Page 22 of The Duke's Virgin

Blood, molten hot, pooled low inside me while simultaneously rushing to heat my face.

He broke away and looked down at me, a faint smile on his face. “We better get to your room before I decide to just push open the next door I see.”

“Um. Okay.” That soundedsosophisticated. With a slight shake of my head, I eased back and resumed my walk down the hall. He caught up with me, sliding his arm around my waist, his fingers curling over my hip once more as he tugged me close against him.

My nipples, tight and hard, stabbed into my bra, the padded silk suddenly torturous.

“My suite’s here.” We rounded the hall, and I gestured to the doors, suddenly feeling awkward.

Luka either didn’t notice or decided to ignore it as he led me into the suite. The light from the sitting room directly in front of us came to life, a gentle golden glow that spilled over a wide, soft couch with a back that looked like a clamshell. The entire suite had a design that evoked a mermaid’s playground, although elegantly done.

He didn’t even look around as he caught me up against him. Sinking back against the door, he pulled me in closer and fisted a hand in my hair, urging my mouth back to his. “You’re the sexiest woman I’ve ever seen,” he murmured against my lips before delivering yet another deep, drugging kiss.

I clung to him, one hand fisting in his shirt while curling my free arm around his neck. My legs were weak. I’d read books where the heroine claimed such, had seen it referenced in movies and had overheard girls in school gossiping about kisses that did such things.

But I’d never experienced it.

Just the stroke of his tongue, the brush of his hand over my side, that was all it took to turn my bones to water.

He broke the kiss and murmured against my mouth.

It took a few seconds for the words to process, then I blinked and nodded. “Yes…I…I’ve got a couple of condoms in my purse.”

I’d found them in the bathroom drawer here in my suite. Probably standard for the guest rooms, because I doubted my aunt and uncle’s household staff was actively involved in making sure I had prophylactics on hand. And none of that mattered because I had a beautiful man in the room with me, and I had condoms, and I was going to have sex for the very first time.

“Good.” A slow smile curled his lips, and he tugged me against him. Sliding his fingers under the strap that ran between my breasts, holding the purse securely in place, he said, “And the purse is so handy right now. I have half a mind to push your skirt up and fuck you right here for the first time. You’ve been seducing me from the moment I laid eyes on you. Do you know that?”

My breath skittered out of my lungs. “I have?”

Luka bent down and nuzzled my neck right below my ear. “Yes. You have. Tell me, Stacia. Should I have you right here the first time, rough and fast? Or would you rather me take you to bed and draw things out? Either way works for me, as long as I have you wrapped around my cock by the time we’re done.”

My heart lunged and leaped in my chest, hard enough to leave me breathless. “I…um…” Twisting my fingers in his shirt, I shoved him back a few inches and met his eyes. “I should tell you something.”

He’d been smiling, but now the smile faded. “Tell me what?”

“I’m a virgin.”

A blank expression followed after I blurted it out, his smile gone and brows furrowing over his eyes as if he wasn’t sure he’d understood me.

Damn it. Had I screwed this up?

“It’s not a big deal, Luka.” I feigned indifference, giving a careless shrug as I continued, “I graduated high school young. I was always ahead of everybody my age and that doesn’t make for the easiest social life. When I was in college, it was the same thing. I was awkward while everybody else was comfortable with who they were, or it seemed that way. I might have had two or three guys ask me out by the time I was twenty. And…”

“Why me? Why now?” He caught a lock of my hair and twisted it around his finger.

His question wasn’t a surprise. I mean, I would have wanted to know myself if I had been in his place. But I couldn’t find the right way to explain that wouldn’t sound awkward.

Just how did you go about telling somebody you wanted to have sex with them because they were super-hot and because you appreciated the fact you wouldn’t have to worry about seeing them once you left the country?

The super-hot part would be easy. But the rest of it?Thatwould be awkward. I licked my lower lip and mentally squared my shoulders. If I could ask a near stranger to my room, then I could answer this simple question. Or part of it.

“I’m just tired of wondering and waiting, and you…well, I noticed you earlier today too. You kind of turned my belly inside out. If that makes sense.”

He trailed his hand down my side, then smoothed his fingers over my belly. “Right here?” A smile teased his lips. “I don’t know if that’s a good thing. It almost sounds unpleasant.”

Sparks of heat went through me at his touch, leaving me shivering. “No. Not unpleasant. Not at all.”

He slid his hand higher, tracing it in a meandering path across my mid-section so that his thumb brushed the underside of my breast before his hand curved over my side. I shivered again and inadvertently arched closer.

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