“Princess,” he said. “I don’t take this trust lightly. I will only make you feel good. I swear it.”
She swallowed hard against the lump in her throat raised by the sincerity in his eyes.
“I trust you,” she said, surprised to find that it was true for more than just this moment.
His eyes went dark, suggesting that he heard the deeper meaning, too.
Before Clio could wonder if she should try to take these words back, before she could worry that she’d revealed too much, Hector bowed his head—and pressed a kiss to the soft skin of her inner thigh, several pointed inches above the top of her stocking.
Clio jolted violently enough that she nearly knocked him in the head with her knee; it was only his quick press of a hand against the other leg that saved him from injury.
Becauseoh. Oh my. She’d understood that the place between her legs would be involved somehow—she wasn’t so far lost to sensation that she didn’t realize the significance of his raising her skirts—but he was going to use hismouth?There?
She almost protested, because surely it wasn’t right, surely people weren’t meant to do such things. The kisses against her thigh felt sogood,however, that the words died long before they reached her lips.
And then he pressed a kiss against the center of her and, for a moment, Clio thought perhaps she’d died from the pleasure of it.
It wasunreasonable, that feeling. It was all wet warmth and soft caresses, and she knew it should have seemed rude or wrong, but it didn’t; it felt wonderful, wonderful.
“Hell, princess,” he growled without removing his mouth from her. It sent a wonderful tremor through her; she gasped as her hips bucked again, this time against hisface.
“Oh, God,” she babbled. “Oh, sorry.”
“Donotapologize,” he commanded, pressing one big hand to her hip, because he might not want her apology, but apparently, he didn’t want her to break his nose, either. “If you only knew how desperate I was for this.”
A moan escaped her at the idea that he was aroused by this action, too.
His mouth returned to her, this time pressing against a place that made an earthquake go through her, a tremor that began in her low belly and started to ripple outward. It was merely awarning shock; she knew this on instinct alone, and she writhed against Hector’s grip in search of more of the sensation.
“Hector,” she gasped, squirming with increased vigor as she chased a feeling that was building within her. “Hector, please. More, please.”
He gave her another long caress with his tongue, and then his fingers were there, too, blunt and rough in a way that would not be found on your average gentleman, but then he wasn’t theaveragegentleman, was he? No, he was her rough and tumble blacksmith duke, and he slid a digit inside her, her body eagerly accepting him, and began caressing her in a place she hadn’t known existed and?—
Her vision went white with pleasure, and she had only just enough presence of mind to throw her hands over her mouth before she screamed the house down.
His movements gentled as her crisis overtook her, coaxing her through the last tremors. When she was finally still aside from the heaving of her chest as she struggled to catch her breath, he sat back on his heels, looking so smug that Clio might have been annoyed by it if she had the ability to feel anything but satisfied.
“Does that answer some of your questions, princess?” he asked, and she found that she did have just enough energy to kick at him. He caught her foot with a laugh, then pressed a kiss to her ankle and set it gently on the floor. Her skirt fell to her knees, covering her halfway.
Clio would focus on this detail later because it was just then that the servant came into the room.
There was something to be said, Clio supposed, for the fact that the little slip of a maid didn’t actually see her entirely bare. She’d been dressed and bathed by servants all her life, of course, but she’d never felt nearly asnakedin those acts as she did now, with only a few inches of her legs visible between her skirts and her stockings—but with Hector’s position between her splayed thighs making their recent activities all too obvious, she felt as revealed as she ever had.
“Sorry!” the girl squeaked before backing out the door and closing it behind her.
Clio looked at Hector. Hector looked at Clio.
“I’m sure that won’t be a problem,” she told him.
CHAPTER 14
It was an enormous problem.
Apparently, the maid was friends with the lady’s maid that worked for the red-headed woman—a Lady Clarissa, it transpired—and once the gossip followed that straight line, it was scattered to the winds.
The one thing to be grateful for, Clio supposed, was that she, Aaron, and Phoebe left the following day before the word had spread. It was bad enough that she had to look into her brother’s devastated face across the drawing room in his London home. Doing so for hours while trapped in a carriage together would have been untenable.
“Should I duel him?” Aaron asked, his head hanging as he leaned on his knees. “The thing is—I would win that duel, and then he’d be too dead to marry you.”
