“I…” She gaped.
He pressed a kiss. Light and lingering. “Allow me to share your burdens. Feel your joy. Heal your woes.”
“I…” She swallowed.
“Let me warm you each night,” he murmured close, lips brushing her earlobe. “Hour upon hour. Unceasing and heady till we bind as one. Till we no longer recall our names and can only gasp our pleasure.”
“I…” She gulped.
“From the day we first met, you have stirred both my passion and heart. I love you. And whatever tangled path we walked upon in order to stand here in this moment, tonight we begin anew.”
Casper had supposed this speech to be awkward, but it flowed. No stutter or hesitation gripped him – just feelings in words. He couldn’t spout romantic verse like some, but he could now understand the emotion. And it staggered him.
So he kissed her parted lips, relished the moment her surprise lifted, as her sweet touch turned ravenous, deep and sensual, tongues lashing and breaths entwining. He wrested pins and drew her head to the side, devouring her throat with nips of his teeth.
“Be my duchess, Evelyn.”
“Casper… I do want to… I love you so much. But…”
Doubt assailed him, set to tear him asunder, and he hauled her close, stared deep into her eyes. “But?”
“I’m a penniless baronet’s daughter and you are a duke.”
Doubt fled in an instant. “Perfect,” he rasped, spreading open-mouthed kisses upon her shoulder.
“I’m a penniless baronet’s daughter who’sworkedfor a living…in a theatre.”
“Remarkable,” he growled, tugging at the gown’s edge with his teeth.
“I bring no dowry or thousands of acres.”
“Splendid,” he breathed. “I’ll bring those.” And he seized her bodice to uncover the swell of breast.
He heard her gasp, stutter, then…
“Oh, sod it,” she murmured, throwing herself against his body. “Yes, yes I will. I will marry you. I love you so very much, Casper.”
As luck would have it, the edge of the desk halted his backwards fall, and he perched against it for support, hands grasping her luscious backside as he swept her into his arms, ravishing her mouth – soft and gentle, then rough and wild, every way he could and all the ways he’d yearned to. She responded, keen and fierce, knotting fingers within his hair and pressing that magnificent bosom to his chest.
How could he have ever considered Evelyn as merely mistress? A travesty of his love and respect. Now she would be his duchess and savage possession coursed – unruly and entirely spontaneous.
Images besieged him: her trailing fingers upon the leather inlay of that desk, her taunting impudent lips, and her tangled, glorious hair in the carriage.
Parting his legs, he dragged her between, felt her writhe as he frantically thrust hand to fiery locks, hips clashing with the need for more.
But this damn bedchamber desk wasn’t hewn for such roughness and it shifted backwards on the floor. No matter, and he swung her towards the shadowed four poster.
Growling, he snatched at the gown’s buttons, heard them spill upon the floor. Could wait no more. For too long had he been teased and enticed by Miss Evelyn Pearce but now they would begin to satisfy this torment which burned like wildfire upon a heath.
The taut ivy-hued bodice sagged, revealing translucent skin and a rise of breast this man would walk a desert for.
Thirsting for more, he tugged, and the silk slunk to her waist to expose a deep-green corset with black laces, and he vowed to have the name of whichever modiste had created this borrowed finery by tomorrow’s end.
It brought him to his knees.
And once there, he yanked the skirts and petticoats till they cascaded to the floor in an emerald pool.
She rose like a shy Venus soaring from its depths, eyes lowered, a blush spiralling across her décolletage. Rising from his supplication, he trailed a hand from waist to bosom, watched the soft slopes above her corset surge with the rapid breaths.
