Page 43 of Ne'er Duke Well
Alarms were sounding in his head, shrieking,Stop talkingandBack awayandShe’s not for you, you ass.
He ignored it all, and savored the impossible softness of her skin.
“I think about you. All the time. Even when I shouldn’t think of you, I do.” Blood was roaring in his ears now, pounding through his body, but he made himself be easy, let his thumb explore her racing pulse.
Her lips trembled apart, but she didn’t speak, so he kept going. He couldn’t have made himself stop.
“I am so glad I know you,” he said. “You are so clever. So damned sweet. I can’t stop wondering what it is that you smell of. I dream about how you would taste. And Christ, Selina, I want to taste every part of you.”
Her lips came back together, pressed into a pout, and he realized it was the start of a little plosiveP. She was going to say his name. She was going to tell him to stop being such a damned fool.
And so instead of letting her finish, he caught that pout with his own mouth and kissed her.
She stood frozen for a moment beneath his mouth. It felt wrong, somehow. This wasSelina, fire and life and abundance, and he did not think she was afraid.
So he touched her, softly, behind her ear, then slid his thumb questioningly along the line of her jaw.Please, he thought dazedly.
And she seemed to hear him. Her mouth came open on a gasp, and then she was pressed against him, her slim body coming warm and full into his, and he nearly groaned in relief and shifted his fingers into her hair.
She tasted—oh Christ, her mouth was heaven, was sweetness and tart lemon ice. He would never taste lemon again without being here in this moment, drowning in this woman.
She nipped at his lower lip, and he shuddered and sucked andtried to pull her harder into his body. She wanted—he could feel her desire in the unsteady whisper of her breath, in the press of her breasts against his chest. She reached up and found the nape of his neck above his cravat, and her cool silk glove felt like paradise against his heated skin.
He broke away from her mouth and shifted downward. God, he had dreamed of this—this exact place where her neck met her shoulder, the sounds she would make when he kissed her this way.
But he should have known she would be more than he could have imagined. She rocked against him and made a soft, impatient sound that made him want to yank her skirts up to her waist.
But slow, he told himself.Slowly now.
“You taste so good,” he murmured into her skin. “You are so sweet. So lovely.”
He closed his teeth around her earlobe, and she made another one of those sounds, a sound so low and heated he thought he might go blind with wanting.
“Peter,” she whispered. “Don’t stop.”
He wanted to please her. He had to please her. He dropped his hands to her buttocks and made to tug her body up, just a bit, to feel her against his chest and his cock.
And ohGod, beneath all those layers of silks and skirts, Selina Ravenscroft had the sweetest, roundest, most magnificent ass he’d ever encountered.
He turned an oath into a wordless growl and dragged her against him, suddenly desperate to feel, to hold, to possess…
And it was that—that rough desperation—that brought him back to himself.
He could hurt her like that. He could not be careless with her.
He wanted more than this—more than frenzy and flesh. He wanted so much more with her.
He let her go and lifted his head. She blinked open her eyes and looked up at him, her face flushed, her lips parted. It took every scrap of his limited self-control not to bend his head back, not to spin her around and push her up against the door and find her skin with his hands.
“Marry me,” he said.
Her lips parted further. She stared at him, and the flush in her cheeks faded, degree by agonizing degree.
“I—” she said. “Are you—practicing? Still?”
Oh Jesus Christ, this woman. “I was never practicing. It’s you, Selina. I wantyou.”
Some part of him was shouting that he neededwords. He was good with words. He could tell her that she was extraordinary. He could tell her that when she walked into a room, all the candlelight gathered itself upon her face.
