She cried out, her body jolting forward from the sheer force. Her breasts dragged across the marble—nipples scraped, nerves aflame. He filled her entirely, to the root, and her inner muscles fluttered in helpless welcome.
Hypothesis: this angle would allow for maximum depth and emotional compromise. Subject might not survive.
“Good heavens, Your Grace, I think I just saw Saint Peter!”
His laugh turned into a snarl. He didn’t give her time to adjust. Didn’t whisper sweet words or pause to savor her first gasp. His rhythm was a campaign of utter ruin—brutal, relentless, and wholly unsuited to delicate ladies of poetic constitution. Each thrust stole the breath from her lungs like a bandit in the night, forcing her mouth open in gasping, gloriously unladylike sobs. Her body rocked beneath him, a symphony of sweat, steam, and positively indecent craving.
And then he spanked her. Mid-thrust. A sharp, hot slap across her already thoroughly punished backside.
She gasped from the fierce, exquisite way it made her clutch around him, her body tightening in helpless, greedy response.
Another smack.
Another spiraling rush of pleasure.
Her knees folded like a debutante’s resolve at a midnight ball. Her breath caught and stuttered, escaping in a breathless, desperate whimper of surrender, her body trembling, undone, and absolutely unwilling to stop.
She was unraveling, limbs reduced to syllabub, pulse a pounding drumbeat of make it stop never. Her body was no longer hers. It belonged to sensation. She was but a wiltingwallflower clinging to the marble, a fainting heroine with absolutely no exit strategy.
Then, with a snarl and a surge of strength, he grabbed her shoulder and flipped her like she weighed nothing at all.
She landed flat on her back. He gripped her thighs and pushed them open, then folded her legs toward her chest until her knees nearly kissed her ears.
“Duke,” she managed to gasp, looking down at their impossibly tangled limbs, “I should have—oh heavens—stretched.”
His mouth curved into a wicked smile. “I’ll do it for you.”
“Your Grace, that is not how flexibility works!”
Her head tilted back, and she noticed the mirror in the ceiling. From this angle, she had a devastatingly clear view of the Duke’s backside.
Tight. Straining. Carved by centuries of war, punishment, and what must have been morally questionable lunges. The muscles flexed with each thrust—twin crescents of aristocratic wrath. A sculptor would weep. A bishop might faint. Wanton Wallflower nearly wrote a dissertation.
She wanted—oh, wanted—to touch them. To grab him there. For balance. For research. For the sheer principle of tactile inquiry.
How, precisely, did a lady ask to clutch ducal glutes mid-coitus without violating protocol or spontaneous combustion? Did one request a peer-reviewed squeeze?
Before she could pose the question, he thrust.
Hard.
Deep.
An unholy angle of impact that restructured her worldview.
Her shriek echoed off tile. Her vision blanked, her logic disbanded, and her hands—treacherous, scholarly hands—flew down to his backside.
She grabbed him.
Like reins on a wild stallion, her fingers dug into the sculpted perfection of his glutes, desperate for anchorage as he pounded into her like war drums played in iambic pentameter. Her palms sank against taut heat. Her thumbs flexed. Her scientific soul keened with joy.
“Oh Duke!” she sobbed. “You’re not just the most glorious backside in England—you’re the whole continent!”
Field Note: The Duke of Arsbury’s backside is, in fact, a national treasure. Access should require gloves, but she refused.
He groaned.
She was spread. Impaled. Worshipped. Claimed. Her legs trembled in his grip, her breath shattered, her entire being suspended in the unbearable, exquisite tension.
