Page 25 of The Duke Undone

He slid his thumb down her cheek, and her skin moved, the soft flesh tightening. How novel, to feel a woman scowling.

“Go on,” he said. “I might take pity on you if you ask very nicely.”

She drew back abruptly, eyes glowing. He was provoking her, but God knew she deserved it.

“So gracious of you,” she said, all politeness, through gritted teeth. “But I can manage without.”

“You should take advantage of a man’s offer, instead of, well.” He paused to frown at her. “Taking advantage.”

“I said I was sorry.” Her hands were in fists at her sides.

“You did.” He acknowledged it. “I can see the signs of your sincere contrition.” His voice was dry, and his eyes dropped to her fists, which she released instantly, brushing at her skirts. “As a reward, to counterbalance all that remorse”—he twitched away his smile—“I give you permission. You don’t have to beg.” He rocked once on his heels, then stood stock-still, a hand on his hip, posed. He barely moved his lips. “Do what you will with me.”

She was staring at him now, the ferocity of her scowl diluted by sudden uncertainty. He’d unnerved her. Good. He’d wanted to unnerve her, as she’d unnerved him.

“You were so resourceful, when you found me stark naked, as you say, in that alley.” He abandoned his pose, rolled his head on his shoulders, stretched his limbs, aware that she watched him narrowly. “But your faculties fail you, it seems, when you’re forced to meet the gaze of your subject.”

He smiled, a smug smile, he knew. He leaned forward and lowered his voice, making it silky. “You really can’t think of one single thing you want to do?”

She stepped back in haste, caught herself, and looked at him, face aflame. Then she marched forward, put her hand on his neck, and gripped. She rose onto her tiptoes and kissed him.

• • •

She had made a miscalculation. A significant one. The realization dawned on her without illuminating a solution.

His surprise lasted no more than an instant. He rocked back once on his heels, then pressed forward, leaning into her, curving her body back like a bow. His mouth was warm and sweet, moving on hers as he licked at the seam of her lips, parting them.

What had she been thinking? That she could turn the tables? Teach him a lesson?

No. A little voice chimed in the depths of her mind. Like always, she had been more interested in her own education. She’d wanted to learn his mouth beyond its color and shape, its abstract form. She’d wanted it since the first moment she saw him.

She was learning now. His mouth . . . it was heat and moisture, and a faint honeyed taste.

Beneath her hand, she felt the movements of his throat, the friction of the tiny hairs embedded in the skin of his jaw. She let her hand slide down, slide across his shoulder, broad and hard.

She already knew his anatomy, knew the moment her palm would begin its downward slope, bump of clavicle, bunched density of deltoid and biceps. But her knowledge was changing. It felt less like mastery and more like surrender. To know wasn’t to order the world, but to open to its mystery.

His arms came around her and their strength made her gasp against his mouth. He liked that. She felt his lips curve before he drew her lower lip between his teeth, suckling the plump flesh, scraping its tenderness ever so lightly. He was smiling. Not her corpse, not Endymion. The Duke of Weston. A buffoon. A selfish, conceited idiot. A man who shattered stained-glass windows and pickled himself with gin.

The subject of your picture is me, he’d said, and it was he whom she was kissing, not an idealized figure. It was madness to pretend otherwise.

But, dear God, his beauty convulsed her senses.

This was like nothing she’d experienced with boys in the borough, the few that she’d kissed, all bright, skinny lads in caps, older brothers of the girls with whom she’d once shared clothes-peg dolls. They were fervent and earnest, and in the end, she’d batted them away. They were a distraction, and she was very good at maintaining her focus.

This was different. This was a threat.

Every heightened instinct urging her to push him away was turned against her, into pure sensation. Now both her arms were wound around his neck, and his hips ground into her skirts. The swelling she felt between his thighs made her eyes fly open. He was growing larger, harder, and when she pulled back to assimilate these new dimensions, the arm around her waist kept her close, and his mouth dragged from hers and pressed hot and wet against her neck, before his teeth closed on the lobe of her ear.

She moaned, unable to stop herself, kneading his shoulders. She hadn’t seen the back side of his body, how the muscles knit over his ribs, the way his buttocks jutted from the iliac crest, but maybe she could feel . . .

No. His jacket muffled detail. Whereas the silk of her gown scarcely protected her. She could feel the individual pads of his fingers sweep across her shoulder blades, exploring her as she longed to explore him, working their way down the knobs of her spine.

She dug with her fingers, feeling the savage desire to rend the cloth. Touch was a new frontier. She wanted more of it. Criminal that he should rub against her cased in layers of linen, silk, and wool. He found her lips again, his breathing as ragged as her own, his tongue stroking deeper.

There were hollows she hadn’t even considered, negative spaces, that suddenly thrummed with feeling. He was licking into her, and she felt heaviness and heat gathering lower down in her belly, an answering ache.

Kisses before had natural ends. Two self-contained bodies touched at the lips, then separated.