Page 40 of The Duchess Games

Or why she liked it so much.

He stilled, briefly. His manhood twitched against her. His hands tightened. And then he chuckled, low and silky and every inch a duke who would be obeyed. Her thighs trembled.

“Is that so?” He ran his open mouth against her neck, nipping. He pressed harder against her and she had nowhere to go, no place for her worries or her plans. Not when his free hand grazed her waist, moved down her leg to snatch at the hem of her chemise just below her knees. He grabbed the material with force, as if it personally offended him. As if the very thought of it separating him from her was an affront.

His harsh breath in her ear drowned out her moans when his fingers grazed her, ever so gently. Teasing. Making her squirm to get closer. So much closer even though there wasn’t even enough space left between them for a shaft of light. He kicked her ankles apart with his boot and she gasped. She was open to his hand now, to his long fingers that played over her so softly she pushed back against his erection. He laughed again, quietly. “Did you want something, Miss Sparrow?”

“Don’t tease me. Your Grace.” She strained against him, trying to wriggle her pinned wrists free. To touch him. To push him over the edge so he would take her with him.

“Say please.”

“Callum.”

He ran his fingertip between her folds, still barely touching her. Tauntingly close to her bud but never giving her what he knew she wanted. Want sharpened through her, muddling every thought that wasn’t Callum’s hands, Callum’s tongue, Callum’s thighs flexing against her. She clenched around nothing. He dipped into her slickness, a taunt. “I can’t hear you, siren.”

As if she was the one calling men to the depths of the ocean with a song. As if he wasn’t the one threatening to drown her in want. “Please.”

“There,” he said, as if she’d pleased him.

And then he slid two fingers into her, and she trembled with the sudden invasion, intimate muscles quivering. When his thumb finally, finally circled her bud, it sparked through her. She felt it in her stomach, in her thighs, in her throat as it worked around another moan, husky and startled. He kept whispering in her ear, each word ripped out of him as he brought her closer and closer to her climax. “You feel so good,” he said, and she panted as his fingers crooked deep inside her. His voice was positively filthy, in the most beautiful way. “So hot and wet. I know just how you’ll taste.” He increased the rhythm of his fingers, steady, deep. “Divine.”

She had never felt her body so keenly.

“You’re going to come for me, aren’t you, siren?”

It was building and building and just this side of too much.

“Come,” he commanded softly, just as his teeth closed over the spot where her neck and shoulder met. “Now.”

She didn’t just come, she very nearly came apart. The spirals of sensations tightened and tightened and then loosed all at once. She slumped, her cheek pressed against the door, panting. Tiny tremors of aftershock pulsed through her.

He eased back and shrugged out of his coat. He placed it around her shoulders, brushing his mouth gently, high on her cheekbone, before pulling the door open and slipping out of the closet without a word.

Chapter Fifteen

Without a word, mind you.

It was infuriating. And yet it made her just as hot all over as his stern and unyielding attention. And this way, they might pretend a little longer. Just a little longer.

He’d thought of her? After all this time?

Cat ran all the way up the servant stairs, praying no one would see her in her chemise and a gentleman’s coat. Not just a gentleman’s, but the duke’s. Not to mention, she was fairly certain her cheeks were indecently pink. How could they not be with lust still sparking through her?

Voices lifted from the main stairs as guests sought their rooms for rest or to change before dinner. Servants’ footsteps sounded down the other end of the hall. Panicked, Cat popped into the sitting room she shared with Viola as it was the closest door. She hoped fervently that her sister was still in bed as she did not know how to answer any of the questions that would no doubt start flying at her head. She needed a moment to think, to ground the memory of Callum inside her body where no one could ever take it away from her.

Of course, Viola was not in her bedroom.

Neither was she alone.

Worse yet, Lady Ruby was her visitor and Lady Ruby was entirely too sharp and perceptive for comfort. As evidenced by the immediate lifting of her eyebrows. “Is that the duke’s coat?”

Cat froze. “Um.”

Viola sat right up on the settee, her nose still pink but her eyes clear. “Cat, why are you in your chemise?”

“We went swimming.”

Lady Ruby’s eyes narrowed. “That was two hours ago.”