Page 63 of A Duke Too Far (The Way to a Lord's Heart 4)

Nathaniel was so absorbed with kissing her back and with shaping the contour of her ribs, waist, and hips that her meaning took a moment to sink in.

“And I want out of my damned breeches.”

Althea sat up, he scooted, she helped, and soon he was naked. “The dressing gown,” he said. “Please.”

She shrugged out of it, sniffing at the flannel lining. “I like wearing your scent.”

“The things you say…” Honest, erotic, un-self-conscious. “I like wearingyou.”

She kept her chemise on even as she resumed her place straddling his lap, likely the better to tease him with full breasts straining against delicate linen. He glossed his thumbs over her nipples and she arched like a happy cat.

“Good hands,” she said. “I love that you have good, knowledgeable hands.” She brushed her sex over his arousal in a maddeningly slow, hot caress.

Even as desire spiraled upward, Nathaniel was aware of a discontent separate from bodily yearning. The pleasure was most exquisite and soon to surpass even that superlative, but Althea would be intimate with him only this once, only here and now.

That was wrong. Unfair to them both, and no amount of racing on horseback over the darkening moors would ease that sorrow.

So here and now must be worth a lifetime of recollection. Nathaniel eased Althea’s chemise up and over her shoulders, leaving her wonderfully bare and rosy.

“You are…magnificent.” In appearance she might not be remarkable from an artistic perspective—she was beautiful to him—but her direct gaze, the lovelylisteningquality of her touch, the intensity of her lovemaking made him ache.

Her smile became devilish as she took him in her hand and slowly, slowly slid her body down over his arousal.

“If I am magnificent, what is this?” she asked, when she’d hilted him inside her. Shedid something, a little feminine caress from within, and Nathaniel nearly came undone.

“Thatis almost more delight than I can bear. Take your pleasure swiftly, Althea, for I won’t last worth a damn.”

“Neither will I,” she said, cuddling down to his chest. She moved at a deliberate tempo, and Nathaniel tried to hold the sparkling heat loosely as it built, but his restraint was barely equal to the challenge.

Fortunately, Althea wasn’t interested in a contest of delayed gratification. She let go with a soft laugh against Nathaniel’s shoulder, yielding to pleasure vigorously. He held her until he was certain she’d wrung the last ripple of satisfaction from him, then lifted her up far enough to withdraw.

She must have known what he was about because she immediately tucked close again, giving him weight, heat, and her body to finish against. Very soon he would doubtless find the mental resources to resent withdrawing, but as satisfaction overcame him, all he could be was grateful.

Very, very grateful, and at peace.

He held her as their bodies cooled, his hand finding the discarded dressing gown and using it as a blanket over them both. Althea quieted, and Nathaniel, with no conscious thought, matched his breathing to hers.

The moment was perfect. He was replete in ways he hadn’t been, ever. To hold Althea thus, skin to skin, no pretenses or secrets between them, was more intimate even than what had gone before, and Nathaniel was certain he would miss both equally—the passion and the sweet contentment that followed it.

He’d not known either previously, and that had been a backhanded mercy. What a man did not know, he could not long for—or beg for—but throughout the rest of his days, Nathaniel would long for Althea Wentworth and the joy of intimate union with her.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Milly asked.

Stephen could barely recall his mother, but he’d heard Jane take that tone with his little nieces. He set the wicker panniers on the sideboard in Lynley Vale’s foyer, ceramic jars clanking gently.

“I’m on my way to aid a neighbor beset by illness. Althea didn’t have time to pack ginger when she decamped on the same mission, and if she intends to bide at Rothhaven any longer, she needs a change of clothes.”

Milly folded her arms. “Then Rothhaven should send for those items.”

“I promised them I’d bring the ginger. I keep my word.”

“You are meddling.”

“Then what are you doing, darling Milly?” He’d passed the open door of Althea’s private sitting room and seen Milly at the desk, scratching away at some list or other.

Her response was to look away and drop her arms. “I am planning a ball.”

Not a reply Stephen could have anticipated. “I beg your pardon?” He propped himself against the sideboard—God bless all homes liberally stuffed with sturdy furniture—and prepared to hear a confession.

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