“Are you trying to arouse me?” Fingers trailed up to her knee. “Please, stomp on my hand.” He winked. “Or punch me.” He turned his cheek. “I beg you.”
“You are shameless.”
“I am.” His hand dropped to circle her ankle once more, tightening his grip before trailing up the rest of her leg.
“Release me, or I’ll scream.” Brave words. Helen could hardly breathe, not with his fingers searing through the wool of her stockings.
“You won’t,” he said.
She sunk to her knees before this glorious imposter posing as a duke. Wanting nothing more than him, the hum along her skin drowning out any protest her mind might have made.
His other hand raised, one finger traced the outline of her cheek.
“Do you engage in…fisticuffs?” she said stupidly. Because, obviously, he did, given his occupation as a criminal. The danger hovering about his broad shoulders told her he was a man who knew how to fight. Not the prancing about gentlemen did as a form of exercise but—the sort one does to survive.
“Oh, you mean like the dandies do?” He made a punching motion with one fist. “I ’spose you could say as much.” His eyes dropped to her mouth. “I want a kiss, dear Helen. Just one, then if you wish me to leave, I will.”
Helen was rapidly losing the taste for turning him over to Roxboro and the duchess. She should be asking him to meet her later, not considering how much Helen wished to taste his mouth once more.
“I don’t wish you to leave, but you must,” she said. “Perhaps we might meet elsewhere.” Helen looked towards the house. “One of the downstairs maids saw me come out to the gardens. One kiss.”
“Oh good. I don’t have to convince you further.” He grabbed her about the waist, pulling Helen to the grass. They were behind the wall of the fountain, hidden. If one of the servants or God forbid Parker peered through a window, they would see nothing.
“Against my better judgement,” she murmured, seconds before his nose, with that tiny freckle, brushed along her temple. Such a light, intimate touch. Barely a whisper. Yet it left Helen aching for him.
His hand cupped the back of her head, but the other, the one hiding beneath her skirts, lifted the fabric until she felt the breeze along her thighs.
“What—” she hissed, pushing at him. “Are you doing? I agreed to a kiss.” The words quivered from her lips.
“Yes, but I get to decidewhere.”
Oh. Dear.
Her hands stretched over his shoulders, pulling him closer. Sanity, something Helen prided herself on, faded to distant memory. No guilt, for once, because he wasn’t Roxboro.
Yes, Helen, that’s rather the point.
He moved down her body, squeezing and exploring, his breath whispering along her legs. But he did not touch her otherwise. The sight of all that…magnificence sprawled between her spread thighs had Helen’s pulse hammering beneath her skin. The brush of his fingers left her breathless, unable to speak or think clearly. Certainly, she did not protest his attentions even if this was foolish.
He could be a murderer, Helen.
“Christ, you smell delicious, little gnat.”
Helen’s fingers sunk into the grass at her sides as his head dipped lower. “How humiliating,” she panted as his mouth and lips moved sensuously along her stockings, tickling the skin of her thighs. “To be compared to a tiny, unimportant insect that others swat away.”
“Gnats,” he said, roughly grabbing one hip. “Are determined creatures. They do not care whether their adversary is larger or stronger. They are tenacious.” Cotton shredded. Tore. Then there was nothing but sunshine against the lower half of her body. “I knew you’d have a lovely quim.” He pressed a kiss to her mound.
Helen shut her eyes, not wanting to see watch his study of her…lady parts. Her mind, ever pragmatic, screamed to kick him off and scandal or not, summon the authorities, but there was the matter of her laying in the grass with her skirts up around her waist and his head between her thighs.
Things wouldn’t go well for her.
Really, they rarely did.
“You must stop,” she whispered. “We’ll be found.”
He inhaled against her sex again. “Lovely. Worth risking a knife to my ribs.”
“What?” she panted, as he sucked at the skin of her inner thigh. Then a gasp spilled out of her lips, a hitching of her breath at the press of his tongue against her sex.
