Thank you for your continued support. I sincerely appreciate it.
Standard disclaimer.
'That is it, then,' Gwen thought. 'I give up.' She surrendered to Arthur's care, not knowing what else there was to do.
She'd always considered herself a resilient person, but tonight, she was beat. 'London one, Gwen zero...less than nothing.'
Even considering the thousand pounds in wages Arthur had promised her, she was now several thousand in debt.
The duchess would never forgive her.
How would she ever pay her back?
The duke was still crouched at Gwen's side, concern written all over his face.
"Put your arms around my neck," he directed.
She obeyed, halfheartedly lacing her wrists about his shoulders.
"Hold on tightly," he admonished, muttering a curse. "You're a farmer's daughter and a serving girl. I know you can do better than that."
Gwen willed her muscles to flex. He was right, she had a sturdy frame...which meant she wasn't precisely a feather's weight. She owed it to him to do her part.
He lifted her with a low grunt of exertion, shifting his arms until her weight settled against his solid chest.
"The shoe," she said feebly.
"Damn the shoe," he muttered. She supposed he was right. What difference did a shoe make, when she'd just lost a necklace worth thousands of pounds?
Arthur carried her to the end of the street, down a different way, than they'd come in pursuit.
Gwen thought about pointing out the discrepancy, but decided, he knew where he was going.
His face, when she now and then glimpsed it, in the weak light thrown from a window, was a mask of stern determination.
"I'm so sorry," she said. He gave a terse, dismissive shake of his head.
"Don't be."
He didn't speak to her further on the way home.
Not in the boat that ferried them back across the Thames. Not in the carriage back to Mayfair.
When they arrived at Bradford House, she heard him giving quiet, yet firm orders, to the house staff.
Then, she found herself whisked into the Rose Salon and propped up on the largest available divan.
"I'm calling for a doctor," Arthur said.
"I don't need one...really," Gwen protested.
He left the room and that was the end of that argument.
So Gwen sat in the Rose Salon, while the doctor poked and prodded and looked her over.
The swelling seemed to be improving already.
There was no lasting harm done...not to her ankle, anyway. Other parts of her might never recover.
As the doctor was on his way out, the duke appeared in the doorway, to confer with him.
He'd removed his coat, rolling his shirtsleeves to the elbows.
Gwen rose from the chair and hobbled to meet him, in the center of the carpet.
"Well," she said. "I finally proved a catastrophe. I must have appeared to be a foul-mouthed harpy, swooping across those manicured greens."
He didn't seem to see the humor in her statement.
"Come. I'll help you upstairs," he said. She waved off his help.
"It's not a bad sprain. The doctor said it will quickly mend."
As if he hadn't heard her, he insisted on placing an arm about her waist, guiding her towards the stairs.
She didn't know how to refuse.
The juxtaposition of his glowering expression and his solicitous attentions, made everything seem worse.
Gwen took the first stair with her good foot.
"You're angry with me," she said.
"I am angry," he replied. "I cannot deny it. But I am struggling not to direct my anger at you." She hobbled up another stair.
"I'm so sorry. I'll pay it back somehow. Beginning with the thousand pounds, of course. As for the rest of it..."
She stopped and looked up at him.
"I don't know how. But I swear to you, I will make this right."
Arthur looked down at her with an expression of absolute bemusement.
"What on earth can you mean?" he asked.
"The necklace. I'll pay for it somehow." She clutched the banister and took another step, but he didn't move with her.
"This is absurd," he muttered.
Ducking, he wrapped one arm under her thighs and lifted her straight off her feet, into his arms.
He carried her up the rest of the steps, and at the top of the staircase, he didn't continue up another flight to her bedchamber, he turned towards his private suite.
Balancing her weight in one arm, he opened the latch, carried her through the entry, and kicked the door shut behind him.
After toting Gwen through the sitting room, Arthur dropped her onto a bed...his bed.
It was an enormous bed. A four-poster of solid mahogany, with velvet hangings on all sides.
