Page 82 of A Duke Changes Everything
“I don’t want to hurt you. Ever.”
“Go slow.”
He did, peeling away the fabric and revealing that her ankle was slightly reddened but barely swollen.
“Now the other,” she told him, quietly, lifting her opposite leg.
Bracing her foot on the broad, hard plane of his thigh, Nick held her gaze as he reached under her skirt, rolled down her stocking. When he bent to kiss her exposed knee, Mina grabbed for his lapel.
She knew where she wanted his lips.
He settled onto his knees and pressed in between her legs, forcing her to spread wider to accommodate the width of his body.
“Is this where you want me?”
“It’s a start.” Mina stroked her fingers through a wave of black hair on his forehead.
“Tell me what you want. Anything, and you’ll have it.” There was a desperation in his voice that made her body pulse in response. More than her body, some essential part of her. She understood his need. She felt it too.
“Kiss me.” She wanted his mouth on hers. To taste him. Desperately.
He studied her lips a moment, took her face in his hands. Mina tugged at his shirt, and was just on the verge of demanding he end the torment of making her wait when his lips came down on hers.
Their previous kisses had been too rushed. Too new and uncertain. This was different. Slower, and yet hungrier. He tilted his head to kiss her more thoroughly, used his tongue to explore more deeply.
This was right. Everything else fell away. Passion flooded in, pleasure and a sense of belonging she’d never felt in her life.
Mina clung to Nick’s shoulders. It didn’t matter that she was safe in his arms, perched on the firm edge of an expensive settee. Everything was falling away. All the years of pretending. All the miserable loneliness. All the restless yearning she’d tried so hard to curb.
With him, in this moment, in his arms, she wanted and wanted and he gave her more. Exactly what she needed most. To be bare, without a single wall between them or a single defense. And she was unafraid.
Mina held on to his tensing shoulders and then she got to work, moaning into his kisses as she pushed the coat from his shoulders, worked free the knot of his cravat, fumbled with the buttons of his shirt.
“It seems you wish to undress me too.” He laid his feverish forehead against hers, watching her fingers work.
“Yes,” Mina hissed as she found his lips again. “I need to see you.”
Five little words. Awful words that she immediately wanted to take back. She’d had no idea they’d break the spell.
Nick’s hands that had been stroking her, gripping her possessively, stilled against her body, and then he pulled away.
“Nick?”
“We should turn the lamps down.” He stood and did just that, casting the already dim room into near darkness but for the flicker of flames from the fireplace.
“You insist on hiding yourself from me?” It was the last thing she wanted.
“I insist on sparing you.” He returned to her, bending to put his hands on the settee’s back, cocooning her between his arms. “Trust me. You don’t want to see.”
He kissed her, so sweetly and thoroughly that Mina relented, reaching up to twine her arms around his neck. She would have been quite content for the kiss to go on forever.
But he soon pulled away slightly, slid a hand under her knees, and scooped her into his arms. As he walked toward the bed, the fire’s glow danced over his face. Mina traced the edge of his jaw, then gently, tentatively, the line of his scar.
“I’m not afraid of seeing your scars.”
He settled her with infinite care on the edge of the enormous bed, not quite meeting her gaze. “I am.”
The ache in her chest was so piercing it stole her breath, and she forced her hands to remain on the bolster rather than reach for him. He hated sympathy or any sign of pity. She’d learned that lesson well.
