Page 62 of The Duke's Only Desire

Chapter Eighteen

Three Weeks Later

Unable to resist,Shay stepped up behind Sophie as she worked at the bench in the greenhouse to prepare a dozen little pots for spring plantings, slipped his arms around her, and placed his mouth against the side of her neck in a lingering kiss. Immediately, her pulse spiked beneath his lips, and he smiled against her skin.

“If you keep that up,” she warned in what he knew to be her best attempt at a stern admonishment but which only emerged as a throaty purr, “we’ll never get the greenhouse readied for spring.”

“I’m perfectly fine with that.” To prove it, he took her earlobe between his lips and sucked.

A tremor swept through her. “And then what will all the little—” She gasped sharply when he nipped at her ear. “—all the little plantings do if—” When he soothed away the bite with a tender lick, her words faded into a soft whimper. “—if we don’t clean out—”

He turned her around in his arms and lowered his mouth to claim hers. At that moment, he didn’t give a damn if a single flower ever grew here again. All that mattered was the way her body melted against his, how her arms snaked up around hisshoulders to pull him down into the embrace. A wolfish growl seeped from him, and he felt her grin with pleasure beneath his lips at the reaction she drew from him.

He slipped his hands beneath her open coat.

“Stop that!” She reached for his hands and darted a glance through the glass panes toward the barren garden beyond. “Someone will see.”

“I don’t care if they’re jealous.”

“It’s not jeal—” She caught her breath when his hand swept up to capture her breast. “They’ll think we’re shameless.”

“We are,” he reminded her with mock secretiveness even as he massaged her breast through her clothes and silently cursed that they prevented him from teasing her bare nipple with his fingertips.

A delicious flush of embarrassment pinked her cheeks at that reminder of how they’d spent the past month.

He nuzzled her cheek to hide his smile as he increased the pressure of his hand. How they’d spent those days and nights…bliss. They’d barely left their rooms for the first three days after they’d consummated their marriage, taking their meals in his room and lounging around sleepily in hers whenever they weren’t making love. And there had been a lot of that, both tender and fierce in turns, exploring each other’s body and satisfying each other’s needs.

When they reluctantly emerged from their rooms, their daily lives had irrevocably changed. Instead of riding out every day to avoid her as he’d done before, now Shay worked at home, ostensibly to keep up with managerial duties because Enfield had resigned upon learning that the duchess could have anything she wanted, including entirely new gardens. Truthfully, Shay simply wanted to be near her, although he’d taken frequent breaks to seek her out, often making love and often in places he never would have considered before. On thesettee in the little room she’d turned into her office, in the tack room in the stables before taking her out in the sleigh and then again in the woods in the middle of their sleigh ride, even on the desk in his study—which made it damnably difficult afterward to concentrate whenever he attempted to work. And now, if he had his way, right here in the greenhouse.

Although—he threw a glance over his shoulder—she might be right about the glass and unwanted viewers. After all, if MacHeath caught them together, the old man would surely die of apoplexy.

“We’ll just be careful,” he told her and pressed himself closer, letting their two open coats hide what he was doing.

“Shay,” she protested, but her admonishment was undercut by her own hands as they roamed unseen over his front.

“Then we should go back to the house,” he murmured. “I’m suddenly feeling tired. I think I might need a nap.” His hands slipped behind her to squeeze her buttocks and tug her tightly against his pelvis. “Averylong nap. Perhaps for the rest of the afternoon.”

“I’m too busy for that kind of nap.” Yet traitorously, her body responded by pressing into his. “I’m behind in spring preparations.” A soft moan rose from her lips as he stroked entreatingly over her hips. “You’ve been distracting me for weeks.”

“And I plan to continue to distract you every chance I have.” He grabbed his right glove in his teeth to tug it off, then dropped it to the floor. “Starting now.”

Her breath hitched as he reached to lift her skirts and slip his hand beneath to touch her bare thigh above her wool stockings. Selfishly, he wanted to see the expression of joy that always crossed her face when she came against his fingers.

“At this rate,” she teased, her voice trembling with growing arousal as he stroked her inner thigh, “I might just miss the fall harvest.”

He laughed and buried his face in her hair, wrapping his arms around her and hugging her against him. Good lord, was he happy! Happier than he had thought he’d ever be. Far happier, certainly, than he had a right to be.

But he didn’t want to tempt fate by uttering those feelings aloud. Just as he couldn’t bring himself to tell her he loved her.

“And winter and spring the following year,” he added as he shifted her against the work bench behind her and placed heated kisses to her neck. “And the one after that.” His fingers caressed against her feminine core and elicited a whimper from her lips. “And the one after—”

“Sir!” Pearson’s voice boomed across the barren garden, well before the former soldier came anywhere near the garden entrance.

Sophie giggled at the curse Shay uttered at being interrupted, then slipped out of his arms and left him leaning in disappointment against the bench, his head hanging low.

“I should have let him resign last month,” he grumbled.

“We would both be lost without him, and you know it.”