Page 75 of Tamed By her Duke

“But,” she said, her own voice notably breathy, “we’ve a bed, inside.”

Caleb’s gaze snapped back to hers, the deep, deep blue of his eyes nearly obscured by his blown pupils.

“I always did say ye were a clever lass,” he murmured approvingly.

Grace felt unsteady when he set her on her feet. She half wished he’d give fully into his desire for brutishness and throw her over one shoulder and carry her off to bed, like he was some sort of ancient marauder claiming his prize.

Maybe they’d be better off reenacting that particular scene once they were back home and away from the prying eyes of Londoners, she thought, scarcely sparing a moment to recognize that she’d thought of Montgomery Estate ashome.

They barely made it all the way up the stairs before Caleb was tugging at her laces.

“You’re going to scandalize the servants,” she panted, wriggling out of his grasp and lunging toward her bedchamber door, only to be stopped before she’d made it more than two paces.

“Was I no’ clear,” he asked, pausing to bite her hard on the nape of the neck that made her gasp and consider presenting herself like a sacrifice to be devoured, “when I said that I daenae carewhoknows that I’m a brute, so long as they understand that I’m a brute forye?”

That comment left her too fuzzy to really care if he got her stark naked in the hallway.

Caleb, however, seemed to possess enough presence of mind to onlyloosenher gown before they made it all the way into the bedchamber, even if he did slip the neckline further down her shoulder to press hot kisses along the skin there.

The door clicked behind them in the split second before Grace’s dress hit the floor.

“What the hell is this?” he demanded when he found himself looking at the back of her stays. “Where are the damn ties?”

She giggled and whirled in his arms, then brazenly pressed her breasts against him.

“These unlace in the front,” she said, running a finger down her decolletage to where the ties were knotted securely. “It makes it much easier to take them on and off by myself.”

Caleb gazed down at the shadowed valley between her breasts, his throat bobbing and his eyes dark.

“Ye’ll no’ be doing it by yerself today,” he said.

Watching her husband undergo the painstaking process of unlacing her stays would be a delicious tease, Grace decided with a shiver?—

Or itwouldhave been, she amended, for her husband did no such thing. Instead, he pulled aknifefrom his boot and—snick, snick, snick—cut through the laces until he could pull the entire garment from her body in a single grasp.

She gaped at him, shocked and utterly aroused.

“Youcutthem!” she exclaimed.

“I’ll buy ye more,” he said at once.

“I mean, you can relace them?—”

“Then why are ye complaining, woman?” he demanded, sounding so disgruntled that it startled a delighted laugh out of her. Whywasshe complaining? “And now ye’re laughing,” he said, but there was a note of humor in his voice, too.

When he’d stripped her of her shift, too—“Donotcut it again, Caleb; it slips right off!”—he seized her around the waist and tossed her on the bed, where she nearly tumbled off again on the bounce before he caught her in his arms.

“Ah,” he said gruffly. “Finally, I’ve got ye where I want ye.”

“I haven’t gotyouwhere I want you,” she retorted, scrabbling for the fall of his trousers, yanking his shirt out of the way so she could access the fastener. When the loose linen kept hindering her work, she tugged the shirt up and up until he gave in and pulled the garment over his head, then pushed on his shoulder until he let her roll them onto his back.

“It’ssonice to know that you can be reasonable when properly motivated,” she told him saucily as she tugged open his trousers.

His eyes went dark. “Woman, I?—”

The words were cut off when she bent down and gave a tentative lick over the length of him. He let loose a long stream of Gaelic that could not be anything but filth.

Grace beamed with pleasure. She’d been wanting to try that ever since he’d applied his mouth to her person; the effects had been so marvelous that they’d quite overridden the crude mutterings she’d heard, during her time away, that alluded to such an act.

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