Dukes of Madness: Chapter 33

I stare down in awe as her lips part, the head of my cock a breath away, swollen and already leaking. On some level, I’d already written all this off. The thought of Lavinia letting me touch her like this. Looking up at me, on her knees, so soft and open and inviting. It’s all I’ve ever wanted. I’d dreamed of it—fuck, obsessively—for years, but I’d already started down the path of accepting that all I could get were the hard, violent moments where I took it, and those weren’t worth it. I know that now. I’ve tried this every way I knew how. By negotiation, deep in the bowels of the Hideaway or over the breakfast table. By force, tied to the bed fighting me every inch of the way. I saved her. Used her. Abused her. Abandoned her.

God, it feels better this way.

Still, it’s a physical battle not to thrust forward, to watch as she holds my eye, licking out to wet her plush bottom lip.

The first touch of her tongue punches every bit of air from my lungs. It’s not just the sensation, slick and gentle, her tongue spreading the precum around. It’s the way her eyelids slump, like she’s drunk on it.

“Holy,” I growl as she pitches forward, “fucking,” sinking down, lips tight around my shaft, “shit.”

Goddamn.

Her mouth is hot and wet, but it’s the sight most of all, her lips around me as she reaches up to grab the base, humming. Sucking. Stroking. Bobbing. My lungs struggle to perform basic operations, and it’s not right. My Little Bird on her knees like this. I’m supposed to be worshiping her.

It hurts to tug her off, and the surprised, dazed expression on her face when I do isn’t helping. I soothe it away by bending to kiss her and it’s unbearably fucking erotic, the fact that we’re tasting ourselves on each other’s tongues.

She goes down easily when I push her back on the mattress, and it’s strange. I should be nervous as I lay her out, her naked body on offer before me, because those words…

Make love to me.

I want to. I want to be that man for her, the kind who treats her better than a duchess—a queen.

But the words, the implication of them, is like being interviewed for a position as someone’s soulmate.

It’s just a lot of fucking pressure.

Literally.

I’ve never made love to a woman before. I’ve fucked plenty, but it’s always been hard and fast, even when it was Lavinia—but that’s the last thing I want to think about. If I could, I’d erase the memory altogether, cover it with the sight of her gazing up at me right now, chest flushed as she rakes her lip through her teeth.

But I’m not nervous.

I know exactly what to do.

I brush the hair from her cheek, holding myself up on a forearm as I kiss the overheated skin. Her thighs are warm against my hips, and I don’t think I’ll ever get over it—the fact she’s spreading them for me, letting me in. I accept it greedily because it’s where I belong—I’ve always known it—rocking my cock against her folds as I kiss down to her neck. I suck a bruise into the skin there, dick surging at the sound of her low moan. It’s as essential as the star on her hip, proof for tomorrow that this was real, that it happened. Maybe I’ll even find myself counting the broken capillaries like a goddamn headcase.

She tilts her head, her fingertips finding my shoulders, and when she swallows hard enough that I can hear the click of her throat, I get the sense this whole love making thing is just as foreign to her as it is to me.

Lifting my mouth from her neck, I grab her chin to guide her eyes to mine. “Too much?”

Her eyebrows pinch in confusion, but smooth just as quick. I’m not stupid. I know the way I feel about her makes her all shifty and evasive. But she shakes her head, insisting, “It’s what I want.”

I watch her for a long moment, searching. There’s a hurt in her eyes, but I know I’m not the one who’s put it there. Sy? Remy?

I don’t ask.

Instead, I tighten my grip on her face and push our mouths together, only letting her go to skate my fingertips over her tit, palming it up to feel her back arch. The noise from downstairs is rowdy and somewhere in the kitchen, the Archduke is rattling his food bowl, but Lavinia and I are distilled down to the point where I reach between us, grabbing the base of my dick and rubbing it through her folds.

The head of my dick slides through her wetness as it descends, slotting up against her entrance, and I break from the kiss to watch her fluttering eyes as I slowly—fucking agonizingly—push inside.

Her mouth parts on a gasp, the fingernails against my back digging divots into the skin. “Oh god,” she breathes, eyes wide.

I freeze, teeth clenched against the instinct to fuck inside. “Hurts?”

But she shakes her head, the sole of her foot rubbing against the back of my knee. “Just… go slow?”

Fixated on the crevice between her eyebrows, I sink another desperate inch into her, grunting at the tight, wet warmth of it. I spit a low, “Fuck,” my balls aching with the urge to slam forward. But I’m not my brother. I hold it back, enthralled by the way her body takes me, her chest heaving as she watches me back.

When she lifts her hips, working up against me, I tangle the fingers I have above her head into the hair at her crown, holding her steady as I sink to the hilt.

