She was hungry for the challenge he presented.
The rapid uptick in her breathing, faint but discernable little puffs as she panted like the bitch in heat she was.
“Let me atone for my sins, my boy,” she whispered in tones schooled by experience.
The dowager duchess, near in age to Argyll, held his gaze with her lust-filled one. Never breaking contact, she curled her fingers into the sides of her muslin skirts; the noise crinkled noisily under her long, meticulously manicured nails.
Indulging her show, he reached for the crystal decanter and snifter he’d emptied before her arrival and made himself another. He and the duchess had played this game for well over a decade now. Since when Argyll’s sire was still kicking around London, taking every cunny, he could.
At that point in his life, Argyll had been young enough, that his stepmother’s games added an element of newness to his debauched ways. Young, lonely stepmama. The young, lusty son.
And oh, how she’d reveled in the upper hand over him.
Just now, the hot widow inched her damp fabric up.
Argyll sipped his drink and watched. His late father’s wife revealed calves, taut from all the men she’d fucked. Impressively thick thighs.
When first married to Argyll’s father, she’d been drearily innocent. Her fall came fast.
The duchess had teased Argyll. Taunted him. Subtly at first. A flash of skin. A deliberate stroke of a finger along her indecent neckline. The fleeting but noticeable squeeze of his arm.
Then came the sinfully placed foot beneath the dining table. That moment everything changed. With the duke—her husband and Argyll’s sire—seated between them, prattling on about the details for a planned libidinous ball, the duchess pressed her bare toes between Argyll’s legs. She stroked him to hardness. Rubbed. It’d been the closest he’d gotten to coming in his trousers since his Eton days.
The forbidden thrill speared his ennui.
She kept him hard. Wanting. Denied. Trapped in anticipation. And yet, even that exquisite torment lost its flavor. Her power over him ebbed. Argyll learned, at some point, hisinterestswaned. His appetite was too great. To keep carnality from descending into monotony, it required a constant escalation. He required variety.
With that understanding of basic human nature, he’d built Forbidden Pleasures.
Throwing her head back, the duchess yanked her dress up the remainder of the way and let her well-fleshed legs splay.
A feral cat’s smile played on the duchess’s rouged lips. “I know something that might please you,” she said, in a sing-song voice.
He quirked an eyebrow.
For valuable information, he would play the game, abitlonger.
“Duchess,” he drawled, “surely you do not take me as so dull a man as to be impressed by your shaved cunt. I’ve seen all this before. Yours included.” Argyll swirled his brandy in a smooth circle. “For all the years you’ve spent testing my restraint, you will have to do better than that.”
The sin-soaked widow accepted Argyll’s challenge. Languidly, she freed the lace ties at the front of her gown. The filmy material slipped from her body in a diaphanous waterfall.
He scraped an assessing glance over her buxom frame. She’d always been a lush thing. Time had since added a layer of cushiony softness to her middle, and, in equal measure, to her breasts, which had always been abundant.
Aware of his scrutiny, the duchess rolled her shoulders back and put those big orbs on even better display.
“You never did suck them.” With a coquette’s smile, she teased a long, thin nail over the disproportionately small tip. She rested the flat of her back against the panel. “I have thought of you biting them and pulling them with that clever mouth of yours, Argyll.” Then, using her spare hand, the wanton palmed her cunny.
The sounds of jagged breathing filled every spare space in the room. The duchess slipped three fingers inside her well-used channel and indulged in a solitary pleasure.
Did she truly believe him that desperate to have her?
How contemptible.
He wanted for nothing. Certainly not eager bed partners.
He’d been wrong before.
He was capable of pity after all.
