The Wicked Ways of a Duke(34)

“What I wanted?” His voice was low and thick, his warm breath was making her shiver.

“That night at the opera, you said you’d like to see me tipsy.” She moaned as he pressed kisses along her throat. “I think I’m tipsy now.”

He laughed softly and slid his free hand into her hair, tilting her head back. “Then kiss me, tipsy girl.”

Prudence stood on her toes and twined her arms around his neck. Her lips parted willingly beneath his, but when he deepened the kiss and his tongue touched hers, she stirred in involuntary surprise. She started to pull back, but his hand tightened in her hair to keep her where she was, and his mouth tasted hers in a lush, openmouthed kiss that was so sensual, so blatantly carnal, she knew he must have learned it from those French cancan dancers. She feared she was equally carnal, however, for when he withdrew, she followed his move, pressing her tongue into his mouth.

That seemed to ignite something inside him, for he made a rough sound against her mouth and leaned into her, using his body to maneuver her backward. Before she could guess his intent, Prudence felt herself sinking into the softness of her sleeping berth.

“What are you doing?” she gasped, shocked by the masculine strength of his body as he followed her down, his weight pressing her into the mattress.

“You’re already tipsy. I’m going to make you drunk.” His mouth opened over hers and he began to fulfill that pledge, kissing her again and again—soft, slow, deep kisses that spread aching warmth through her from her head to her toes, making her feel as if she had indeed been drinking spirits.

There was a particular hardness in his body where he was pressed against her. Having lived in the country most of her life, she realized what it meant, and she knew she ought to stop him, but as she moved against him, it felt so good, she could not will herself to call a halt. She squeezed her eyes shut in shame and delight, and relished the feel of his body against hers. She must be drunk, she decided, for never, even in her most secret, romantic dreams, had she imagined a man could make her feel like this.

But as dazed as she was, as glorious as it felt, she hadn’t completely lost her wits. When his hand slid between their bodies, she instinctively guessed his intent, and when he began to unbutton her jacket, she flattened her palms against his shoulders to stop him. It was a token resistance, however, for his kisses seemed to have robbed her of all willpower.

He ignored this halfhearted protest and continued to kiss her, sliding his hand inside the front of her jacket. He opened his hand intimately over her breast, embracing it through the layers of her shirtwaist, corset, and chemise. She moaned with pleasure as his hand began to shape and cradle her breast, but when he began to unfasten the buttons of her shirtwaist, she knew her virtue was in serious jeopardy.

She broke the kiss, sucking in a deep gasp for air as she once again pushed at his shoulders, more forcefully this time. “We have to stop.”

“Why?” He tilted his head and kissed the base of her throat as he continued unfastening buttons. “This is what married people do.”

“We’re not married yet.”

“The wedding is in six weeks. I think it counts.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head, knowing that was nonsense. “I’m a respectable woman,” she said, trying to remind both of them of that fact.

His hand slid inside her shirtwaist. “I respect you.”

He sounded sincere, but no man, even a man as noble as Rhys, could be trusted on this particular point. Her own mother had discovered that painful truth about the male sex, as had many a girl-bachelor at the lodging house. She strived to remember all the times Mrs. Morris had sat with young women in the parlor of Little Russell Street, listening to tales of what men had promised, handing over handkerchiefs, inquiring about family, and sometimes murmuring a delicate suggestion that seven months or so of country air at a discreet place in Hampshire could do a brokenhearted girl a world of good. But with Rhys’s fingertips caressing her bare skin just above the lacy edge of her undergarments, his palm cupping her breast, it was hard to remember cautionary tales.

Prudence began to waver. They were going to marry, it was only a matter of time. But perhaps her mother had thought that, too. The wedding her father promised had never happened, and she had been the result. Desperate, feeling a wave of panic, she seized his wrist. “We can’t,” she whispered, opening her eyes. “Not until after the wedding.”

He stilled, his breathing hot against her throat. “Prudence, I want to touch you. I’ve wanted this, dreamed of it, from the very first moment I ever saw you.”

