole of the staff from gossip. “If you might do that yourself, to leave us privacy?”