Heiress in Red Silk, Hunter, Madeline [good beach reads TXT] 📗

until they embraced body to body and skin to skin. She held her breath in wonder of how good that felt, and she throbbed, sensitive and wet, in expectation of what was coming.

She found herself on the bed. He kneeled over her and used his mouth. Kisses, licks, and bites covered her body, each one arousing, each one demanding. He moved lower, then lower yet. She guessed what he was going to do. Shocked, she instinctively covered herself with her hand.

He kissed her hand. “Move it.”

She hesitated.

“Move it now, Rosamund.”

She obeyed and closed her eyes. He pleasured her with his hand until she surrendered to abandon. She was beyond shock when she felt his tongue begin a devastating tease. Soon, all was darkness and sensation, and cries of need screamed in her head. She felt him lift her legs.

She looked down her body. He stood beside the bed, holding her knees to his hips, thrusting into her. The sight of him aroused her more. He brought his intensity to everything he chose to do, even this, and it thrilled her to see his face hardened by passion, and his hair hanging about his brow and face, and his mouth and jaw so firm.

That special tightening began in reaction to it all, shimmering around his fullness this time, building into waves through her body that grew more violent. Her peak now centered where they joined. The release was so long and encompassing that she truly lost hold of the world while she cried out at the blissful freedom flooding her.

When her senses returned, he was laying in her arms, with his hard breaths feathering her ear.

“I was going mad without you,” he murmured.

She tightened her embrace and floated in perfect peace. Not only pleasure created this mood. A special intimacy absorbed her now, as if their essences touched as well as their bodies. That had become part of the desire and pleasure, and even of their easy friendship. She didn’t want to lose any of that.

Perhaps she would wait a day or so to let him know just how unacceptable she would be as a wife, and to ask him about the duke’s death.

* * *

“I suppose all the servants now know.”

Rosamund said that simply. He lay on his back and had her bundled into an embrace in his arms. He had been taking notice of the chamber’s appointments. She had done some redecorating and the place looked much nicer than when they had toured it with the agent.

Her reference to the servants returned his mind to a reckoning that he had started a few minutes earlier but quickly discarded for a while. The truth was, he had not taken much care with her reputation tonight, and the servants were the least of it.

He had no idea how to manage an affair, because he had never really done so before. There had been a short-lived debauch that might be called a liaison by the generous-minded, but otherwise his carnal appetites found the most practical solutions. Presumably there were standards for carrying on a liaison for any period of time. This one might be lengthy if she chose not to marry. He didn’t intend to give her up just because of that decision if she went in that direction.

“If they are good servants, they will be discreet. Nor will they ever let you know what they think they know. Don’t mention it and your maid won’t. If you want to pretend we discussed the enterprise, tell her that.” He trusted he had this much right. That was how servants behaved in his experience about other matters that required privacy and discretion.

“I’ll see if I can be sophisticated, or if I want to start explaining away your presence in my bedchamber this long. I doubt she will think we needed to come here to talk about the enterprise, though. I have a whole house for that.”

His mind walked through the house and its various chambers. If he ended up living here, he could see a notable deficiency. The house lacked a good-sized study where he could sequester himself when he pursued his interests. There would need to be a place for the business to be managed too.

“I think I will let chambers,” he said. “You can always visit me there, if my coming here is awkward for you.”

“That would be more scandalous.”

She was probably right.

One thing he did know. He could not stay here all night. Eventually, maybe, when she knew her servants better and if she was very sure of them. But not tonight. Marriage would be much more convenient, that was certain.

He set her away, then sat. “I’ll make sure no one sees me leave.”

Her hand caressed his back. He turned, bent, and kissed her.

“Tomorrow next,” she said. “I’ll decide by then.”

Chapter Eighteen

Kevin punched toward Nicholas’s body. Nicholas danced out of range, then stepped forward and punched back. The impact on his torso almost took Kevin’s breath away.

Nicholas stepped back again. “I refuse to go on. You are not paying attention. Much more of this and I will hurt you. I’m going to wash.”

“My apologies,” Kevin said while he followed him toward the dressing room. “I have no excuse.”

“I shouldn’t have encouraged you. You came down to breakfast half asleep.” Nicholas stripped off his shirt while the attendant poured warm water into two basins. “Are you announcing that engagement soon?”

Kevin dealt with his own washing. “That will be decided soon. She may well decline. She is smart enough to know what she will lose in the marriage. I may have to content myself with the way matters now stand.”

“It is odd for a woman to choose a liaison over marriage.”

“I’m wondering how to do that, if it goes that way.” Kevin wiped his face. “How do you do it?”

Nicholas’s motions stilled. Kevin kept washing.

“Are you asking me how to conduct an affair?”

“Only the practical strategies. I assume you know all about maintaining discretion and such. I am a novice at