Page 38 of Duke of Destruction
“Yes,” she panted, tugging him forward again.
They kissed until Catherine lost track of everything except for the taste of him against her tongue, the feel of his hands on her, the silky slip of his hair between her fingers as she used it to cling to him. They kissed and kissed until her lips felt raw with it.
And still, it was not enough.
That heat in her belly—the one she now understood to be arousal, a kind that promised ever so much more pleasure to come—built and built inside her. She found being pressed between the duke’s hard body and the tree’s unyielding surface to be thrilling, but the position left her unable to rub herself against him as she’d done that night on the verandah.
“Please,” she said. It came out as an incoherent whine, but she didn’t care. She wriggled, seeking pressure in just the right spot. “Percy. Please.”
He let out a growl when she said his name; the sound went right through her, causing another jolt to her center that was justnot enough.
“Please what, Catherine?” he asked her in a wicked murmur that told her he knewexactlywhat she meant.
She growled back at him; hers was, she was frustrated to note, far less effective than his.
“Touch me,” she demanded, satisfied when her brazen request made him suck in a short, sharp breath.
One of his hands left her waist, traveling down between their bodies until he pressed against the place where her legs met her body. Even through her skirts, the touch was thrilling, and she widened her stance, seeking more of the sensation.
“Here?” he murmured.
As though he didn’t know.
“Yes,” she commanded, heady with power. “I need you, Percy.”
His one hand clenched against her side, and she realized there was power in her words. He liked it when she spoke to him.
The realization made her daring, even as a trembling, nervous feeling went through her at speaking so coarsely.
“Touch me,” she said again. His hand traveled down, and she was momentarily furious about this, until she realized that he was starting to raise her skirts. She felt cool air on her knees as he rucked the fabric higher, then on her thigh. “Make me feel?—”
“Maybe over here?” a female voice said—from far too close.
Catherine would have sprung away from Percy if she could have, but she was pinned up against a tree, which suddenly seemed like a terrible idea. Fortunately, he was fast enough for both of them, leaping back from her so swiftly that it was as though she had caught fire. Her skirts fell back to the ground, and she turned to face the tree as he skittered across the clearing, both acting as though they were searching for something off their lists.
“I think I maybe see something interesting!” she said, too loudly and too brightly, just as Miss Reid and Lady Cardale entered the clearing.
“Oh, yes?” Percy asked, just as obviously. “What did you find, my lady?”
Christ alive, they were the two worst actors on the planet. And once you considered that her cheeks had to be bright red and her lips swollen, there was no way she could escape detection…
Except she had forgotten, it seemed, one important detail: Miss Reid was an unmarried young lady and Percy was an unmarried—not to mention young and handsome—duke, which meant that Catherine might as well have been invisible.
“Your Grace!” she said cheerfully. “Are you enjoying the scavenger hunt?”
“Um.” Percy darted a glance over at Catherine, who busied herself looking at a bush. Truly intriguing things, bushes. “Yes.”
“We are, too,” Miss Reid said. “Although we simply cannot find a red feather. Have you located one?”
“A—what?”
Catherine, too, gave up feigning indifference as suspicion overtook her.
“What’s on your list?” she demanded.
Lady Cardale blinked at her in surprise. “Why, the same as everyone else,” she said. “A leaf bigger than one’s hand, a red feather, a perfect clover, and all the rest.”
Catherine gaped at Percy, who just shook his head.
