He pressed harder, finding an exquisitely sensitive place, then worked her nub back and forth until she was on the edge of coming undone. He kissed her throat, the corners of her lips.
“You feel so damn good, but it’s not enough,” he said against her wildly pounding pulse. “I want to lick you. Will you let me?”
“Please,” she said, the only word she could manage past the sudden rush of desire pulsing in her core.
She had thought of him pleasuring her with his mouth so many times. So many lonely nights. Her own touch had been a paltry substitute. Never sufficient.
He guided her, moving her slowly, until her back met with the wall of shelving. “Hold your skirts, love.”
Somehow, her mind was able to make sense of his gently issued command. Her hands left his broad shoulders, taking the hems of her skirts and petticoats, and holding them to her waist as he had.
“Good.” He kissed her once, swift and hard, on the mouth, and then he sank to his knees.
Oh sweet heavens. She would have been embarrassed, were it not for the need thundering through her, the remembrance of what that wicked mouth could do to her. How much pleasure he could bring. His hands framed her hips, caressing her with appreciative sweeps, then urged her legs farther apart. Cool air touched her intimate flesh as her drawers opened. Suddenly, the coolness was replaced by heat.
By the velvet warmth of his lips. He sucked her into his mouth and made a low growl that told her he enjoyed pleasuring her every bit as much as she liked his mouth on her. Elysande’s knees wobbled.
He released her, glancing up at her through hooded, blue-gray eyes. “Lean into the shelves and hook your leg over my shoulder.”
She obeyed, lost in the madness of the moment. He helped her to shift her left leg as he wanted, leaving her open to him, his hot breath fanning her core. His head dipped, and he was feasting once more, eating her as if she were the finest delicacy laid before him, as if he could never slake his hunger.
He lapped at her folds, then parted her, his tongue gliding lower, pressing lightly against her entrance. She was going to swoon. Or splinter into a thousand jagged shards of herself. He alternated between long licks, pressing his face into her, his hands cupping her rump and holding her still for him to devour her.
The nip of his teeth on her pearl proved her undoing. He bit, and molten bliss, exquisite and all-consuming, rocked through her. She moaned, body bowing away from the shelving in her attempt to get closer, for him to give her more. He nibbled on her throbbing clitoris until her climax hit her.
Wave after wave of bliss crashed down. White stars speckled her vision. Hudson remained there, delivering little light flicks with his tongue, lapping her up. He rubbed her bottom in soothing, reassuring strokes, then kissed the bud of her sex, then her inner thigh.
His kiss was wet with her own dew. It was wicked and Elysande liked it. Liked his mouth on her most intimate place, the knowledge that his lips tasted like her. He slowly removed her leg from his shoulder and rocked back on his heels, staring up at her with drugged desire. He was so handsome this way, more man than gentleman, hair tousled, full lips dark and glistening from his efforts.
She was trembling and sated and limp, breaths leaving her in ragged bursts, heart galloping like a wild horse given a start. None of this had been her intention when she had initially sought him in the library, but she could not regret her actions. Her gaze dipped to the evidence of his desire, a long ridge hidden by his trousers. The sight did nothing to quell the passion still muddling her brain.
“Ah, damn,” he said, collecting her hems from her and lowering them back into place. “You make me lose my head, Ellie.”
There it was again.Ellie.
She liked the way her name sounded in his deep, smoky voice. She liked everything about him.
He rose to his feet and took her hands in his. “Come. It has been a long day, and we should both get some rest.”
She nodded, tamping down the rise of disappointment in her breast that his words had not been different. That he had not asked to come to her bed instead. “Yes, it has, and I daresay we should.”
He escorted her to her chamber and left her there, with nothing but a tender kiss on her brow. And just as she had for every night of her marriage thus far, Elysande went to bed alone.
Chapter 9
Perhaps Barlowe had the right of it. Being honorable and doing the right thing was damned hard.
But the devil of it was, so was his cock.
Hudson had risen, as he had ever since the morning by the lake, with a cockstand and no way of curing it save a thorough frigging with his own hand. This life of his was getting old.
He no longer knew who he was, living a half life between one and the next, part of him very much still Chief Inspector Stone, part of him the new Duke of Wycombe. He had a wife he had yet to make love to, a former lover who had been murdered, a monster who continuously eluded capture, two homes in need of refurbishing, former friends and fellow detectives who now considered him an outsider, yet another world in which he did not belong, and the possibility he would be charged with Maude’s murder.
The thought cooled his ardor considerably. As did the memory of what he had witnessed that night. How could he ever forget? All the blood, so much of it. Everywhere. He’d bathed thrice when he had finally made his way to the town house afterward. Had scrubbed his skin until it had been red and raw.
Today, he needed to see O’Rourke. The reminder had him rising from his bed to the cool morning air. The fire in the grate had died at some time during the wee hours, and there was precious little heat to be had in the chamber. He shivered as he made his way to the washstand. Maude had been dead for three days and nights, and beyond that awful first evening, Hudson had seen nothing of the inspector.
O’Rourke had been cold and unrelenting on their previous meeting, so it was hardly surprising he had given Hudson no indication of the progression of the case. He knew he was no longer a detective himself, and that he had no right to information. However, he was partly responsible for Maude Ainsley’s murder. She would not have been followed and killed if she had not sought out Hudson that night at Barlowe’s dinner.