She hisses, and I think she means to say, “Fuck,” but all she manages is the ‘f’-sound, her teeth buried into her lip as she grinds her head back. I take the opportunity to dip down, licking a hot path from her throat to her chin as I begin rocking my hips.

Here’s something about Lavinia I never knew.

When I’m fucking her and she actually wants it, she’ll tuck her hand behind my neck and wrench me down for a long, obscene, searing kiss. I get lost in it, nearly forgetting the scope of the job as I pull my hips back and plunge forward, deep and hard. The sound she makes is rough and raw, her teeth sinking into my lip, but I can tell she likes it.

She raises her knees, wrapping her legs around my hips.

It sends a fissure of liquid-hot bliss down my spine to be clutched between her thighs, the heels of her feet pushing against my ass, spurring me on. When I break away from her kiss, she stares down between our bodies, face both slack and tense as she watches me fuck her. “Do you see it, Little Bird?” I tighten my fingers in her hair, nudging her back to meet my gaze. “We fit together.”

She nods, but her eyes are dark and lost, fingernails pushing into my skin. So I tell her in every language, bending to suck her tit, hand reaching to clamp around her thigh. I hold her close as my hips roll, cock dragging and prodding as I search for it, tilting for a new angle, until—

“Nick,” she gasps, hands jabbing down to claw into my ass.

“That’s right.” I grunt the words against her lips, staring into her eyes as they widen and then scrunch. “No one knows you like I do,” I whisper, voice so wrecked I barely recognize it as my own. “No one can make you feel as good as I do.” My hips rock, cock pushing right into her G-spot. “No one can love you like I do. You know that, don’t you?” She nods, body coiling with a series of soft, punched whines, and I nod back, hips rocking. “Come for me, baby. Show me.”

Her face screws up, cheeks such a lovely, violent shade of red as she digs her fingers into the hard muscles of my ass, setting my pace, forcing me faster, deeper. I kiss her as it builds—her mouth, her chin, her hot cheeks, the little patch of skin beneath her ear, the mark I’d made earlier.

Right as she seizes, her eyes fly open, locking with mine. “Nick…”

I feel her come around me, pussy clenching as she shudders. The long column of her neck stretches as she cries out, spine arching into me. I keep hammering away at that spot, dragging my cock against it stubbornly, relentlessly. It’s a good thing I’m willing to worship her because watching her come undone on my dick is a fucking religious experience.

It isn’t until after the tension in her thighs has snapped, muscles going lax, that I think of my dick as something other than hers; a tool to make those sharp little cries, a weapon to cause that aching twist of her face.

When I finally can, I rise up to give her a full thrust, watching as her pussy swallows me to the root, grasping me when I drag my hips back to do it again.

It’s the sight of her beneath me that makes my balls ache, though.

She’s spent, staring up at me with this glazed, bliss-out expression. When she releases my ass, it’s only to run a hand up my chest, hooking around my neck.

“Tell me,” I demand, so fucking eager to fill her up that I don’t even think to draw it out.

I can see it cycling in her head, the question of what I want to hear. I don’t want to have to tell her. I want her to look in my eyes, all fucked out and ready for me, and say the words I’ve waited two years to hear.

And she does. “I’m yours.”

I bury my face into her neck when I come, slamming into the cradle of her hips as if I could dig my way further inside of her. I make some fucked-up combination of a grunt and a growl as it rips through me, my cock pulsing into her heat. It feels like it goes on forever, her fingers carding through my hair as my cock surges, filling her up.

She hums, cradling the back of my head, and it’s so fucking sweet and perfect that, for a second, I’m convinced it can’t be real. That’s why I stay inside her so long, allowing her to milk every last drop. It’s why, when I finally roll to my back, I tuck my arms around her waist and drag her with me, not allowing my dick to slip free. I hold her there, against my chest, dick softening within her warmth, unwilling to let it go.

When she tries to lift herself, I tighten my arms around her, shoving her back down. “Stay,” I demand, voice ragged and hard.

She responds by stiffening against my hold, pushing against it, and I remember who I’ve fallen in love with here.

A fighter.

I loosen my hold, brushing my lips against her forehead. “Please?”

There’s a moment where I’m sure she’s going to be her usual defiant self, and it’d frustrate the ever-loving shit out of me, but I’d get it. I’d let her go.

Instead, she sags, sighing into the hollow of my throat as she stills. “Sticky,” she murmurs, wiggling her hips.

My cock gives a feeble twitch, because she’s right. I can feel my cum inside her, but it’s amplifying this warmth in the pit of my chest to know she’s so full of me. So I stubbornly—fucking tenaciously—move with her to make sure it doesn’t slip free.

As long as she’s with me right here, right now, this is real.