She tried to struggle up on her elbows, but her heavy gown worked against her.
Before she could make any progress, he had her caged.
He knelt over her, straddling her thighs. Then, he framed her face in his strong hands, forbidding her to look anywhere, but at him.
His eyes were wild and fierce. And her heartbeat slammed against her rib-cage.
"I am angry, Guinevere. I have immense rage for that brigand, who dared to touch you. I am furious that you've been hurt. And I'm angry with you, yes. For chasing after him, putting yourself at such risk. Do you know what kind of people lurk in those paths and alleyways?"
"I didn't know what else to do. He took your mother's..."
"Necklace. What of it? She has dozens."
"But this is a valuable one. I know she prizes it. That's why she wanted me to wear it tonight, so..." 'So you could see me, and look at me as a true lady. So you'd fall in love with me and want me to be your bride. What a laugh.'
"You believe I'd value a strand of jewels above your life? I know we've had our differences, Guinevere, but that's low. Do you truly think so little of me?"
"I...No. I think a great deal of you."
"I happen to think a great deal of you, too." There were kind words, but he spoke them so viciously. "Tomorrow," he said, "I can buy my mother another necklace. A better one. A half dozen of them if she likes. Jewels can be replaced."
"So can serving girls."
"Don't. Don't play that game." He pressed his brow to hers. "When I heard you cry out...it was like a saber to the gut. I wanted to die."
'I wanted to die,' she echoed internally. The words pushed a wave of doubt through her. He couldn't mean that. It was just an exaggeration, surely.
"I could have found you broken or bleeding, or..." His voice broke. "Or worse. Don't tell me I care about polished rocks on a chain. I want to believe you know me better than that."
"I do."
"And yet you believe I'd be so upset about a necklace, that I'd send you away?" She gestured uselessly.
"You had just said you didn't want me at all."
"I said no such thing. You ran off before I could finish." He ran a hand down her body. "I said I didn't need 'someone.' Because you're not just someone to me. You're remarkable and stubborn and lovely and too damn brave for your own good."
His hand fisted in the fabric of her gown.
"You're you. I want you. From the moment you stumbled through that tavern door, I wanted you."
Gwen pressed a hand to her mouth, stifling her emotion.
"Don't." He pulled her hand from her mouth. "Don't hide. And don't ever run from me again."
He kissed her hungrily, desperately, and she opened herself to his sensual invasion, welcoming his tongue with her own and aching to hold him tight.
With labored breaths of effort, he pulled away, his eyes burning into hers.
"If I asked you to stay with me..." Arthur began.
Stunned, Gwen went still in his arms.
"You know I couldn't. I must go home to Danielle. I promised her, and you gave us your word."
"If I offered you a home. A house in the country, with everything you and your sister could ever need..."
"I couldn't be a kept mistress Arthur...not even yours. I'd lose respect for myself, and for you."
His gaze clouded.
"I can't marry you."
"I know." Sadness pressed down on her heart. "There's no way this can last beyond week's end."
He cupped her face with one hand and stroked his thumb over her cheek.
"Well, know this. I am damned well going to make love to you tonight."
Excitement jolted through Gwen. 'Yes.' "Yes, Arthur. Please."
He gathered her skirts, tugging them upward.
His fingers curved around her thigh, stroking up and down.
"Are you sure you're well enough? You're not too bruised, or hurting under all this silk?" His concern for her well-being touched her heart.
"I'm fine. I promise."
"I'll judge for myself." He turned her on her belly and began to tug at her hooks and laces. "Off with these things. I've been wild to see you naked again."
'Again?' "When did you see me naked before?"
"That first night in the library."
"But...I was wearing my shift the whole time."
"I know." He pulled the gown down over her hips, then set about untying her petticoats. "But your shift was gloriously thin. When you stepped in front of the lamp, the light shone right through it. I could see everything."
"Everything?"
"Everything."
Gwen didn't know how to take that.
She merely went limp, as he unlaced her corset and flung it aside.
