Page 61 of A Duke for Diana
She started to hurry off, then paused. “If you wish to dance with Rosy, now would be the time to ask her. I . . . um . . . heard Grenwood say he was going to the tearoom.”
When Winston brightened before hurrying away, she wondered if she’d been unwise to encourage him. But she didn’t stay to find out. Besides, his interest in Rosy helped her as much as him, because it meant he could truthfully tell prying people she had gone to the retiring room and Geoffrey to the tearoom.
Ifanyone happened to notice, which they probably wouldn’t anyway.
She went out toward the retiring room, thankful she saw no one in the hall. Passing by its entrance, she headed for the stairwell and managed to slip into it before anyone saw her. She’d barely entered when Geoffrey melted from out of the dim light to hold his finger to her lips. Then he led her downstairs and through a door to a part of the building she’d never been in before.
While she knew the building was home not only to Almack’s assembly rooms but to various lodgings, she hadn’t thought about what they must be like, so she was surprised when he unlocked the door to one and led her inside.
The room was fully furnished, which took her by surprise. “Whose lodgings are these?”
“Mine. That’s how I got the floor plan of the building. I told the owner I wanted to rent a furnished room for a private gathering of my bachelor friends next week, and he insisted upon my renting it for a month. So here we are.”
“But you can’t . . . I don’t think . . . Doesn’t anybody know you’ve rented it?”
“No one but you and me. And the owner, of course, who’s delighted to have a duke as a tenant.” He took her gloved hand and kissed it, which somehow felt more intimate than when he’d kissed her lips before. The lighting was low, and they were alone. It was wonderfully forbidden.
And when he kissed his way up her arm to the bend in her elbow, it became even more so. He tasted her there . . . actuallytastedher with his tongue, and that shot a current of excitement through her.
“Geoffrey,” she said in a soft voice. “I–I thought we could . . . talk.”
“Later,” he rasped.
Later?Oh dear.
Now he was holding her loosely about the waist so he could kiss the part of her breasts showing above her bodice, and she couldn’t breathe for the thrill of it.
But if they were caught... “How much later? We . . . we have to return before eleven . . . when they serve supper.”
“I heard the supper isn’t that good,” he murmured, thumbing her nipple through her gown.
Oh. My. Word. “That’s n–not the point.” When he ran kisses up her throat to her ear while also kneading her breast, she moaned. It feltsogood,sowicked. “At least one of us . . . must be there, or people will . . . notice . . . So we have to leave . . . well before then.”
“And we will. But that still gives me plenty of time to feast on you,” he whispered, then nipped her ear as if he literally meant to devour her.
“What do you . . . mean?”
“I’ll show you.” He pulled back to stare at her, eyes glittering like blue flames in the lamplight. “It finally dawned on me that I can introduce you to pleasure without ruining you. You’ll walk out of here as chaste as when you came in.” Dragging up her skirts, he backed her toward a sofa, then settled her down upon it as gently as a bird settling onto her nest. “And then you’ll know . . . whether it’s worth marrying for.”
The mention of marriage confused her. He didn’t want to marry—he’d told her so. Had he changed his mind? Hadshe?
Heedless of her fixing on that word, he pushed her gown up to her waist, exposing every part of her below. When she started to close her legs, he murmured, “No, no,” and pushed them carefully apart. “I want to taste you here . . .” He licked her inner thigh. “And here . . .” He licked her other inner thigh. “And then I want to sip your honey.”
Good Lord, what didthatmean? The “fallen females” had said naught of sipping honey when they’d tried to explain what lying with a man entailed.
Then his hot mouth covered her mons and his tongue flicked her soft folds, and she nearly lost her mind. Sothat’swhat he meant by “honey.”
But he wasn’t exactly . . . sipping it. He was stroking and flicking andcaressingher tender flesh with his mouth and tongue so exquisitely that she grabbed for his head to press him closer. He chuckled against her, then resumed lashing her most deliciously with his tongue.
Now he was thrusting his tongueinsideher. Oh . . .Lord. The most scandalous sensations rocketed through her. She pushed against his mouth, and he pressed his thumb over a place she’d found it pleasant to rub herself in the past. Except that whenhedid it . . .
“Yes,” she choked out. “Like that . . . good heavens . . .”
His tongue drove into her, harder, faster, and his thumb worked her in perfect accord, until she felt as if an invisible string pulled her up into the air and she thought she might fly . . . or die . . . or quite wellexplode.
And then she did, her back arching, her hands clutching his head, her body shattering around his tongue and thumb.
Then she sank back depleted. Her senses were still vibrating as if the plucking of the invisible string still reverberated inside her. How . . . marvelous.
