Devil's Daughter (The Ravenels #5)(75)

“I’ll do my best,” she said doubtfully, glancing at the upthrust length of him. “Although it’s a bit more responsibility than one would wish for.”

“Be grateful you don’t have to live with it,” he advised, pulling her onto his lap so she was facing him.

Seeming to enjoy her blushing discomfiture, West opened the almond oil, shook a few drops into one of her hands, and set the flask on the floor beside the chair. “Will you?” he asked softly.

“You . . . wish me to apply it?” she asked, thoroughly flustered to find herself sitting naked on a man’s thighs in such an outlandish posture.

“Please.”

Tentatively she rubbed the oil between her hands and reached for his face.

West caught her slim wrists, his blue eyes laughing at her. “Not there, sweetheart.” Slowly he drew her hands down to the thick shaft straining between them.

“Oh.” Mortified and amused, Phoebe stroked the length of him, covering the satiny, ruddy skin with a thin sheen of oil. His male part was large and well shaped, the rigid flesh alive with pulses and deep-secreted quivers. His breath became unsteady as she caressed him from base to tip and let her fingers slide back down to the heavy sack below.

“You’re handsome even here,” Phoebe murmured, gently grasping him with both hands.

“Thank you. I’m rather partial to it. However, I don’t agree. Women’s bodies are works of grace and form. Men’s bodies are strictly for function.”

“Women’s bodies serve some rather important functions as well.”

“Yes, but they’re always beautiful.” His fingertips went to her stomach, tracing the delicate crescent of a stretch mark gleaming silver in the daylight. “What was it like?” he asked quietly.

“Giving birth?” Phoebe glanced down ruefully at the faint lines low on her belly. “It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I was grateful to have the benefit of modern medicine.” Her lips quirked as she watched his fingertips move from one mark to another. “They’re not pretty, are they?”

His gaze met hers with surprise. “Everything about you is pretty. These are marks of a life well lived, and risks taken, and miracles you brought into the world. They’re signs of having loved and been loved.” He brought her closer, lifting her to her knees so he could kiss her throat and the upper curves of her breasts. “I’m sorry to say,” he continued, his voice muffled in her cleavage, “my respect for the institution of motherhood doesn’t affect in the least my desire to debauch you thoroughly.”

Phoebe curled her arms around his neck and rubbed her cheek against the black-brown locks of his hair. Bringing her mouth close to his ear, she whispered, “I’m not sorry about that.”

To her surprise, she felt a fine tremor go through him, like the vibrations of a piano wire. Drawing back, she stared into his flushed face, and smiled with a hint of triumph. “That’s the sound, isn’t it? . . . the one that gives you tingles. It’s a woman’s whisper.”





Chapter 26




“I admit nothing of the kind,” West said, resuming his attentions to her breasts, cupping them together and kissing her nipples. Fastening his mouth on a stiff peak, he drew it deep and suckled. Gradually one of his hands smoothed over her stomach, down to her groin, idly fluffing the red curls. Despite his physical strength, he handled her with stunning gentleness, his caresses skillful and indirect, building anticipation.

His touch skimmed through delicately layered flesh, pressing her open like petals. The tip of his middle finger eased around the half-hidden nub, playing lightly. At the same time, his mouth moved to her other breast. Still straddling him on her knees, Phoebe felt her thighs quiver dangerously. She sank lower and jerked as she felt the taut head of his sex press against her.

“Don’t stop,” he said against her breast, one of his palms sliding over her bottom to guide her. At her hesitation, he lifted his head and read the uncertainty in her expression. “You’ve never done it this way?”

“Henry and I were both virgins. We only knew how to do it the one way.”

West gave her a skeptical glance. “You never looked at erotic postcards together? You would have discovered no end of ideas.”

“Never,” Phoebe exclaimed, more than a little shocked by the idea. “For one thing, Henry wouldn’t have known where to find such materials—”

“The booksellers on Holywell Street and Drury Lane keep them behind the counters,” he said helpfully.

“—and for another, he would never have shown anything like that to me.”

West’s eyes sparkled wickedly. “What would you have done if he had?”

Taken aback by the question, Phoebe opened her mouth to reply, then closed it. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I suppose . . . I might have looked at one.”

He laughed. “Only one?”

“Or two,” Phoebe said, so embarrassed she half-expected to burst into flames. She leaned forward to hide her face on his shoulder. “Let’s not talk about dirty postcards.”

“You’re having fun, you naughty girl,” he said, one of his arms sliding around her, “Admit it.”

Phoebe smiled against his shoulder. She loved how he teased her, the way no man would ever tease a duke’s daughter or a respectable widow. “A little,” she said.