Page 63 of Trapped with the Forbidden Duke
He laughed breathlessly, a short burst of noise that did not make her feel embarrassed but aroused.
“Edwina, I will only claim you when you truly crave me. When you are so sick with longing that you cannot take it anymore. When the only tremors coursing through your body are ones of pleasure and not trepidation or a nerve-soaked sense of duty. When your dreams are filled with images of me pinning you to my bed, I will truly claim you. You are not ready. Not yet.”
“Who is to say that I have not been having such dreams?” she breathed.
Her heart pounded in her throat, and everything in her body was alight in a way it had not been on her wedding night.
“Because I know how you look when you’re so aroused that you cannot think of anything else.” His words were soft caresses, drifting over the shell of her ear, and she shivered. “And I know how you look when you are fulfilling a duty you think I am expecting. I will not put you through that.”
After a moment, she realized what he was doing. He was riling her up, testing her limits, to see if she would match his fire with her own.
“Who is to say that I do not crave you as you crave me? Who is to say that I do not wish to be toyed with?”
“The night of our wedding… you did not want this.”
Rising on her tiptoes, Edwina leaned in, her lips brushing his jaw. Lucien stiffened against her.
“It is true that my hands tremble, husband, and it is true that I grow nervous, but you do not get to assume the desires I have since kept in my dreams at night, when the candles are out and my bed is too empty. The desires that have plagued me ever since our kiss, when my body reacted to the way your hands slid over me, fueled by your weakness for me.”
“Edwina.” It was both a warning and a sound of desperation.
“Does it upset you, Lucien?” she asked, the darkness and quietness of the night emboldening her now. “To know that you have a weakness for my body? Is that why you have avoided me?”
“Edwina,” Lucien growled as he pressed his body against hers, not leaving an inch of space between them.
With one last desperate push, Edwina undid the last button on his shirt and met his eyes. “Toy with me, Lucien.”
Without wasting another moment, Lucien ground his hips against hers, and she tugged on his shirt, pulling him in. Their mouths crashed, and her breath was stolen by his lips closing over hers.
Lucien kissed her roughly, his hands releasing her wrists to capture her face. His teeth grazed her lower lip—a hard show of his pent-up desire—before his kisses turned slightly softer when she welcomed him into her mouth.
His tongue brushed hers, and she shivered beneath his touch, aching for more. She felt greedy, the days of avoidance heightening the desire she had not let herself feel in favor of thinking of her wifely duties.
But now that desire blazed through her.
She gasped when Lucien gripped the back of her thigh and hitched it higher. Then, he took her lips in slow, deliberatekisses. Edwina felt like she was free-falling, and she did not even care if he would catch her if she crashed into him. Yet, she knew he would.
Lucien made a rough noise in the back of his throat and pressed his lips to her neck. “Say that you want me.”
“I do,” she gasped when he dragged his tongue up her neck.
He shuddered against her. “Say the words.”
Edwina struggled to keep her wits about her as her eyes closed, her fingers sliding into his hair. Auburn strands spilled over her pale fingers, and she tightened her grip.
“I want you.”
“Again.”
“I want you.”
“Keep saying it.”
“Heavens,” Edwina breathed as he kissed his way down her throat and nipped her collarbone, nudging her robe off her shoulders so it fell and gathered at her elbows. “I want you, Lucien. I-Ineedyou.”
He was kissing down her chest, right over her thin nightgown. He growled against the fabric, and for a moment, she wondered if he would tear it off her body. Her stomach fluttered as she considered it. Perhaps he would have, had they not been in the hallway.
Instead, he straightened to take her mouth again as he wrapped her leg around his hip. It left her open in a way she had never been before, and the vulnerability of being spread made her tremble.