Then, pulling her to a half-sitting position, he lifted the chemise up and over her head.
She flopped back on the bed linens, completely nude except for her stockings.
Arthur sat up and began to remove his own clothing. Waistcoat, cravat, shirt.
Gwen watched him, as he stripped off, layer after layer of elegance, down to the man beneath it all.
"Cor," she breathed. He was perfect. Broad in the shoulders, lean at the waist. Muscled everywhere, with a sprinkling of hair on his chest.
He turned away, sitting on the edge of the bed, to remove his boots and unbutton his breeches, giving her ample time, to admire the sculpted planes of his back.
"There," he said, tossing the last bit of clothing aside.
He stretched out beside her, and she suddenly felt abashed. He was so perfect, everywhere.
The ideal form of a man. And she wasn't the ideal form of woman. Not at all.
For the first time, she felt truly unequal to him.
Arthur's gaze swept her body first, but his caress soon followed suit.
He cupped her breast in his hand. And she began to hope, foolishly, that he might say he liked what he saw.
But, she didn't need to hear 'Beautiful' or 'Lovely' or Perfect.' Something like his terse 'Good' earlier that evening would do.
When his thumb found her hardened nipple, he did something much better. He gave a low growl of satisfaction, deep in his throat.
The sound was so primal and unambiguous and so utterly male, it called to everything feminine in her, and the response that welled from deep inside, was a faint, sighing, moan of relief.
"Just as arousing as I remember," he muttered. "Or more. You wouldn't believe how hard you made me, that first night and every night since."
A self-conscious laugh escaped Gwen.
"I'm built like a fourteen-year-old boy," she said.
"Bollocks. I've been a fourteen-year-old boy. I tell you, my breasts were nowhere near this enticing."
He traced her areola, then the curve beneath her breast and she writhed, undone by the intense sensations.
"So you're one of those men, who actually likes his women small-breasted?"
Her well-endowed friends, had always consoled her, with the promise that such men existed, but she'd yet to meet one in the flesh.
She'd grown to think of them as mythical beasts, in the same class as pixies and dragons.
"I never understood that way of thinking," Arthur started.
As he spoke, he kissed her breasts and swept bold touches over her belly and down her thighs.
"It's like those old men, who come to the club for dinner every night and always take the same meal, sitting at the same table. What good is life, if a man can't appreciate variety?"
He drew one nipple into his mouth, circling the taut peak with his tongue. And sigh of pleasure eased from her throat.
Beyond that, Gwen didn't know how to respond.
She supposed a duke would have ample access to 'variety,' if he wished it.
After she returned to Spinster Cove, perhaps he'd find a buxom, fair-haired beauty for contrast.
As if Arthur could sense her unease, his demeanor changed.
"You're an intensely attractive woman. You do know that, don't you?" To her silence, he replied, "You'd believe me, if you could see yourself."
"I have seen myself. That's the snag, you see."
He shook his head.
"No, no. Not in a mirror. I know how mirrors work. They're all in league with the cosmetics trade. They tell a woman lies. Drawing her gaze from one imagined flaw, to another, until all she sees, is a constellation of imperfections. If you could get outside yourself, and borrow my eyes for an instant...you'd see, there's only beauty."
He pressed his hand to his heart.
"I swear it, on the seven Dukes of Bradford before me."
Several moments passed, before Gwen could speak.
"Well...I've seen their portraits. I'll concede, that I'm prettier than they were."
Arthur chuckled.
"Thank God for that."
He wedged his hips between her thighs, spreading her wide. The hard curve of his erection pulsed hot and urgent against her core.
"Let me be, now," he said, burying his face in her neck. "Next time, I'll go slowly...kiss you everywhere and touch you for hours. But I can't be patient any longer. I need...God, I need you...so much."
"Yes," she replied, seeing the honesty in his eyes.
She kissed him, tilting her hips in invitation. She needed him, too...desperately.
Arthur positioned himself at Gwen's entrance and thrust.
