Loved by a Duke (The Heart of a Duke #4)(74)

“The details,” he echoed back. Which only conjured all manner of details that ended with Daisy upon her back on the leather button sofa with her skirts rucked up about her waist. A groan rumbled up from his chest.

“Yes.” She gave a flounce of her curls. “The details.”

He shouldn’t ask. He really shouldn’t. The years in knowing her had taught him as much. “And just…uh, where did you come by these details?”

A becoming blush stained her cheeks. “It really matters naught,” she said quickly. Too quickly. In a way that suggested the lessons and details imparted had come by no proper mama, as they should have.

By God, he’d kill the bounder who’d filled her ears with words of seduction and dared put his hands upon that which belonged to him. She’d always belonged to him, even as he’d denied it to himself. “Daisy,” he gritted out. He counted silently to five for patience.

She lifted her shoulders in a little shrug. “Oh, very well. Mr. Fenerson’s Lessons of Livestock and Procreation.”

Surely, she hadn’t said…? Oh, God, to laugh would be the greatest folly. He fixed on the crown of her dark curls to keep from looking at her with her face scrunched up in deep seriousness and concentrated on his breathing. “Mr. Fenerson’s—”

“Lessons of Livestock and Procreations,” she interrupted, her head bobbing up and down with a quick nod. “Yes. And it was very enlightening.”

It would likely prove perfectly enlightening for sheep and cows and horses. “Was it?” he asked, unable to squelch the drollness of his tone. It would assuredly not prove helpful on matters of lovemaking between creatures of the two-legged sort.

“Oh, undoubtedly,” she said with another little nod. A dark strand of hair tumbled over her brow. She blew it back.

She really needn’t expand. They’d both be a good deal better if she…

Expanded. “It explained about the necessary instruments—”

“Instruments?” his voice emerged garbled from pained laughter.

She widened her eyes. “Auric Kinsley Richards, you are laughing at me.” Not at her per se, but he suspected that slight distinction wouldn’t make much of a difference to his fiery wife. By the fury snapping in the brown irises, the lady quite took offense at his lack of protestations.

“Not at all,” he said, belatedly and entirely too late.

“Humph,” Daisy marched around him, her miserable embroidery work in her hand.

Auric closed the space between them in two long strides. He folded his hand gently about her forearm, staying her forward movement. Through widened eyes, she looked to his fingers wrapped about her person with a frown, then the little indication of her displeasure lifted as her lips parted ever so slightly. With nothing but silence about them, the rapid intake of her breath echoed in the stillness.

He tossed aside her embroidery frame then cupped his other hand about her neck. “I was not laughing,” he purred, placing a kiss against the side of her mouth. Her lids fluttered wildly. “Well, perhaps I was laughing.” He moved his lips to the opposite corner of her mouth. “But not at you.” Their mouths met in a probing, explorative kiss. “Never at you, Daisy.”

Her lips trembled under his. “My lack of experience then,” she whispered when he moved his lips down her neck. He parted her modest wrapper and placed a kiss to the swell of her breasts. She moaned.

“Never that. I’d have you innocent and untouched.” He’d have had her any way he could have her, but it would have destroyed part of him to know another had known the perfect contours of her generously curved frame. Auric drew her against the vee of his thighs, bringing her close to his hard, aching flesh. He palmed her breast through the fabric of her nightshift, toying with the nub. It pebbled under his ministrations.

A little, breathless moan slipped past her lips and she layered herself to him. “I-I imagine a man such as you has limitless e-experience.” He nibbled gently at her neck. “W-with…”

She thought wrong. “With?” he breathed against the place where her pulse pounded its awareness of him.

“I-I cannot think when you…” A sound, half-groan, half-moan, killed the remainder of her words. She pressed herself against him as though attempting to meld their flesh together.

Auric swept her into his arms as he’d longed to do but had denied himself. What had once been wrong for who she was and everything between them, became right for every reason that mattered. “I love you,” he whispered as he carried her through the threshold of the door and down the quiet corridors.

She cupped his cheek. “I love you, too.” Daisy captured her lower lip between her teeth. “You really should set me down.” He’d sooner run through the streets of London, bellowing like a madman. She nudged him in the side. “I said—”

He grunted as her sharp elbow collided with his ribs but continued his forward path through the halls. “No.”

As they reached the base of the staircase, she wiggled in his arms until he was forced with either stopping or risk dropping her. Auric stopped, one foot on the bottom of the stairs. “Yes?” he asked with far less patience than he felt.

“You really should set me down.” Wiggling her hips back and forth, she continued to shift in his arms.