To Woo a Widow (The Heart of a Duke #10)(36)

She bit her lip to keep from crying out and tangled her fingers in his hair, anchoring him close, never wanting him to cease his delicious torment. “Please,” she managed to pant out.

Miles showed no mercy. He dropped to his knees and slowly drew her skirts up, so that the air caressed her skin. “Let me love you,” he whispered, trailing kisses along her calf, up the sensitive flesh of her inner thigh. His hot breath stirred her core and she whimpered, burning in ways she’d never felt. Knowing only Miles could teach her.

“Wh-what…?” she whispered as he put his mouth to her mound. His breath stirred the curls shielding her femininity and her entire body jerked. “Miles,” she rasped.

He parted the curls and, with his lips, found her swollen nubbin. A low, tortured moan bubbled past her lips. She arched her hips toward him, aching for more of his wickedly wonderful ministrations. In the whole of her marriage, lovemaking had been mostly painful, always awkward, quick couplings she’d silently suffered through. With Miles, he’d awakened her to the truth that she was very much a woman; a woman capable of passion. And she wished to know all of his touch. Philippa let her legs fall open and she tangled her hands in his luxuriant hair as he thrust his tongue inside her.

He swirled his expert tongue around, playing with the pleasure nub. Then the way he’d done with her nipples moments ago, he sucked that flesh between his teeth. Her breath coming hard and fast, Philippa thrust herself against him. Tension spiraled inside her and she gritted her teeth, her body climbing toward an unknown precipice. Then, he reached between them and his fingers found her sodden center. She flared her eyes and on a sharp cry, exploded in a wave of color and feeling. Waves of ecstasy went rippling through her with such force and she wept from the force of her climax, arching and twisting, wanting the moment to go on into forever. Miles continued suckling her nub, until he’d wrung every last bit of utter bliss from her. She slumped on the sideboard, faintly panting.

Philippa slid her eyes closed, breathless from her exertions. As a wife, she’d been schooled by her miserable husband to believe their joining’s served only one purpose—to produce his precious heir. There had never been satisfaction. As such, given the lessons handed down by her mother before she’d married on her “dutiful obligations” in the marriage bed and the shamefulness of that act between husband and wife, she should be scandalized. She should be ashamed and mortified and all those proper responses ingrained into her from early on.

Her breath settled into a smooth, even rhythm. And yet, in this, there was no shame. There was just a glorious sense of being alive and knowing the powerful wonder that her body was capable of. Pleasure she’d long believed herself incapable of knowing through a deficit in who she was as a woman. Miles placed a final kiss along the sensitive flesh of her inner thigh and drew back, adjusting her skirts and undergarments.

A tear slid down her cheek. “Thank you,” she whispered. “I never knew… I never…” She sucked in another breath. “Thank you.”

Miles caressed her cheek. “May I call on you tomorrow?” he asked, his meaning clear.

And just like that, reality intruded. The realness that was her life. She mustered a smile. “O-Of course.” He wished to court her. And were she any other woman, a wholly unbroken woman, she’d have reveled in his attentions. But she was not. And, as his mother had coldly reminded her, never would be. With frenzied movements, Philippa set to work righting her gown. She then gathered the strands that had sprung free of her once neat chignon and attempted to stuff them into a semblance of order. “I have to return.”

“I know,” he whispered, touching his lips to her earlobe.

She moaned and leaned back into his caress. He angled her around and found her mouth with his. Their tongues met in the same fiery explosion they’d shared since their first embrace at the lake. It was Miles who found the fortitude to draw back.

Wordlessly, he turned her about once more, removed the butterfly combs from her hair, and reworked the tresses. Everything he did was done with such infinite gentleness and tenderness that the remaining parts of her heart that hadn’t already been claimed fell into his hands. “Until tomorrow,” he promised.

With a shaky nod, Philippa rushed to the front of the room and left. Her heart thundered hard; the rapid beat filling her ears and as she fled, a panicky desperation filled her. She’d no doubt he would offer her his name and as she wanted him—all of him—she’d not force him to abandon what he required as a marquess.

She bit her lip hard and rushed around the corridor nearly to the entrance of the ballroom and collided with a hard, thick wall. Philippa grunted and reeled back, but a pair of large, strong hands shot out and righted her.

“Lady Philippa, how unexpected but utterly delightful meeting you here on the way to your assignation.” By the slight emphasis, they were two ships sailing in the night.

Lord Montfort smiled. And this was not the easy, affable, sincere grin worn by Miles but rather a cold, empty expression of mirth. Her own existence had proven life indelibly shaped a person; marked you with pain. What was to account for this man’s steely edge? Seeing it, recognizing it, however, made him more man than the beast she’d taken him for at Hyde Park. “My lord,” she said quietly, glancing about. If she were discovered, there would be even more questions she didn’t wish to answer. “If you’ll excuse me?” She made to step around him when he called out, staying her.