Daring and the Duke (The Bareknuckle Bastards #3)(89)

His hand was sliding over her hip, down the skin of her thigh, teasing her legs apart until she was open for him, lifting her hips to meet his touch, rocking against him. She ached with need, not just for the caress he promised, but also for the rest, for his eyes on her. For his lips on her. For his words around her. For him.

And then he parted her folds and stroked, finding her wet and wanting, only made wetter by his growl of satisfaction. He lifted his head from her breast and met her gaze. “You like this.”

She nodded, moving her hips in time with his strokes. “I like you.”

He stilled at that, and for a mad, fleeting moment, she wondered if she’d said too much. But if that was too much, what would happen if she told him the rest?

He stroked again, and her eyes began to slide closed. He stopped. “No, love,” he said, the word warming her as much as his touch. “I want you to watch.”

His fingers moved in lazy circles, there right at the heart of her.

She spread her legs wide. “Go on, then.”

They both looked down her body, at his hand, working her, and she slid her own over his, their fingers tangling, their breath coming heavier. Neither of them looked away when he said, “Take it.” He leaned down and took her nipple again, in long, lovely sucks that made her pant, his touch steady and strong, then faster, and she was arching up to him.

“Ewan,” she whispered. “Please.”

And then it was there, cresting, and she was rocking against him as he guided her through the pleasure, lifting his head to watch her claim it for her own. “There,” he growled. “Take it. Everything you need.”

She did, his watchful gaze a gift, a promise that he would always be there to hold her pleasure. To provide it. To revel in it. To guide her through it, as it threatened to unravel her.

When she was sated, he lifted his head, his hand now cupping her tightly, ensuring she received every last moment of pleasure.

Finally, she looked to him and raised her hand to the side of his face. “This was supposed to be yours,” she whispered. “I was to give it to you.”

“And you think you haven’t?” he said at her lips, stealing kisses between whispered words. “I feel nothing but the kind of pleasure that steals one’s sanity.”

She shouldn’t like that, but she did. “That good?”

“Impossibly good,” he said. “Christ, Grace. Pleasure with you—it puts pale to every other pleasurable thing I’ve experienced.”

“Have you experienced much pleasure?”

She didn’t know why she asked it. It shouldn’t matter what had happened in the twenty years that had passed. It didn’t matter if he had had lovers. It didn’t matter who they’d been.

She shouldn’t have asked.

He did not seem to mind. “No.”

She ached at the reply. At the truth in it. He’d been alone for as long as she had. Longing for something, just as she had.

Longing for her.

“I missed you too much,” he whispered, the words so soft that if they hadn’t been entwined, she wouldn’t have heard them. But she did, along with the truth in his voice. “Every day, every hour. I missed you.” A pause, and then, “To say I have missed you—it’s not enough. The word . . . it implies a natural occurrence. It suggests that if only I’d been home the day you called . . . if only you’d been on St. James’s the last time I bought cravats . . . then I’d have had a chance not to miss you. But what do we call the aching emptiness that I feel for you? All the time? Every day?”

Tears stung at the words, at the way he put voice to the emptiness that lived inside her, as well. An aching sadness, like a part of her was gone.

He kissed her again, urgent and full of that ache. “What do we call the loneliness, as though my other half has gone, never to return?” he asked. “What do we call that?”

Love.

“Ewan,” she whispered. Not knowing what to say. Not knowing what to think. Knowing only that she wanted to give him something to ease the ache.

To ease her own.

And then he froze, his breath stopping in his throat. Her eyes flew to his, but he wasn’t looking at her face.





Chapter Twenty-Two


She had a tattoo on her left shoulder.

He hadn’t noticed it before then—it had always been covered by straps and bodices and sleeves and, when he’d stripped her naked earlier, by her riot of red curls. And then, he’d been so riveted by her eyes and her face and the way she gave herself up to desire that he hadn’t noticed.

But now he did, on her left shoulder three inches down and six in from the outer edge of her arm, a tattoo, in black. One he recognized because it was the foil of the mark he carried in the same spot on his own body. His, a white scar—one she’d tended mere nights ago—twenty years old and still raised and puckered, the punishment he’d been given for loving her.

The punishment he would have taken again and again, if it meant keeping her safe. And it had.

She had run, and she had built herself a kingdom and a palace alongside his brothers, whom she now claimed as her own. And he’d imagined that she had done everything she could to forget him, from the moment she fled, believing him the monster he had made himself to be.

But she hadn’t forgotten him.