Loved by a Duke (The Heart of a Duke #4)(76)

Daisy leaned down and kissed him.





Chapter 19

As Daisy kissed Auric, an airy lightness filled her chest. There had only been one other woman before her. And though she abhorred the faceless, nameless stranger, she reveled in the knowledge that but for that one other, he would belong to her in this most intimate of ways.

He wrapped his arms about her and as he drew her close to his chest, he slipped his tongue inside and mated with hers in a sweetly erotic rhythm. Daisy boldly met his movements. A moan worked up her throat and he took that desperate sound of desire into his mouth.

Daisy reached between them and fumbled about for his hand, and finding his fingers, she raised them to her breast as she’d longed for him to touch her since the library only moments ago. With a little moan, she let her head fell back as the heavy warmth of his palm radiated through the thin slip of fabric.

He stilled. His blue eyes clouded and he peered at her with an inscrutable expression.

Daisy burned red with sudden embarrassment at her boldness. “Should I not? I should not—?”

Auric touched a finger to her lips, silencing her words. “You should.” Then, with swift, sure movements, he divested her of her night wrapper. He tossed it aside where it landed in a fluttery wave of white atop his pile of garments. “Anything between us is right, Daisy.” His deep, mellifluous baritone cascaded over her and all earlier vestiges of fleeting embarrassment lifted. He slowly drew her nightshift overhead, but the row of buttons along the back of the modest garment snagged in her hair.

Daisy’s gasp was swallowed by Auric’s curse. A smile tickled her lips as he set to work disentangling her loose curls from the buttons. She winced as he tugged a bit too hard. “Allow me,” she said and reached up. Their fingers brushed.

“I have it,” he murmured, and then a moment later the pressure eased as he freed the strands. With more precise movements, he carefully undid the endless row of buttons. His long fingers trembled along her skin hinting at his nervousness, and all of her heart fell into his hands. “I am making a rather pathetic show of this,” he whispered against her lips as he claimed her mouth in another kiss.

Daisy angled her head to better receive him. “You’re…” He lowered his lips to her neck. “N-not.”

“I wish I came to you with the grace and assurance you deserve, Daisy,” he said softly, lowering her onto the mattress. He shifted over her once more.

She preferred he came to her as he was. “I love you as you are,” she mewed. Her fingers twitched with an urge to touch his powerfully muscular chest, grazed with a dusting of tightly coiled curls. Daisy stroked the flat disc of his nipple. “How very different,” she marveled. Where he was hard, she was soft.

Auric lowered his head and captured the tip of her breast between his lips. Daisy gasped. She fisted her hands in his chestnut locks and held him close to her chest so he’d not stop worshiping her as he did. Desire licked at her senses, driving back logical thought, so all she was capable of was feeling. Her body burned from the inside out in a scorching heat. He teased at the nub until the warmth settled, hot and heavy, between her legs.

“Au-Auric,” she moaned as he shifted his attention to her other breast, laving the neglected tip with his tender attention. Daisy thrashed her head upon the mattress, hopelessly wrinkling the fabric of the coverlet, and uncaring about anything and everything but her body’s hungering for him.

He shifted away from her and she cried out, scraping her fingers along his back in an attempt to draw him close, but he resisted. Except, he only yanked off his boots and threw them to the floor where they landed with a loud thump. Daisy shoved herself up onto her elbows and watched him with wide eyes when his fingers went to his breeches. Their gazes caught and held as he shoved them down.

Her mouth went dry as some of her earlier desire was replaced by a sudden nervousness. She stole a peek down for a hint of his instrument…and promptly choked. He was enormous. The angry, red flesh sprang proudly from a thatch of chestnut curls. And he was also not at all what Mr. Fenerson’s manual had suggested. “You’re going to do what with that?” Her question emerged garbled. It would seem livestock and men were different—very, very different. Blasted Mr. Fenerson and his quite misleading manual.

Auric crawled over to her on the bed. “All will be well,” he murmured, and kissed the corner of her lips. “Trust that I won’t hurt you.” He lowered his head to her breast once more and then tugged at the swollen tip until some of the anxiety seeped from her frame. Then he palmed the curls that concealed her womanhood and her hips shot off the bed. The air left her on a hiss as he slipped a finger into her moist heat. She splayed her legs open, allowing him better access to her throbbing center.

He slipped another inside, and a hot, heavy need burned at her core, a desire to know the feel of him. She bit down hard on her lower lip, her lashes fluttering closed as he worked her with his sure fingers. Pleasure built from that intimate part of her he now caressed, except like a conflagration, the ache of desire so intense that pleasure blurred with pain, spread throughout every corner of her being until she feared she’d splinter into a million tiny pieces that would never be able to be put back together.

Daisy dimly registered him shifting his tall, powerful frame over her. He removed his fingers. She moaned at the loss, her body crying out for a surcease that had felt so very close. He settled himself between her legs and rested his large shaft against the moist curls that concealed her womanhood. She expected she should feel some maidenly modesty or shame at her body’s unabashed response to him. For ladies surely did not cry out and moan with this wanton desire, and yet she could no sooner cease responding to his touch than she could stop breathing.