Page 95 of The Duke's Dream
Her turn.
Slipping her hands beneath his lapels, she pulled out his coat.
His turn.
He knelt before her, and his palms trailed a path of fire as they slid down her thighs, peeling her stockings.
Her turn.
Helene unbuttoned his shirt, revealing his torso for the first time. His muscles rippled underneath her palms, and she traced the dark hair sprinkled across his fair skin.
Sighing, she embraced him, pressing her ear to his chest, listening to the steady rhythm of his heart, soaking in his warmth.
Helene stepped back, hands reaching out to pull the shirt down his shoulders. William held both her wrists. And his expression closed.
***
Helene stood before him, her arms resting by her sides, her breasts rising and falling with deep breaths. Her skin was translucent, the candlelight shimmering over her pearly powder. She was a vision of expectant vulnerability, her gaze brimming with tears and unspoken hopes.
Did she understand what she asked? The shield she wanted to remove was his last thread of control.
He told himself it wasn’t about the clothes. He was not made for this sort of intimacy. This baring of souls. They were indeed from different worlds. She, so comfortable in her skin, while he lived in a society that frowned upon a man who bared his own throat.
The dim room seemed to shrink, blurring the boundary between what he struggled to contain and what she longed to set free. His heart raced, and sweat broke across his skin like a soldier in enemy fire, unarmed, bracing for the blade.
“William, what is it?” Her singsong voice shattered his thoughts.
His gaze swept over the room and landed on La Sylphide’s wings.
William caught the pair. Tulle and silk bound by wire and thread made magical by the flickering candlelight. In the dreams, she tempted, and he watched. Though she escaped when dawn came, leaving him dissatisfied with his life, at least his identity remained unchanged.
He lifted the wings for her. “Dance for me.”
“I want to see you, touch you, I—”
“The overture. When La Sylphide dances for a sleeping James.”
Helene’s breath caught, her eyes widening.
Then her chin dropped, and she resembled a child who came for a treat and received instead a reprimand.
Other women might balk, start an endless discussion, or leave.
His Helene sighed.
“Very well.” She turned, offering him her back.
Exhaling, William looped the straps, first over her right arm and then her left. The wings settled between her shoulder blades as if they grew from her pearly skin. Nude, she was beautiful. Clothed in wings, she was his every erotic dream come alive.
His cock hardened, and he kissed the side of her neck, his arms itching to bring her closer, to taste her.
She waltzed away from him, suddenly playful. “James doesn’t kiss La Sylphide.”
William envied Vestris—the closeness of their dance.
“I hate it when you partner him. It’s too sensual—”
Her nose twitched. “I don’t experience my art as sexual.”