His words thrilled her to the very core, but she tightened her grip on his wrist, clinging to virtue, trying to remember sanity.

“I won’t let things go too far,” he told her, nuzzling her throat. But when she still did not relent, he took a deep breath and lifted his head to look into her eyes, caressing her breast as he braced his weight on his other arm. “I give you my word. Just don’t stop me yet.” His hand tightened and he closed his eyes, swallowing hard. “For God’s sake, not yet.”

He was an honorable man. She knew that as surely as she knew anything. He wouldn’t ever deceive her. Her grip on his wrist relaxed. “Not yet, then,” she whispered, unable to deny him just a little bit more of what he wanted.

He shifted his hand, sliding it inside the top of her corset and chemise. His fingertips grazed her nipple and she cried out, her body jerking sharply. She wanted to pull away, but his hips pinned hers to the berth and she could only writhe helplessly beneath him as he rolled her nipple between two fingers. She began to moan low in her throat, and he kissed her, long and deep, taking the sounds of her agitation into his mouth as he groaned in reply.

As he kissed her, his hand tightened, shaping her breast and toying with her nipple within the tight confines of her clothing. She stirred beneath him, but the weight of his body on top of hers limited her movements, and a strange tension began to build inside her. What he was doing felt so exquisite, and she began to yearn for more. When he withdrew his hand and rolled to his side, she cried out again, this time in vexation.

He laughed, the wicked man, blowing warm breath against her neck. “I thought you wanted me to stop,” he murmured, and grasped a handful of her skirt in his fingers, pulling it upward. “Do you want me to stop now?”

She shook her head, unable to think clearly, knowing only how she felt. “Not yet,” she gasped. “Not yet.”

Rhys’s hand slipped beneath her skirt and petticoat, then glided up her leg, across her hip and between her thighs, his touch scorching her beneath the thin lawn material of her drawers. The tension inside her continued to build as his fingers eased inside the slit of her drawers, and when he touched the dark curls there, she felt her whole body blushing in response.

“I could stop,” he said, the tip of his finger caressing her in her most intimate place. “Is that what you want?”

She tried to speak, but a frantic, “N-N-N…” was all she could manage, for her body was on fire with shameful excitement, excitement that flared higher with each touch of his fingers. As he stroked her, she could hear strange sounds coming from her own throat, sounds like none she had ever made, primitive, high-pitched animal sounds. Her body moved in frantic little jerks that she could not stop.

“What, then?” he asked softly. “If you don’t want me to stop, then what do you want, sweetheart? Hmm?”

Prudence didn’t know how to answer him. Need clawed at her, need for something she could not name. She shook her head, desperate, helpless to articulate what she did not understand.

“Is this it?” His finger began circling one particular spot in a way that was feather light and yet made her sob with pleasure. “Is this what you want?”

“Yes,” she panted, desperate, frantic, unable to say anything beyond that one word. “Yes, yes, yes.”

And then the feelings swirling within her seemed to coalesce into a ball of fire. The pleasure became unbearable, and she cried out his name as everything within her flared up and exploded in a white-hot flash, followed by waves of the most exquisite pleasure she had ever felt, waves that seemed to go on and on as he caressed her and she gasped his name.

Afterward, as the wild euphoria ebbed away, she felt him withdraw his hand, and she opened her eyes to find him leaning over her.

“My goodness,” she whispered, amazed by the extraordinary thing he had just done to her.

He smiled at that, and her heart twisted with the same aching sweetness she always felt when she saw him smile.

She smiled back. “You kept your word.”

He kissed her nose and tugged her skirt back down. “Damned heroic of me, too.”

His voice had that light, careless note, but his breathing was ragged, as if he’d been running, and she could still feel the hardness of him pressed against her hip. She thought again of the whispered stories at the lodging house about gentlemen’s animal nature, and she knew it couldn’t have been easy for him to keep his word.

“Very heroic,” she agreed, and lifted her hands to touch his face. He held himself above her, motionless, as she traced the lean planes of his cheeks and the square lines of his jaw and the thick, blunt, brown lashes of his eyes.