Page 73 of The Last Duke She'd Marry
Wide blue eyes, dark with emotion, met his. Overmastering emotion made her voice shake, too. “You could have died. I’d never have known you.”
“He was certainly angry enough to kill me. But I came through all right. The devil looks after his own.”
The glance of her fingers across the raised flesh flashed through him like lightning. Because she was right. His life could have ended in that field in Camden. Just now, the thought that he might have missed holding Juliet Frain in his arms was unbearable.
“I’m so glad he didn’t kill you.”
Evesham prepared to make some careless response, because he was the rakish duke and he greeted trouble with a grin and a quip. But the meaningless riposte died unspoken, when Juliet leaned in and kissed his ugly scar.
The action carved a rift through his pretense that this was just another sensual escapade. More intense than usual, certainly, but at heart the same as all his other affairs.
This encounter wasn’t like anything else. Juliet was unique. Even if he lived to a hundred, she’d remain unique.
“Right now, so am I,” he said fervently and caught her face to hold her for a desperate kiss.
He’d loved kissing Juliet from their first embrace on the empty stage at Afton Park. But these kisses were different. Not just because she’d learned how to stir him up.
Every kiss was a prelude to a more profound joining. Evesham raked his hands through her lovely hair, bunching it as his mouth plundered hers. He slid the silky robe away from her shoulders to bare her breasts.
She gave a murmur of discomfort. So far, his kisses had lulled her into following where he led, but now he caught a flare of shyness in her eyes. She lifted trembling hands to cover herself.
“Will you let me see?” he asked, his voice gruff.
She bit her lip but after a moment, she lowered her hands. “As you wish.”
“Juliet…” Once again, words escaped him.
She was all woman. Creamy flesh. Jutting raspberry nipples. Her hair rippled across her shoulders, providing a fragile modesty. But under his admiring gaze, she raked her hair back until she was revealed in all her glory.
Reverently, he shaped his hands to her lush shape and discovered the warmth of her skin. She sighed and tilted up with such eagerness that his overexercised heart took off on another gallop. He squeezed and stroked her, and when he could bear no more delay, he bent to take one sweet, beaded point between his lips.
Juliet cried out and angled closer. Her hand burrowed into his hair, urging him nearer. He needed no further encouragement.
He used teeth and tongue to torment her into trembling arousal. While he teased, he caressed her, running his hands down her flanks and hips. She moaned as his mouth suckled her other nipple.
When he lifted his head from her breast, she lay across the sheets in magnificent disarray. Her eyes were closed and a flush colored her cheeks.
He took her lips in a brief, fierce kiss. When he pulled away, her eyes fluttered open and he found himself drowning in sultry blue.
“Time to drop the last barriers, my darling,” he murmured, sitting up to undo the knot at her waist that kept her in her peignoir.
He hadn’t fumbled undressing a woman since he was a beginner. But for the life of him, he couldn’t manage the pestilential sash.
“Damn it,” he muttered between his teeth.
Her expression mirrored his desperation. “Tear it.”
He didn’t hesitate. The sash shredded, and she wriggled out of her robe.
The breath jammed in his throat at the first sight of her nakedness. She was all gold and white, from her lustrous fall of hair to her flawless skin to the darker gold curls covering her mound.
As his ravenous gaze drank in the sumptuous details of Juliet’s body, he recognized that it was time to let physical needs rule. Her languorous gaze and swollen red lips showed that she was ready. The preliminaries had been delectable, but now his blood drummed with an insistent rhythm and he was harder than an iron pole.
“You’re perfect,” Evesham whispered, placing a kiss on each breast.
Desire had always been present, but with every moment, desire merged with a more unfamiliar feeling. Worship perhaps. Certainly gratitude.
What a fool he was. He’d assumed that the pupil in this encounter would be Juliet. But as she drew him deeper under her thrall, he discovered a new world. Where pleasure resided as much in heart and soul as in his body.
