“No!”
He stopped before her, and dear God, the headiness of her scent and nearness was an intoxicating combination that not even opium could rival. “Then tell me. What do you read about in your books?”
It was a question he should not ask.
Just as lingering here with her was a foolish risk he should not take.
And yet Aubrey stayed, awaiting her response. Needing it more than his next breath.
“About…about lovemaking and what happens between a man and a woman,” she said breathlessly.
And his stupid cock, which had begun to settle, twitched back to life.
Such words alone were paltry. They meant nothing. Issued in her sultry voice, however? They meant everything.
Aubrey cleared his throat. “You’ve been reading vulgar books?”
“Books, yes,” she corrected with a prim air that had no place coupled with what she had just said. “Notvulgar, however.”
Damn it all,why? Why did she have to make such an inappropriate admission, and why did it have to affect him so?
He had to get her out of this bloody house party.
Out of this room.
Out of his reach.
“Ah, yes. Not vulgar at all. Would you care to repeat what you just explained to your brother?” he asked cruelly.
“It is none of Whitby’s concern what I read,” she snapped.
“Because you know he wouldn’t approve.”
Her nostrils flared. “Because I am a woman grown.”
He raised a brow and raked her over with a wilting gaze. “Are you? Because I do confess, you look rather like a girl playing at being a woman just now.”
For a moment, he thought she might slap him.
But instead, she did the opposite.
Lady Rhiannon Northwick took one step forward, her pink evening gown slamming into his trousers, billowing outward, and then she grabbed his necktie and tugged him toward her. In the next second, her lips were on his.
And Aubrey?
He was bloodylost.
Lost in her hot, silken lips. Lost in her curves melding into his hard frame, lost in her scent, in her breasts crushing into his chest, in the way she fit against him, as perfectly as if she’d been made to do so. Aubrey had no choice but to kiss her back with all the suppressed desire within him…
Fuck.
This wasn’t going to end well.
Rhiannon could scarcely believethat she waskissingthe Duke of Richford.
The beautiful, cruel rake. The gentleman every woman threw herself at, be she wife or widow or debutante. The most beautiful man she’d ever met and the most confounding man she knew too.
Because he had called her a girl playing at being a woman. Because she had been harboring a secrettendrefor him ever since she’d first set eyes upon him at sixteen, and he never looked at her with the same melting gaze he settled upon every other lady. Because she wanted him to notice her, to flirt withher, to bestow his disarming smiles and wicked sallies upon her. To lead her into darkened alcoves at balls and kiss her breathless.
