Page 74 of Duke of Destruction
Whathadhe done to her, this cantankerous man with his crooked smile and his boundless energy? How had he managed to shake her so profoundly from her moorings?
“You know why I’m here,” she said. He did know. She knew. The footman at the door knew. Even Edwards knew, as horrifying as it was to think of it.
But if they all knew, there was no point in being coy about it.
“I want you to make love to me.”
Percy growled as he dove in to kiss her further, but, no matter the aggression of the sound, his grasp on her wasn’t rough, wasn’t frantic. It wasn’t rage or even simpler irritation fueling their encounter now. They’d had such reasons before. They’d grappled and fought for dominance with the press of their mouths and hands.
But this…was something different. This was an understanding.
What a foolish, foolish,wonderfulmistake it had been coming here.
“Catherine,” he said, snaking his arm between her back and the door, adding another point of leverage to help him hold her close. “If we do this…there won’t be any going back.”
“I know.”
He was, no doubt, speaking of her maidenhood or something of that ilk, but Catherine felt the more metaphorical underpinnings to the words. There would be no returning from this; tonight would always be between them, no matter how much time anddistance separated them. If the other wounds might have healed, this one would remain fresh, perhaps forever.
But there already wasn’t any going back. There maybe hadn’t ever been any going back, not from the very moment that they had met.
He pressed his brow to hers. He was breathing heavily, as though the exertion of holding himself back was immense.
“Do you understand what that means?” he asked her.
She reached up a hand to press it to his cheek.
“No,” she admitted. “I don’t know what it will mean for tomorrow, or the days ahead. I don’t know where my life will take me. But I do know that for now—here, tonight—I want this perhaps more than I have ever wanted anything in my life. I wantyoumore than I have ever wanted anyone.”
For a moment, he just pressed their heads more firmly together.
“You have undone me,” he murmured, half to himself.
And then, before she could think of what else there might be to say, he pressed his mouth to hers again. The kiss was a promise, she realized, as he pulled her away from the door and, with the same guiding grip on her arms, led her back into the room. He brought her over to the bed and, achingly gently, lowered her down onto the soft mattress.
The covers were pulled back from where he had been sleeping. The sheets still carried hints of his warmth, and Catherine wanted to sink into it like a bear curling up in her cave for the winter. She tugged off her gloves and chucked them aside, caressing the linen with her fingertips.
But then Percy climbed up with her, his mouth never truly leaving hers, not for longer than a moment or two. The real heat of him was better, she decided at once. If she hadn’t been so hungry for him, she might have been content just to fall asleep right here, the weight of his body pressing her down.
But she was hungry for him. She ached for him. So no pull of slumber came for her.
She wound her arms around his neck and kissed him and kissed him, and let herself be kissed in return, and oh, God, how perfect it was.
He was on top of her, truly and properly on top of her, and shelovedit, even the way his weight made every movement a fight. She loved it twice as much when she felt movement against her hip, and then a telltale hardness.
Experimentally, she wiggled against that spot.
“Catherine,” he said warningly, not taking his lips away from hers.
She wiggled a little harder.
“Catherine,” he repeated.
Exasperating man.
“Don’t ‘Catherine’ me,” she complained. She held on a little more tightly to his shoulders, in case he got any ideas about pulling away from her. “I want to feel you. Percy, please. Let me feel you.”
She punctuated this plea by getting one of her legs loose enough that she could wrap her ankle around the back of his calf and tug on him. This settled him a little more firmly into the vee of her legs, which brought his straining length more firmly into contact with her core. There were still perhaps six layers of fabric between them, which Catherine couldn’t say she was happy about, but the greater pressure wasdelicious.
