She didn’t offer protest, just spun, presenting him with her back.
“You’re certain about this, minx?” he asked, voice low and deep.
More certain than she had ever been about anything.
There was no hesitation in her response. “Yes.”
His fingers moved over her buttons, pulling them free, the silk of her bodice gaping more with each one. With the gentlest of touches, he peeled her bodice down her arms and tossed it to the floor, where it joined the piles of discarded dresses she had yet to tidy. Her breath caught as his fingertips grazed the bare skin of her upper arms, her elbows. Good heavens, herwrists.
She was aching in places that were ordinary and commonplace. Her body was greedy and desperate, wanting his touch on every part of her.
“Your bedchamber is a bloody mess,” he observed without any bite to his words.
“My lady’s maid would have stood me in great stead, but I didn’t dare risk bringing her with me.”
His mouth fluttered over her nape, and she nearly jumped from the electric shock of it. “How did you come to be here? You never said.”
He wanted to have a conversation whilst he was undressing her? Rhiannon shivered and leaned into him, cursing the annoyance of her bustle getting in the way.
“I didn’t tell anyone where I was going. I just left.”
He nuzzled behind her ear, and Rhiannon’s legs almost gave out.
“Christ. What if a cry has been raised over your disappearance?”
“My mother won’t notice,” she managed breathlessly. “She scarcely knows I’m alive.”
Except in regard to the earl’s courtship. But Rhiannon had already promised not to speak Carnis’s name again, and she didn’t want to think about the future awaiting her now. She wanted to live in this moment, in the impossible hope she had been clinging to for years, finally made real.
As real as the duke’s lips on her nape, his fingers finding the hooks on her skirt and setting them free. His hands clamped suddenly on her waist, and he spun her to face him.
“Promise me you won’t do something so reckless again.”
She opened her mouth to argue, to ask why it should matter, to remind him that this was her last chance before her boring life began as someone else’s wife. But he laid a finger over her lips.
“No arguing. Promise.” His voice was stern, his expression intent.
“I promise,” she said, then gave in to the urge to kiss his finger.
“Good.”
His fingertip slid along her lips, over her chin. He skimmed it down her throat, making her tilt her head back. Slowly, slowly, he trailed his touch across the center of her chest, between the swells of her breasts beneath her chemise and corset. Then he hooked his finger in her corset and tugged her into him, his lips claiming hers again, and promises, the future, and all else fell away.
There was nothing but him and her, their mouths melding. Nothing but the night and the two of them. He cupped her cheek with one hand and made love to her mouth, feeding her voracious, deliciously carnal kisses. Her dream lover, hers atlast. Perhaps she was asleep, but if so, she would sooner revel in this forbidden fancy than wake.
As if to prove he was real, she coasted her hands over his chest, finding the buttons that kept her from him too. His coat and waistcoat fell to the floor. More buttons. She sucked on his tongue as her fingers flew over additional fastenings. Rhiannon lost patience and clawed at his shirt, her nails raking over his chest.
He grunted, and she tore her lips from his, aghast that she had scratched him like a wildcat.
“Forgive me.”
His gaze was as dark as forest moss. “Hush.” He caught her hand and brought it to his lips, pressing a feverish kiss to her knuckles. “Never apologize with me.”
Aubrey’s shirt hung open, revealing a tempting swath of chest and the lean, muscled slabs of his belly, all dotted with a sprinkling of golden hair. Three pink lines rose above his flat nipple, and she leaned into him impulsively, pressing her lips to his heated skin just above his heart. She absorbed the rhythmic beats with her mouth, inhaling deeply of the scent of him, masculine and beloved.
His shirt fluttered to the Axminster. Her petticoats went next. Their lips met again as he walked her toward the bed. She nearly tripped in the particularly voluminous skirts of a discarded day gown and clung to him. He caught her to him, keeping her from falling.
She was drunk on him. Or perhaps on the champagne she had consumed during the ball. Mayhap both? The lights swirled around them, and everything became a blur of color and sensation. He one-handedly plucked open the laces of her corset while kissing her breathless and pulled open the hooks on her busk with the other. Her chemise and drawers were next, andthen he backed her onto the bed while she was clad in nothing other than her stockings and garters.
