“You know what happens between a man and woman—how did you explain it in the carriage? ‘In the intimacy of marriage?’ You know how our bodies will unite?”
“I... think,” she whispered.
He threw the second boot, harder than he intended. Everything she said aroused him more.
“Youthink?” he repeated slowly. He remained on a knee above her. “And tell me, Miss Trelayne, does this thinking include a very crucial piece of my anatomy that grows very hard and urgent when I am... as we’ve said... ‘excited’?”
She blinked at him.
“That is,” he continued—it was killing him to keep up the casual, languid explanation, but it was the very best kind of death—“my body grows hard so that it can actually delve inside your body. And what makes this happen... this hardening... isengagingwith a woman I find very alluring, a woman I want very much. A woman who is absolutely nothing like anold maid.”
“Ah...” she stammered, staring up at him.
“That’s you, Miss Trelayne,” he whispered. “You.Because there isengagingwith a woman and then there is ‘engaging’ with you. And what you and I are about to experience—or what I am very hopeful we are about to experience—is... total engagement. With my wife. Invoking my very hard, very urgent bits. You might as well know. Since we’ve covered my languid eyes, and pounding heart, and my heavy breath.”
“Oh,” she said, a whimper.
Ian dropped over her but held himself off, balancing on his knees and elbows. “Give me your hand, Miss Trelayne.”
“Your Grace,” she whispered, a plea.
“Come now, Miss Trelayne, we’ve veered this far off your road to spinsterhood, we cannot stop now.”
“Your Grace,” she repeated, breathless.
“Duchess,” he said in a teasing sort of growl, nuzzling her neck. “The duke has asked for your hand.”
Finally, she gave the answer they both required. “Yes, Your Grace,” she breathed.
She raised a trembling hand. He took it up, pulled it to his lips, kissed the pulse point on the underside of her wrist, and then, never taking his eyes from her face, he slowly moved it down his body to settle it over the heavy rock-hardness of his erection.
Miss Trelayne sucked in a startled breath, but she did not shy away. Her long delicate fingers cupped him through his buckskins, squeezing slightly, and Ian thought he would perish. The pleasure was so intense, so obliterating, he barely managed to balance above her, to continue the seduction, to keep control.
“Now, Miss Trelayne,” he managed, his voice a rasp, “do you doubt your allure or desirability? Can you feel how much I want you?”
“Yes, Your Grace,” she said breathlessly and squeezed him again.
Ian snapped, dropping on her body like a tree felled in a storm, trapping her hand between them, kissing her mouth, her neck, her ear, her mouth again, devouring her with kisses and grinding into her hand.
Miss Trelayne let out one of her scintillating little gasps, and then something that sounded like a laugh, then a moan, and then she simply endeavored to keep up.
When he turned his head, gasping for air, he panted, “To the bed, Drewsmina. Now. Bed.” It was the only language left to him.
He rolled from her and reached down to scoop her up. He tossed her over his shoulder, hair swinging over them in an arc. The movement ejected a sparkling object from her hair, and Ian responded on instinct snatching it from the air.
“A dragonfly?” he asked, studying the jeweled comb.
She said nothing but held out a hand. He placed the comb in it and she tossed it—she actually hurled it—in no specific direction.
Ian laughed and stalked to the bed. The room was not small, but he crossed it in five strides. He toppled her from his shoulder and pitched her to the center of the mattress.
“If you don’t want this, tell me now,” he growled.
Miss Trelayne scrambled into a half-sitting position in the center of the bed, scraping the hair from her face, gasping for breath.
“Drewsmina?” he demanded, shucking his trousers and drawers, ripping off his shirt. “Do you want it?”
“Yes,” she breathed, staring hungrily at his nakedness. “Yes, Your Grace.”
