She could barely draw breath.
His hand came up over hers, holding her there against the warmth and strength of him. “This is what you do to me.”
Without realizing it, her fingers pressed more firmly against his chest, as though she needed to convince herself that what she felt there was real.
Alexander’s eyes darkened. Slowly, without breaking that gaze, he moved her hand from the center of his chest, slid it around his back, and drew her gently closer across the blanket until the space between them vanished.
His other hand came to her face, his palm warm against her cheek, his thumb brushing once just below her mouth.
He softly pressed his lips to hers.
She heard the question in it, the waiting, the care. Diana answered before she had fully decided to and the kiss deepened at once.
Something inside her seemed to melt and catch fire all at the same time. The warmth of his mouth, the quiet force of his hand at her face, the arm he had drawn around her back—it all seemed to gather the last fraying strands of her restraint and burn through them.
She leaned into him, startled by the hunger that rose so quickly in her, by how natural it felt to open to him now, to let him take another kiss and then another until softness gave way to something deeper and more urgent.
Alexander made a sound low in his throat that went straight through her.
His mouth moved from hers to the line of her jaw, then to her throat, and Diana’s head tipped back of its own accord. Candlelight trembled behind her closed eyelids. Every place his lips touched seemed to wake at once, heat unfurling through her body in helpless waves.
He lay her back slowly into the grass and blanket, never once breaking the line of kisses that had already made her feel unsteady and feverish.
“Alexander,” she whispered.
He lifted his head just enough to look at her. The expression on his face stole what remained of her composure.
He looked undone. His eyes were dark, his breathing no steadier than her own, and there was a tenderness in the way he looked at her that made the hunger there all the more devastating.
“I have wanted to do this all evening,” he said.
Her entire body reacted. The words made something inside her shiver open, a raw, aching vulnerability that the cold Duke of a year ago could never have reached.
He lowered his mouth to her throat again, his beard grazing her skin with a delicious, stinging friction.
Diana’s hands flew to his shoulders, then buried themselves in the thick waves of his hair, her fingers tightening as she sought to anchor herself against the storm he was building. His mouth moved lower, following the delicate, dipping line of her gown.
She gasped, her chest heaving, when he reached for the silk. Slowly, he eased the bodice down, baring her breasts to the silver moonlight and his burning gaze.
The air hit her damp skin, making her nipples peak, but the chill was instantly incinerated as he leaned down. Diana’s whole body began to vibrate, a fine, rhythmic trembling she couldn’t suppress. When his lips finally brushed over one sensitive tip, she let out a strangled cry, waves of pure electricity crashing through her and pooling deep in her belly.
He teased her with agonizing precision, his tongue swirling around the aching centers before his teeth grazed them with just enough pressure to make her back arch off the grass. He moved from one to the other, his mouth hot and demanding, until Diana was a sobbing, desperate mess beneath him.
“Alexander,” she breathed, her fingers digging into the muscle of his arms.
He shifted, his weight pinning her gently into the soft grass as his hand began a slow, torturous journey. His palm slid over her hip, moving upward along the silk of her inner thigh. The heat of him was a brand. He hooked his fingers into the edge of her underwear, sliding the fabric aside to expose her to the night air.
Then, he slid a finger inside her.
Diana’s breath left her in a sharp, broken gasp. She had never felt anything like this—the fullness, the slick heat, the way he moved with a slow, swirling rhythm that seemed to touch the very center of her soul. Her walls clenched around him instinctively, her legs spreading wider to give him everything he sought. When he added a second finger, the sensation doubled, pushing her toward a ledge she hadn’t known existed.
He kept moving, his thumb finding the spark at her core and pressing firmly, rhythmically, while his fingers drove deep inside her. The world narrowed to the scent of crushed grass and the sight of his green eyes locked onto hers, dark with a possessive, predatory focus.
The tension coiled tighter and tighter until it snapped. Diana cried out his name, her body convulsing in a violent, shimmering climax that blurred her vision into dark spots. She shattered against him, her pulse thundering in her ears as the waves of pleasure ebbed into a heavy, glowing languor.
Slowly, the sounds of the summer night returned—the crickets, the rustle of the trees.
Alexander collapsed beside her, pulling her flush against his side as they lay in the grass. He tucked her head into the crook of his shoulder and began to caress her, his hand moving in long, soothing strokes from her shoulder to her hip.
