Page 38 of Duke of Wickedness
On stage, the hero dropped his face to the woman’s chest. She writhed in what justhadto be exaggerated ecstasy.
“I’m afraid my angle won’t quite allow for that,” the duke said, sounding genuinely regretful. “But please know that when I have the chance, I plan to lick and suck you just like that.”
Ariadne whimpered. She watched as the hero kissed his way down the lady’s stomach.
Accordingly, the duke’s hand slipped to her waist.
“Where do you think he’s headed, little bird?” he asked her, his fingers drawing hypnotic circles against her ribcage. “What do you think he’ll do to her when he gets there?”
Ariadne could only assume that this question was rhetorical; if it wasn’t, he was destined to be disappointed, as she had no hope of wrangling her feelings into words.
“Because,” he went on as Ariadne watched, transfixed, as the heroine began sneaking her skirts higher and higher as her partner kissed lower and lower, “I can think of a few other places that I would like to lick and suck.”
She whimpered. It was all she could manage because that warm touch of his fingers on her waist was somehow spreading, radiating out, the warmth extending far beyond where he was making contact.
“Do you think I could make you writhe like that, little bird?” he asked. His mouth was trailing down her shoulder now, kissing across where the wide neckline of the gown revealed most of her collarbones.
This answer, at least, she could manage.
“Yes,” she gasped. “Yes, yes, please.”
For the barest instant, she felt the bite of his teeth against her skin, not hard enough to injure, or even to hurt, but enough that she really felt it. She bit her own lip to hold back what threatened to be an actual moan.
“Christ, Ariadne,” he murmured into her skin. “Do you know what it does to me when you bite your lip like that? It drives me fucking wild.”
They may have been listening to coarser language than this all evening, but hearing the swear from the duke’s lips made it a thousand times more alluring than did hearing it from some anonymous actor.
Suddenly, it seemed very stupid that she was still sitting here trying to pay attention to the heroine’s performance of pleasure when she could be experiencing real pleasure of her very own.
She pulled away just enough to look the duke in the eye. His mouth was wet and shiny from where he’d been playing with her throat, and this, combined with the way his light brown hair flopped over his brow and the blown wide look to his eyes, made him look utterly debauched. Not just a fallen angel, but the one who tempted you down with him, the one who made damnation seem really not so bad.
“Take me somewhere private,” she commanded him. “Now.”
Hunger surged across his face, but he hesitated.
“Don’t you want to watch the show?” he asked, all innocence.
“David,” she said. His name tasted right in her mouth, and he liked it too; she could tell from the way that hunger grew just a touch feral, like he was a man scarcely in control of himself. “Now.”
She didn’tthinkhe would hesitate again after all that, but she wasn’t prepared to take the risk either. She grasped his hand in hers and stood, dragging him out of the semi-private box and past the other theatergoers, at least half of whom were engaged in their own illicit encounters. Their presence was almost a surprise. Ariadne had almost forgotten that anyone else was there.
They made it out of their box and into the makeshift hallway, which was even more dimly lit than the theater itself. As soon as the shabby curtain dropped shut behind him, David—damn it, she even loved the feeling of his name in her mind; David, David,David—wrapped his arms around her from behind, one arm crossing up and between her breasts, the other around her waist, securing her to him.
From this position, she could feel a telltale hardness against her backside, and some instinctive drive within her urged her to press back against it.
“Do you think to drive me to distraction, little bird?” he asked, pressing kisses across the back of her neck, down to the first knobs of her spine. “Does it please you to feel how you have succeeded?”
“Yes,” she whimpered. “David, please.”
For a moment, it was his forehead against her neck instead of his mouth.
“You are a menace,” he muttered. She wasn’t certain that this was meant for her to hear. Before she could decide whether she ought to respond, though, he had stepped out from behind her and grabbed her arm. He tugged her along, moving purposefully through the darkened hallway.
The first secluded corner they came across was occupied. The second—also occupied.
The third, though? The third was all theirs.
David put his hands on Ariadne’s waist and spun her so that her back was nestled into the corner, then pressed in close so that her whole world was him—the feel of him, the smell of him, all fine soap and a hint of the cheap ale they’d been selling at the start of performance. It was entrancing.
