“Your Grace,” Emma murmured as her body melted back into his.
Closing his eyes, he fought the needs of his own body and tuned himself to hers. Their hearts beat in perfect rhythm. His fingers brushed her unbound hair aside, exposing her ear.
“Call me Thomas,” he whispered.
His lips traveled down her neck. Her jasmine scent tickled his nostrils. She tasted young and soft and dangerous and addictive.
“Oh, God, Emma, I can’t help myself. I want you.” He realized with those words that he had wanted her since their first encounter in Boston, when she had arrived in the receiving room slightly breathless, disheveled, and dressed in black mourning garb.
Thomas spun her around, cupped her bottom with one large hand, and curled the other around the back of her neck. Then he crushed his mouth with hers. His brain cried out for him to stop, but Emma was pliant and melted into his kiss. Her soft, innocent, questing lips inflamed him.
A little gasp escaped her, and he took advantage. He swept his tongue inside her luscious mouth, seeking, tasting, and drowning. Thomas never craved anyone so deeply before. God help him, he wanted her, needed her like one needed air to live. One of his hands skimmed up her rib cage and cupped her unbound breast. His knees almost buckled when she shivered in response. Then she stilled.
“No.” She gasped. Her hands pushed against his chest. “Stop,” she demanded.
He dropped his arms, stepped back, and bowed. “Forgive me,” he gasped, attempting to catch his breath and slow the fierce beating of his heart.
Right before his eyes she changed. Her chin came up in defiance, her blue eyes burning into him. She was flushed, not with sensual awareness any longer but with pure anger.
“How dare you take advantage of me in your home?” Her voice vibrated with rage. “You . . . you . . . vile degenerate, you rakehell, rogue . . . despoiler of innocents.”
Before Thomas could apologize again Emma stormed out, leaving him to deal with his own guilt and wounded pride. What the bloody hell had he been thinking?
Oh, that’s right, I’m an idiot. I had not been thinking. I let my lust rule me.
Silently he made a promise to himself that he would never, ever, touch her improperly again. Making that promise shredded his heart, and he knew, given the same circumstances, it was a promise he would not be able to keep.
***
Emma’s bare feet never stopped moving until she reached her bedchamber. Behind the closed door, she dropped to her knees, with heart pounding and body trembling. She wrapped her arms around herself, willing her body to calm.
Time suspended as she relived every single moment of the kiss she and the duke had shared. How he smelled earthy and had tasted faintly like brandy, and how the texture of his tongue tickled her as it invaded her mouth. How his strong yet gentle hands had tantalized and burned her to her core.
She was going straight to hell for the wanton thoughts traveling through her mind. Because Emma knew, even before this, she had craved his hands on her…his kisses. But in the library just now, she had experienced passion that burned low in her belly for him, and she did not fully comprehend the foreign feeling of it. When he had pulled her hips tightly against his hard body, there was no mistaking the bulge in his breeches. That man-part Penelope had warned her about.
Penelope had said men wanted to put that between a woman’s thighs. Only now it did not seem shocking and frightening when she envisioned Thomas doing that to her. Ahh, and he asked her to call him Thomas. But she would not allow herself to think of him as Thomas. He must remain the untouchable duke to her.
Her hands slid up her belly, and she cupped her full sensitive breasts. God help her, she wanted to feel his large hands there again. She lowered one hand to touch between her thighs, shocked at the warm moisture her fingers brushed against. She collapsed onto the floor, sobbing. Surely no gently bred lady would touch herself there or have such wicked thoughts in her head.
What had the duke done to her?
Would she ever feel normal again?
More sobs came as she worried how she would face him on the morrow. Would the dowager duchess, Bella, Amelia, or dear God, Sebastian, know she had changed so much overnight?
Telling herself that what had passed between her and Thomas meant nothing would be a bold-faced lie. For as long as she lived, regardless who she married, she would always and forever treasure the memory buried deep within her soul of the one passionate encounter she’d had with the Duke of Wentworth – the first man to steal her heart.
But what she wanted and needed she could only have in a marriage bed. She knew she could never marry Thomas, that she was not good enough.
She also knew marriage wasn’t what he had wanted from her tonight.