Page 61 of How the Earl Entices

“You hid that ring from me. What other secrets are you keeping?”

“More than you can count,” she shot back, but the aching breathlessness of her voice undercut whatever indignation she’d been aiming for.

His lips curled into a wicked smile he couldn’t prevent. He knew why she was trembling and panting.Thatwasn’t anger.

He leaned closer, so close that her lips tickled against his as he murmured, “I think there are some secrets you want to share.”

The heated flare of her eyes proved she knew he didn’t mean her name.

“In fact, I think you’re aching for it.” He admitted in a rasping half-growl, “God knows I’m aching for you.”

His arousal pulsed fiercely in his gut, flamed by the way she stared at his mouth. The front of her body moved against his with each panting breath she took, rubbing the towel against his chest and unwittingly sparking a delicious friction that stirred his cock.

He trailed a single fingertip down her bare arm, from her shoulder to her wrist, when what he wanted to do was grab her into his arms. Yet that slight touch was enough to blossom a trail of goose bumps in its wake and prove to him how much she wanted his hands on her. “Why deny yourself the pleasures you want so badly?”

“I can’t,” she protested, her hands grasping tightly at the towel.

“Oh, I very much think you can.”

Unable to resist, he lowered his mouth to kiss her bare shoulder. When she sighed softly, making no move to stop him, he brushed his mouth over that delectably smooth patch of skin where her shoulder curved into her neck.

“You want me inside you, making you writhe in pleasure until you shatter from it.” He smiled sinfully against her throat, reveling in the sensation of her pulse racing furiously against his lips in arousal. “You’re craving it, so much that you’re trembling.” He placed a soft kiss against the tender flesh behind her ear, and she shuddered with longing. “Say yes and let me give you that pleasure.”

“I can’t…endanger Ethan.” Her whisper came between soft pants, her breasts rising and falling rapidly beneath the towel.

“This has nothing to do with him.” He dared to caress his hand over her bare shoulder in a featherlight touch. Then lower, to stroke his fingers teasingly across the top of her chest, where he could feel her racing heartbeat. “This is only about you and me, and letting ourselves have what we both want.” His lowered his head to trace an open-mouth kiss along her jaw. “And I want you, so very much.”

“But we—we don’t trust each other.”

“Idotrust you. I trust you with my life.” He nuzzled his mouth against her cheek, her jagged scar rough beneath his lips. He kissed it reverently. “So trust me enough to make yourself vulnerable to me, in every way.”

His lips found hers. When her mouth softened with a sigh, he slipped inside to take sweeping licks into the delicious depths of her kiss, to tauntingly joust with her tongue and arouse her to give over to the hot ache he knew burned inside her. To the undeniable attraction that had crackled like electricity between them since the night of the storm.

“Say yes.” He took her bottom lip between his and gently sucked. “Say yes and let me give you every pleasure you deserve.”

“Ross.” His name was a tortured whimper of capitulation as a hot shudder of permission swept through her.

She slowly opened the towel.

Chapter 18

Grace caught her breath as the rush of cool evening air swept over her naked body, followed immediately by the heat of his predacious gaze. It raked over her with agonizing deliberateness, taking her in, from her breasts with her nipples puckered hard and aching with arousal, across the flat of her belly to the curls between her thighs, and down her bare legs. Dear God, he was like a wolf, contemplating which parts of her to devour first.

“So beautiful,” he rasped out as he swept his hand down her front, teasingly stroking over her breasts before resting on her lower belly, his fingertips mere inches from the throbbing that sprang up at her core. He lowered his mouth to hers and murmured against her lips. “And finally mine.”

His hand lowered possessively between her legs. When she gasped at the intimate touch, he drank in the soft sound. Then he smiled against her mouth when his fingers caressed her and the gasp became a throaty moan.

Grace closed her eyes and clung to him, the world around her falling away until all she knew was the delicious teasing of his fingers. For once, she didn’t let herself consider the risk she was taking by letting herself be vulnerable like this, or if wanting this touch made her wanton. If stepping her legs apart so he could stroke more deeply and moaning when his mouth slid down her body to kiss at her breasts made her just another one of those merry widows who threw themselves at him. If the pleading whimper that fell from her lips when he pulled her nipple deep into his mouth and suckled hard acknowledged exactly how much she longed to be ravished by him.

None of that mattered as she arched herself against him. The need to be in his arms, to wrap herself around him until his strong body was both surrounding and surrounded by hers, had nothing to do with any of that. Just as it had nothing to do with the past ten years of loneliness and fear.

This desire was only for Ross and for the way he awakened the woman sleeping inside her. It was only his touch she craved, only his strong arms she wanted around her. His mouth caressing its way down her body, the same mouth that challenged her to such verbal sparring that her blood heated from it. His heroism and inner strength, his goodness.Allof him aroused her and made her yearn for the pleasures she knew he could give her, every brilliant, dedicated, daring inch of him.

When he sank to his knees, she opened her eyes to find him staring up at her. His blue eyes gleamed like the devil’s own, not leaving hers even when he placed a tender kiss against her soft belly. Not even when he nuzzled his mouth and chin against her feminine curls, as if daring her to stop him.

But she didn’t—oh, how could she? She wanted this with every ounce of her being. When a knowing smile curved at his lips as his hands stroked up the backs of her legs and squeezed her bare bottom, Grace bit her lip to choke back a moan.

“You smell like jasmine.” He nuzzled her again, this time slipping his mouth shamelessly lower until his warm lips tickled against her wet folds. “Everywhere.”