The Duke Identity (Game of Dukes #1)(50)

No one plays a dirtier, more despicable game…I’d trust anyone before a policeman.

And he knew he couldn’t risk it. Couldn’t risk her ejecting him from her life when he needed to stay by her side. To protect her from the imminent peril.

“Is…is something wrong, Bennett?”

Her tremulous words punctured his dark thoughts. When the threat is over, I’ll tell her the truth, he vowed to himself. And I’ll do whatever it takes to win her forgiveness.

“Nothing’s wrong,” he said huskily.

“Then why are you brooding?” Her eyes searched his. “If I’ve done something wrong—”

“Tessa, you’re perfect. This,”—he claimed her mouth once more, lifting his head only when she was breathless and wearing that delightfully dazed look on her face—“is perfect. The only thing I’m thinking about is how I want to pleasure you tonight.”

“Oh.” Her mouth took on a sudden, impish curve. “Do you need suggestions? Because I still have that deck of cards Alfred lent me…”

He didn’t know whether to groan or laugh. “I’d forgotten about those damned cards, or I would have confiscated them.”

“Confiscated?” she said saucily. “And what would you have done with them, Professor?”

Hearing her use that sobriquet brought echoes of his erotic dream of her. He was as stiff as an iron pike, but he was determined to slow things down. To pleasure her and explore her sensual bounty. As if she read his thoughts, her laughter faded, her eyes growing heavy-lidded, an invitation he could not resist.

He kissed her neck, inhaling her sweet, unique scent. When he nipped her earlobe, she made a sound halfway between a moan and a whimper, as adorable as it was arousing. Impatient with the layers that separated them, he untied her cloak, tossing it to the ground. A few moments later, her night rail followed.

Staring down at her, he was rendered speechless. With her delicate curves and flawless skin, she was like a nubile water nymph rising from a spring. Seeing the dark, shy thatch between her slender thighs, the glint of clinging dew, he swallowed heavily.

“Do you find me…pleasing?”

At her hesitant words, he dragged his gaze back to her face. Incredulously, he saw that she was serious. And worried?

“Christ, sprite,” he said with feeling, “you could not be more so.”

He cupped her breast, the silken weight fitting perfectly in his palm. She bit her lip, and just watching her pearly teeth sink into that luscious pink ledge, the same color as her budded nipples, made his mouth pool.

“You don’t think they’re…too small?”

It took him a moment to understand what she was asking.

Startled, he said, “Your breasts, you mean?”

She averted her gaze. “The girls at school used to make fun of them. Said I ought to water them so they’d grow.” Her laugh sounded forced. “They said gentlemen preferred ladies who were more, um, endowed.”

Anger spiked in him at the cruelty she’d experienced. At the same time, he felt a fierce surge of tenderness for the girl Tessa must have been. For the girl who lived inside the woman…the woman who he was finally beginning to understand.

“The silly chits don’t know what they’re talking about.” He curled a finger beneath her chin, made her look at him. “You are perfection.”

“Truly?”

The wonder in her eyes made his chest ache. And his erection throb. In answer, he grazed her right nipple with his thumb and heard the sharp hitch of her breath.

“See how responsive you are, sweeting? How your nipples bud and blossom at my touch? There’s nothing prettier than that,” he said thickly. “Nothing more arousing to a man than knowing a lady likes what he’s doing.”

Her lashes swept up against her brows, myriad emotions darting through her eyes.

Then she dazzled him with a smile. “In that case, you ought to know that I like what you’re doing very much.”

“Brazen minx.”

Lips curved, he kissed her, marveling at how everything felt different with her, different and new. Being with her in the moonlight beat back the shadows of his past. She was unlike the ladies he’d known and the women he’d bedded in the navvy camps. He’d never been with a female who blended passion with humor, innocence with the instincts of a siren, playfulness with devastating honesty.

She moaned when he rolled the needy tip of her breast between finger and thumb. Tearing his mouth from hers, he kissed a path down the slope of her collarbones, fragile as a bird’s wings. Lust pounded in his veins as he continued on to her breasts, the petite, firm curves shivering beneath his tongue. When he closed his lips around one perfect, pink peak, her spine arched off the bed.

“Blood and thunder,” she gasped.

He suckled her harder, going from breast to breast. He flicked the taut tips, then laved them with his tongue, loving her breathy moans. He reached between her legs, and the extent of her arousal whipped through him like a storm.

“You’re drenched.” Reverently, he slid his finger up her dew-soaked slit.

“I can’t help it.” Her bottom lip caught beneath her teeth again even as she wriggled deliciously against his stroking finger. “It just happens whenever I’m with you.”