Her Reformed Rake (Wicked Husbands #3)(43)
A blessing, she’d said, her sweet voice redolent with maternal love. Sebastian had always fancied it a curse, an imperfection that rendered his face asymmetrical. But the way Daisy’s gaze stole to it with such a rapt expression, he was beginning to think perhaps his mother had been right after all.
“Which statement don’t you agree with, darling?” he asked Daisy with cheeky intention. “That getting acquainted with each other without your dressing gown as an impediment will be enjoyable, or my name?”
“Your name,” replied the minx, surprising him with a teasing smile of her own. “I’m sure your name is something sensible and suitably haughty, something more along the lines of William or Alistair.”
A strange sensation, heavy and warm and altogether unfamiliar, slid through his chest as he shared a smile with her. What the hell was it? Some odd sensation of… rightness? Was that the proper word? No, he decided instantly. More than likely, it was something else, caused by frustrated lust.
“Is Sebastian not a sensible name?” He traced the bridge of her nose with his index finger.
Strange how even touching her there, in such a seemingly innocent location, made his ballocks tighten in anticipation. He hesitated at the tip, the two of them connected by such an infinitesimal touch and yet the torrent of need between them so deep and raging. She could feel it too, this inevitable attraction they shared, sparking and threatening to burn into a full-blown flame. He could see it in the way her eyes flared, her pupils dilated, her lush mouth dipped open and her raspberry-dessert breath ghosted over his lips.
Raspberry had never been so bloody intoxicating.
“I’ve never thought it a sensible name,” she said into the charged silence. “Though perhaps it does bring to mind the sort of man who gets churlish when his wife is late for dinner.”
The chuckle burst forth from him before he even knew it was there. He had been an utter boor to her, hadn’t he? And solely because he found it so goddamn difficult to keep her at arm’s length when all he wanted was to keep her here, like this: warm and smiling and beautiful, her eyes laughing into his, her decadent pink mouth just a dip of his head away from being kissed.
Bloody hell.
Before thoughts of duty and loyalty and doubt could stop him, he dropped his hand to its natural home on the nip of her waist and lowered his mouth to hers. Fitting his lips to hers, he kissed her, coaxing her to respond with gentle pressure. He took his time with that kiss, drinking her in, savoring her.
“I’m certain,” he added against her mouth before kissing her again. This time, his tongue teased the seam of her lips, requesting entrance. She opened to him, and he swept inside. Raspberry-sweet and all that was delicious. Their tongues dueled for a moment before he broke the kiss to drag his mouth down her throat.
As much as he loved kissing her, reveling in the unexpected closeness this night had brought upon them, he couldn’t deny that his self-restraint was growing thin. He needed to remember the promise he’d made to himself. He would not take her. Not, at least, until…
Jesus, until what? He pressed his mouth to the hollow at the base of her neck where her pulse pounded the strongest. And then he couldn’t resist tonguing the soft flesh. He had to still his wayward mind. There was no future in this, in the Duke of Trent and Daisy Vanreid. All there could be was tonight. This one night where he allowed himself to be a selfish bastard and forget about his oaths to the League for the span of an hour and no more.
Never again.
“I’m beginning to think you were correct,” Daisy said on a sigh.
He stilled, looking up at her and raising a brow. “Which statement, buttercup?”
The grin that curved her mouth was blinding. It took his breath. “Both.”
e was a handsome devil, the Duke of Trent.
Not the duke any longer but Sebastian, and she really must remember that.
Her husband, she thought again. It was still so new, a fresh connection to which she’d yet to grow accustomed. How sudden and foreign her married state was to her, though not without its own allure. Having a husband who kissed the way Sebastian did was no hardship. But that she was installed in his home, laughing with him in bed, seemed a dream from which she would wake too soon, finding herself back in her chamber at the rented Belgravia home with Aunt Caroline.
It wasn’t a dream, however, for he smiled back at her now, unleashing his rakish dimple while his fingers closed over hers at the knot on her robe. “I’m glad we’re in accord.”
That was one way to describe the molten sensations rushing through her. So dry and chaste sounding, and not at all a proper means of conveying the way he made her flush hot, every part of her tingling as though jolted by an electric current. The flutter of her pulse, the ache in her womb, the frenzied way her body longed for his, all made a blatant lie of accord.
Without employing much effort, he brushed her hands aside. She didn’t protest this time, for any initial embarrassment she may have felt at being completely nude before him had been extinguished by the raw, aching need he evoked within her. She liked this side of him, the darkness she sensed within him dashed away by rare light.
The knot came undone. He stared at her intently, his grin fading, and she reached out to trace his fleeting dimple. With the pad of her index finger, she worshipped that lone groove until it was gone. His whiskers proved a shiver-inducing abrasion against her skin.