But how wrong he was. There was nothing this beautiful man could do to her that she would ever regret.
“I’m not ready to leave yet,” she returned, nettled with herself for the unsteadiness in her voice.
The longing.
She had been waiting years for the Duke of Richford to want her, and she wasn’t about to move away from the door. Not if her life depended on it.
CHAPTER 5
He wasn’t going to kiss her.
He wasn’t jealous of Lord bloody Elmont.
But he was going to come out of his damned skin if Rhiannon didn’t do as he asked of her and get the hell out of this room. He could admit that much, if only to himself.
And what was Rhiannon doing? The minx was blocking the door with her lush, tempting form, taunting him by suggesting she’d wanted to see another man’s cock, when the only cock he wanted her to see or touch or know was his.
That cannot happen, he reminded himself viciously.
You can’t have her.
She’s forbidden.
Whit’s sister.
A fucking virgin.
Yes, she was all those things. But she was also the most potent aphrodisiac he’d ever beheld, flushed and glossy-eyed, all but panting with desire. He might have consigned himself to the fiery pits of hell in that moment just for the chance to lift her skirts and test the slit of her drawers to see if she was wet.
He bit back a groan and struggled to give her his sternest expression. “Be a good chit and go.”
“I don’t want to be good, and I’m not a chit,” she denied stubbornly.
But then she did something else, something that broke him apart like a rock being dashed to bits by a pickaxe. She cupped his face in both her hands, staring up at him with such raw, unfettered desire that he couldn’t resist.
He had an excuse for the last time their lips had met. She had been the aggressor then, taking him by surprise. On this occasion, however, he had no such defense. Because he was the one lowering his head toward hers, angling his mouth to claim and plunder. He was the one who pressed her to the door and ravished her lips the way he wanted to with the rest of his body.
And damn her, she tasted every bit as sweet as she had then. Perhaps more so. She opened without hesitation, and he gave her his tongue. Her hands moved from his face to his shoulders, her nails digging into him through the layers he wore as if she wanted to hold him there forever or perhaps make her mark. Some dark and debased part of him hoped she would.
He was on fire for her, and it had precious little to do with the show the couple had enacted for them in the adjacent room. He had scarcely spared them a glance. The only one he’d been watching was Rhiannon. Her swift inhalations, her parted lips, the way her body shifted and moved, as if she were trying to assuage the ever-growing ache deep within. An ache he knew could only be quelled one way.
Realization hit him with a clarity that was so sharp and precise, it may as well have been fashioned from a guillotine. Hehadto touch her. Just once. Had to know if she had been as stirred by watching Lord and Lady Elmont as he thought she’d been. It was wrong, he knew, but he couldn’t stop or help himself.
If he never took the opportunity to touch her, he’d regret it to his dying day. This would be his only chance. Aubrey graspeda handful of her skirts, slowly lifting silk and petticoats. Inch by inch. As he did, he deepened the kiss, her tongue slick against his, her breathy moan of encouragement enough to make his cock leak.
It was ridiculous, how much Rhiannon affected him. He was a grown man, an experienced, jaded rake who had known his first lover as a callow youth of eighteen when he had been desperate to lose himself in someone, to escape from the horrors of his own reality. Since then, he’d bedded countless women. There was no earthly reason he should want Lady Rhiannon Northwick more than he’d ever desired another.
Perhaps madness had finally claimed him.
He had been dancing about the devil for years now.
Her lips chased his as she ground her breasts into his chest. Up went her hems, just a scant inch higher. He was closer to what he wanted, but…
Fuck, fuck, fuck. He couldn’t touch her cunny. This was his friend’s sister.
Unfortunately, regardless of how many reprimands he issued himself, none had an impact on his all-consuming need for the woman who was kissing him as if her life depended upon it. Good. He would make her forget about the couple who were no doubt shagging like mad at this very moment.
Aubrey left her lips, stringing kisses across her jaw and down her throat. He found the place where her pulse pounded frantically and set his mouth over it, sucking at the smooth, soft skin. She tasted sweet here too, like Rhiannon and the faintest hint of her perfume. He sucked harder, some perverse part of him hoping to leave a mark there so that when she looked in the mirror, she would remember this moment. So that she would know who had put his mouth on her there.
