Page 59 of A Lady of Means
“So very disciplined, Captain.”The way his throat bobbed as he swallowed, keeping his eyes trained on her, made her feel feverish.
“Have to keep my head around you.”
She tipped her drink back.“Thought you’d already lost it.”
“My head, my heart, my family jewels, my sanity,” he laughed, pulling her against his side.She rested her head on his shoulder.
“Do you have to smell so good?”she asked, nuzzling the side of his neck with her nose.
He pulled her tighter to his side.The feel of his arm draped around her, here, alone in her family’s house without any regard for what her family would say if they knew, took her back to another life.To a different man she’d never gotten to love in the light of day.Devyn wasn’t that man, and she wasn’t that girl, but her mind was playing tricks on her.
“Hey,” he tipped her chin up with a finger, a very large finger, to meet his eyes.“Where did you go?Come back to me.”
The concern in his voice, the smell of him, the sheer size of him, the dark tempest of his eyes.He was so much.There was so much to this man.And she wanted everything with him.
Her hand fisted around the strands of hair at the nape of his neck and brought him to her mouth, hitching up her skirts to straddle him.His lips opened, letting her drag her tongue along the inside, scouring the roof of his mouth.She took in the rumble that emanated from deep in his chest and swallowed it greedily.Her hands were hungry marauders, roaming the wide expanse of his shoulders, down the slopes of his honed pectorals to his abdomen, and inside his shirt looking for purchase.
He pulled back and swore.“Moria,” he breathed her name against her hair.
“Mmm,” she whispered, teasing her lips across the exposed skin of his neck.
“What is it you want?”
“There’s a ring on my finger now…”
He swore, low and guttural and heating her to her core.“You’ve been drinking though.”
“I am in full use of my faculties,” Moria covered her eyes.“Ask me about the paintings in this room.”
“The one right behind me?”
“A glowering old miser named Frederick.He was married to the once ravishing redhead in the green dress, in the painting over by the decanters.”
She could feel Devyn turning to look.“And how about between the two windows along the far wall?”
“That’s a picture of my grandfather’s eleven most favorite hunting dogs, and his sons.”
Devyn let out a singularha.“This family of yours.And the one hanging beside the dart board?”
“It isn’t a dart board, it’s for throwing knives.Lawrence got it for Noelle after our parents died, she needed something to do other than write letters.And that would be the seventh Earl’s fourth wife.Isn’t she a beauty?No relation though, but I always loved that purple necklace and was quite sad it got willed to Kathleen.”
Devyn peeled her hands from her eyes.“That’s a lot of eyes watching us.”
“There are no eyes in my bedchamber.”
Devyn looked down pointedly at the barely touched plate on the table in front of them.“You also drank, rather than ate your dinner.”
“I was hungry for something else,” she said, devouring him with her eyes.“Why are you blushing?I’m the debutante, aren’t I supposed to blush?”
“Come here, you viper,” he said, reaching for her.
There was a note of laughter in his voice that wrapped around her, comforting and warm.God above, she could wear his laugh as her favorite frock and never get tired of it.
He was kissing her, one massive hand pulling at her hair pins.She opened her mouth for him.He rewarded this small act with a swipe of his tongue that possessed her own.Her hand snaked into the collar of his shirt and down his back, aiming to pull it over his head.He nipped her bottom lip into his mouth, sucking on it until it released with a pop.
“Oh my god,” she breathed.“You are a fantasy.”
He laughed again, wicked and sinful and boyish.“What fantasies am I conjuring…” his devious mouth traveled to her collarbone.He licked up her neck, bit her earlobe.“Right now?”
