Page 16 of Til Death Duke Us Part
“Make a maid’s visage temporarily more beautiful. Change the outside of a cottage so it looks less derelict. People pay for it. I’ve done it before. Doesn’t last forever, but it makes them happy in the moment. Happy enough to pay me. That’s all I care for.” He wasn’t interested in that right now. “Now, can we discuss what it will take for you to wrap those strong little legs around my hips and?—”
“Stop!” She held out a defiant palm, as if it were a wall his words would simply bounce off. “You should not say such things.”
“And why not?” He took several steps forward. Until he could touch her. Made no sense, but he wanted to fuck her senseless. He curled his fingers beneath her chin and lifted it. He couldn’t look away from her lips. Pink and pouty and so very damnably kissable. “Why not, Persephone Graves?”
“Because I want you to do everything you’re saying,” she whispered. “And because I cannot think of any reason you should not.”
“Fabulous.”
He crashed into her—legs and belly and chest and breasts and hands and curves and lips.
“This is mad,” she said as she ripped his clothes off.
“Entirely unreasonable,” he agreed as he yanked her bodice down so hard they heard a rip.
“I don’t even like you.” She sucked his tongue into her mouth.
“You’re hardly up to my usual standards.” He grazed his lips along her neck.
She tangled her hand in the hair at the back of his head and yanked it hard. “Be nice.”
He could do that easily. “I cannot remember the last time I felt this deliriously anxious to kiss a woman’s breasts. Do you know what your body looks like licked in flames?” He shivered, and she felt him grow hard.
“You were watching me when I was bathing.” She gasped as his tongue circled her nipple through the thin lawn of her chemise.
“And you knew it.” He spoke softly, his lips grazing the sensitive skin of her breasts. “Puffing out your chest and lengthening your neck. All those little moans as you cleaned yourself. Don’t tell me you weren’t torturing me.”
“I was torturing you.”
“Knew it,” he purred against her mouth. He clutched her more tightly and slammed her against the nearest wall. The breath left her, and he swallowed it with a kiss. Harder than before. Never in his life had he felt such need. The need was everywhere. All around him, inside every inch of him. Hard and demanding. It even pulsed around his finger where that little band of gold lied to the world. Somehow, through that ring, he felt her moan before he heard it.
He pulled back a little to take in more fully the sight of her generous breasts spilling from her corset. “Fuck. Gorgeous.” He growled. “Time to feast.” She tasted wonderfully sweet—sweaty and ripe. He hooked a knee between her legs, and he didn’t have to say a thing for her to grind against the muscle of his thigh. The little grunt of pleasure she gave sent a shock of desire straight to his cock.
“Good girl,” he said, scraping his teeth along the gentle swell of one breast.
“Girl,” she snarled, pulling his hair again. “I’m not some little thing you can ruin. I’m a woman, damn you. And you, duke, will respect that.”
He threw his head back and laughed heartily, because no one had ever dared talk to him like that, certainly not a little runt of a woman with big breasts and an even bigger mouth.
She didn’t melt beneath his touch. She stood strong and with that hard muscle of her arm and her thigh took what she wanted.
Thank God what she wanted at that moment was him.
“My mistake,” he said, “the last one I’ll make tonight.” He slid his hand lower, gathered up all the excessive material of her skirts and her shift, and when he found the silk of her skin beneath all the nonsense of her undergarments, she shuddered, melted in his arms. He found her warm and wet, and he set about making her moan and squirm.
After he found the pulsing pearl at her center, it took so very little to make her break.
And somehow he felt her climax, knew it was coming before it happened. The intensity of it almost broke him, too, but he tightened his jaw and held fast to control, watching her shiver and shake as she fell apart in his arms.
He’d always taken delight in giving pleasure, but this was so different, so much more. It was as if he felt her pleasure in his very bones. And when in the throes of ecstasy, her little hand kept squeezing his cock—rubbing it through his fall with the practiced gestures of a courtesan or a widow—it didn’t take much for him to lose control.
Or perhaps she’d wrested it from him, refusing to do this alone.
Her eyes flew open, locked with his just before he spent in his trousers. Her mouth curled into a wicked grin, as if she knew before him, with him, what was about to happen. He cursed through his orgasm because it was so good, because it should not be so good.
And when he leaned his forearms on the wall on either side of her head, it was to keep himself up as much as it was to keep her. She was draped on him, his very own warm, curvaceous little greatcoat. She was quivering. He was shaking. And fuck.
What the hell had just happened?
