Chapter 15
His kiss should have frightened her, because she had just been so bloody afraid of the pull that he had over her. But it didn’t frighten her; she wasn’t afraid because his mouth was warm and soft and right.
She let herself sink into him like falling into bed after a long day.
And he lifted her up because he’d never let her fall—had never, would never—and his arms were so strong around her that she could have let him hold her forever.
Dangerous, whispered a voice, but it was terribly quiet compared to the part of her that was shouting for more.
When he made to pull back, she made a frustrated sound. Her hands were in the front of his shirt, and she clenched hard enough that the fine fabric would never be the same again.
He didn’t go far.
“Is this all right?” he asked, his lips close enough that they brushed, ever so lightly, against hers as he asked the question.
It was another chance for her to come to her senses, to step away. But she’d known he had this gravity to him, that she was forever destined to be caught in his orbit. Maybe she’d known it from the start. Either way, she was too deeply in his pull to free herself now.
She could not muster the energy to feel sorry about it.
“Yes,” she told him, pressing up on her toes so that she could reach his mouth of her own volition. She thrilled at the way his lips curved into a tiny, pleased smile as she did so. “This is more than all right. This is wonderful.”
His hands slid down her back, reminding her that she was only wearing the thin muslin garment she slept in—more of a shift than a proper nightdress.
The warmth of his touch soothed her while it also inflamed her, making her crave more of him.
She slid her palms up from his chest and his tattered, ruined shirt.
She glided them over the firm muscles of his chest—really, too hard and lovely for a duke; he had too many advantages.
If he was going to be rich, powerful, and handsome, he ought not be so strong—and up to his neck.
“Why do you make me feel like this?” she asked as she wrapped her arms around him and pressed her breasts hard against his chest. The pressure felt so good without any constricting stays between them, and he, too, must have realized that her nighttime attire made for a new opportunity, because he raised a hand between them and cupped her, his thumb unerringly passing over where her nipple had turned into a hard little bud beneath the fabric.
“Oh my dear girl,” he murmured between kisses. “If I knew the answer, I would tell you. But you have cast the same spell over me.”
“Truly?” she breathed.
Because, honestly, it did not seem possible.
She was a thirty-year-old redheaded governess of modest birth and no notable distinction.
She was fairly attractive but not truly beautiful.
She was intelligent enough, but possessed no miraculous show of genius.
Despite her situation, she was an untested virgin with no particular talent for seduction.
In fact, she had spent most of her efforts trying to avoid drawing attention to herself.
So how could beautiful, clever, wily Ezra—a duke with the slyness of a fox and the fortune of a king—be drawn to her?
He laughed as though she had said something truly humorous.
“Yes, truly,” he said. He was kissing in apparently random patterns across her face.
Then Letitia realized he was pressing these kisses to her freckles, anointing them like they were something lovely when she’d always considered them blemishes.
“You have come into my life like a hurricane and completely undone my good sense. As I told you before, I may not be a saint, but I am not the man who comes knocking at the staff’s door in the dead of night.
But you... You have made me forget myself.
You make me forget my responsibilities and my duties.
You make me feel as though I am just a man, caught up in the grasp of the loveliest woman he has ever known. ”
It was like he saw someone else when he looked at her, she thought dizzily.
He was still cupping her breasts, still tracing lazy circles around her nipple with his thumb.
The movements were almost absent, as if nothing of importance was happening.
Yet, they were making her melt inside, like she was a bonbon left out in the summer sun.
“That cannot be true,” she protested, her head falling back as he moved to kiss his way down her throat.
“Do not contract me, woman,” he countered, nipping lightly at the place where her pulse raced under her skin. “I have but the barest shreds of control when I am around you. Let me have this one thing, lest you command me absolutely.”
She wanted to glare at him suspiciously, but she only had enough wherewithal to peer at him through one half-lidded eye.
“Me? Command you?” It sounded too breathy to be truly skeptical, but her meaning must have come through, because Ezra let out an incredulous laugh, which teetered teasingly against her skin.
“Oh, indeed,” he murmured. “Do you know how you have haunted my thoughts? I thought it could get no worse than it had been, then you showed me how gorgeous you look when you are taking your pleasure atop me.”
Letty could feel her cheeks flaming so brightly that it was a wonder there was any blood left for things like her legs, which did feel admittedly quite wobbly.
“But I left you…” She trailed off. Even now, back in his arms, it was too horrifying to contemplate.
Improbably, he smiled, then bent down to nip lightly at her bottom lip.
“So you did,” he agreed. “I will admit that I would have enjoyed another outcome as well, but I found it… alluring. I have thought of it many times since, if you take my meaning.”
The innuendo had been perfectly obvious, but he still arched a brow.
“As if I could miss it,” she retorted.
He groaned, one of his hands sliding down further to palm her buttocks. He used the grip to tug her closer against him, really, truly making certain that she could not miss his meaning—that she could not miss that he was once more in a similarly, ah, turgid state.
“Let me show you,” he said—and, truly, it sounded almost like a prayer, like he was begging her. “Let me show you the command you hold over me. Let me show you how dearly I desire you. Let me give, not take.”
With each word of this offer, Letty felt as though she was being wrapped in something—the spell he wound with his speech, perhaps, or that devilishly soft binding that seemed to always be holding them more tightly together. She understood the general meaning of the offer, if not its specifics.
Pleasure, for her alone—once again. But this time, given intentionally and still without asking for anything in return.
It was the opposite of everything she’d ever been faced with in her life.
She’d had offers. More frequently, she’d had threats disguised as offers.
