“I think he did a very good job,” Rosemary replied seriously. She searched his countenance, focusing on his square, handsome chin and the straight line of his jaw. “I don’t see a stray whisker anywhere.”
“What about now?” he asked, leaning into her hand as his eyes dropped to her mouth and the air between them suddenly crackled with delicious tension.
Rosemary wet her lips, and his gaze darkened. “As–as I said, he did a very…very good–ah.”
This time when she fell, she didn’t scream so much as whimper. Perhaps because she wasn’t fallingoutof something butintosomething.
And that something was Sterling.
He cradled her against him with all the infinite care of a shepherd tending to a lost lamb. Except Rosemary wasn’t a sheep, and the Duke of Hanover had more in common with the wolf that stalked the flock than the man who cared for them.
His tongue slipped lazily between her lips and heat shot through her with the archaic force of a lightning bolt scorching the earth. Almost immediately, this kiss went further, farther, faster than the two preceding it. They were a wildfire racing across an open field that hadn’t seen rain in a fortnight, and Rosemary…Rosemary wanted to burn.
Thrown off balance all over again, she clung to his torso as she’d clung to the tree, holding on to the narrow lapels of his emerald green jacket while his hands, devilish entities unto themselves, followed her body’s natural curves from her shoulders all the way to her waist where they settled, thumbs hooked on the sloping ridge of her hipbones as his fingers splayed across her backside, delving through untold layers of satin and muslin and wool until he reached her bottom.
Sterling squeezed her plump flesh and heat shot through her anew when she found herself pressed intimately against his loins, that sweet, slick area between her thighs rubbing on a rigid, pulsing staff.
On a muttered oath, he abandoned her hips to cup her breasts, strumming across nipples already hard and all but begging for his touch.
Bright flashes of light danced behind her closed eyelids when he dropped his head while simultaneously yanking on her flimsy bodice, exposing her skin to moonlight and feverish madness before his wicked, wanton mouth closed around a swollen rosebud.
Her knees buckled, and his breath fanned across her breast in a velvety chuckle as he prevented her from sliding to the ground in a boneless heap of delirious desire.
“Clementines,” he rasped. “You taste like clementines.”
He kissed her other nipple, tongue swirling around the puckered point in a waltz all of his own making as she did her best to remain on her feet. Swathed in sin and draped in shadow, she and Sterling abandoned themselves to a passion that refused to be denied. Thatcouldn’tbe denied, no matter how irregular or inconvenient it was to catch fire for a scoundrel who was hard-pressed to remember her name half the time.
But that wasn’t important.
When flames licked across her skin, nothing was.
Tit tit tit tit tit.
Except for that.
“Sir Reginald!” she gasped, wrenching free of Sterling’s embrace as her pet’s anxious call threw a bucket of cold water onto the fire. Like a mother that had heard the cry of her child late at night while the rest of the house slept, every fiber in her being instantly went on alert. Yanking her dress into place and lifting her skirts, she hopped back onto the bench and tried in vain to spy the squirrel amidst the dark, leafy branches. “Sir Reginald, not to worry. I’m here!”
“What the devil is going on?” Scowling, Sterling shoved both hands through his hair, scraping the inky curls off his temple as he stepped beside the bench and followed her frantic stare upwards into the maze of limbs and leaves. “Who are you yelling at?”
“Sir Reginald.” She bit her bottom lip–a lip swollen from Sterling’s kisses. “I cannot reach him, but he’s frightened. Too frightened to come down on his own. What am I going to do? I must get him. It’s far too dangerous for him to stay here overnight.”
A muscle ticked high in Sterling’s jaw. “Have you tried reminding him that he’s a damnedsquirrel?”
“He already knows that,” she huffed.
“Are you certain?” the duke said skeptically. “Seeing as he’s oh, I don’t know.Stuck in a bloody tree?”
“You don’t have to take that tone.”
“What tone?”
“Thattone.”
“You mean the tone of a man who was just cock robbed by a rat?”
Rosemary nodded. “An exceedingly crude way of putting it, but yes. And Sir Reginald isn’t–”
“A rat. Yes, yes, I’m aware.” Sterling’s sigh was long and agonizing. “He is a member of the prestigiousSciuridaefamily which includes the American prairie dog and marmot.”
