Page 87 of Nothing Compares to the Duke
With utmost care, he cupped her face in his hands and swept his thumbs across her cheeks. “You’re so soft. Like warm satin under my fingers.”
Bella tipped her mouth up to his, waiting for his kiss. She thought she knew now what kissing Rhys again would be, but when his lips came down on hers this was different.
The kiss began tender, a gentle exploration, sweet and familiar. But when she reached for his waistcoat and worked the buttons free so that she could flatten her palm against his chest, he deepened the kiss. He stroked her with his tongue, slid his hand back to wrap his fingers around her nape.
He kissed her hungrily, possessively.
Bella opened to him. She wanted him. She always had, and she reveled in how much he wanted her too. She felt it in every stroke of his tongue and in the way he tugged at her clothes as he leaned his body into hers.
“Do you have any idea,” he said against her lips, “how impossible it is.” He kissed the side of her mouth, then traced the edge of her lower lip with his tongue. “Bella,” he whispered with a desperation that made her center melt with need. “It’s impossible to be close to you and not do this. Not think about this.”
“Rhys,” Bella hissed when he licked the spot behind her ear.
“I know. We should stop.”
“Yes,” she told him, as she worked the knotted fabric of his cravat loose. “But only so that you can take me upstairs.”
He stilled, one hand gripping her hip, the other tangled in her freshly mussed chignon.
“What is it?” she asked him.
“When you say things like that and I’m in the state I am, I have to take a moment and make certain I’m not dreaming.”
Bella tugged his cravat until the fabric slid from his neck, baring more of his skin to her view. She couldn’t resist stretching up onto her toes and pressing a kiss at the base of his throat. She was rewarded with a moan and the rapid beat of his pulse against her lips.
“I can’t be the only woman who’s asked you to take her to your bed,” she said teasingly.
For a moment, a bit of fire went out of his gaze. Then he reached for her hand, opened two buttons at the top of his shirt and pressed her palm against his bare chest.
“Feel that? Only you make this happen.”
His heart pounded erratically under her hand. Hard and wild.
“This isn’t just impulse,” he rasped when Bella reached up with her free hand to release more of his shirt buttons. “This is desire.”
Yes, desire, hunger, need. And something more. Feelings she couldn’t yet name and knew he feared too. Words that might destroy this moment.
Bella swept his shirt aside and explored the muscled ridges of his chest, then dragged her fingertip over his nipple. “If you don’t want to take me upstairs—”
He stopped with one deep breath-stealing kiss that left her knees quivering.
“I do.” He stroked a hand down her neck. “Shall we race? For old times’ sake.”
Rather than answer, Bella ducked under his arm, lifted her skirt to keep it from tangling around her ankles, and bolted for the staircase.
Chapter Twenty
He let her win. In the hallway at the top of the stairs, she stopped and swung to face him. She was breathing hard, her eyes sparkling, and she swiped some of the long strands of wavy auburn hair behind her ear.
“I don’t know which room is yours.”
For a moment he had the impulse to direct her to a guest room. He’d decorated his own room lavishly, thinking only of his own taste and being excessive and making every inch of the chamber look decadent. Now, for the first time, he cared how someone else might perceive what he’d done.
But he didn’t want any pretense between them. Bella knew him better than anyone. She knew secrets he’d confided to no other. He wasn’t going to start pretending now.
“On your left.”
She immediately twisted the latch and stepped inside. He heard a gasp before he reached the threshold.
