All that remained was him. Spencer. Bainbridge. The Duke of Disdain. They were all varying versions of the same beautiful, complicated man. And she wanted them. Every last one of them. All of them.
All ofhim.
“And yet,” she prompted again, unable to squelch the restless desire to hear the rest of what he would have spoken though she knew it already.
He did not respond, merely scorched her with his relentless stare that seemed to see to the heart of her, to unlock all the secrets she kept within. And then, in the next instant, his mouth was upon hers. Fierce. Hungry. Devouring.
She opened to him, feeding on his kiss, sucking his tongue into her mouth. He was all she wanted without ever having known it. He was vital. Air. Water. Succor. He was everything, and it was as if his kiss could sustain her even if she was lost in the deepest, darkest wilds of the world. He kissed her as if she were someone he longed to consume and someone who was precious to him all at once. His hands were gentle. His mouth was firm, hard, demanding.
A moan tore from her throat, her fingers delving into his thick hair. His scent enveloped her, filling her, overtaking her. She welcomed it. Welcomed him. His questing touch smoothed over her waist, finding the belt of her robe, made short work of undoing the knot.
He groaned, tongue playing against hers, gliding with deep, languorous sweeps as though he had all the time in the world to discover her. To pleasure her. But Bo did not feel nearly so generous. She wanted everything she had read about, and she wanted it now. She wanted him to strip her of the layers keeping her skin from his, wanted him to lick and suck and nip her everywhere and anywhere he chose, wanted him between her thighs and deep inside her body.
The knot opened. Herrobe de chambreslipped down her shoulders, puddling to the floor in a whisper of fabric. Only a chemise, thin and transparent, kept her body from his traveling hands. Knowing, traveling hands, and everywhere he touched her, her traitorous body seemed to sing.
His thumbs found her nipples, circling, plucking. He pinched them between his fingers, rolled them, pulled, made her moan into his mouth with his tender yet skilled ministrations. Her breasts were so sensitive, heavy and full, desperate for his touch. She arched her back, licked her tongue against his, fisted her hands in his hair.
Nothing had ever made her feel more depraved or alive than this forbidden moment with the Duke of Bainbridge in her arms, his hands on her body, his mouth playing with wicked abandon over hers. He set her aflame as no other man before him ever had, and as she was beginning to suspect no man after him ever could.
How had she ever thought him icy?
For he was not. Not cold. Not cool. Not rigid or frigid.
Rather, he was on fire, singeing her with his kisses and his caresses, the sweep of his hands over her back and lower still. And she wanted that fire more than anything. Wanted to get burned. It would be an inferno, claiming everything in its path. But it would be worth it.
He cupped her bottom with both hands, kneading and squeezing before angling her to his body more fully. She felt him against her belly, erect and uncompromising and so tempting. The books she had read made it impossible for her to remain ignorant of what he would do with that part of himself or what it meant. He wanted her. Despite their differences, in spite of all that had happened since her arrival at Boswell Manor, the Duke of Bainbridgewantedher.
And she wanted him. More than she had ever wanted anything or anyone. So much that it frightened her. So much that she stood in nothing more than a chemise, in his chamber, tossing the last remnants of her reputation into the proverbial flame. No good would come of her presence in his chamber.
No good would come of his hands meandering over her body or the restless desire within her to feel his bare skin pressed to hers. No good would come of anything that was happening now, in this moment, in the emerald chamber without the ghosts of his past and the fears of their future curtailing them.
For the moment, it was as if they were suspended from reality. No one knew she was within his chamber. No one knew she had gone from hers with the exception of the servant posted at her door, and she suspected that he would not wish to alert his retainers of his failure now that he had lost her. Indeed, no one, then, would suspect at all. No one would ever know what she had risked, what he had taken, or what she had given. It was as if time ceased to exist, and they were the only two souls in the world, both on fire for each other, both needy and desperate for something they did not comprehend.
She trailed her hand down his strong arms to his hip.
Not many days before, she had touched his cock, cupping and stroking. While she had not known what to do then—and still did not—the heaviness in her veins, the heat settling in her belly, and the wetness between her thighs urged her onward now. She arched, making certain that her breasts burned into his chest and his arousal connected with her mound’s soft flesh.
Yes.This was where she wanted him. Where she needed him. Nothing else mattered, not consequences or propriety, nor the fact that they were sharing a roof with their respective family members. Any part of her that would have objected to the depravity threatening to consume them both was hastily squelched, firmly shoved to the far recesses of her mind. Here, in this moment, there was no room for rules. No room for decorum. No room for anything other than pure, animal want.
She wanted Bainbridge. He wanted her.
Simple. She sucked his tongue, ran hers against it, bit his lower lip until he grunted, and then she kissed and licked away the sting. He had done this to her. Had turned her into a raw, unadulterated wanton. The final remnants of the girl she had once been—the girl who had tried to please her parents, who had made an effort to conform, the girl who had dutifully attended finishing school—dissipated. That girl was gone, and in her place stood a woman in her chemise, who knew what she wanted.
Rules and everyone and everything else be damned.
A groan tore from Bainbridge’s throat then, and he dragged his lips from her mouth, down her neck, open, hot, wet, hungry. She threw back her head to grant him better access. He licked the tense cord of her throat, sucked her skin, gently bit the taut corner of flesh where her neck and shoulder met. His hands were everywhere, kneading, caressing, making her untutored flesh come to life.
Someone moaned into the silence, and she supposed it must have been her. The longing inside her continued to tighten and build, a delicious pang of want echoing between her thighs. She had read about such primitive feelings, but she had previously imagined them embellishments perpetrated by the authors with the intent to titillate.
It wasn’t so.
Those feelings—the wicked, the prurient, the wrong, the desperate—all of them, were as real as the breath leaving her lungs on an exhale of pure desire. He dragged a path of kisses over the bare décolletage above her chemise. Then lower still, his hand cupping a breast, his mouth closing over her nipple through the thin linen.
“Bainbridge,” she gasped, arching. Nothing could have prepared her for the decadence of his hot, wet mouth on her. Suckling her. Suddenly, she longed for the last barriers between them to be gone. “Please.”
He nipped her then, not with enough force for pain. Pleasure, clear and strong, shot through her. And then he raised his head, his gaze meeting hers. “You need to get out of this chamber, Lady Boadicea. At once.”
But as he issued the authoritative command, his hands molded her waist, swept lower, back to the swell of her bottom, and he angled her against him. His hips thrust against her, the stroke of his cock over the sensitized bundle of flesh at her core inciting an answering twitch of her hips.
