“No,” she said, darting her gaze from his face and settling it on the same cock he’d been pondering. “That would be a very bad idea.”
He frowned, but didn’t press. Anonymity, it seemed, would reign, at least for her. And then she touched him and he no longer cared about that or anything else.
She took his length in her hand and smoothed her fingers from tip to base. He lifted up into her with a grunt, and she smiled. A wicked little smile on an otherwise very sweet and ladylike face. At least the part he could see.
“I have watched those around me in this place,” she said. “With much interest.”
He arched a brow as she stroked him again and electric sensation raced through his entire body. “Did you now?”
“I saw more than I ever imagined, but I was always interested in one particular act.”
He sat up on his elbows and watched as she inched a little lower. “What act is that?”
She positioned herself so those full, luscious lips were just beside his cock. His heart had begun to throb. “This one,” she whispered, then darted her tongue out and swirled it around the tip of him. She glanced up and met his eyes. Hers were wide. “I taste myself on you.”
He grunted. “You will kill me, I think.”
She smiled again and then lowered her mouth over him a second time. This time, though, she was not teasing. Whatever she’d watched in the masquerade, whatever she knew or didn’t know but had observed…she was a good student of the wanton arts. She took him into her mouth as deep as she could and stroked him in time with her hand.
Pleasure jolted through him with every motion, and he dipped his head back with a long, unsteady moan. It had been ages since he had this experience, and he’d forgotten just how good a woman’s tongue felt as it swirled around his cock, what kind of desire the pressure of it could create. How it made a man want to surrender whatever small power he had and worship any woman who gave such unselfish pleasure.
She built him toward completion like it was a race, and he had no control left to fight her. His mind was emptying, his hips lifting, he just kept growling out incoherent sounds of need as his balls tightened and the pleasure reached its peak.
When it did, he grunted and pulled free just as he came. She didn’t recoil, but continue to pump him with her hand until he gasped out surrender and collapsed into a boneless, tingling heap.
Only then did she cuddle into his side and wrap her arm around him as they lay together in satisfied silence. And for just a moment, it felt perfect.
Chapter Eight
Isabel didn’t know how long they lay together in the silence of that warm room. It felt like a blissful eternity as his hands traced her naked hip and hers made trails along his chest and stomach. At last, she looked up into his face. His eyes were closed and she drank in the sight.
He was relaxed and that gave his expression a warmer look, rather than the tense one he normally had. His short-cropped beard shadowed a well-defined jaw and highlighted equally sharp cheekbones. He was truly a beautiful man. Like he had stepped from a painting.
There was no doubt why Angelica had loved him.
That thought pierced the warm fog Isabel had allowed herself to surrender to, and she tensed a little as she withdrew back into reality. Pleasure was wonderful, but she had a duty to perform here, as well.
“May I ask you a question?” Her voice cracked and she swallowed hard.
He didn’t open his eyes, but his full lips quirked up a little. “The perfect time to interrogate a man is after an experience like that. I’d give you the keys to the kingdom if I had them.”
“Why did your friend say that you were being brought back from the dead?”
He went stiff beside her, and slowly his gray eyes opened. The tension was back on his face immediately, and she marked how that put a distance between them. One she surprisingly did not like, despite her reasons for being here.
She preferred the sensual man without a care to the one who suddenly looked…broken.
“What happened to a stolen night?” he asked, his tone suddenly neutral, purposefully unreadable. “Anonymity?”
“But you are not anonymous,” she responded. “Your Grace.”
He sat up and pushed from the bed and her arms. He pulled his shirt closed and began to button it before he tucked it into his trousers and fastened them, too.
“No, I suppose I am not,” he said at last as he turned away from her. She watched his every movement and did her best not to react. “And since that is true, I’m surprised you ask the question.”
“Why?”
He faced her, his eyebrow arched and his lips thin with displeasure. “Everyone knows my story, don’t they? It is all they talk about.The Duke of Tyndale and His Tragedy. It is practically folklore.”
