Her scent, he reflected, blended beautifully with the summer night air. It made a man want to nibble on her, to see if she tasted of lavender, roses, and honeysuckle. He cast back, trying to recall when he’d hired the pretty, younger-than-she-should-be, more-protective-than-she-needed-to-be, Mrs. Seaton. Early spring, perhaps, when he’d made the decision to leave the ducal townhouse, lest he strangle his dear papa and the endless parade of shirttail cousins his mama trooped past him for consideration as his broodmare.

The whole business was demeaning. He understood his parents, having lost two sons, were desperate for progeny from their two remaining legitimate sons. He understood Val affected a preference for men—at least he claimed it was an affectation—rather than suffer the duke’s importuning. He understood Devlin would be years recovering from Waterloo and the Peninsular War.

He did not understand though, how—given that the ducal responsibilities took every spare hour and minute—he was going to find the time to locate a woman he could tolerate not just in his bed but as the mother of his children and his companion at the breakfast table.

“Westhaven!” Elise flew across her sitting room, arms outstretched to envelope him in an enthusiastic hug. “Did you miss me?” She squeezed him to her ample bosom and kissed his cheek. “I have expired for lack of you, Westhaven.” She kept her hands wrapped around his arm, pressing her breast to his bicep as she did. “A month is too long, isn’t it? I’m sure you were very naughty in my absence, but I’m here now, and you needn’t go baying at the moon for lack of me.”

She was tugging at his clothing, her mouth chattering on, and Westhaven knew a moment’s impatience. Desire was a bodily craving, like fatigue or hunger or physical restlessness. He tended to it, usually twice a week, sometimes more, and lately less. It had been mildly alarming to find Elise’s departure for a month-long house party had inconvenienced him not one bit.

But she was back, and it had been a month, and his clothes were rapidly accumulating in a pile on the floor.

“Elise,” he said, stilling her hands, “you know I don’t like to be untidy.”

“But you do like to be naked,” Elise quipped, bending to scoop up his shirt, waistcoat, and cravat. She dumped them over the back of a chair and pushed him onto her fainting couch, the better to extricate him from his boots. “And I like to get you naked.” Like a small, blond fury, Elise finished peeling him out of his clothes, showing an enthusiasm he didn’t usually find in her.

“You’ve added flesh,” she observed when she’d thrown his breeches onto the chair, as well. “You aren’t as skinny, Westhaven. Oh, and look, you are glad to see me.”

His cock was glad to see her, anyway. Glad enough that when she pushed him onto his back on her silly red bed, he could concede a month of celibacy had been enough.

“Let me taste you.” Elise was still in her dressing gown, but she climbed onto the bed and knelt at his hip.

Now this was something new. Elise liked having him for a protector, liked thinking the heir to a dukedom had chosen her for his pleasures. She did not, however, particularly like him or like sex. These factors bothered him a little, but no more than they bothered her. In many ways, it was easier if she wasn’t personally attached to him, nor he to her.

Her tongue lapped at his cock, the sensations tantalizing and more arousing than the rest of Elise’s repertoire of foreplay put together. Elise, however, had been reluctant to indulge him thus previously, so with her, he usually contented himself with more pedestrian sexual play. The lapse of time since they’d last been together, and the enthusiastic efforts of her mouth, combined to undermine his usual self-discipline.

“I’ll come in your mouth, Elise,” he warned her several minutes later. “When you suck on my cock, it tempts me—”

“You’ll do no such thing.” Elise glanced up at him sharply, alarm flitting across her face. She opened her dressing gown and lay down on the mattress beside him. “You can’t have all the fun, Westhaven.”

She obligingly spread her legs, so he rolled and settled himself over her.

“I take care of you, Elise,” he said, nuzzling at her neck. She wasn’t much of one for kissing on the mouth, but she tolerated attention to her breasts fairly well.

“You do,” she agreed, arching up against him. “Though you take your damned time about it.” The words were teasing, but something in her tone was petulant, ungracious, so he dispensed with further preliminaries and found the entrance to her body with his cock.

“I will assume”—he began to rock his way to a fuller penetration—“you have simply missed your pleasures, Elise.”

“I have,” she said, wrapping her legs around his flanks and locking her ankles at the small of his back. “Now fuck my feeble brains out and cease jabbering.”

His cock liked that idea just fine, but in the part of him that always watched, always considered, something about Elise felt just the slightest degree off. Her enthusiasm didn’t seemed feigned, exactly, but neither was it… warm.

“Harder,” she urged, flexing her hips to meet his thrusts. “I want it rough today, Westhaven.”

Rough? Where in the hell did that come from? He obligingly thrust harder and felt his own arousal ratchet up. Elise’s heels dug into his spine, though, and the distraction allowed him to hold back his orgasm as he listened for hers to approach.

“Oh, God…” Elise was flailing her hips at him desperately, her passion a welcome and uncharacteristic display. “God damn you, Westhaven…”

She bucked against him harder, until he felt his own climax bearing down on him. He held off until he was sure Elise had found her pleasure in full then arched his back to withdraw.

Elise held him all the more tightly, her legs vised around his waist.

With a sudden wrench, he broke her scissor hold and lunged back.

“What in God’s name are you doing?” he roared. He sat back on his heels, panting with frustrated lust, while Elise stared up at him, eyes dazed with passion and anger.

“Why?” she yelled back. “Why for once couldn’t you just come like most men and not be so goddamned careful? You can’t just fuck, Westhaven. You have to be a damned duke even in this!”

“What on earth are you going on about?” He speared her with an incredulous look. “You know my terms, Elise, and…”

He watched her face, and realization dawned.

“Oh, Elise.” He climbed to the side of the bed and sat with his back to her, lungs heaving. “You let Renfrew plant his bastard in your belly and hoped to pass it off as mine.” He didn’t need to see her eyes to know he’d come across yet another ducal ploy to trap him into marriage. Renfrew was tall, green-eyed, brown-haired, and randy as a goat.

“His Grace promised…” Elise wailed quietly. “His man said if I conceived, the duke would see us wed.”

Westhaven shook his head in exasperation, “Elise, the duke would not have seen us wed when I told him the child was Renfrew’s.”

“And how would he have known that?”

“I am not stupid, Elise, and I have never spent my seed inside you. My father would believe me in that much, at least,” he said as he rose.

“Where are you going?” She sat up, closing the dressing gown around her as if he might peek at her nakedness.

“I am going to take a cold bath, I suppose.” He began to sort through his clothes. “Would you prefer diamonds, emeralds, or rubies?”

“All of the above,” she replied, crossing her arms over her chest. “You were a damned lot of work, Westhaven.”

“Was I really?” He was momentarily nonplussed by the thought but then resumed dressing. “How so?”

“This is just sex.” Elise waved her hand at the bedroom in general. “But still, it’s sex with another person.”