Page 41 of The Marriage Wager

His gaze flickered over to her. He studied her for a moment, then answered just as quietly, “No, I suppose I am not. Though I have done my best to ignore it for the last two years.”

Constance looked at him. His jaw was set, the usual amused expression utterly gone. Looking at him thus, she had little trouble believing him a man who had gone to war for his country, who had fought and bled and led men into battle. He had known sacrifice.

She reached over and laid her hand gently atop his. It was the same gesture of comfort and consolation that she had given him at the gravesite of his sister. He smiled, a bare curving of his lips, and he turned his hand, taking her hand in his and raising it to his mouth, gently pressing his lips against her skin.

A frisson of pleasure ran through Constance at the touch, and she quickly edged away, hoping that he had not seen her response.

“I was almost engaged once,” she said.

She could feel him grow still beside her. After a moment’s pause, he said, “Almost?”

“Yes. He proposed, but I told him that I could not accept.”

“Did you not love the man?” Dominic asked carefully.

“I did. Or thought I did. Perhaps it is not love when one can recover from it as quickly as I did.”

“But you refused.”

“I could not marry him. My father was ill. I had to stay and nurse him through his illness.” She looked at Dominic then. “I understand the call of duty and its precedence over other things.”

“And what of the man? What did he do?”

She shrugged. “He accepted it. He went on with his life. He married a year or two later.”

“He was a fool,” Dominic growled, his eyes boring into hers. “He was a fool not to wait for you.”

Constance’s breath caught in her throat. Dominic’s gaze, heated and intense, sent desire shimmering through her. She remembered the way his hands had felt upon her body earlier, the taste of his mouth against hers. Unconsciously, she leaned toward him.

In an instant his hands were on her arms, pulling her up and into his lap. One arm curved around her back, supporting her, and his other hand went to her chin, tilting her face up for his kiss. He kissed her long and deeply, and she clung to him, her arms wrapped around his neck. All modesty and shyness seemed to have fled from her. She pressed brazenly up against him, returning his kiss.

With his free hand, Dominic roamed the front of her body, caressing and exploring her as his mouth ravaged hers. He was hampered by the layers of her clothes, and impatiently his hand delved beneath the neckline of her dress, finding the smooth bare skin of her breast and curling around it. Constance started in surprise at the unaccustomed touch of his fingers on her naked flesh, but after that instant of astonishment, her skin responded, turning hot and tingling, her nipple tightening into a hard bud.

Nothing had prepared her for the things that Dominic was doing to her, the wild sensations he was arousing within her. She felt as if she were on fire, and everywhere his mouth or hands touched her, her flesh grew even hotter. When he caressed her breasts, they swelled, pleasure flooding through her, and at the same time, they ached even more, yearning for his touch.

She squeezed her legs together, for it was there that the desire was pooling, molten and insistent. A pulse throbbed deep in her abdomen, and she yearned for more, though she was not sure what it was she wanted.

Constance kissed him harder, her tongue tangling with his, seeking the satisfaction she craved. She could feel him hardening against her hips, his desire prodding at her soft flesh, and she wiggled restlessly on his lap. Dominic made a choked noise, and his lips left her mouth, kissing frantically down her throat and onto the white plain of her chest. He found the soft white mounds of her breasts and kissed the quivering flesh gently, working his way across her breasts and down to the fleshy button of one nipple.

He kissed the bud gently, and pleasure shot through her, exploding in white-hot heat in her loins. She let out a moan of surprised pleasure, and she felt his soft, smugly masculine chuckle against her tender flesh. She might have resented the sound had it not been for the fact that it was followed an instant later by the hot, wet touch of his tongue, circling her nipple and curling over it, and she arched up in response, her whole body tightening.

Her hands dug into his hair. Just when she thought that she could feel nothing more intensely pleasurable than his tongue, he opened his mouth and closed it around her nipple, pulling the bud into the hot, damp cave of his mouth. Constance trembled at the sensations that shot through her. With each pull of his mouth, he seemed to pluck a chord that went deep into her loins. Each stroke of his tongue excited an even greater hunger, a deeper satisfaction.

His hand moved slowly down her front, caressing her through the material of her dress. His fingers flexed, then relaxed, bunching the muslin. She could feel him against her, taut as a bowstring, his muscles tight and hard, as though he could barely hold himself in check.

He murmured her name, his breath trailing over her breast, made moist by his mouth, and her skin prickled in response, something tightening between her legs and increasing the ache there. Dominic rubbed his face gently against the soft, swelling mounds of flesh, then lightly kissed his way across them. His lips were like velvet upon her sensitized skin, and she waited, her entire body anticipating the moment when he took the other nipple into his mouth and worked his magic on it. She tensed, breathless, whimpering a little as he paused to circle his tongue around the areola, then blew softly upon it.

He was arousing her past bearing, she thought, and she moved instinctively, her hips rocking against him, her back arching up, offering her soft white flesh to him. Dominic groaned in response to her movements, and his mouth clamped around her nipple, hot and wet, suckling her.

At the same moment, his hand slid down between her legs, firm and insistent, seeking out the hot center of her desire. Constance jerked, startled, and her legs closed tightly around him as though to deny him access. But his fingers moved rhythmically, stroking her through the cloth, teasing and testing, and her legs moved apart, mutely inviting his touch.

She lay in his arm, limp and dazed with desire, feeling open and exposed to him in a way that had little to do with actual bareness, for, except for her breasts, her body was shielded from his gaze by her dress. It was as if, layer by careful layer, he had stripped from her the familiar conventions, the modesty that had always shielded her, the cool surface of virtue and calm, exposing the heat that lay beneath, the sultry inner core of her self, throbbing with passion and heat. She pulsed, she ached, she yearned for the feel of his skin upon hers, for the heat and hunger of his mouth, and for a hundred other things that she did not know, did not understand enough to name.

She knew, somehow, that she wanted to be taken, that she longed to feel him as intimately as possible, that she wanted to be filled by him. She ached in some deep, primal way to belong to Dominic wholly, and the fact that her mind was rather hazy as to the details of that belonging in no way kept her from wanting it.

“Dominic…” His name was a sigh in her mouth. “Please…”

Her words shook him, and he lifted his head.