Page 49 of Claimed By Her Forbidden Duke
“As though—as though I am a woman you want,” she spat out, exasperated. “And it is exhausting.”
“Why, Lady Penelope?”
“Oh, you infernal man,” she hissed. “Because I could never hope to believe that a duke such as yourself would want a spinster like me.”
Her claim left her in a tight rush, but she quickly was quietened when the Duke came onto her, bracing his arms against the rail behind her. He had her trapped, and yet she did not feel it.
She refused to meet his eyes, but suddenly her chin was pinched between his fingers, and he tilted her head up to finally look at him.
“Is it so hard to believe?” the Duke asked, his voice lower but no less rough. “You are no spinster, Penelope.”
His use of her name without her title made her shiver in his embrace as his hand slid down to cup her waist, as it had when they’d danced.
“Then what am I?” she dared to ask.
“You are… a woman draped in desire I cannot let myself have. A woman who has haunted my thoughts since the night we met,” he muttered, as if he was reluctant to admit it. As if it was a weakness. Yet he gazed at her with equal amounts of vulnerability and heavy desire.
Penelope’s breath caught. “Your Grace,” she whispered.
“Call me Edmund,” he told her, and then he kissed her.
The kiss took her by surprise, and for a moment, Penelope froze, feeling his body press against hers.
His mouth was hot on hers, not demanding butseeking, a silent ask, and when she was too stunned to reciprocate, he began to pull away. But before he could even put a full inch between them, she moved, following that desire that had sparked within her ever since she had first laid eyes on him.
His eyes met hers for a brief moment before she kissed him fervently, knowing that she had very little skill in such things, but a desire burned within her and she chased it like it might incinerate her whole if she let it.
Edmund’s lips were searing against hers, a small groan caught in the back of his throat as his hand inched up her waist. This time, it continued its ascent.
Penelope was quickly lost in the feel of his hands on her, his mouth coaxing more and more.
His teeth nipped her lower lip, and she made a sound between a moan and a gasp. Her fingers curled into his dark hair, brushing it back from his face.
The hand Edmund kept on the rail inched closer, barely brushing her hipbone, and her body came alive, singing a song she had not yet heard but had been told the magic of.
Desire shot through her, and she chased the Duke’s mouth over and over, drowning in the breathy kisses. His palm slid higher up her body, his thumb brushing the underside of her breast but not daring to go higher, and then he moved his hand back down as if realizing the daring touch.
“I would tear this suffocating gown off you with my teeth if I could,” he growled, kissing his way to her neck, snarling again when he only met that high, choking collar. Impatiently, he tugged at it, as if wanting—needing—more of her skin bared. “I thought of you wearing the gown I bought. I do not think you realize how much you—how much you made me desire you.”
“How much?” Her voice was thin and breathy as he kissed what part of her throat he could access.
He tangled with her dress, and Penelope swore she heard a small tear. But with her head tilted back, her eyelashes fluttering with pleasure that the Duke delivered with more touches and hot kisses, she could not know for sure.
“Incessantly,” he told her, his voice low and rough.
Edmund kissed his way back to her mouth before he cupped her face in his hands, drawing her to him. And—oh. Penelope could feel very muchhowincessantly that desire roved through the composed Duke, poking the skirt of her dress, a need that strained against his clothing.
Her breath mingled with his, and her eyes closed, feeling the hitch of his breath as his tongue swept over her lower lip, hesitant for entry that she granted immediately.
She was lost in him, the rising panic from earlier settled because she was in his embrace, the focal point of his intensity again.
Curiously, she shifted her hips just so, and the noise he made in response sent more heat through her. Shakily, she pressed closer to him, hungrily taking what she had been so deprived of for such a long time—but it was with a man who held her as though she was meant to be there, with him.
They kissed one another as if they were answers they had long sought and could not bear to part.
Edmund pawed at her dress, a mirror of her frantic actions before, but in a different way. As her skirts rustled and a breeze snaked between her legs, Penelope let out a soft moan she had only let herself press, shamefully, into her pillow late at night.
“Make that noise again,” Edmund groaned, pulling back only to speak for a moment before his mouth met hers again with more urgency.
