“The afternoon is getting late,” she said. “I should go in and ready myself for supper.”
“Ah, yes. It is nearly that time. Of course, Miss Oliver, I’ll leave you to your preparations.” He motioned toward the path with a partial bow.
“I’ll see you tonight,” Selina choked out, but she was already moving away from him, toward the house. Toward the man she wanted to see so desperately. Toward a connection she feared because it had nothing to do with the lies as the Fox and everything to do with the heart of the woman she truly was.
Chapter 12
Derrick stood glaring at the mirror, straightening his cravat for what felt like the tenth time since he’d tied it. It had been years since he had a valet, since he’d fully abandoned his grandfather’s grander plans for him. A decade, perhaps.
He was well capable of shining his own boots and dressing himself. But the cravats…
“Bugger,” he grunted as he unwound the contraption and started over in tying it.
Well, the cravats were still a struggle. He almost had it finished and was trying to find a place to tuck a sloppy end of fabric when there was a knock on his door. He crossed to it, still fiddling with the neckwear.
“Barber, if that’s you, I’m going to need your assistance because you know I’m rubbish at—” He threw the door open as he spoke and then skidded to a halt. It wasn’t his partner there waiting for him. It was Selina.
She was wearing another blue dress, another opportunity for her eyes to pop like fine sapphires. This one had short puffed sleeves, a scooped neckline and a gauzy overlay the cascaded over her curves like a waterfall.
“Selina,” he whispered like a fool. “I…I didn’t think, I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting you.”
She slipped past him into the room without asking his leave, and she stood there in the middle of the small space, looking around her. He slowly shut the door, closing them in the same way they’d been in the library. His hands shook as he turned toward her, so he clenched them behind his back so she wouldn’t see.
She met his eyes and there was something different to her stare. Something softer, something warmer.
“Selina?”
“You saved my brother,” she whispered, her voice cracking and barely carrying across the room.
He caught his breath and couldn’t help but stiffen at that declaration. A spoken fact, not a question. “Barber has been talking,” he said with a shake of his head. When she nodded, he said, “I wish he wouldn’t.”
“I’m glad he did,” she said.
He let out a long sigh. “Selina—” he began, but before he could finish, she crossed the distance between them in three long steps, wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him in for a kiss.
He couldn’t resist her, even if he’d wanted to try. But he didn’t want to try. He just wanted this, so he sank into the kiss, angling his mouth to deepen it, exploring her mouth with his tongue, tugging her harder against his chest. Her fingers clenched against the back of his head, driving through his hair, massaging his neck, and he couldn’t control the low moan that exited his lips at the sensation of her touching him.
“We don’t have time to do this,” he whispered against her mouth.
“No, not the way I want to,” she agreed. Then she pushed back away from him and there was that wicked smile again. Intoxicating and maddening as it lit up her face. “But I can do this…”
She punctuated that statement by easing her hand between their bodies and cupping him. She stroked him, once, twice, and his head lolled back almost against his will as he groaned out her name. Pleasure streaked up his cock, into his balls, made his legs shake. It was more powerful than anything he’d ever experienced before.
He realized, somewhere in that fog of sensation, that she was unfastening his fall front. Her fingers closed around his bare flesh, hot and tight and certain as she rubbed him harder. Her mouth found his, her tongue tracing the crease of his lips, her breath hot against his mouth.
Then she stepped away and pointed to a chair. “Sit.”
He blinked, dragged back to reality by the sharp order of a woman he could break with his passion if he wanted to. Except she kept breaking him, this petite sprite. And he liked it.
He sat as she’d asked, slouching a little to give her a place to perch as she fucked him. Only she didn’t take it. She grabbed a pillow from his bed and dropped it between his splayed legs. She kept eye contact with him as she sank to her knees on the pillow and then leaned up to grab his cock again.
“Selina,” he said, this time with more urgency. Only he couldn’t do anything else because she was just so damned good at what she was doing with those magical fingers. And just when he thought it couldn’t get better, she leaned in and traced the head of him with her tongue.
His eyes flew open and he stared down at her. She was watching him as she circled that pink tongue around and around the sensitive head, wetting him so that the friction of her hand disappeared. And then she took him into her mouth completely and stars burst before his eyes.
She sucked him gently, swirling her tongue over him as she sucked him in long, slow strokes. He found his hips lifting and she accommodated him, drawing him deeper and deeper into her throat as her pace increased. His legs shook, he gripped the armrests of the chair until he feared he could rip them from their moorings, and all the while, he was lost in sensation. Powerful pleasure unlike anything he’d ever felt rocked his cock, his entire body. His heart throbbed, his back arched, the pleasure built, brick by brick, until there was a wall ready to explode.
He lowered a hand against the back of her head and she smiled against his cock, increasing her pace.