The moment their bodies joined, she cried out...but not in pain. Despite the hurried foreplay, she was ready for him.
She'd been ready for days, and waiting on this sensation for years.
The size and heat of him, were formidable, but she welcomed both feelings. The fullness. The searing pleasure.
At last, she was with him. Beneath him, around him, holding him, kissing him, stroking his hair and shoulders.
At last, this was how a man made love...not a fumbling youth, but a proper man. One who understood not only what he wanted, but what she wanted as well.
Arthur loved her in a smooth, powerful rhythm, delving a little deeper with every stroke.
Just when she thought there couldn't be more of him to take, he proved her wrong. His pelvis met hers..he was fully buried inside her, stretching her to the limit.
The tension burned like the sweetest fire, as he lowered his body to hers, and her breasts flattened beneath his chest.
Their heartbeats sparred, punching back and forth like pugilists and he began a slow, steady roll of his hips.
His firmness slid in and out of her, in cautious increments, teasing whorls of pleasure from her center, spreading bliss throughout her body.
He stared into her eyes, looking strangely bewildered.
"This is...so good, Guinevere. I'm no stranger to pleasure, but this is...good."
"You did say it's been a long time for you." He nodded.
"Months and months. And you?"
"Oh..." she moaned. "Ages. Years." Arthur paused mid-stroke.
"I suppose that must be it."
He bent to kiss her, moaning against her lips, as he eased forward.
She clutched at his shoulders and back, trying to urge him faster. Deeper. Wilder. She felt sure, he wasn't the sort of man to make sweet, careful love.
"Arthur," she pleaded. And he paused.
"I don't want to hurt you. I'm trying to be gentle," he said. She pushed against him just enough, that she could meet his gaze.
"Just be you. I want you."
Something feral sparked in his eyes, when she said that. He rose up on his arms and dug his knees into the mattress, thrusting hard.
"Yes," she gasped, thrilled by his strength. "Again. More."
He gave her again. He gave her more. He gave her stroke after stroke, of pounding bliss, and she was utterly laid waste.
This was raw, primal sensuality, but the emotions were what made her ache.
He could be teasing and nonchalant with words. But each pummeling thrust, was a confession of just how much he desired her, how desperately he wanted this..with every muscle in his body, every pulse of his blood.
The intensity in his darkened, captivating eyes, turned her inside out.
She was exposed and vulnerable, in the face of such bald determination.
He seemed to hold nothing back, in pursuit of this pleasure. He would give her everything he had.
Gwen lifted her arms overhead and braced her hands against the headboard, pushing back against Arthur, with everything she had.
"That's right," he grunted, never breaking pace. "Move with me."
Her body arched off the bed, as she strained to meet his thrusts.
Their joining verged on painful, but she was beyond any such cares.
She couldn't take him deep enough, couldn't stretch tautly enough, around the smooth, hard curve of his member.
The contrasts were exquisite. The two of them rutting like beasts, amid all the embroidered pillows and clouds of discarded petticoats.
The helplessness of her splayed posture beneath him, only added to the surge of sensual power she felt.
When she wrapped her stocking-clad leg over his hips, sliding the silk across his bare thigh, he gave a fierce, primitive growl.
He was so animal and so elegant...and so powerfully arousing, she couldn't possibly last.
With every stroke, his body rubbed hers in just the right place.
Her head rolled back and her eyes squeezed shut. She could feel the pleasure building, drawing tight all through her body. Release was so close.
Arthur groaned deep in his chest, and the sound sent worry shooting through her.
Perhaps, release was close for him, too. They hadn't discussed what would happen at the end. The anxiety was enough to drag her back from the edge.
"Let go," he said.
She opened her eyes. He was looking down at her, his face a mask of resolve.
His rhythm never faltered for an instant.
"I have you. Just let go."
And that was when she realized...he wouldn't stop, until she reached her peak. He just wouldn't. He would stroke on. And on. And on for hours, if she needed it.