She’s mine.

I’m hers.

And nothing else matters.

The tower is dark other than the sliver of light coming from the clock face. Our naked bodies are only halfway covered by a thin novelty blanket, and this close to the glass, the cold radiates, tickling at every piece of exposed skin. But she’s hot against me, still straddling my hips—my cock is still inside her—and her weight against my chest is the only blanket I need. I still cover her, though, my hands moving over her back beneath the blanket as she burrows into my chest to steal my own warmth.

We’ve been dozing off and on for a while, but every slam from the party downstairs jolts me back awake. Lavinia’s head is tucked under my chin, her hair wafting a sweet scent, and every time I dive back into awareness, I’m shocked fucking stupid all over again that she’s still here. I hold her close, constantly pressing my nose to her hair, breathing in the scent of honey and sex, and Lavinia…

Lavinia explores me.

Her fingers find the ridges of muscles, lingering there, and not for the first time tonight, I’m hit with the heady realization that she digs my body. I’m not generally a humble person, so it makes me want to push into her touch—show her all the things about it that make my body powerful and strong. It’s just like the day she said she preferred me without the beard, this little ember of satisfaction flaring to life.

When she touches my ring, I fidget with it—something that’s become an unbearable habit. It’s heavy and awkward and ugly as sin, but it’s mine. When I reach around her back to pull it off, I turn it over in my palm, over and over, feeling the worn smoothness of the Bruin’s head.

Her fingers trace every tattoo she can reach, as if it’s her first time ever seeing them. Her back is soft and warm, and every so often, I’ll let my fingertips wander down her spine, tracing the vertebrae as she breathes against my skin, moving to another section of ink on my chest, my neck, my arm. Sometimes she’ll inhale, mouth parting, like she wants to ask about the pocket watch on my arm, or the angel weeping blood, or the eyes on the back of my hand, or the rosary around my wrist.

When she finally does find one to ask about, voice slicing through the silence, my dick is surging to life inside of her—thickening, lengthening, locking us together.

If she notices, she doesn’t say anything. “What’s with this?” she asks, pulling at my hand. Her fingers press into the skin above my wrist, tattooed a solid black, and I spin my ring with my thumb, watching the tendons shift.

“An apology,” I rumble, so lost in the feel of her handling me, touching me, that I might as well be shitfaced drunk. She stills when I take her wrist, smoothly sliding the ring onto her little thumb. I worry at first she’ll tell me no, take it off and throw it back in my face. Instead, she frowns as she inspects it, worrying it on her thumb a lot like I do. I flare out my fingers for her own to fit between them. “It used to be an LDZ skull. Remember?”

Her mouth turns down as she inspects it, trying to find the design hidden beneath. “Hm, maybe.”

I’m not surprised she doesn’t. Ducking my chin to press a kiss to her hair, I explain, “When I came back to West End, Remy was really upset with some of my ink. Sometimes I had to get pieces that were more… South Side-esque.”

Her fingers wander to the upper and lowercase S’s over my collarbone. Remy understood why I couldn’t let that one go. Good or bad, useful or not, South Side is a big part of who I’ve become. It’s taken me a while to come to terms with that, but he managed it pretty much immediately.

“So,” I go on, giving my hips a careful, testing nudge, “I let him tattoo over the skull. It’s solid black because—”

“Black means sorry,” she whispers, eyelashes fanning out as her eyes slip closed.

She doesn’t exactly seem opposed, so I hold her in place, rolling my hips to thrust. “Yeah. It was my way of saying sorry. In Remy’s language.”

I’ve never fucked someone like this before, going hard when I’m already inside of her, and it’s insanely erotic to feel her wetness rushing to meet me. It’s also unhurried and lazy, my palms moving over her back as I fuck into her just as casually as I’m stroking her skin.

“I told him about the Russian Roulette tonight,” she says, tilting her pelvis to give me a better angle. It drives me so crazy that I almost miss what she’s saying, too obsessed with the friction of pushing into her to pay attention.

When it finally hits me, I keep going. “Oh. Alright.” She could tell me she set fire to the tower right now, and I’d probably nod along stupidly. I do ask, “Why?” but it’s spoken in a breath between gentle thrusts, my hands finding the swell of her ass. “I thought we agreed that he’d—”

She makes this tiny little mewling noise, rocking into me, and all coherence goes right out the window.

Until she explains, “He accused me of trading my body to the Barons for Leticia’s skull.”

It’s a testament to the power of the moment that my hips barely stutter, even though I push her up to look her in the eye. Tightly, I demand, “Want to fucking say that again?”

She shakes her head and plants her hands on my chest, blue hair grazing her tits. “It’s bullshit, obviously, but he needed justification for…” her breath catches and she rolls her hips, eyes glazing over. “Fuck,” she breathes, rocking into my thrust.

