Page 51 of Duke of Destruction
“The terminology doesn’t matter. Whatever you wish to call it, this is perhaps my only chance to…” She cleared her throat, but when she spoke, her voice still sounded hoarse. “To feel the things that you make me feel.”
She was touching him in only two small places: their interlocked fingers, and her quelling gesture against his lips. Yet, it was enough to feel the shudder that went through him, to feel the fight that went out of him.
Thank God, Catherine thought. She could not fight this pull between them any longer; it was only fitting that he felt the same.
With slow, careful deliberation, Percy reached up and removed the finger that was still pressed against his lips. He didn’t release her hand, though; he held on to both of them, clasping all four hands together between them.
“If we do this,” he said slowly and carefully, “we must agree that this is truly the last time. Tomorrow, we return to London. To our normal lives. This—” He squeezed her hands to indicate whatever madness seemed to perpetually brew between them. “This cannot go on, not when we are back among Society.”
She nodded easily. She had already known that. Indeed, if it hadn’t been one of his conditions, she would have insisted upon it herself.
“It will be easy, in London,” she said. “We shan’t see one another.”
She felt a pang at the words, but it was doubtless just because she wanted him still, would continue to want him until theyfinallyreached the satisfaction that this evening promised.
“Yes,” he echoed, looking down at their hands. “Easy.” He paused, then looked her square in the eye. “And we cannot—that is to say, I cannot ruin you.”
He held up a hand against any argument; she disliked that he dropped her from his grip to do so.
“Perhaps you think yourself an ancient crone, unable to attract a husband due to your age and decrepitude?—”
His tone was sardonic, but still Catherine scoffed.
“I beg your pardon; those werenotthe words I used.”
“—but I have already made it very clear that I disagree. And I could not live with myself if I had dishonored you thusly. Therefore, tonight must be about pleasure and naught else.”
Catherine would have liked to experience everything there was to experience, but she detected a steely note in Percy’s voice that said he would not be moved on this matter, so she decided she would relent.
Besides, she could not imagine how the pleasure they’d shared previously could be considered anything like second best. So, yes, it would suffice. She supposed.
“Very well,” she agreed, hoping she sounded lofty and worldly.
Another beat.
“Yes?” he asked, as if needing absolute confirmation that this was truly happening.
“Yes,” she said without hesitation, reaching for him.
They were on one another in an instant.
Kissing Percy… Kissing Percy felt soright, Catherine thought in a daze as he held tenderly to her cheeks, and she grabbed furiously at his back and waist. She hadn’t kissed anyone else before, but it seemed impossible that it would feel morerightthan this.
“You drive me to madness, Catherine,” Percy accused between short, hungry kisses, like eager sips of champagne. She wrapped her arms around him more tightly. She was, perhaps for the firsttime in her life, grateful to be so tall. It made it all that much easier to pull him down to kiss her.
“You started this ridiculousness,” she returned. “With all your surly looks and hovering about, being cross.Youwere already mad; you just infected me with your lunacy.”
She had covered every inch of his mouth thrice over, so she began kissing his whiskered jaw, the place where his pulse thrummed in his neck. He wasn’t wearing a cravat, which she found to be absolutelyfascinating. She rubbed her nose against the divot at the base of his throat. He smelled lightly of woodsmoke and crisply of bergamot.
“God, what are you—” he groaned. “Why is that?—”
Catherine wanted more,more,and she had very little time to steal it away. She was covetous, like a greedy faerie from a legend. She let her eager hands come to the buttons of his shirt, fumbled her way through undoing the first, then moved more swiftly to the second.
“I am normally a sensible man,” Percy said, and Catherine wasn’t even certain he was talking to her as much as to himself. “But youundo me. God above.”
She’d gotten all the buttons undone. She pulled aside the sides of his shirt, then drank him in. He was strong, but rangy rather than muscular—a fashionable body type that made current styles look devastating on him. She surveyed the differences between their bodies with untampered fascination.
When she ran her thumb gently over one of his flat nipples, he grunted out a swear. When she trailed her fingernails through the sparse trail of hair that led to his belt, the oath turned into a moan.