Plowing his hardness into her, over and over again, just as many times as it took, to reduce her to a quaking, shuddering bliss.
This man would not be denied.
"I have you." His whispered words were hoarse. "I have you, now."
He covered her hands with his, pinning them to the bed.
And she let go.
Her arms went limp and her hips thrashed beneath his.
Little sobs began to escape her, as each thrust drove home.
Through it all, she stared into his eyes, unable to look away. Those darkened blue orbs were her anchor.
"Come. For the love of God, come, Guinevere." Hearing her name from his lips...undid her. Because, it let her know, this was for her. All this heroic, erotic effort, was for her.
She broke, her release rocking her, with waves of keenest pleasure. The climax went on and on...battering her, body and soul, with fierce, unparalleled joy.
He slid back on his haunches and took her by the waist, lifting her body, with those powerful arms.
"Arthur..." she whispered, hoping she wouldn't need to say more.
"I know." He grimaced with pleasure and drove into her, until his actions grew erratic, fully aware, his powerful grip would leave marks.
With every vein in his upper body bulging, he released a growl and with a desperate jerk of his hips, he withdrew and spent himself somewhere in all those folds of sheets and petticoats.
Afterwards, he collapsed beside her on the bed, perspiring and working for breath.
They lay that way for several minutes, staring wordlessly up at the bed's canopy and struggling for air.
'What now?' Gwen wondered.
Perhaps, now that his desire was slaked, he would feel regret.
Perhaps, whatever emotions he'd imagined he had for her, were obliterated by the force of his climax.
The longer they lay there, side by side but not embracing, the more anxious she became.
She'd known this couldn't last beyond the week. But was it already over?
Finally, with a soft groan, Arthur put an arm about her.
"Come here."
He rolled her close and pressed a tender kiss to the crown of her head.
Gwen couldn't help it. She wept with relief.
He pulled her tight, tucking her head to his chest and guarding her with his body. He didn't try to stop her weeping, didn't chide her for nonsensical tears.
He just allowed her to have her feelings, and he held her all the while.
As though he understood, that all other men had failed her in this one simple way, and he was determined to make it right.
After some time, she laid her head on his chest.
"I'd only been with one other man before you...the shopkeeper's oldest son. He said he loved me. He said a lot of things, and made a great many promises, he never saw through."
Her face heated in embarrassment.
"I'm just telling you this, because, I don't want you to think I'm expecting more. I don't want promises from you, Arthur. But I hope you understand, that I don't do this often, or with just any man. Even if it's only this once, it means something to me."
Her head rose and fell, as he took a slow, deep breath.
His hand found hers and clasped it.
"Guinevere? Please believe I say this in all sincerity...I am honored."
Her breath rushed out in a relieved sigh.
She didn't know what she'd been hoping to hear...but what he'd said, was even better.
There was a ring of newness in those words. 'I am honored.' Somehow, she doubted he'd spoken them to a woman before. Not in bed, at least.
She turned in his embrace, skimming a possessive touch over his chest and he groaned in encouragement.
She loved, that she could be free to touch him now, explore him everywhere.
Her fingers found the red, not-quite-healed slash on his biceps, and she traced it.
"Are you in pain?"
"Not there."
His words had the deep resonance of a confession. She treasured those two syllables of raw honesty.
"Is it this?" she asked, touching the small bruise on his cheek, from where she'd punched him yesterday.
"No."
"Somewhere else, then." She dropped her hand to his bare chest, covering his thudding heart. "Somewhere deep inside. You're hurting."
He nodded.
"Like the devil," he said.
Gwen's curiosity was intense, but she resisted the urge to press him for explanations or details.
He'd trusted her with this much. Perhaps he would trust her with more, in time.
"Can I kiss it better?" She gave him a playful smile.
"I don't think so."
He thoughtfully brushed a lock of hair from her face and the glint in his eyes went from wounded, to wicked.
"But I could be persuaded to lie very still, while you exhaust yourself in the attempt."
Stay safe!