Page 35 of Rules for Heiresses
“Ravenna.” He shifted and her fingers dug in to his scalp.
“Cordy.”
He hissed out a breath. “Nobody has called me that in years.”
“You haven’t been this irritating in years,” she said. Was it his imagination, or had her sensual voice grown a tad huskier? “Sit still and let me do this for you. It’s no hardship and I’ve been told I’m quite good this.”
The beat of jealousy took him by surprise. “Who told you that?”
“My harem of male lovers, who else?” she replied with a small laugh. It wasn’t as funny to him and he scowled. Her fingertips smoothed over his furrowed brow. “My mother, silly. She suffers from frequent migraines. Massage helps.”
He sighed at the firm ministrations. Shewasrather skilled, her hands moving in small, concentrated circles. Courtland opened his mouth to tell her so, but then lost all power of speech when those warm, strong fingers slid down his bare nape to knead into the tight muscles there.
“Damnation, woman.” He breathed out, closing his eyes.
She laughed. “I suppose there’s a compliment in there somewhere.”
“Your hands are bloody magic.”
“Thank you.” Her voice was a liquid caress as her proficient hands stilled and lifted, and he mourned their loss. “Would you be so kind so as to remove your coat and waistcoat?” His eyes snapped open at the husky, nearly erotic command. She might have well commanded him to take off his trousers. The thought nearly unmanned him.
“It’s not proper.”
“How so? I’m your wife,” she said from behind him, her warm breath gusting against his ear, and he had the abrupt desire to instantly strip himself bare. For some reason, the fact that he couldn’t see her face added to the sexual tension currently flooding the study. “Besides, the door is closed. There’s no one in here but you and me.”
“Peabody and the servants will know.” Courtland wanted to take the asinine words back as soon as he said them. When had he become so missish? He couldn’t give a shit about Peabody, or anyone else, even if the house started to burn down around his ears.
Her laughter tickled his hairline. “Since when do you care?”
Since she’d turned him into a prudish henwit, apparently. Courtland was grateful the desk was covering most of his lap because his shaft suddenly had no intention of behaving. Against his own forewarnings, he shrugged out of his upper layers, not missing his wife’s fine intake of breath. The soft lawn of his shirt grazed over his highly sensitive skin.
“Finish your tea and lean back,” she said, and fuck if that throaty edict didn’t harden him to forged steel.
Fingers reached around to unknot his cravat to reward him after he’d emptied the cup, and then slipped beneath the collar of his shirt to his bare skin. At her expert and divinely blissful touch, every nerve ending in his body went screamingly alive: his skin burned, his stomach clenched, and his cock wept.
Devil take it, he was going to purgatory.
Ten
Gracious, she was a fool. An imbecile. A dolt. An utter dunce.
Why on earth would she do this to herself? Torture herself thus? Hadn’t she learned her lesson when it came to him? He would no doubt find some reason to push her away and then pretend he felt nothing. But clearly, she was a glutton for punishment. She should have brought the sodding tea and left it, but no…she just had to go and touch him. Revel in his thick, soft curling hair, delight in the strong, corded muscles of his neck, and now gorge herself on the spectacular glimpse of deliciously brown skin peeking from beneath the soft, white fabric of his shirt.
Ravenna couldn’t believe that he’d removed his clothing after her scandalous request. She could hardly countenance thatshe’dasked, that such an audacious demand had even fallen from her lips! It was so shameless of her, though she wasn’t complaining. Because here he was…her gorgeous specimen of a husband in shirtsleeves and entirely at her mercy.
And he had never looked more splendid.
An unrepentant Hades, and her, a salivating Persephone.
His shoulders were deliciously broad, his shape so palpably masculine that Ravenna couldn’t stop from sighing. Her mouth watered indelicately, her blood running hot and her core clenching with need. She was glad she couldn’t see his face and that he could not see hers, but there was something about it that was surprisingly intimate without the connection of their eyes. Hetrustedher, trusted her touch. And in truth, that made her bolder.
She resumed her attentions, digging her thumbs into the bunched, hard muscle. The duke’s skin was hot beneath her exploring fingertips. She kneaded his shoulders and massaged down the sides of his spine. Soon, there was nothing but their combined breaths in the silence as she worked. His breathing had reduced to ragged sighs, and she could barely breathe herself, but still she soldiered on.
A few more minutes and then she would leave. All would be well, decorum observed, and modesty would be no worse for wear. On the outside, anyway.
“Fuck it,” Courtland muttered, making her startle, and wrenched the shirt over his head.
Oh, for the love of things holy, Ravenna’s knees buckled. She didn’t know where to look. She wanted to absorb every single sinful detail of the masculine feast on display before her. Courtland was, by any stretch of the imagination, the most exquisitely built man she’d ever seen. The glimpse beneath the gap of his neckline had in no way prepared her for the glorious breadth of him or the muscles flexing beneath warm brown skin.
