His hands, tracing her body like he wanted to learn her every inch. His mouth, moving against hers with practiced sensuality. His hips grinding against her, rubbing against that sacred place between her legs he had touched once before.
Here, with him, she could forget they were in public and in danger of being discovered. She could forget about her mother and the indiscretions her mother seemed so keen to commit. There was only the Duke. Only George. And she wanted all of him.
“Don’t stop,” she whispered against his mouth. “Please, George. Don’t stop.”
He made a noise that was partway between a grunt and a moan; it reverberated through her, sinking deep into her stomach and lower, to add to the heat and sensation between her legs. He eased more of her skirts aside so he could access the apex of her thighs with his finger. The rush of sensation this time was so great she gripped his shoulders and tipped her head back, looking at the blue sky flecked through the branches.
“Quiet,” he said, his voice low and rough. “You must be quiet, Sybil.” She looked at him again, at the flush on his face and the redness of his cheeks, the way his mouth parted, and as though her expression was more than he could bear, he kissed her.
The tree was rough against her back, the air was warm against her legs—bare above her stockings—and there was that hardness in his breeches that ground against her so relentlessly she could feel the heat building. She wanted more; she wanted him inside her. But she would settle for this.
“George,” she said as tension coiled in her stomach. Her body felt as though it was going to tip over the edge she had experienced before, with him, all those months ago. Ecstasy would follow, she knew, but there was such a sensation of vulnerability building with pleasure that she felt stripped bare. Not physically—he had seen her without clothes before, anyway—but emotionally, as by looking at her, he would see a part that no one else had ever seen.
That perhaps no one else would ever see. Who knew whether the relationship with her eventual husband would lead to this?
“Are you close?” he asked, framing her face with his hand. She leaned into his caress, the tenderness reassuring her.
“Yes,” she said, every breath a pant.
He groaned, the sound lighting her on fire and bringing the edge still closer. “Look at me, Sybil,” he said. The command reminded her of when he had said the same thing during their first encounter, and she met his gaze as with one final thrust of his finger, she came undone in his arms. As the waves of pleasure rolled through her, and she bit her lip to prevent herself from making a noise, she held his gaze, barely registering the way his pupils swallowed his irises or the way his nostrils flared.
He hissed a sharp, harsh breath, his gaze never leaving hers as he pressed against her one final time. His arms shook around her, but just as she hadn’t looked away, neither did he until his body relaxed again and he caught her by the waist to hand her down, brushing down her skirts.
“We—” she stopped, unsure, “that wasn’t the same as last time.”
“No.” At her confused glance, he ran a hand through his hair and offered her a wry smile. “At the risk of sounding a little too moralistic, I didn’t think it would be appropriate.”
Sybil recovered a few more of her scattered wits and did her best to assemble them into what almost resembled logical thought. “And this was?”
“No,” he confessed with a grimace. “But you drove me mad yesterday, Sybil. I couldn’t stop thinking of you, and if I’m to consider finding you a husband, I needed to clear my thoughts.”
His words briefly warmed her, then cooled her again as she considered what that meant. A husband. Another man. He had done that to her and now wanted to proceed to find her another man to spend the rest of her life with.
She looked up into his face. This encounter had proved it: the feelings he awoke in her were not just physical, and just as she hadn’t forgotten him, she would not now. He had taken something precious from her, and now he was destined to forever have captured a corner of her mind and heart she could not give another.
“Why not you?” she blurted, then cursed herself. Of all the stupid things she could have said, she chose this one.
Ifshe was going to approach this at all, she should have sat down and decided on the most logical, emotionless way to broach the subject, because while George clearly desired her, more was required to tempt a man into matrimony.
His brows rose, and she imagined drowning someone. He would be an excellent candidate, for example. Or failing that, herself. Perhaps that would be better, because if she drowned herself, she wouldn’t be held responsible for murdering a peer of the realm, which she fancied would come with hefty repercussions.
“Why not me what?” he asked.
She waved a hand she had every intention of being careless and airy, and was instead clumsy. “Never mind.”
“Sybil.” He caught her arm and swung her to face him. “What do you mean?”
“It doesn’t matter. It was… foolish.” She looked up into his blue eyes and hoped they wouldn’t haunt her dreams that night as they had haunted her previous night’s dreams. A foolish hope, really. She was good at those. “I just thought—as you pointed out, you trulyarecourting me, so I wondered why not also… marry me.” Her words trailed away at the expression on his face. Or rather, the lack of expression on his face.
Excellent. Well, now she knew where he stood and she could go ahead with her plan of sticking her head in a bucket.
“Why not marry you,” he repeated. Again.
“I’m not saying you should feel obliged to,” she said hastily. “Only that—we are good friends, and we have…we—” She trailed off. How did one express the fact they were attracted to one another without being crude or implying there wasmorethan attraction at play? “Well, we have done this. Twice.”
His gaze seemed to caress her face. “This was not the same as last time, Sybil.”
“That’s not the pertinent point here,” she snapped, her face heating. “But you have made your perspective perfectly clear, so allow me to apologize for such an improper suggestion, Your Grace.”
