Daring and the Duke (The Bareknuckle Bastards #3)(88)

He pulled her to him, lifting her high in his arms and taking her to the bed, where he laid her down, letting her pull him to join her on the rough silk coverlet. Letting her kiss him, long and lush, with a slow sweep of tongue and a slow suck of lip, until they were both aching.

This.

This was her pleasure. Being wanted. Being desired. Not for her money or her power or the position she held, but for herself.

But it wasn’t all. It wasn’t enough.

The pleasure was in the reciprocity. In being wanted and wanting in return. In giving and receiving. In needing and providing.

There was the pleasure for which she had spent a lifetime searching.

And here it was, in Ewan, her first love. And now, she suspected, her last.

He pulled away from her and pressed a kiss high on her cheek. Another at the corner of her eye. Another on her jaw. “She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen,” he whispered, and she was suddenly desperate for the rest of the story.

With a sly smile, she said, “Everyone loves a girl who can fight.”

Those amber eyes tracked over hers, taking her in. “Truth.” And that single, soft syllable threatened to set her aflame. Before she could explore it, he continued, his fingertips lightly tracing over her arm, to her hip, where she shivered in anticipation for more. “Apollo had been a god a very long time, you see, and he’d seen many beautiful women, but never one who was so fierce and so committed to her path. A warrior. He fell instantly in love, proposing to her on the spot.”

“What then?” she said, breathless. “Did she tumble into his arms and they lived happily ever after?”

Another one of those small, knowing smiles. “You are not paying attention. She did not care that he was a god. She was one of the most skilled fighters the world had ever seen. She knew her power and was not about to relinquish it. Not even for an immortal.”

“Clever girl,” she said, her own hands on him now, stripping him out of his coat and untying his cravat as he spoke.

“Did I not tell you that she was brave and brilliant?”

She tossed the cravat away, spreading her hands over the fine white linen of his shirt, low, lower until she pulled it from his trousers. “And beautiful, you said.”

He caught her chin in his fingers, tilting her to him. “Incomparable.”

Another kiss, hot and delicious.

“But she did not want a second life like the one she’d lived with her father. She didn’t want to sit in idyll, the wife of a god. She wanted to rule a kingdom—a warrior queen.”

Grace was watching him now, hanging on every word, knowing the end of the story. The only way it could possibly end. “She refused him.”

He nodded. “And so the great god—god of the sun, of truth, of light, of prophecy—he did the only thing that was left to him.”

“He stole her,” she whispered. And the words, part of a silly story, horrified her. The idea that there was always someone with more power, who would stop at nothing to lay claim. How many times had she looked over her shoulder, terrified of that power, in the hands of men?

In the hands of this man?

“No.” He held her eyes, watching her carefully. “No, Grace. He didn’t steal her. He begged her. The son of Zeus, the great deity of the Trojan War, he lowered himself to his knees and begged her to join him. He offered her wealth, jewels, immortality . . . if she just let him love her.”

She shook her head. “She refused again.”

“Why?” The story was fading, and there, at the edge of that single question, she heard reality. “He wanted nothing more than to give her the world. To love her and keep her safe, and give her everything she wished.”

“But not everything she needed,” she replied. “He couldn’t know what she needed—with him a god, and her a mere mortal.”

With him a duke, and her, nothing at all.

“She didn’t want the world,” she said softly. “Not from him.”

He nodded, urging her to continue.

“He wanted to gift her the future,” she said softly, “but she wanted to claim it.”

He paused for a long moment, until she wondered if he was going to speak again, one finger tracing the line of her jaw, over the soft swell of her lips. “What do you need?”

The question brought her such comfort. Such joy.

And hope beyond anything she’d ever experienced.

“I need you—” she said.

He waited. Ever patient.

And finally, she continued. “I need you.”

His eyes darkened at the words.

“Now,” she whispered. “Tonight.”

She didn’t say the rest—the bit that would change everything.

She didn’t say forever.

He might have heard it anyway, for how he kissed her, deep and thorough, rolling her to her back and coming over her to kiss her jaw, her neck, the slope of one shoulder, her breast, easing closer and closer to one straining tip. His lips softened over her and she sighed at the way he worshipped her, her fingers sliding into his hair, her back arching toward him, pressing closer to him.

Aching for him.

Not just for his touch, but for all of it, the intimacy of the caress, the care, the pleasure.

So much pleasure.

He followed her touch, his lips closing tightly around her, and he sucked gently, working at her until she was fisting his hair and whispering his name, holding him at her breast, full of heat and want, and slowly unraveling beneath his long, rhythmic sucks.