Page 54 of If the Duke Demands

She licked her tongue over his Adam’s apple and drank in each panting breath he took beneath her seeking lips. Her kisses tormented him, and she gleefully relished in it. She wanted to hear him confess that she was right, that kissing her and touching her wasn’t a mistake, that he wanted her—

“I was wrong.” He growled and once more seized her mouth beneath his. This time when his mouth covered hers, instead of kissing her, he traced the outline of her lips with the tip of his tongue in an inverted kiss that sizzled through her and left her aching for more.

Oh, alie! But Sebastian was lying to himself as much as to her. Even now, heat sparked everywhere their bodies touched. She wasn’t like Lady Jane or those other society ladies. Not proper, not demure, certainly not passive. But he wanted her just the same, and her heart leapt with joy over it.

She rose up to meet his mouth full-on and greedily devoured his kiss, letting her inexplicable ache for him sweep her away. As he kissed her breathless once more, she clung to him and met kiss for kiss, lick for lick, each bite for tantalizing bite. He couldn’t hide the effect she had on him, and he was beginning to shake with the loss of his precious restraint. But she sensed a change in him, a reluctant capitulation rising up from deep inside him. One she knew cost him a great deal of his pride.

“I can’t have you, Miranda.” Belying his own words, he reached behind her back, and his clever fingers expertly unfastened the row of tiny hooks on her dress. “You’d be ruined, and I’d still be forced to marry someone else.”

Her breath hitched as he pulled her bodice down to her waist and revealed the short stays beneath. A shiver of nervous excitement pulsed through her as his hand traced down the front laces. The heat of his touch seeped into her flesh through the stiff material, as if it wasn’t there at all.

He brought his lips to her ear and confessed in a hot whisper, his fingers pulling the laces free from their eyelets, “But I still want you.”

Then his mouth covered her ear, and his tongue plunged deep inside in the most erotic kiss she’d ever experienced, leaving her clinging to him to keep from falling away. Yet her heart soared. She could barely believe it—Sebastian Carlisle wantedher. The man who had once been nothing more to her than the aggravating neighbor next door had become her friend, and now had come to mean so much more.

When he pushed open her stays and tugged down her low-cut chemise to bare her breasts, she was unable to hold back the low moan that poured from her. The heat of his gaze burned across her bare flesh everywhere he looked. And he looked greedily, drinking her in with his dark eyes as she draped so wantonly across his lap. He smiled wickedly when her nipples pebbled in the cool air beneath the heat of his gaze.

“We’re in a dark and private place,” he murmured. His husky voice swirled around her, heating her from the inside out. “In the shadows where no one can see or ever know.”

She shivered at the reminder of what she’d said to him the night of the opera, in that wholly scandalous, completely tantalizing conversation they’d shared in the shadows. One that had left her aching and all of her tense with longing. Then, as now, her breath grew shallow and rapid, and the tip of her tongue darted out to lick her suddenly dry lips. She whispered, “The kind of place where a woman might be tempted to tell a man what she wants?”

He slowly circled her left nipple with his fingertip, making it ache. “And a man might be tempted to give it.”

“Yes,” she sighed out. She arched her back against his touch, unable to lie still beneath the torturous tracing of his finger.

He laughed softly at her eager response, and the deep sound twined through her. Heavens, how she loved to hear him laugh! He was never more attractive than when he was happy, and her heart ached impossibly more for him.

“What do you want, Rose?” he murmured. “Tell me, and I’ll give it.”

She swallowed. Hard. She knew she should stop this, put an end to it before it got out of hand. But the temptation was simply too great, the way he made her feel too delicious.

With her heart pounding so hard she was certain he could feel it, she whispered, “Kiss me.”

“As you wish.” He leaned over and seized her nipple between his lips.

She gasped at his audacity. The sensation of his hot, moist mouth against her cooled skin jolted her, and she shuddered violently, only to gasp a second time when his tongue licked over her, swirling around the nipple the same way his fingertip had done. This wasn’t a kiss. This was so much more wicked, so much more delicious that her toes curled inside her slippers.

When he’d thoroughly laved her nipple into a hard pebble, leaving it hot and aching, the tip glistening wet in the dim lamplight, he moved to the other breast to begin the sweet torture anew.

She shifted restlessly on his lap, unable to lie still as he tongued her nipple. “Sebastian,” she protested between fierce, little pants, “what are—”

“Shh,” he whispered against her breast, his mouth not leaving her bare flesh even as he reached his hand up to caress across her upper chest, soothingly, as if calming a wild kitten. When she opened her eyes to watch him, something tugged deep inside her at the sight of his sensuous mouth at her breasts, something raw and purely feminine. Her thighs clenched against the hot ache that surged through her and stole her breath away.

Suddenly, he was through teasing. He took her breast deep into his mouth as he suckled greedily at her. So hard, so strong that his lips pulled the throbbing ache from between her thighs all the way through her like a rope, leaving her lungs panting for breath and her legs shaking as they draped open across his.

With one last tender kiss to her aroused nipple, he lifted his head and stared into her eyes. “What else do you want, sweet Rose?” he enticed, his voice hoarse.

“Touch me,” she breathed, so softly that barely any sound fell from her lips.

As his dark eyes held hers for a moment, primal pleasure flickered bright in their depths. Then he lowered his head and blew a cold stream of air across her wet nipple.

Jolted at the unexpected sensation, a cry tore from her. She bucked, but the hand that had been softly stroking her now held her down to keep her from squirming off his thighs. He blew against her other nipple, and she moaned at the sweet torture. Who knew the most tantalizing touch would be not touching her at all?

She whimpered, “Sebastian…” A dishonest attempt to halt his caresses, when the last thing she wanted was for him to stop. Instead, she somehow found enough clarity through her arousal-fogged brain to force out between panting breaths, “You aren’t…doing what…I want.”

“No. For once I’m doing whatIwant,” he murmured, nuzzling his soft cheek against her breast. Then his mouth moved to the other breast, to suckle at her again, just as greedily as before.

She arched her back, thrusting her breast deeper into his mouth. “You’re not…playing fair,” she panted out.