Page 60 of Any Duke in a Storm

The agents had barely left before Raphael camebarreling out of hiding and clocked poor Thorin right in the jaw. The young nob went down like a sack of bricks, groaning and clutching his chin.

“Raphael, what the devil has come over you?” Lisbeth cried.

“He touched you. Kissed you.” Fury rolled off of Raphael in violent waves. He turned that burning glare on her, and she shivered, but it wasn’t fear she felt at all.

“On the cheek, for the agents,” she said slowly, placatingly. “They’re gone now.”

Without speaking, he prowled toward her, and Lisbeth felt her legs go weak.Donotswoon, you weak-minded fool!He shot a fulminating look at Thorin who staggered to his feet. “Get out!”

“Raphael, the agents are waiting,” she said when Thorin took his leave after a concerned look in her direction. She waved him away. She wasn’t in any danger.

At least not the mortal kind.

Anything else, however…

“Let them wait,” Raphael rumbled, that possessive sound shooting right to her aching center. God, she was so wet already, it was indecent.

“I—” But the minute she opened her mouth, he pounced, his lips crashing to hers and his tongue sweeping in to snatch the speech that could only turn into helpless moans as she held on for dear life.

Damn and blast, he was going to put her over his knee. Show her exactly who she belonged to on this ship. Ruin her for any other who came after, man or woman. But first, he would kiss her until neither of them could breathe. Punish her for daring to put those lips on another man in his presence. God, she tasted like heaven and hell, spite and seduction, life and death. Everything in between.

“This fucking dress,” he muttered against her mouth, tonguing her across the roof of her mouth, the rough swipe chasing shivers through her as she scrabbled for purchase on his coat. “You drive me to bloody distraction, Viking. Did you know I was there?”

“Yes,” she admitted, arching as his mouth descended the column of her throat to tug on that tight bodice and free those tempting swells.

“Wicked woman. I shall have to punish you for that.” He lifted her breasts from their confines and stared at the full teardrop shape of them, his mouth watering to taste. Berry-tipped and peaked, ready for his tongue. Histeeth. But first he looked. He gorged himself on the luscious bounty before him. Christ, was there anyone lovelier than her?

“Raphael,” she moaned as he rolled one furled tip between his fingers. “We don’t have time for this.”

“Do you want me to stop?”

“No,” she whimpered.

“Good girl.” He bent to take the second sweet peak into his mouth, his tongue curling around the taut little bud, and sucked hard.

“God, I hate you,” she said, writhing and arching up against him as if daring him to take her entire breast into his mouth. He did just that, opening as wide as he could and filling his mouth with her succulent flesh before dragging his teeth along her tender skin. His tongue painted her flesh in hot, wet lashes, switching from breast to breast until her moans had reduced to half-garbled sounds of need. He was so hard it hurt, but this was for her. To remind her exactly who brought her pleasure.

“But you don’t really hate me, do you, Viking?” he crooned, alternating tender laps with stinging nips, leaving the marks of his stubble on her pale, creamy skin. “In fact, when you donned this dress, you were thinking of me fucking you in it, weren’t you? Lifting up these satin skirts and feeling how soaked you were.”

She jolted at his filthy words and panted. “Oh God.”

Raphael rucked up the hem of her gown torturously slow, wanting to feel her bare skin beneath his fingertips but also wanting to prolong the torture for as long as possible. He was dying to see if she was as drenched as he was hard, but he had every intention of ensuring that she was a sodden, needy mess by the time he gave in.

He’d meant every word when he said he planned to keep her on the edge for hours. He kissed a wet path up her neck and captured her lips again. She could barely function, her tongue chasing his in complete utter need, a mess of pleas and strangled whispers as he cupped her chin and feasted on her mouth. He alternated between soft, drugging kisses and hard, deep plunges, leaving nopart of her mouth unexplored…marking every corner and crevice as his.

“Please, Raphael, I need…”

“I know what you need.” He spun her so that she was facing the wall and grabbed handfuls of her skirts, gathering them roughly in his palm just below her navel. The curled knuckles of his hand pressed into her mound and she rocked up, instinctively seeking more friction.

“What are you doing?” she groused, attempting to turn back. “I need you to face me.”

“Don’t move,” he growled. “You don’t get to control everything, Viking.”

“But—”

Raphael bent and bit into the meat of her shoulder, running the knuckles of his free hand down the length of her corseted spine. The noise that came from her mouth was inhuman when he sucked the spot he’d bitten and repeated the sequence at the base of her throat. Bite,suck.

Gentler this time, however. She would bruise easily, and while the thought excited him more than it should, he did not want to compromise her. She was no ingenue by her own admission, but if she was truly a countess as she’d claimed, he understood the rules of the aristocracy only too well. Gossip did not care about circumstances.

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