She laughed. The sound was wet, broken, and real, and Hugo’s composure finally, completely, irreversibly crumbled.
Then Hugo pulled her to him and kissed her.
This kiss was not like the first.
The first had been full of surprise, a collision of impulse and denial that had ended before either of them could understand what it meant.
This kiss was achoice.
His mouth found hers with a certainty that left no room for pretense. Lily’s hands came up to grip the lapels of his coat, notto push him away but to pull him closer. The sound that escaped her throat was not protest but surrendering.
He kissed her until her back met the stone wall of the terrace. The impact was gentle. His hand cradled the back of her head, but the wall was solid and cool behind her, and Hugo was solid and warm in front of her. The contrast sent a shudder through her body that he swallowed with his mouth.
His lips left hers and traced a path along her jaw, down the curve of her neck, across the collarbone. His breath was hot against her skin, and each press of his mouth left a mark that was not visible but that she felt as though it were branded there.
“Did you touch yourself?” His voice was rough against the hollow of her throat. “After I left your room. Did you do what I told you?”
Her fingers tightened in his hair. Her breath came in short, ragged pulls. “Yes… Or, I think so, at least.”
He groaned. The sound vibrated against her skin, low and raw, and his hands tightened at her waist.
“And what did you think about?”
“I thought about…” Her voice faltered. The words dissolved on her tongue because saying them aloud, here, with his mouth against her skin and his hands gripping her waist, felt likelighting a match in a room already full of smoke. “I thought about you. About the balcony. About your…”
She trailed off. Hugo lifted his head just enough to look at her. His eyes were dark, his lips parted, and the smile that curved his mouth was slow, wicked, and full of promise.
“Good girl,” he murmured. “Let me reward you.”
His mouth traveled lower. He kissed the swell of her chest above the neckline of the sapphire gown, and then he sank to his knees before her.
The sight of him kneeling on the terrace stones, this man, this Duke, this rake looking up at her with dark eyes and parted lips and an expression that held nothing but want, stole every thought from her mind.
“I have never kneeled for anyone,” he said, his voice rough and low. “But for you, Lily, I would stay on my knees all night.”
His hands found the hem of her gown. His fingers gathered the silk, drawing it upward, and the night air met her stockinged calves, her knees, her thighs. He pressed his mouth to the inside of her knee, and the sensation was so sharp and so unexpected that her head fell back against the wall, and her hand found his shoulder and gripped it.
He kissed higher. Slowly. His lips traced the inside of her thigh with a deliberateness that was neither hurried nor tentative.Each kiss sent heat spiraling upward through her body, building on itself, compounding, until the warmth in her stomach became a fire and the fire became something she had no name for.
“From now on,” he murmured against her skin, his breath hot and close, “every time you touch yourself, I want you to imagine this.”
His mouth found the center of her pleasure, and when his tongue flicked it, a charge coursed through her. Lily clenched her fingers in his hair to keep from collapsing…
And to continue what he was doing.
Hugo lifted his head. “Should I stop?”
Lily knew she should say yes. She risked ruination if they were discovered, but the need that filled her was an ache so complete that the risk felt distant, abstract, and belonging to a version of herself who was not pinned against a wall with Hugo Beaumont on his knees before her.
“No. Please don’t stop.”
He smirked widely. “As you wish, my betrothed.”
His fingers opened her warm folds, allowing his tongue to flick across her pearl. Fire licked through her veins with a heat so sharp it stole the breath from her lungs.
When his fingers moved into her, something wound tighter and tighter at her center. The pleasure gathered at the base of her spine and climbed until it consumed every inch of her.
Sheshattered.
