His breath caught.
And when their lips finally met, it was becauseshehad pressed up to meethim.
CHAPTER 11
Letitia knew that she should likely put this at the very top of the list of stupid things she’d done in her life, but as she felt the warm, wet press of the Duke of Rutley’s mouth against hers, she could not think that this was anything but abrilliantidea.
“This is a mistake,” she said aloud, mostly to try to convince herself, even as she wound her arms around the duke’s neck.
“Yes,” he agreed, bringing an arm around her waist, pulling her up and toward him until her breasts were crushed against his chest. “We said we wouldn’t do this again.”
“It’s a bad idea,” she said, running her fingers through his hair.
“Completely terrible,” he agreed, leading them backward until he could sit in his chair again. Their lips never parted as he guided her to climb atop his legs, her knees on either side of his hips.
“We should stop,” she breathed as this new angle made it easier for him to kiss his way across her jaw, down the column of her throat, then back up to the place where her pulse thrummed. He sucked lightly there, nipped at her skin, then soothed the bite with a hot swipe of his tongue.
“Stop then,” he whispered into her skin. His hands were at his sides now; he wasn’t holding her there. The choice was entirely hers. She could walk away—she trusted that he would let her.
Instead, she pressed herself closer, dropping her weight so that her center pressed against his lap—against the hardness that was rapidly forming there.
“Fuck,” he groaned, his head tipping back against the chair. “Letitia. Hell...”
Letitia had grown up as a relatively unprotected girl, then spent years working as a member of staff in aristocratic households. She had heard her name associated with all manners of filth before. Usually, it made her skin crawl.
But, for some reason, hearing the duke—hearingEzra—say her name like this, like it was a sort of prayer, in that tormented, carnal tone…
It made her feel hot and slick between her thighs.
She’d always been wary of men, so she had not been tempted to take one to her bed, even when other maids had gossipedgleefully about their dalliances with this footman or that butcher’s apprentice. She had explored what they’d meant when they giggled about the kind of pleasure that a woman could seek on her own. After all, she was a full thirty years old. That was probably the only kind of pleasure she was likely to find.
Her body knew what it wanted as she ground her center against his hardness, her lips, tongue, and teeth tangling with his. They held on to each other as if this moment might slip away if they weren’t careful, as if they were stealing this time from eternity and dared not let it go.
“Oh,fuck, yes, Letitia,” he moaned into her mouth. “Yes. Take what you need from me.”
“I am no gentle-bred lady,” she reminded him, gasping and arching as one of his hands came up to clutch her breast through the fabric of her dress. “Nobody kept me pure and sheltered for an aristocratic husband.”
He made a low, growling sound in the back of his throat. Her pleasure was building inside her as she moved, aided by the way one of his hands came down to her arse to give the motions a bit more force.
“You are bloody divine, is what you are,” he breathed into her. “The most goddamned bloody gorgeous thing?—”
She let out a sharp cry as, suddenly and unexpectedly, her pleasure peaked, crashing over her and pulling her into its grip so strongly that, for a moment, she could not see or hearanything. When she came back to herself, the duke—Ezra,Ezra—was looking at her like she was wondrous.
For three perfect seconds, shefeltwondrous.
And then she remembered herself. She remembered that she needed this position, thatSarahneeded this position. She remembered that letting gentlemen see her as a woman was always a mistake, even if they didn’t seek to take advantage. She remembered that she cared for Iris, even after so little time, and didn’t want to do anything that would take her away from the girl.
She scrambled off Ezra’s lap.
He was still hard beneath his trousers; she could see it plain as day. Even without that, he would have looked utterly debauched. His hair was a disaster, his clothes rumpled. She thanked every star in the sky that at least her clothing was still all intact—rumpled, she could explain, but not unlaced or unbuttoned.
“I amsosorry,” she breathed, sounding almost hysterical as he blinked at her. He didn’t seem to understand what had happened, right up until he did, and then his look of wonder closed off, replaced with a flat, blank nothingness.
“You have no reason to apologize,” he said.
“I do,” she said. She pressed her hands to her face, which flamed, both from her mortification and from the places thathe’d pressed those hot, sucking kisses. “I really do. I should not... I apologize.”
“If anyone should apologize,” he began, but she shook her head hard enough to cut him off, though sadly not hard enough to erase her memories from her mind.
