His thumb circled over her nipple instead, and his lips made constellations over her throat, finding his way back to the beauty mark, then higher, along her jaw once more, to her chin, the corners of her lips. Lips that were swollen and dark from his kisses.God.How luscious she was. He’d never wanted to be inside a woman, buried deep, claiming her as his, so badly.
The depth of his reaction to her astonished him, for it was even more potent now than before. He was lost in her. And it was utterly ridiculous. He, who had seduced his way through London, brought to his knees by a mere miss who had only just learned to kiss. The very last woman he should want, to say nothing of hold, in his arms. The last woman he should touch, kiss, or corrupt.
“I don’t know what it is,” she whispered, her hands cupping his face in a hesitant gesture that belied the fierceness of her kisses.
He should have shaved. He wondered if his whiskers pricked her tender palms. And then he had the urge to rub his whiskers all over her naked breasts and belly and thighs. On her sweet cunny, too. To mark her as his. But even as the mad desire rose within him, he knew it could never be.
What had she been speaking of? He felt almost as if he were in his cups. Drunk on her.
“What don’t you know?” He searched her gaze, falling into the honeyed warmth, the golden flecks hidden in her irises.
Her thumbs traced his cheekbones in a slow, gratifying caress. “Your given name.”
“Trevor,” he told her, and then he couldn’t resist kissing her deeply again.
“Mmm,” she said into his mouth, the sound one of carnal delight, as if she had just bitten into something delicious.
He knew the feeling. This wasn’t supposed to feel so bloody good. Nor was he meant to be kissing his ward in his library. Or anywhere else, for that matter. Not that the reminder of propriety and duty stopped him. He’d come very near to dying today, and he was going to celebrate his victory against death in the very best fashion he could fathom, by covering Lady Virtue Walcot’s lips with his and parting them until he fed her his tongue and she sucked on it as if she wanted to swallow him whole.
And then he thought about what other parts of himself she might swallow, and his cock went harder, rising against the placket of his trousers. She hadn’t said his name. Perhaps he should leave her mouth for a moment, allow her to catch her breath and will his raging cockstand to abate before he did something even more foolish than the liberties he’d already taken.
This was wrong and he was in agony.
Apparently, Trevor William Hunt, sixth Duke of Ridgely, Marquess of Northrop, Baron Grantworth liked very bad things. Forbidden things. Wicked things. But then, he had never claimed to be a good man, and nor had anyone else accused him of being one. He reckoned no one would be surprised to have their bleakest suspicions of him confirmed.
Trevor took a moment to study her as he lay on his side, still wearing whatever he’d donned that morning in between the departure of his friends and the arrival of the Bow Street Runners they’d called for, who had made their inquiries concerning the dead man. He didn’t recall his heart ever pounding this quickly. Not even in the darkest depths of the night when he’d been racing after that murderous villain down the stairs.
He wanted to tell her how beautiful she was. To tell her the power she could possess over every man in London, should she wish it. If he’d had a modicum of poetry in his soul, he would have composed a sonnet then and there to the wonders of her sensual allure. But all he could think about was how she had tugged at his hair and thrust her curves against him in all the right places, and the sharpness of her teeth on him.
She was a tigress, and good God, helovedit.
“You bit me,” he said, his lip still throbbing where she’d nipped him, rather like a naughty kitten.
Her eyes were wide, her breathing ragged, her breast rising and falling against his eager palm. “I didn’t.”
“You did.” He released her breast with the greatest of reluctance and tapped his mouth where she’d done it. “Here.”
Her cheeks flushed pink. “Forgive me. I didn’t intend to hurt you.”
There was only one pain when it came to her, and it was the pain of not being able to take her as he wanted.
“And you pulled my hair,” he added for good measure, not certain why.
Perhaps to distract himself from his desperate lust. Perhaps to celebrate her ferocity. Her boldness had both vexed and drawn him to her in equal measure, from the moment they’d first met.
“I am sorry,” she apologized again, her flush deepening.
“I’m not,” he told her, holding her gaze, cupping her cheek and forcing her to meet his stare when she would have looked away. “I’m not sorry because I liked it.”
Her lips parted as she struggled to make sense of his revelation. “You did?”
“You’re a bit wild, aren’t you, Virtue?”
Of course she was. She defied him at every opportunity, crossed verbal swords with him whenever she could. She stole his damned mare and rode Rotten Row at six o’clock in the bloody morning. She slipped into his bedroom to find the books he’d taken from her. She was wild and wayward, and he suddenly, very badly, wanted all that energy focused upon him. He wanted to lose himself in her, with her. To worship her as she deserved.
What an arse he’d been, supposing he might hastily marry her off. She deserved so much better than a marriage of convenience with some tepid lord who was no match for her keen wit and unbridled passion. But what an inconvenient time for this realization, when he had someone trying to murder him and he was all but ruining her.
“I’m not wild,” she denied softly, brushing a lock of hair from his forehead. “Surely you are more so than I.”
