Page 49 of In Compromise with the Earl
Unbidden, a giggle left her mouth. “Are you so determined to leave you would destroy a suit for it?”
“Yes,” Oswald shrugged.
Amused, Aphrodite turned to the door. “I’ll be down soon.”
* * *
Fifteen minutes to her parting word, she met Oswald at the front doorway of the Manor, clad in a maroon carriage dress and light coat; he was dressed smartly in tan trousers and jacket, a dark-blue waistcoat and a white shirt. His cravat was missing, and a beaver hat sat rakishly on his head.
She tapped his clavicle. “Ready to do away with social rules, are you?”
“I don’t want to feel strangled or halfway decapitated when I do not need to be,” he replied, while resting a hand on the small of her back. “Please, let us go.”
They descended the flat steps and he helped her into the carriage, before joining her inside. With a quick rap to the roof, the driver spurred the horses on. Oswald plucked the hat off and dropped it on the seat next to him. “Do you think your father had received my contract?”
“Even if he did, there is not much he can say about it,” Aphrodite said. “Anything less than Duke Strathmore’s golden offer is a disappointment to him. I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”
“We have two posting inns to pass through before getting to Bath,” Oswald said.
Cocking her head, she asked, “And why do you state it with such heavy tones?”
“Because…” he reached for the velvet curtain and dropped it before reaching for her and tugging her onto his lap, “because we will not couple until we are there. Do you know how narrow those beds are? Utterly unfit to have a long night of lovemaking.”
She shivered under his touch, and leaned her cheek into his large, callused palm. “How long?”
“Until dawn,” he replied sultrily, while sliding a hand under her nape and using his thumb to swipe a heated streak down the pulsing point in her neck. “Might be taxing for an innocent.”
“I suppose the response for that is to teach me,” Aphrodite replied, firming her hands around his face. “Kiss me.”
Their mouths met, hungry, hot, and open. With a groan, he sank his tongue past her lips, and Aphrodite knew for certain that she would not rest until they were one—until she was his.
A soft moan escaping her did in his darkest fantasies. His drugging cologne filled her nose and brought on a craving she had never known. Sinking her fingers into his hair, the kiss turned ravenous. And when he cupped her backside and brought her flush on his chest, she was lost to anything and everything around them.
When the need to take a breath gripped her burning lungs, Aphrodite pulled away but kept her hold on his face. “Not that I am complaining, but this ardor. Why haven’t you shown this before?”
“You cannot show something that did not exist before,” he replied. “The moment I kissed you in the lake, something began to change and that night you came to my bed, you resurrected the passion I had thought dead.”
A hand slid up her back, before his thumb coasted over her rib and brushed the side of her breast. The touch, almost accidental, still burned through her clothing and a soft, involuntary gasp left her lips.
When he possessed her lips this time, the kiss was needy and ruthless, but he broke it to kiss down the smooth slope of her throat. The scrape of his almost-invisible stubble was oddly arousing and heady as he licked his way up to her delicate jaw and then her earlobe.
Capturing the flesh in his lips and curling his tongue around the sweet curve of her ear he suckled, and gripping his shoulders with almost bloodless fingers, she began to writhe against him.
“I won’t take you now,” he growled into her ear as his hands found the row of buttons at the back of her dress. “But I crave touching you. We’re alone, indulge me for a while.”
One by one, he popped the buttons and eased both shoulders down. His gaze was piercing, giving her every chance to say no—but she didn’t. She wanted to be daring, to break the rules, even once, and when he cupped her soft, firm breasts through the silk chemise, she groaned. His touch was Heaven. He found the hard peaks, rubbed them through the thin layer of silk.
She was panting now, her eyes closed, her hands gripping his sleeves. With a growl of pure want, he pulled the chemise away and lowering his head, licked the sensitive crevice between her heaving mounds before capturing a rosy nipple, flushed with color and ripe as a berry into his mouth. He drew his thumb across the other puckered peak, and her eyes flew open.
Resting on his lap, her hips undulated, seeking, longing for more pressure. She recalled his lips on her core, the mere memory of his tongue dancing over her intimate flesh, sent a thunderbolt of arousal straight to her core. She wanted it again but knew it impossible in such tight confines.
“What do you want, Sprite?” he nosed at her ear. “Tell me.”
Sinking her fingers into his hair, she said, “I want you to touch me,there. Send my mind soaring again.”
Chapter Seventeen
Bracing one hand on the small of her back, Oswald slid a hand under the bunched-up skirts on his lap to find her smooth thigh. He took his time to watch the melee of emotions crossing her face as he took his time to touch her.
