A Taste of Desire(114)

Weakly, Amelia twisted her head trying to dislodge his mouth. “Don’t try to-to distract me, Thomas….” His name ended on a moan when he nipped her neck with his teeth then proceeded to soothe the spot with his tongue.

Perhaps he took pity on her, reduced as she was to gasps and whimpers of pleasure, for he raised his head and regarded her somberly. “I swear to you, she is nothing to me. A folly of my youth, nothing more. Since her return to England, I hadn’t seen her for seven years. God, Amelia, you must know by now I love you and only you.”

Amelia’s breath stilled, all thoughts of the duchess forgotten. Dazed, she wondered if she’d heard him correctly. Then he was kissing her, sucking her into a maelstrom of passion. Oh, Thomas, I love you too, she yearned to say but she found the words impossible to say aloud. She gave herself up to his kisses, his touch, and the promise of more to come. She’d confess her love to him later. Yes, very soon. Perhaps, after the kiss.





Chapter 29



“Mademoiselle, the baron is here!” Hélène’s panicked voice penetrated Amelia’s bemused thoughts.

As it was, Amelia didn’t confess her feelings to Thomas after the kiss, which had quickly escalated to intimate touching and heavy fondling. Thomas had halted it before it had burned out of control. After they parted company at the bottom of the stairs, their bodies still throbbing with unfulfilled desire, she took herself off to her chamber to rest until the evening meal.

“The who?”

“Lord Clayborough. ‘E is ‘ere. Out there.” Her hand gestured wildly at the window.

“But—” Amelia broke off. Lord Clayborough was at Stoneridge Hall? Good Lord, why? Then she recalled one of the last things she said to him when she was in town. Next time don’t require a written invitation. You know where I am. Well, this was a fine time for him to start listening to her.

Lord, that time felt like eons ago, the events happening to a different woman at another time in her unhappy life. She wasn’t that woman any longer, and she hadn’t wanted to marry the baron for some time now. Blast, she should have written him the moment she’d realized. Now he was here—at Thomas’s home. A wave of terror swept over her. Good Lord, if Thomas were to discover … With ruthless calculation, she squashed further such thoughts. She had to think. She needed to find a way out of this miserable situation.

“And you saw him where?”

“I-I, um, well, Johns was showing me the grounds before it got too dark, and ‘e saw us near the groundskeeper’s house. ‘E’s zare now.” A blush painted Hélène’s face red as she lowered her gaze.

Another time Amelia would have found her maid’s discomfiture at having to explain her tryst with one of the footmen amusing, but now wasn’t that time.

Think, Amelia, think. Dare she risk meeting with him now? Or worse yet, dare she not? She thought of Thomas and knew her future happiness hinged on what she did now.

Everyone had turned in for the evening, and ten or fifteen minutes was all the time she needed to send Lord Clayborough on his way. No doubt, he would be disappointed, but it was not as though they were a love match.

“I’ll need my cloak.” The decision made, Amelia wanted nothing more than an expeditious ending to the entire affair with Lord Clayborough.


Thomas couldn’t sleep, which came as no great surprise to him. After the kiss in the library, it was a small miracle he could walk upright. He’d existed in a state of semi-arousal for the remainder of the evening.

Supper had been an exercise in self-control. Food was necessary and food could be pleasurable, but never had he imagined it could be sensual as well. But then he’d never watched Amelia joyously consume a dish while imagining what it would be like to have her lips wrapped around him. The sight of her savoring the chocolate-dipped strawberry had made him harder than a poker iron. A veritable feast for the palate indeed.

They’d parted company at her bedchamber door, his control too tenuous for even a chaste kiss on the cheek. To touch her would have been the height of foolishness, given his noble intention not to forsake his mother and sisters and screw her blind.

An hour later, however, as he lay in his bed nursing an unflagging erection, his bed linens in disarray, he was having second, third, and fourth thoughts about the hindrance that was his moral code, which was keeping him from her bed. After all, he was going to marry her. Theirs wasn’t some torrid, illicit love affair. And, of course, they would be discreet. His mother and sisters would never know, for they occupied bedchambers in a different wing.