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The stiff garment dropped to the floor, and his hands went to her hips. She still wore her chemise, but she could feel the warmth radiating from him through the whisper-thin fabric as he pressed her back against the hard plane of his body. He kissed her neck, skimming his hands up, bunching the chemise as he went. When he got to her breasts, he tore the scrap of fabric off and threw it to the side. She gasped at the shock of cold air that puckered her nipples and gasped again when his hands cupped her breasts. His hands moved in unison as they taunted her, teasing and pulling and rolling her nipple between thumb and finger.

Her back arched, pressing her hips against his cock. He grunted and so she did it again, wiggling a little this time. Nicholas spun her around and laid her out on the pallet before she could even draw a breath.

“Eager?” he asked as he covered her body with his.

“Aren’t you?”

“Desperately,” he said, parting her legs so that she fell open for him. “I’ve been thinking about this since I laid eyes on you in that innyard.”

“Even as you were trying to be a gentleman?” she teased.

“Especially then.”

She sucked in a breath, but if he noticed, he didn’t let on. He was instead very occupied with moving down her body to kiss the creamy smoothness of her inner thighs, his tongue darting out every couple of inches to trace an invisible path upward. Then he parted her lips with his fingers and planted a full-mouthed kiss between her legs. That was when Jane lost the ability to speak.

Her hips bucked against his mouth as his tongue flicked over her sensitive bud—the clitoris, Elizabeth had told her in her matter-of-fact, physician’s-wife sort of way. But Jane found that she could care less what it was called. All that mattered was that it felt good—deliciously, wickedly, sinfully good—and she didn’t want him to ever stop.

She cast her gaze down her body, watching with open curiosity and wonder as the muscles in her legs and her stomach began to tremble with his ministrations. This was what she’d ached for—or at least that’s what she told herself as she watched the dip and move of his head with every stroke of his tongue. Her whole body had been primed for him after three days of watching and wanting from just a few feet away. Without even trying, he’d seduced her into imagining what it might be like to lay claim to a man. A husband was out of the question—who would want to marry her?—but for a short time she could have this. Someone to hold her. Someone to kiss her. Someone to make her body sing.

Her fingers wound in Nicholas’s hair, pinning her to him as though she could keep him there forever. Whether he sensed her urgency or just knew what she needed, he shifted a little and suddenly his fingers joined his tongue. He slid a finger into the slick wetness of her body. The fullness of him inside her and the sensation of his mouth sucking at her clitoris were almost too much.

“God, Nicholas,” she groaned.

She could have sworn that she felt the cheeky man smile.

She was about to tug on his hair just to teach him a lesson when it happened. All of the heat and tension building up in her broke and rushed through her. Her hips bucked clear off of the makeshift bed, but his mouth never left her. He simply locked eyes with her in the dim light and drove her over the edge until her body shuddered back to earth.

Jane was out of breath when Nicholas finally pulled away—not that he was much better. She was incredible. The sound of her voice crying out his name in the dark was like succor to his soul. Looking for a woman had been the last thing on his mind, but it seemed as though, while he was occupied with every other problem from his sisters’ seasons to saving his family’s legacy, he’d managed to find one who left him breathless.

He wanted more from her. Of course he did. He was a flesh-and-blood man and she’d opened herself in more ways than one. Who wouldn’t be tempted by a naked beauty lying underneath him? But he didn’t expect her to want the same things. She was an unmarried woman and almost certainly a virgin as well. He wouldn’t ask her to make that decision for him. Not unless she wanted to.

He dropped a kiss to the soft skin of each thigh as he sat back. Then he kissed her stomach. The valley between her small but firm breasts. The side of her neck. That, he decided, was his favorite part of her. She smelled sweet and warm just there. He smoothed her hair away from her shoulder and nestled his nose in her soft blond locks, just holding her to him.

There was no way that she was not aware of the hard length of him that lay against her hip, but he couldn’t rouse the gentlemanly concern to care. She knew by now how much he desired her. There was no escaping it.

He hadn’t been lying when he told her that he’d wanted her from the moment she’d strode up to him and asked what he was shouting about that first day. There was something about her determination. She’d stood there, hands on her hips, like a small immovable mountain. He’d known in that moment that she was the sort of woman who could have whatever she wanted if only she knew to ask for it. Tonight, it seemed, she was learning that same fact about herself.

Jane trailed a finger along his spine, sending shivers down his back. “Be careful how much you do that,” he murmured into her neck.

“And why’s that?” she asked in a soft voice.

“You’re a very distracting woman.”

She laughed, low and throaty. “No one’s ever told me that before.”

He shifted onto his elbow so that he could look at her. “You are.”

She blushed. “It’s not a very desirable quality in a governess.”

He reached down and skimmed his hand over her hip to the dip in her waist and over one of her breasts. “You’re not a governess right now.”

She quirked an eyebrow. “No?”

“You’re an adventuress.”

“An adventuress who’s running around England chasing after her very disobedient charge.”

A dark thought he’d been putting off confronting since he kissed her in the bracken roared up in his mind. “What happens after you find her?”