A Wild Night's Bride (The Devil DeVere #1)(23)

Phoebe’s heart wrenched at his self-torment. “It wasn’t your fault,” she said soothingly. “We are all mortal and know not when or how we will be taken from this earth. You showed your love through worship of her body, and she wanted to reciprocate that love by bearing your children. It was natural. It was right. You have no need to torture yourself. It’s been three years. Can you not forgive yourself?”

His violent burst of emotion spent, she pulled him to her breast, holding him tight, comforting him, stroking his hair. How she longed to be loved like that. Moved to her very soul, she feathered kisses on his jaw, his cheek, his eyes. She closed her own as her body stirred. “We all have the same need...to love and be loved. It is not a fault to manifest this need with the desire for physical intimacy.” She realized with a pang that her words echoed the yearnings of her own heart.

He turned to her with a groan of capitulation, capturing her lips. As her kisses became more fevered, his greedy mouth claimed hers, taking total ravenous possession. He possessed her mouth with an agony of hunger, his fingers tangling in her hair and demanding more. He savaged it with lips, teeth, and tongue. Her hands roamed his body of their own accord with a touch no longer designed to comfort, but to arouse. Tearing at his clothes, the forgotten sheet slithered to the floor.

Phoebe found herself on the floor beneath him. Incited with a ferocious need, she moaned into his mouth, twined her arms about his waist, pulling him closer, her body seeking, demanding his hard heat. Lost in this passionate hunger, time and place receded from conscious thought, slipping away toward blessed oblivion...until a set of heavy footfalls and the jangle of keys jarred through the erotic trance.

“Someone’s coming!” She jerked away, frantically grabbing at the abandoned sheet and scrambling for various articles of scattered clothing. Ned lurched to his feet and threw the coverlet and pillows back into place. Simultaneously, they looked to DeVere.

“Good God!” Ned exclaimed. “Where do we put him?”

“In the dressing room. Hurry!”

Grabbing DeVere by the ankles, they dragged his inert body across the parquet and through the dressing room just as the outer doors opened.

“I swear I heard something,” a shrill feminine voice declared.

“Probably just one of the footmen,” a baritone replied.

“There should be no footman about the king’s chambers when he is not in residence. Do you see this?” she asked. “Reeks of brandy.”

“Damn! I forgot the flask!” Ned whispered with a suppressed groan.

“What footman would be drinking brandy unless he filched it from his betters? There’s a rogue afoot, and I intend to find him.”

“My good woman, look around you. The room is empty; there’s naught out of place.”

“I tell you there’s sommat amiss,” she persisted.

Ned cast a panicked gaze around them. “They’re going to search. What do we do?”

“There!” Phoebe pointed. “The closet.”

Dragging him by the shoulders, they somehow managed to pull DeVere into the tight space, prop him up, and close the door of the linen closet, for that is what it had turned out to be. While Phoebe’s heart already raced at the close call and the lurking danger of discovery, the pace quickened to a wild gallop at the realization she was naked and back to chest with Ned.

She closed her eyes and held her breath at the sound of approaching footsteps. Still acutely aroused, her body trembled in mixed trepidation and exhilaration of a blatantly sexual variety. A pair of warm hands settled at her waist. She slowly exhaled. Hot breath caressed her nape, eliciting a quiver low in her belly. Warm lips brushed the juncture of her neck and shoulder as his hands cupped her breasts. She inhaled sharply, but dared not breach the silence even with a whisper.

One of his hands left her breast while the other traced and teased her nipple, filling her with delicious tingles. His body was a solid wall of heat behind her. His hard, pulsing erection pressed against her backside, filling her with aching want and sending a flood of wet heat between her thighs. She bit her fist to suppress a moan.

His hands continued their play, one skirting the outside of her body, hip to thigh and back again, the smoldering flesh of his palm lighting an inferno of sensation along the surface of her skin while the other continued to taunt, tease, and tweak her nipples.

The jangling sound approached the door. A key rattled in the lock just as Ned grasped the handle. With his other hand, he covered Phoebe’s mouth, his low sibilant shh tickling her ear. His tongue followed, hot and wet, tracing the curve of her lobe, finding and gently biting the tip.

“It must be the right key,” the female voice grumbled. The doorknob shook. Ned held it firm.

Her gaze riveted to the door, Phoebe felt fumbling behind her and the hard, hot heat of Ned’s freed staff stroking along the crevice of her buttocks.

“Well, it seems to me a waste of time, m’um,” the guard replied. “A closet door can hardly be locked from the inside.”

His hand slid down the plain of her belly. Phoebe ground against him and felt the smile on his face. With precision born of expertise, he found that secret place of exquisite sensation.

“Humph!” the female replied and withdrew the key from the lock all while Ned’s clever fingers worked their magic—stroking, sliding, strumming, making her body sing with rivulets of pleasure. Overtaken with raw need, she squirmed, aching to receive him, to feel the slide of his sex deeply within her. With blinding bliss building and coiling within her, she could barely contain her whimpers against the growing need for release. Her body tensed, her breath seized, her world blurred, and the very moment the footfalls receded, her world was racked by explosive quivers of ecstasy.