“For what?” I ask, reaching up to drag my fingertips down her tit, catching her pebbled nipple as I descend. Her clit is already swollen when I push my hand between us, rubbing my thumb into it. “What did he do?”

Remy has patterns.

I’ve seen him bouncing around here like a coke-addled goblin for the past week, but even though I did my best to make him take his meds, go to class, keep him out of harm’s way, I knew a crash was coming.

Lavinia’s jaw drops, eyes slamming closed as I rub her clit, thrusting into her wet heat. I don’t think either of us expects it when I come first, thighs flexing as I buck my hips, emptying inside her for the second time tonight.

She reacts by grinding back—hard—and clenching around me with her own release. It’s less intense than the one before, her dropping back down to my heaving chest.

It’s almost like it never happened.

The chill seeps through the glass of the clock face and she sighs, burrowing close as I stroke up the bare expanse of her back.

I almost forget the conversation altogether, distracted by how wet she feels around my dick.

“I walked in on them,” she says, voice rough as gravel. “Him and… Haley. She was sucking him off after the fight.” I freeze, ducking down to try to meet her gaze. There’s a wobble in her voice, and I know she’s trying to hold back, but I wrap my arms around her and hold her close.

“Son of a bitch.” A few pieces of the night click into place. The hurt I could see in her eyes, her need for comfort for reasons other than Sy and her healing pussy.

Before I can speak, she continues. “He was being such an asshole to me before the match, and it was like… I could feel him trying his hardest to push me away. You know?”

I knit my fingers into her hair, rubbing against her scalp. “Yeah. I know.”

She touches that tattoo on my wrist—the apology. “He was rambling on about me having some kind of relationship with his dad—even though I’d repeatedly told him I hadn’t seen him since the night he introduced us.”

My lips press into a grim line. “He didn’t believe you.”

She nods, tonelessly adding, “He was high as a fucking kite.”

“Lavinia…” Nothing gets Remy as crazy as his dad. It’s one of the reasons I can’t fucking stand the guy. Ever since we were kids, Timothy Maddox has played Remy’s problems against him. “Sometimes, Remy does this. I’m not saying there’s an excuse for it, but sex? It’s this big mania trigger for him. I don’t think he can think straight.”

She lifts up to look me in the eye, her bare tits pressing into my chest. I run my hand up and down her back. “It’s not just the sex. He was mean. Like, completely delusional, making all these crazy accusations. Not only was I selling my body to the Baron.” Even though she rolls her eyes, I can still see the wetness in them—the hurt. “Apparently, he’s come to the insane conclusion that his father is the King of the Barons.”

I stare at her, my hand coming to an abrupt rest on her hip. “What?”

Despite the question, I barely hear her response, so tied up in the thought that my brain can’t spare the energy for anything else.

“His big ‘proof’,” she makes finger quotes, “is that he swears his father owned the revolver the Baron King gave us. Ergo, his father is the Baron King, and since he knows we made a deal with him, but not what the deal was, he made this ridiculous fucking leap that—because I’m a whore now, evidently—I traded my ass for it.” She smiles, but it’s brittle and bitter. “Can you fucking believe that?”

“Yes,” I say, without pause or reservation. At the way her eyes go shuttered, I lift up to meet her, insisting, “Not that stupid shit about you trading your ass. I mean, about his dad being the King. Fuck.” I look out over the living area below, it all clicking into place. “How the hell did I not see this before? Timothy Maddox has sway—power—but he isn’t loyal to any of the four corners of Forsyth.”

She gasps when I roll us and stand, my dick slipping from her heat, and the look she gives me could melt steel. “You can’t possibly be buying this complete load of horseshit, Nick.”

“Hey,” I say, kneeling to touch her cheek. “Listen to me. Remy is a fucking shit for doing that to you, and I’m going to beat his ass the next time I see him. And don’t think I can’t appreciate the fact that you just turned to me, asking to be made love to, because I’m just… some sure thing.”

Her neck snaps back, forehead creasing. “Nick, it wasn’t like that.”

Softly, I argue, “On some level, it was. And I’m glad, because it means you get it. I’m yours, and now you’re mine, so I don’t fucking care. But Remy…” Shaking my head, I struggle to put it into words. “He isn’t crazy. He sees more than people think, and that means there’s something to this thing about his dad.” I take her face in my hands, leaning in to pluck a gentle kiss from her lips. “And that means I have to check it out.”

It’s not easy though.

She watches me from the mattress as I pull on my jeans and it’s fucking agony to look at her, all soft and naked and mine for the first time. There’s only one thing I want more than to get back under that blanket and feel her against me.

The truth.