Page 42 of Five Nights to Claim His Duchess

Something in the way he said it took the strength out of her legs.

He stood.

He did not touch her. He stood, and she had to tip her head back to keep his face, and the whole warm size of him was suddenly the only fact in the room.

“May we complete the fourth night, Duchess?”

He leaned down. She felt his breath go across her mouth. It was warm, and sweet with the wine he must have had somewhere in those six hours. Every particle of her wanted him closer. That was the truth of it, and she had stopped being able to lie about it somewhere around the middle of the afternoon. She had thought about his mouth all day. All day, over the linen and the hangings and the child’s supper, she had thought about his mouth and gone hot in the face over a chest of drawers.

“But tonight,” he said, “I want you to do something for me. Will you?”

Diana’s breath went in on a stutter.

Oh.

Her turn. It had not once occurred to her that there would be a turn. That it might run in the other direction, that she might be asked to do the touching, that he might want anything from her hands at all. She did not know the first thing about it. She did not know where to begin, or what he liked, or whether she would be dreadful at it, and she was suddenly so nervous that she could feel her hands shaking at her sides.

“I—” She swallowed. “If Your Grace will teach me. I shall obey.”

Something flickered behind his eyes, a flash of raw approval that made her knees weaker still.

“Duchess,” he said. “Lie down.”

Heart pounding so fiercely she feared it might escape her chest, Diana obeyed. She walked to the great bed on unsteady legs, the silk of her nightdress whispering against her skin, and lay back upon the linens. He followed, sitting beside her, the mattress dipping beneath his weight.

“Duchess,” he said, voice low and commanding, “today, I want to watch you please yourself.”

She swallowed hard, heat flooding her cheeks and spreading lower, pooling between her legs. “I do not know how to do that, Your Grace.”

His thumb rose to stroke slowly across her lower lip, the touch gentle yet possessive. “Shall I teach you?”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

He smiled, that small, devastating curve, and drew the hem of her nightdress upward with care. The air kissed her bare skin, and she shivered as his gaze roamed over her, dark with hunger. Their eyes met, and the intensity of his look made her feel stripped bare in more ways than one, achingly alive beneath his touch.

He lowered himself over her, one hand tangling in the hair at the back of her head as he captured her mouth in a deep, claiming kiss. Diana bit at his lower lip with sudden, hungry fervor; she had thought of little else all day, and now the taste of him unleashed something feral within her. He smiled against her mouth, the expression warm and pleased, then took her hands in his and guided them to her own breasts.

“Touch them, Duchess.”

Hesitantly at first, then with growing boldness under his watchful gaze, she cupped the soft, perky swells, her palms brushing over the sensitive peaks.

“Duchess,” he murmured, voice rough, “if I am ever far away, I want you to please yourself with memories of me. As if I were there.”

She gasped softly, recalling the heat of his mouth upon her breasts the night before, the way his tongue had driven her near to madness. Emboldened, she touched them harder, pinching the swollen nipples between her fingers until pleasure bordered on sweet pain.

“Harder,” he urged.

She obeyed, a broken little moan escaping her. He took her hand then and slid it slowly down the plane of her stomach, between her parted thighs. “There is a place right here,” he said, pressing her finger to the small, throbbing pearl at her center.

She gasped sharply at the jolt of sensation, bright and electric.

“How does that feel, Duchess?”

“I—Your Grace, it…” Her voice faltered. “It feels divine.”

“Then do not stop touching it.” He guided her finger in slow, circular motions at first, and pleasure began to build in earnest—a coiling heat that made her hips lift from the bed. Diana fell back against the pillow with a gasp, turning her face into the linen as the sensations mounted.

“Do not stop, Duchess,” he commanded softly.