Too Wilde to Wed (The Wildes of Lindow Castle, #2)(53)

Yes, he was.

He would never take what wasn’t freely given.

He left his shirt on, lifted the covers, and slid beneath them. Diana didn’t move, which surprised him until he remembered that she was used to another body, albeit a small one, slipping into bed beside her.

Sure enough, she murmured something and rolled over, one arm coming around him—

And froze.

North waited, enjoying himself the way he hadn’t since he was a young man just free of university, sharing his God-given talents with any woman generous enough to smile at him.

Her eyes opened slowly. He brought her fingers to his mouth. If the lake turned her eyes blue, moonlight restored them to a beautiful silvery gray color.

“I must be dreaming,” she muttered.

He eased forward and kissed her, his tongue sliding over her lips and then past them. Heat blazed down to his groin. His cock was hard; it had been hard from the moment he’d entered the room and breathed the flowery honey scent that was Diana.

“I must be dreaming,” she said again, her voice husky with sleep, “because no duke’s son would be so lost to propriety, so indelicate, and so immoral as to enter a woman’s bed without her express invitation.”

The words were indignant, but her tone wasn’t. And she was looking at his mouth, not at his eyes.

“I had the idea from a print that my sister Betsy bought in London,” North said, keeping his voice serious.

“Who would have thought a future duke had a theatrical bone in his body?” The words were a retort, but her voice held such pure longing that he responded to it instantly. This time he kissed her gently and sweetly, waiting for her to open her mouth.

Which she did.

They kissed until his loins ached to arch toward her softness. His fingers trembling and his cock thicker and harder than it had ever been, he murmured, “May I kiss you in other places, Diana?”

She pulled back. Her eyes had darkened from moonshine to . . . to the color of gunmetal. Or a mouse, with fur the color of tarnished silver.

“What are you asking?”

“For more kisses.”

“Where, exactly?”

“Everywhere.” He edged closer, enough so that he could feel the warmth of her silky skin, and nudged her until she rolled on her back. He thanked her with a kiss. A raw, hungry, possessive kiss.

When he raised his head, she was looking at him in a dazed way. “As long as you understand that I’m never going to be your duchess.”

“So you’ve said.” He didn’t allow himself a scowl.

“No, I need you to acknowledge what I said, not simply repeat it.”

He groaned. “Diana Belgrave refuses to be a duchess. I know it, and so does most of England. She’d prefer to do menial labor, such as cleaning chamber pots, than allow me to buy her all the shoes her feet deserve.”

Her eyes softened and she laughed. “My feet don’t deserve fancy shoes.”

“Saffron-colored shoes are not good enough for you,” North murmured, one hand sliding under her head so he could cradle it. “Your toes should be in diamond-studded shoes and pearl-adorned slippers.”

He kissed her cheekbone, heading toward her chin, heading . . . down.

“I spent the last two days with the duchess,” Diana said with a little gasp. Her fingers curled in his hair. “His Grace came to find his wife every few hours. Sometimes just for a kiss, but often to ask her something about the estate.”

North murmured something. He was unbuttoning her nightdress and she wasn’t stopping him.

“Yesterday he made an absurd excuse and bore her away with him,” Diana whispered. “I think they went to his bedchamber. In the middle of the day!”

North raised his head. “I’m certain they did.”

“Most of England believes that you have seduced me,” Diana said. “From that point of view, you’re somewhat behind schedule, although my edict stands: I will not be your duchess.”

A moment of stunned silence followed. She was looking at him expectantly, a smile on her lips.

She meant it. The small part of his brain capable of logical thought registered utter determination. “I want you to be my wife,” North said. “I want to lure you away in the middle of the day.”

“I know . . . I mean, I know you used to want that,” she said. Her hands slipped from his hair. “I’m enormously fond of you, North. I am. But I don’t love you the way a wife ought to love her husband. Now that my mother is no longer in control of my life, I mean to marry for love, or not at all.”

Her eyes were bright, clear—entirely honest.

He felt it like a blow to the gut, the kind that felled a man. She wasn’t saying anything he didn’t already know.

Diana’s face was uncertain. He leaned forward and brushed her lips with his. He was thinking fast. She wanted to marry for love.

As he saw it, toast and honey was a way of saying, “I love you.” Making love was another way.

“You refuse to be a duchess,” he said softly.

She nodded, her eyes on his. “I would be terribly unhappy.” Her hand curved around his cheek. “If anyone could convince me, it would be you, dear friend.”

“You lost Rose and I lost Horatius,” he said, kissing her again. “So we are clinging to each other like shipwrecked sailors with one raft.”