Duke of Midnight (Maiden Lane #6)(70)

“Do you remember that morning?” he asked, his voice impossibly deep. “You emerged from the pond like a goddess triumphant. You’d flaunted your ankles the day before”—he brushed warm fingers over her left ankle, making her shiver—“but that morning I saw the tender curve of your inner thigh, the sweet bend of your knee, the shy sweep of your calf. You revealed them as coyly as a siren singing a man to his ecstatic death—and you didn’t even know it, did you? By the time you reached the shore I was hard as iron.”

She blushed at his words, remembering that morning. She had no idea she’d affected him so. To think that they’d talked calmly and all the time his penis had been engorged with want for her.

The very thought made her wet.

Her gaze darted down to his hands on her thighs and then back up to meet those knowing, watchful eyes. He smiled as if he could hear her thoughts. He was bunching the skirts of her wrap and thin chemise in his big fists, slowly drawing the fabric up, revealing her legs—and if she didn’t protest, much more.

And this time she knew exactly what the sight of her legs did to him.

He silently cocked an eyebrow in challenge.

But if he was a predator, all masculine danger, then she was his rightful mate. She’d roamed the forest alone as a child. Had swum the pond, stalked squirrels, climbed trees like a wanton. Deep inside, hidden by the bland costume of a lady’s companion, she was just as dangerous as he.

Just as daring.

So she let her own mouth curl as she leaned back in the chair. If he expected maidenly fear or outrage from her, he’d be disappointed.

She wasn’t a maiden anymore.

His eyes lit with almost boyish mischief, his usually stern mouth curling further, and he inclined his head, just slightly, as if in approval.

And then he pushed her skirts up over her hips in one movement, baring everything below her waist to his gaze.

She swallowed a gasp. He wouldn’t frighten her into crying off.

He held her gaze, not even looking at what was spread just below his chin, as he turned his body completely, slowly thrusting his long legs under the chair so he sat on the floor facing her, her lap like a feast before him. His thumbs rubbed slow circles on her hipbones as if to gentle her or maybe to keep her relaxed. Although if that were his purpose, it wasn’t working. She still held his gaze in defiance, but her breath was quickening as if she were climbing a staircase.

Abruptly he looked down.

He stilled, simply staring at her. He made no movement, but there was a wild possessiveness in his eyes that made something inside her stretch and purr in response. He wanted her. Wanted this part of her. She was suddenly jealous of any other woman he’d ever looked at like this. He hadn’t the right—they hadn’t the right. This look, his expression, this moment was only between them and no one else.

They were a universe of two.

It was almost unbearably intimate, but she made herself watch as he spread wide his fingers and drew his hands down over her hipbones, over that tender spot where thigh met hip, until his forefingers brushed her curling hair. His thumbs continued down under her leg until he held each of her upper thighs in his hands. He pushed, slowly, inevitably, making her widen her legs further, helping her to hook one leg over the arm of the chair, until she lay open before him, a lewd offering.

He bowed before her then, like a priest worshipping at an altar, and she watched, her breath catching and breaking in her lungs, as he licked her.

The touch of his hot, moist tongue against her there was so exquisite that she trembled and shut her eyes. It was the most amazing feeling, both terrible and right, and she knew that she would never be the same after this moment. Here, now, he was tearing down the walls of her facade, crumbling the stone, dissolving the mortar. Laying bare the woman within, and the most frightening thing was she wasn’t completely sure who that woman was.

She’d never met her.

He spread her folds with his thumbs and licked into her crevasse, and she arched her neck and groaned. Loudly. Deeply. Without any way to stop the sound.

She felt him open his mouth against her flesh as if he would inhale her, and her heart beat so fast she thought she might die. He laid the flat of his tongue against her nub and pressed and kissed and sucked, and she swore her heart stopped beating completely. It was like a seizure, like a spasm of the soul. Her body quaked, and she caught his head between her palms to hold him there against her. Her hips moved gently, beneath his mouth, rising and falling to meet his relentless kiss. She threw her head back, her back arching, as he flicked his tongue against her, fast and hard and obscene, wet noises filling the room. She didn’t know if she would survive if he went on, but she knew she would die if he stopped.

And when the culmination hit her, she rose. Like an eagle spreading her wings, catching a hot, percussive wave from an explosion below.

She flew and was reborn.

When she at last opened her eyes, she saw him watching her, his mouth still between her thighs, the heat of his gaze enough to scald her newborn skin.

She swallowed, caressing his cheek, and tried to think of some way to express her gratitude, but she’d lost the art of language.

He lifted his head then, and she couldn’t even find the stamina to resent the self-satisfied curl of his lips. He put his hands on her waist and pulled her, gently helping her to fall into his lap, her legs straddling his. He placed one hand at the back of her head and kissed her and when she tasted a kind of tang on his lips, she knew where it had come from.