Her Favorite Duke (The 1797 Club #2)(48)

“Stop thinking,” Meg whispered with a slow shake of her head. “And get on the bed.”

He stared at her closely. “How do you know I’m thinking?”

“I know you. And you’re getting a wrinkle in your forehead. Just…let tonight be about this and us. The rest will come, the rest will be faced as we get to it.”

He said nothing, but did as she asked and climbed onto the bed. He settled onto the pillows and smiled at her. She was right that tonight he didn’t need to think. Everything would come rushing back tomorrow just as it always did. Tonight he wanted to steal this moment, to make her his wife in every way.

Tomorrow he could suffer the consequences. As he should.

“Now you have me, Your Grace,” he purred. “So what exactly will you do with me?”





Meg’s mouth felt very dry as she stared at Simon, naked on his bed, waiting for her, watching her with a half-smile on his face. In that moment he was her whole world, her whole heart, her everything.

And she wasn’t ready to say that, so tonight she had to show him. This was the only way he would surrender to her, so she had to use that against him. She had to use passion to open his heart.

But when it came to seduction, she had very little knowledge to go from. Her statement that she’d tie him down to allow herself the freedom to explore had been said in haste, and now, in a little more leisure, she regretted it.

“You have the cravat,” he said gently. “So tie me up.”

She nodded as she came across the room. She grabbed one end of the cravat, hissing out pleasure as she dragged the silky fabric across her skin to remove it.

His eyes widened. “Better do it fast, Meg, or I’ll do exactly as you fear. I’ll flip you onto your back, tie you down with it and make love to you until you’re weak from me.”

She swallowed, for that kind of punishment didn’t exactly sound like something she wanted to avoid. But she still leaned in, looping the long white tie around his wrists again and again until his hands were pressed together. She still had quite a bit of length left in the cloth, so she looked around for what to do with it.

The bed had an elaborately carved headrest, one with little grooves and holes in the dark surface. Without hesitation, she darted the ends of the cravat through a hole and tied the ends firmly, leaving him tied to the headboard.

When she stepped back, she found him staring up at her. His cock had somehow gotten harder as she did her work and his breath was short, making his toned stomach lift rapidly. “You are a natural,” he growled. “Now you have me, so what will you do?”

Her hands shook as she lifted her fingers. “Take my hair down,” she whispered.

He chuckled. “So it is to be torture. I can handle torture.”

“I hope so,” she teased as she glided her fingers through her elaborate hairstyle and brought pins clattering to the floor around her. Long locks bounced around her bare shoulders as she did so and he stared at it all, licking his lips like she was a treat he was about to savor.

She felt the same way, of course. Staring at this man, this powerful man, now tied to a bed and laid out for her pleasure, she was almost overwhelmed by what she could do. The freedom she had to play any game she wished.

The power of that was both heady and terrifying.

“You can’t do anything wrong,” he reassured her, as if he could read her mind just as she could read his. “Just do what you’d like.”

She crawled up next to him on the bed, emboldened by his suggestion. Being with him, it had always been him taking and her receiving. Now she wanted to take. She wanted him to receive. She leaned over him, her hair falling across his chest, and kissed him.

He made a soft sound in his throat and opened to her, holding back as she tasted him, traced his tongue, invaded him as she had been invaded so many times before. She felt the coiled tension of his body as he allowed her to rule the kiss, she saw it in the way his hands fisted against the lightly tied knot. She was under no illusion that he couldn’t just rend the fabric in two and have his way.

That he didn’t was a gift, and she knew it.

She eased down his body, tasting his throat, letting her hand slip over the angles of his collarbone and lower to his chest. Her mouth followed the trail of her fingers and she reveled in the taste of his hot skin, the way his muscles bunched beneath her tongue, and his breath caught.

Giving him pleasure was better than anything, and suddenly she knew exactly what she wanted to do to him. She lifted her gaze up his body as she stroked her tongue over his nipple, repeating an action he had taken so many times before. His body arched and she smiled.

The test proved her theory. What pleased her also pleased him. And that encouraged her as she dragged her mouth down his stomach, over the ripples of his muscles there. When she moved even lower, he lifted his head and stared at her.

“What are you doing, Meg?” he whispered, his voice rough and raw with desire.

She smiled as she brushed her lips against his hip. “When you kiss my sex, the explosion is so powerful. I want to test if it would be the same for you.”

He grunted out a curse she’d never heard before and struggled to sit up. “Meg, you don’t have to—”

She ignored him as she wrapped her fingers around his cock and stroked him gently. Now that she’d had him fitted inside of her more than once, now that she’d felt the pleasure that act could bring, she did not fear him anymore. She was simply fascinated by the thrust of him. By the silky feel of his skin. By the hard steel it covered.