One Dance with a Duke (Stud Club #1)(74)

He laughed at her impatience. “Not for a few weeks, at least. I’ll need to make arrangements, and so will you, I imagine. And in the meantime”—he stroked her back—“we’ll be occupied with your riding lessons. It’s three days by carriage to Gloucestershire, and you’ll be miserable if you can’t ride part of the way.”

She nodded in acquiescence, catching her plump lower lip between her teeth. Oh, how he needed to kiss that mouth.

But before he could act on the impulse, she kissed him first, throwing her arms around his neck to pull him closer. Her tongue teased his, stoking wild sensations in his blood. Raw lust powered through him, sweeping away any vestige of restraint. Together they stumbled into an unused stall, and he threw an arm out to soften the impact as her back collided with the wall.

So much for fragility. And tenderness be damned. Her fingernails raked his scalp, and the kiss was barely a kiss anymore, but more a series of hot, gasping clashes of mouth against open mouth. He slid his palms over all her velvet-cloaked curves—breasts, hips, bottom, thighs.

“Amelia. We shouldn’t begin this if …”

“I want you,” she breathed, rolling her hips against his.

Between the husky promise of her words and the grinding friction of her pelvis, Spencer thought he might spill right then and there. He fisted his hands in her skirts, lifting the folds of velvet above her knee and thrusting his fingers into the flurry of petticoats. She said she wanted him, but he wanted proof. He needed to feel it.

She sighed, biting her lip as his fingertips grazed her bare inner thigh.

The devil in him wanted to tease her, draw out the contact inch by torturous inch—but he’d expended his reserve of patience days ago. He cupped her sex in his palm. A low groan escaped him. God, was she ready. Her most feminine places were hot and wet and quivering under his touch, both erotic and innocent.

But much as he wanted to take her now, he hated to take her here. A sweaty tup against the wall, in a barn reeking of horses—on the second day of their true marriage? He’d planned to make love to her properly the next time, with patience and care. He’d spent the past several days caught up in a haze of his own unrelenting want, and he was beginning to realize, as the fog cleared, that Amelia might have wants of her own.

“Spencer?” Leaning forward, she licked the underside of his jaw and ground her moist heat against his palm. “Last night, when you threatened to take me against the wall, never mind the bed?”

Oh, Jesus.

“Could you do that now?”

Yes. Yes, if that was what she wanted, he most definitely could. And if she met him halfway with the buttons, they could be under way in seconds.

“Hullo?” A faraway voice echoed through the barn. “Hullo there! Amelia, are you in here?”

“Wh—?” Her eyes sparked like candles. Her hands instantly flew to her riding habit, redraping the skirts and smoothing the bodice. Craning her neck, she called to the rafters, “Yes. We’re just here!”

What the devil? Spencer jerked around, hastily running one hand through his hair and adjusting his breeches with the other. He knew that voice, but he couldn’t place it.

“Don’t tell me this is the duchess’s suite.” The voice and accompanying footfalls approached. “Marriages of convenience are all well and good, but I rather expected Morland to provide you finer accommodations than these.”

Spencer still didn’t know who it was, but whoever it was, he felt like hitting the man. But Amelia …

Amelia blushed. And laughed.

She dashed into the aisle to greet the newcomer, and Spencer followed her. When the owner of the irreverent comments came into view, he instantly understood. Understood that a very promising afternoon had just gone to hell.

Biting back a groan, he watched his wife embrace her brother.

“Jack,” she said warmly. “I’m so glad you’ve come.”

Chapter Fifteen

“I must admit,” Amelia said some time later, directing the servant to deposit the tea service on the table, “it’s quite a surprise to see you.”

“A happy one, I hope,” said Jack, shoving his blond hair back from his face. He shared Amelia’s fair coloring—all her brothers did—but he had a greater share of their mother’s refined features. He’d always been “the handsome brother,” long before he’d eagerly donned the black-fleece mantle of “the ne’er-do-well.”

“Yes, of course,” she replied. “Claudia, would you be so good as to pour?”

Even Spencer’s ward had made an appearance, obviously curious about the arrival of this impromptu house guest. The young lady accepted the tea-pouring duty with reluctance, but Amelia offered her no reprieve. Claudia needed the practice serving, and Amelia needed to think.

Why on earth was Jack here?

Of course she’d hoped he’d come out for a visit. She’d spent the last several months dreaming up methods of removing Jack from his debauched London life. That was why she’d sent him a hasty note the day of her marriage, extending him an open invitation to stay at Braxton Hall whenever he wished. But the very same week?

“I would have come even sooner, had I known what lovely scenery Cambridgeshire has to offer.” He gave Claudia a dashing smile, and worry twanged in Amelia’s gut. That quintessential Jack grin worked entirely too well on impressionable young ladies.