The veneer to those latter cases had always come off when she’d tried to refuse.
Even the true offers had never been meant for her enjoyment.
They’d all thought that she—a baseborn nobody—ought to be grateful for the attention.
“Show me, Your Grace,” she commanded, turning his title into something that was not quite a mockery, but which was far from being deferential, either. “Show me how I command you.”
He gave her a smile that would make the devil himself blush.
“As my lady commands,” he purred.
In a flash, he had put both hands under her arse, then hoisted her into the air. She let out a startled bark of laughter that quickly turned into a moan as he kissed the curves of her breasts, one and then the other, now conveniently placed at the height of his mouth.
He carried her across the room and carefully laid her on the edge of her bed. His hands were gentle as he supported her back. He took her hair, braided it into a rope like she wore it to sleep, and gently pulled it out from beneath her so it wouldn’t cause her any discomfort.
He kissed her nose, her mouth. He kissed the point of her chin, then skimmed his nose down until he could press a kiss to the divot at the base of her throat. He kissed the hard plate of her breastbone, right above the collar of her shift.
And then, he sank to his knees before her.
“Oh, God,” she breathed, clapping her hands over her face.
“No, no,” he crooned. She felt his hands come around her ankles, his thumbs resting on the bone of the joints. He gave her a caress, each mirroring the other. “Don’t hide your face from me. Please, Letty, dearest. Let me see.”
It took more courage for her to remove her hands from her face than to let him use his grip on her ankles to spread her legs wider and wider, until her shift’s width prevented her knees from moving any further.
He traced his fingers up the fine bones of her shins, then cupped his grip around to the backs of her calves. He pressed a kiss to each knee, the touch bright and hot even through the fabric of her nightdress.
“Let me give you more, Letty,” he said, his breath making the muslin damp and warm. “Tell me yes.”
“Yes,” she breathed. Her hands were trembling at her sides. “Yes.”
He raised the hem of her shift an inch, then one more. The rasp of the fabric against her skin was a tease in itself, but it was nothing compared to the hot, open-mouthed kisses he pressed to the inside of her knee, then the tender skin inside her thigh.
She was burning, and her breath came in little hitching pants.
“Ezra,” she murmured. “What are you doing to me?”
“Oh, sweetness,” he breathed into her skin. “I haven’t even started yet.”
The sound that escaped her next was garbled, and, honestly, she didn’t even know what words she’d been trying to utter. He raised her hem higher, kissing each exposed inch as he went, higher and higher still, until—
Oh, Lord, she was bared to him, entirely.
She knew she was slick enough that her arousal would be obvious—she could feel it, and belatedly, she fretted that it was uncouth, somehow. As soon as the thought occurred to her, she had to fight back a hysterical bubble of laughter. They had gone rather far past uncouth quite a while ago.
“God, you are so beautiful,” he breathed, sounding like she was a revelation.
“Ezra...” she said.
And then, he pressed his mouth right to her center.
The sound that left her was akin to a scream.
Lord help her, she had never felt anything like this. She’d never felt as though her body was made of pure energy, as though she could burst into flame at any moment. His mouth was warm and wet and consuming, and everything ceased to exist except for the places that he touched her.
“Do you see the power that you have?” he murmured, interspersing his caresses with punctuated kisses on her thighs, along the crease where her leg met her body, then back to her core. “Do you like knowing that you can put me on my knees?”
She should not admit it, but yes, she did. She propped herself up just enough to look down her body at him, the sight nearly dizzying her. He licked her again, this time bringing his fingers to gently touch her entrance, and she dropped back down flat on the mattress.
“Good God, Letty,” he groaned, sounding almost as delirious with desire as she felt. “The things you do to me.”
“I think,” she gasped, the sound choked, “that you are—oh—doing things to me.”
He slid a finger inside her, and she instinctively felt her body tense. He withdrew, then plunged in again, this time with two fingers, stretching her in the most delightful way.
“Yes,” he hissed into her flesh. “Let me. Let me show you how good it can feel.”
He focused his attention on that one spot that felt so good she almost wanted to cringe away from it, as if the pleasure was so intense it might actually tear her apart.
“Ezra,” she cried, her hand going to his hair, clenching his locks between her fingers.
He groaned when she tugged, just a little, and then she fell truly apart, her entire body clenching and shaking with the onslaught of pleasure.
Her vision went briefly dim, and when she returned to herself, Ezra was standing at the end of the bed, shirt off, trousers unlaced.
She watched with wide eyes as he took himself in hand—the same hand that had just been inside her, she realized with a furious blush—and he pumped his arm fiercely, his gaze fixed on her.
It didn’t take long before he let out his own hoarse cry.
He caught his release in his shirt, and this small act of consideration struck her.
There would be no questions from the staff this way.
For a long moment, they both just watched one another as their breaths slowed and their bodies cooled. Letitia thought she should likely flinch away from his regard, but she didn’t feel exposed under his gaze. She felt… adored.
That is more dangerous than exposure, she reminded herself.
“Do you see?” he asked eventually, his voice soft.
She did—but not in the way that he meant.
She pushed herself to sit up, then awkwardly pulled a blanket over her shoulders. It didn’t really cover her, but she figured she should try before speaking again.
He knew what was coming. She saw it in his face.
“You are still leaving,” he said before she could. It was an act of generosity. He was giving her this gift.
“I am,” she said. “One more week, and then I will go.”
“Very well,” he said. He let out a slow breath. “Very well.”
As she settled herself down to sleep, she dared to believe that he had actually seemed disappointed.