Page 66 of A Scandalous Kind of Duke

Cast off your control and show me the parts you show no one else,she willed him silently.Give me that, for I want nothing less.

She made to leave him. With a roar, he surged up beneath her. Strong hands gripped her, flipped her onto her back like a rag doll. It felt like flying and she cried out with breathless delight as he thrust deep inside her, grunting and growling, eyes savage, teeth bared, a solid quivering mass of muscle and desire.

“More,” she urged him. “Give me more.”

Again, she shoved his shoulder; again, he rolled over, bearing her with him. But a heartbeat later, he rose to flip her onto her front. Those relentless hands hauled up her hips and he drove hard into her from behind.

Frenzied passion coursed through her, until her muscles and skin and blood sang like a choir, as she lost herself to him, to this messy wildness of two people giving each other their all.

Then he stopped, his chest heating her back, his breath rough and ragged against her neck. He slid a hand enticingly up her inner thigh and unerringly found that one spot created to make her scream.

“Wild enough for you?” he growled in her ear.

“Almost,” she gasped. “Give me more.”

His fingers worked their magic, and his teeth grazed her shoulder. Bliss broke over her like a thunderstorm, and his strong arm cradled her as pleasure rippled through every inch of her being.

She came back into herself, with Leo gently turning her onto her back and hovering over her.

Hazily, she fumbled for him, gripped him hard, reveled in his groan, in his fingers wrapped over hers. Their mouths met and their tongues tangled, until he reared back, face turned to the heavens. He released a strained shout and shuddered as he spent his seed onto her belly.

Juno sank back onto the pillows, feeling wrung out and ragged and blissfully alive. Leo collapsed too, half on top of her. Their chests raggedly moved in time.

Slowly, they recovered. The warm air glided over their damp, feverish skin. She dimly identified another sound as the rain pouring down outside.

“Well,” Leo mumbled beside her. “That was about as tedious as expected.”

“Oh, is it over?” she replied. “I hadn’t noticed.”

Laughter welled up inside her. He began to laugh too. Her spent muscles protested at the effort, as the mattress shook beneath their shared mirth.

CHAPTER18

Leo stared up at the pale-blue canopy of the bed. Rain drummed softly on the roof, and ghostly evening light haunted the edges of the curtain, lending the room an air of mystery, of a place out of time. He must have dozed after cleaning them both up, while Juno had eyed him with the smug air of an overfed cat.

She was still dozing, her breaths soft and even, her hair a tangle spread over his chest. It felt wonderful, this sweet intimacy, and he did not know what to do with it. There was a possessiveness in the way she draped her limbs over him. He could never possess her, though. She would dance away again, as she had before, and leave him holding air.

And their lovemaking, if that was what it was. He still felt raw with it, as if the power of that passion had bruised his nerves. How blithely she had torched his careful plans and smashed his expectations. The woman in his bed was not the merry, light-hearted friend, the flippant pleasure-seeker. She played a different game; she had transformed their pleasure into something complex and powerful.

Like a goddess, he thought. When he’d been young and foolish, and read so much mythology and classical poetry that his brain turned soft, he’d thought of Juno as a pagan goddess, a goddess of nature, of flowers and spring, that life force bursting from the earth to create pretty things. He had berated himself for his lazy thoughts: Just because she had the name of a goddess, didn’t mean she was one.

Perhaps he had never quite shaken the idea, and now his mistake loomed, along with the truth. Nature was ruthless; goddesses were too. It was all flowers and moonbeams till she gripped your cock in her fist.

Her power had stripped him of all his lies, leaving him raw and open, so that he felt everything, and everything felt too much.

He had never felt so close to anyone in his life. He had never felt so close to losing himself.

She stirred. Yawning, she spanned a hand over his chest and slid a foot up his leg.

“You were right to bring so much food,” she said with a sleepy smile. “I will indeed need my strength to survive another romp like that.” She stretched languorously and flipped back her hair, so at ease with herself and the release of their secret, wild selves. “If only I could keep you in my studio after all, for my pleasure when I will. But I suppose you must go and be a duke, and I’ll have no use for you then.”

Leo said nothing. He stared at the canopy. There was a small tear in the fabric. How did a tear get up there?

She raised her head, the pressure of her hand on his chest increasing as she gave him some of her weight. He had to look at her.

She searched his eyes. “Is something troubling you?”

“Not at all.”

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