Page 58 of Wedded to the Beastly Duke
“You have such beautiful hair,” he breathed, taking a fistful and applying just enough pressure that she gasped. “I love the way it feels in my hands.”
She let him control the angle of her head, baring her throat to him again, and he scraped his teeth across her tender flesh. His other hand reached under her dress to grasp her hip, moving her against the bulge in his pantaloons. Pleasure bloomed at the point of contact.
“You know,” she said breathlessly, “if your intention was to distract me, consider me distracted.”
His only answer was to bite the spot between her neck and her shoulder. “You aren’t wearing any stays. You’re the one that is distracting me.”
“This way, there are far fewer layers to remove.”
“You will be my undoing,” he said, guiding her to rub against him again. She moaned, and he secured his hand in her hair a little more firmly. “I drove myself mad tonight watching you.”
“I like it when you watch me,” she told him honestly, and was rewarded by another kiss.
He plundered her mouth the way he had entered her life—with utter conviction, a level of determination that bordered on ruthless. Emmeline was helpless under the barrage. She was helpless to resist him.
And by the way he groaned, rocking against her as though he wished there were nothing but tender words between them, he felt the same way.
That was why she had worn the dress, which was now a crumpled heap on the floor.
His teeth gently closed around her nipple, covered only by her chemise, and he suckled her through the fabric. She whimpered.
“Tell me what you want,” he said, his voice gravelly. “Emmeline, tell me what you want.”
“You,” she managed. “All of you. Whatever you have to give.”
“That is a dangerous thing to say, love.”
“Is that not what we are?” she demanded. “We are danger and we are fire, and if we are not careful, we may become ash.” She caught his face between her hands, looking down at him. “And yet when you look at me like this, there is nothing I want more than to burn with you.”
“Then burn,” he told her, and ripped the chemise in a display of power that made her gasp, liquid pooling between her legs.
When he removed his shirt, her sensitive nipples rubbed against the dusting of hair across his chest.
Skin. So much of it, warm and soft under her fingers. Emmeline marveled at the dichotomy of the hardness of his muscles underneath the smoothness of his skin, like velvet over steel. Adam paused what he was doing as she ran her palms across his chest, her fingers exploring him.
This was the first time she had ever seen a male torso. And although she knew, anatomically, how a man looked, the reality was very different. Altogether more tactile. She could feel the slight inhalation, the way his stomach muscles rippled with tension as she put her hand there, sliding down to the waist of his pantaloons.
“Emmeline,” he said, his voice thick.
“All this time. All this time, we could have been like this.” She looked up at the sharp, handsome lines of his face. There was no distance between them now; that had all been burned away with heat. “Why?”
He brought his mouth down to hers, his tongue sliding against hers with an erotic burst of slick heat, and rocked her against him. She had nothing protecting her most intimate area from the soft scrape of his pantaloons, the thick rod underneath pressing right where she needed.
A distant part of her mind told her that there was something wrong, something disgraceful about the way she rubbed along his length, evidence of her desire smearing his trousers. But more than that was the little flashes of friction she felt with every movement.
Whatever had come between them before, there was nothing between them now. Nothing but that thin layer of material that seemed almost as though it taunted them.
She rocked faster, his hand on her hip encouraging each movement. That coiling, restless heat inside her rose again, sharp and bright like fireworks, threatening to explode inside her.
The edge beckoned.
Her head lolled back, his hand still in her hair, but the pressure was gentle now, tender. His breath came fast against her throat, his movements urgent.
“That’s right,” he told her. “Like that. Yes, my sweet.”
Each word was ragged. They filled her with a thrill she hardly knew how to acknowledge.
That’s right.
