Page 53 of Married to the Forbidden Duke
“Mm, will you ruin me?” He kissed her other cheek, and even though she itched with impatience, she also loved the anticipation building in her stomach.
“I’ll make you wish you never married me…”
Air from his snort brushed her hair, and he skated his fingers down to the dip of her decolletage, just teasing the well of her breasts. Her breathing stuttered.
“Impossible,” he said, and bit the curve of her shoulder. She gasped, arching into him, and she felt the press of his smile against her skin.
“Frederick…” she breathed, reaching for him and tugging at his cravat.
“Yes, dearest?”
His fingers came to help hers, freeing the cravat from around his neck and tossing it aside. But he made no attempt to help her as she fumbled with the buttons of his waistcoat. All he did was help her ease it over his shoulders. Then there was his shirt, and she tugged at it, raising it so she could make out his torso.
Muscles. She had never seen a naked man before, but she had seen plenty of Greek statues, and she knew that they depicted men’s abdominal muscles. But even with her limited knowledge of male anatomy, she knew that the average man did not resemble the statues. They were too soft around the middle, too short, or too broad, or too slender.
Frederick, however…
She traced the muscles with something approaching awe. Once or twice, when no one had been looking, she’d touched the statues, but they had nothing on a real, flesh-and-blood man. Soft, velvety skin, the hard ridge of muscle that lay underneath.
What a dichotomy.
The statues hadn’t had hair, either, and she blinked at it, the line that went from the base of his chest down to the waistband of his trousers.
She found hipbones, the muscle-sculpting around them, and had the unaccountable urge to bite them. She wanted her lips, her teeth, her tongue, against every part of him. Her hands trembled as they ran across the V pointing, rather directly, to the bulge in his breeches like an arrow.
Frederick ripped his shirt all the way off, and her gaze traveled over him, taking in his broad chest, the defined pectorals, the rounded caps to the end of his shoulders.
He was a study in male perfection.
How had she not noticed this about him before?
Surely it ought to have been obvious with the way he had carried her so effortlessly; she had been carried often enough before, but it had never been done with quite so muchease.
His breath turned ragged, and he caught her chin, fingers almost rough as he turned her face to his. “Alice,” he muttered, that gravel back in his voice again, so rough it whispered delightfully over her skin. “If you keep looking at me like that—”
“What will you do?” She licked her lips, intrigued by the answer.
“I can’t be held responsible for my actions...”
“Do you wish to ravish me?”
A primal light lit in his eyes. His jaw flexed. “Yes,” he uttered, and it felt as though the word had been dragged from him unwillingly. “I would like to do unspeakable things to you.”
All this while, she had intended to take the reins of control into her own hands. Ensure that she led the way, even as he taught her what pleasure could be.
But now… now she wondered if it would be more pleasing for her to grant him permission to do some of these things. It was awonder to be looked at in this way, as though he would set fire to the world around them in order to preserve this moment.
Perhaps she ought to let him have his way with her. She could trust him to do what he needed—be gentle with her. To guide her right.
“If I find your tastes too depraved, you will stop?” she whispered.
“Without hesitation,” he nodded immediately, some of the ardor in his gaze vanishing. “I would never force anything on you that you did not enjoy.”
She mused for a moment. “Then you may choose one item on your list of unspeakable things, and let us discover if I enjoy them.”
He licked his lips, looking conflicted. “Is that… a good idea?”
“Is it not?”
