Page 76 of The Runaway Duchess

She shook her head, emphatic. Almost frantic.

“Let me . . . I can touch you.” She spoke in a strangled voice and sat up, pressing her palm to the bulge in his trousers.

He felt himself straining against the fabric. She swallowed, moving her hand, her expression concentrated. He sucked in his breath.

“The question isn’t what you can do.” He bent his torso over her, pulling her against him. “I don’t doubt you can do anything.”

If she kept touching him, that adorable, determined look on her face, she’d find out one thing she could do, quite a bit sooner than he’d like.

He couldn’t remember a time a woman’s hand had worked him to this state.

His voice was rough. “The question is what do you want.”

He cupped the back of her head, claiming her mouth as he bore her slowly down onto the moss. Her arm snaked between them—she was trying to release him from the trousers—but he slid down her body, kissing her throat, the swell of her breasts. Thank God she wasn’t wearing one of her silk gowns with all the complicated panels and lace, the eyelets and hooks. He had her out of the thin cotton frock and ruffled knickers in a trice. For a moment he could only stare at her, her creamy body on a bed of green, breasts tipped with pink, dark curls glinting gold at the juncture of her thighs.

“You said everything.” He studied her face as he unbuttoned his shirt, fingers trembling slightly. He wasn’t nearly as calm as he sounded.

He wanted her. He shook with the force of it. “But we need to prioritize. There’s so much.” He took a deep breath as he let his shirt fall. The breeze felt deliciously cool, tickling his ribs. “Tell me.”

“What?” She was up again on one elbow, brow furrowed in confused anger. “I said everything. That means . . .” She trailed off, eyes roaming down his chest. She caught her lower lip between her teeth. Then she met his gaze.

“Take me,” she said hoarsely, and her eyes fell to his groin. Her look alone affected him like a finger stroke. The ache had become a torment.

An equal torment—his sudden knowledge of her innocence.

She knew nothing of the other pleasures he could offer her.

She’d been taught to give but not to take.

That husband of hers, he was an outright villain.

He came onto all fours beside her, nuzzling her breasts, flicking her nipples until they hardened against his tongue. His hand slid over her belly down the slope of her hip. He pulled his head from her breasts to take her mouth in a kiss as his hand slid further, and he teased the curls between her thighs. He burrowed into them with his first two fingers, felt the sudden shock of her moist heat. She cried out in his mouth, bucking, and her arm came around him, fingernails scratching down his spine, then her fingers hooked the band of his trousers. She tugged down.

He moved his fingers gently, feeling the soft wet edges and the hard knot of her, which swelled under his touch.

She still tugged helplessly at his trousers. Sighing, he removed his hand, plucked away her tugging arm and pinned it beside her. He stopped sipping at her lips to take her nipple between his teeth, to plant kisses on the undersides of her breasts and below her navel, and then he was hovering over her lower belly, admiring the fullness of her thighs, and everything that glistened between.

His touch had made her open like a crocus. He wanted to open her wider, to taste each ridge and fold, parting the lavender-rose of her, heavy with dew.

The stream of air he expelled with his groan made her squirm. He leaned in and licked the very center.

—

Her stomach clenched as his mouth closed on her. Dear God, what kind of caress was this, the wet stroking of his tongue at the tip of her sensation? She gasped and wiggled, and his hand closed on her hip, pushing her into the moss, stilling her.

Her breath came ragged. Her legs butterflied around his wide upper body. He held her beating against his mouth, and her cheeks flamed with the near unbearable intimacy of it. She felt his fingers parting her, then the delicious, unsettling stretch as his knuckle churned against her inner flesh, his tongue sliding in rhythm.

Had George ever tried to position himself thus, propped between her thighs, spreading her? No, no, he’d kiss her mouth, her breasts, brush her down there with beringed fingers, then fit himself inside.

If he’d tried . . . she’d never have allowed it. She had wanted George to see her as a princess, an angel, wicked at times, but always irreproachably lovely. He would climb on top of her and she’d make sure her hair was fanned out like a golden halo on the pillow. She would run her hands down his smooth back, sigh prettily, let him take her, adoring his closeness, the flickers of pleasure in that secret place where he rubbed against her.

It wasn’t secret now. She was open to Neal, to the woods, to the sky.

Neal had asked her what she wanted. She didn’t know if she wanted this, this exposure.

“No.” She bit back a cry as his lips, tongue, and teeth pulled and warmth flooded down her thighs. Louder. “No.”

At once, he was up beside her, the muscles in his arm bunching as he took her in a protective embrace. She shuddered against his hard chest.