Page 68 of Any Duke in a Storm

He blinked. “Not far, why?”

She smiled and lifted her arm to let the backs of her knuckles graze over the front of his trousers. Satisfaction filled her. He was rock-fucking-hard, the tip of his piercingbeneath the fabric a jolt to her own spiking desire. “I am going to make a spectacle and drop to my knees in the next thirty seconds, if you don’t get us out of here.”

“Fuck, Lisbeth!” he hissed.

“Thirty, twenty-nine, twenty-eight…”

But even as she started the countdown, they were moving. Not through the ballroom, around it. Flying through the gardens and then she was practically being tossed into an empty barouche with a pair of prancing white horses. “Whose carriage is this?”

“Who cares? Hold on!”

She gasped as he grabbed the reins. “You can’t steal this, you daft man!”

“Who says? I’m already doing it. You act like you never break the rules.”

Lisbeth couldn’t help it. She tipped back her head and laughed to the moonlit sky, exhilaration and fire filling her to the brim. When they arrived at the address of Raphael’s hotel on Twenty-Third Street, the white marble of the massive building lit by moonlight, he paid the attendant a small fortune to return the barouche to Mrs. Astor’s residence.

Her partner in crime grinned at her. “Only borrowing, darling.”

Her heart skipped at the endearment that sounded very different coming from his lips than it had from Thorin’s. The exchange with Thorin had been fake. This was…the opposite of fake, even though it might have started in much the same way. But suddenly she wasunable to think as he made no bones about scooping her up into his arms, striding under the portico to the grand entrance hall lined with Corinthian columns, and ferrying her into the passenger elevator.

Lisbeth’s eyes widened as the liftman closed the door of the car and up they went. A vertical railway, they called such things. There was even a bench for people to sit, but Raphael kept her firmly in his arms to the mortification of the elevator operator. “It’s the first of its kind in the United States,” he told her. “A marvel of modern engineering.”

“Fascinating,” she murmured, though she was much more interested in the man who held her like he’d never let her go. She trailed a gloved finger over his jaw as the car stopped and they hurried to his rooms. He fumbled with the key, but managed to get the door open as she breathed in his scent of sea and citrus. “Where did you come from, Raphael?”

“Dieu, I love when you say my name.”

She feathered a finger over his lips. “I want to scream it.”

Every muscle in his body locked before he slowly slid her down the length of him and cupped her face in his hands. He stared at her for an interminable moment, giving her room to change her mind or move away. But she wanted neither of those things. Lisbeth stepped back, his hands hovering in midair before they fell, his face sphinxlike. She knew he would let her leave if that was what she chose. But tonight was for them. Forher.

The devil inside, however, made her walk toward the door as though she were changing her mind. At the jamb, she glanced over her shoulder with a sly look. She pressed a hand to the wall and arched her back.

“Unlace me.”

Her duke was upon her before she could take another breath or step, hands everywhere, mouth on her neck, breath fanning into her hair. Fastenings and laces came frantically undone, chiffon and satin gaping as he fussed at her crinoline, a frustrated groan escaping him when he was faced with her undercorset. “Too many deuced layers!”

Lisbeth laughed, but he was determined and managed to get the corset sufficiently loosened until she stepped out of the mound of fabric, clad only in a filmy chemise, stockings, and dancing slippers. He stared at her for a prolonged moment, his throat working like a man starved, before he dropped to his knees to slip off her shoes. His fingers trembled on the curve of her ankle, but he did not linger, as though he could not trust himself.

“You are the most exquisite thing I’ve ever seen,” he whispered, looking up at her from his position on the floor.

“Your turn,” she told him, voice husky.

He was much quicker, boots going flying, coat and cravat stripped away, waistcoat, shirt, and smallclothes shorn off, until he stood in the altogether like a sultry, dark prince. Lisbeth gulped at the mesmerizing vision of him—all sculpted, lean bronzed muscle, his nipple ring glinting over the sprawling tattoo on his chest, thecorrugated planes of his abdomen leading to the thick cock that jutted out from a nest of black curls, the gold of his apadravya making a surge of lust pour through her. How wouldthatfeel inside?

Raphael prowled toward her, that big body moving like liquid grace. Her mouth dried when he scooped her up again and ferried her to the bed, the feel of his hot bare skin a delightful shock. He shot her a wicked smile and leaned over her, his powerful muscles rippling. God, she could stare at him forever and never get bored.

You don’t have forever.

Lisbeth closed her eyes, shutting out the painful reminder.

“Kiss me,” she told him.

He complied, but the kiss was teasingly brief, just enough for her to enjoy the smallest taste of him before he was gone, pressing close-mouthed kisses down her lawn-covered body, fluttering over the peak of each breast and blowing streams of hot air. Just enough to torment, not enough to slake the need roaring inside. She wanted to scream in frustration. Those light butterfly kisses continued in a path to her stomach and lower still.

Lisbeth froze as he shifted on the bed between her thighs, her heart hammering behind her ribs, but he did not touch her where she craved it most. Instead he went to the tapes of her stockings. Gentle fingers untied and unrolled, lips following in their wake. She felt the scrape of his teeth on the inside of one knee and nearly cameoff the bed. Who knew she was so sensitive there? He repeated the process on the other side, and by the time he crawled back up her limbs, she could feel how shockingly wet she was.

When he paused at the junction of her legs and inhaled deeply through the linen, she writhed. “You smell like summer on the sea,” he said, his voice a dark, delicious rumble. “Just like you taste.”

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