No Good Duke Goes Unpunished (The Rules of Scoundrels #3)(84)

God help him, he told her the truth. He wasn’t certain he could do anything but. “I do, love. I want you more than you could ever know. More than I could have ever dreamed. I want you enough for two men. For ten.”

She laughed at that, the sound coming on a wicked movement of strong hips and soft stomach. “I don’t require ten. Just you.”

Even as he knew he would never be worthy enough for her, the words went straight to the hard, straining length of him, and he knew he would never be able to resist her—not when she asked with truth in her big blue eyes and passion on her soft, lyric voice.

He leaned in, and spoke to the heart of her. “And you shall have me.”

And then he was where he had wanted to be for a week. For longer. He removed his hand from where it had been working its irresistible rhythm, retreating slowly, killing them both until she moved to seek his touch. He couldn’t stop the wicked grin that spread across his face at the proof that she wanted him. “Easy.”

“No.” The word came out on a near desperate whine. “Now, Cross.”

“So demanding,” he teased, his blood running hot at her insistence. “Now, it is.” And he spread her gently, revealing the core of her, willing and wet and perfect.

He kissed her then, the way he’d promised he would that night in his office, the way he’d dreamed late at night as he lay in the darkness and imagined this vision of a woman rising above him, open and available for worship.

Just as she was now, standing above him, one hand holding her sapphire skirts, the other thrust into his hair, holding him against her as he pressed his tongue into her softness, savoring her taste, making love to her with slow, languid strokes that made her sigh and writhe and push against him. She was pleasure and heat and passion—the first, fresh drink of water after years in the desert.

He found the heart of her desire, working it first slowly, then longer and faster until time faded and he was wrapped in her sound and her feel and her taste, with no desire to move or stray from her. He’d promised her hours, and he could make good on it—he could worship her from here, on his knees, for an eternity.

She lost her grip on her skirts, and her thighs trembled against him as she arched away from the wall, a wicked, wonderful offering. He took it without question, reaching up to hold her, returning his fingers to the heat of her in one long, deep thrust.

She came apart then, against his hands and his mouth, crying her pleasure beneath his tongue and teeth, and he carried her over the edge, through her passion, working her with his touch and his kiss and every bit of desire and depravity he’d resisted over the last six years . . . over longer than that. He reveled in her softness and her sounds, not wanting to leave her. Wanting the experience with her.

She called out his name, her fingers tight in his hair, and he came with her, hard and hot and unavoidable. And in that moment, his own pleasure startled from him by hers, he should have felt embarrassment or shame or something infinitely more base. But instead he felt as though he’d been waiting for that moment.

For her.

And there, in the darkness, her soft cries echoed by the roar of London’s wealthiest gamers scant feet away, he caught his breath and ran his hands along her thighs, guiding her skirts back into place, and considered the startling possibility that Pippa Marbury was indeed his savior.

The thought rocketed through him as quick and unexpected as his climax, and he bowed his head, looking down at her little sapphire slippers, shocked as hell, even as he knelt at her feet and reveled in the feel of her hands in his hair.

That’s how Temple found them.

He came up short just inside the door to the owner’s suite, six feet of muscle going perfectly still, his scarred face a portrait of shock. “Shit,” he said, backing up, propelled from the space by its intimacy. “I didn’t—”

Pippa’s hands moved like lightning, and Cross was naked at the loss of her touch. “Your Grace,” she said, and Temple’s title startled him, a reminder of all their places. Of the wrongness of her being here. “I— We—”

He needed time to think.

He needed time to understand what had just happened.

How everything had changed.

He rose. “Get out.”

Pippa turned her wide gaze on him. “Me?”

No. Never her. But he couldn’t bring himself to speak to her yet. He didn’t know what he would say. How he would say it. She’d wrecked him, thoroughly, and he wasn’t prepared for it. For her.

For the way she made him feel.

For the things she made him do.

For the future she tempted him with.

“I think he meant me, my lady,” Temple cut in.

Then why was he still here?

Temple replied as though Cross had spoken the words aloud.

“Knight has arrived.”

Chapter Fourteen

Oh, my.

It seems that all the discussion of brute beasts and carnal lust addressed in the text of the wedding vows was not just for the groom.

I have never in my life felt anything so . . .

Remarkable.

Magnificent.

Emotional.

Unscientific.

The Scientific Journal of Lady Philippa Marbury

March 30, 1831; six days prior to her wedding

He left Pippa immediately, releasing her into Temple’s protection, even as he loathed the idea of her in his club with another man, outside of his own protection. Outside of his sight.