She could not muster the energy to feel sorry about it.
“Yes,” she told him, pressing up on her toes so that she could reach his mouth of her own volition. She thrilled at the way his lips curved into a tiny, pleased smile as she did so. “This is more than all right. This is wonderful.”
His hands slid down her back, reminding her that she was only wearing the thin muslin garment she slept in—more of a shift than a proper nightdress. The warmth of his touch soothed her while it also inflamed her, making her crave more of him. She slid her palms up from his chest and his tattered, ruined shirt. She glided them over the firm muscles of his chest—really, too hard and lovely for a duke; he had too many advantages. If he was going to be rich, powerful, and handsome, he ought not be so strong—and up to his neck.
“Why do you make me feel like this?” she asked as she wrapped her arms around him and pressed her breasts hard against his chest. The pressure felt sogoodwithout any constricting stays between them, and he, too, must have realized that her nighttime attire made for a new opportunity, because he raiseda hand between them and cupped her, his thumb unerringly passing over where her nipple had turned into a hard little bud beneath the fabric.
“Oh my dear girl,” he murmured between kisses. “If I knew the answer, I would tell you. But you have cast the same spell over me.”
“Truly?” she breathed.
Because, honestly, it did not seem possible. She was a thirty-year-old redheaded governess of modest birth and no notable distinction. She was fairly attractive but not truly beautiful. She was intelligent enough, but possessed no miraculous show of genius. Despite her situation, she was an untested virgin with no particular talent for seduction. In fact, she had spent most of her efforts trying to avoid drawing attention to herself.
So how could beautiful, clever, wily Ezra—a duke with the slyness of a fox and the fortune of a king—be drawn toher?
He laughed as though she had said something truly humorous.
“Yes, truly,” he said. He was kissing in apparently random patterns across her face. Then Letitia realized he was pressing these kisses to her freckles, anointing them like they were something lovely when she’d always considered them blemishes. “You have come into my life like a hurricane and completely undone my good sense. As I told you before, I may not be a saint, but I am not the man who comes knocking at the staff’s door in the dead of night. But you... You have made me forgetmyself. You make me forget my responsibilities and my duties. You make me feel as though I am just a man, caught up in the grasp of the loveliest woman he has ever known.”
It was like he saw someone else when he looked at her, she thought dizzily. He was still cupping her breasts, still tracing lazy circles around her nipple with his thumb. The movements were almost absent, as if nothing of importance was happening. Yet, they were making her melt inside, like she was a bonbon left out in the summer sun.
“That cannot be true,” she protested, her head falling back as he moved to kiss his way down her throat.
“Do not contract me, woman,” he countered, nipping lightly at the place where her pulse raced under her skin. “I have but the barest shreds of control when I am around you. Let me have this one thing, lest you command me absolutely.”
She wanted to glare at him suspiciously, but she only had enough wherewithal to peer at him through one half-lidded eye.
“Me? Command you?” It sounded too breathy to be truly skeptical, but her meaning must have come through, because Ezra let out an incredulous laugh, which teetered teasingly against her skin.
“Oh, indeed,” he murmured. “Do you know how you have haunted my thoughts? I thought it could get no worse than it had been, then you showed me how gorgeous you look when you are taking your pleasure atop me.”
Letty could feel her cheeks flaming so brightly that it was a wonder there was any blood left for things like her legs, which did feel admittedly quite wobbly.
“But I left you…” She trailed off. Even now, back in his arms, it was too horrifying to contemplate.
Improbably, he smiled, then bent down to nip lightly at her bottom lip.
“So you did,” he agreed. “I will admit that I would have enjoyed another outcome as well, but I found it… alluring. I have thought of it many times since, if you take my meaning.”
The innuendo had been perfectly obvious, but he still arched a brow.
“As if I could miss it,” she retorted.
He groaned, one of his hands sliding down further to palm her buttocks. He used the grip to tug her closer against him, really,trulymaking certain that she could not miss his meaning—that she could not miss that he was once more in a similarly, ah,turgidstate.
“Let me show you,” he said—and, truly, it sounded almost like a prayer, like he was begging her. “Let me show you the command you hold over me. Let me show you how dearly I desire you. Let megive, not take.”
With each word of this offer, Letty felt as though she was being wrapped in something—the spell he wound with his speech, perhaps, or that devilishly soft binding that seemed to always be holding them more tightly together. She understood the general meaning of the offer, if not its specifics.
Pleasure, for her alone—once again. But this time, given intentionally and still without asking for anything in return.
It was the opposite of everything she’d ever been faced with in her life. She’d had offers. More frequently, she’d had threats disguised as offers. The veneer to those latter cases had always come off when she’d tried to refuse. Even the true offers had never been meant for her enjoyment. They’d all thought that she—a baseborn nobody—ought to begratefulfor the attention.
“Show me, Your Grace,” she commanded, turning his title into something that was not quite a mockery, but which was far from being deferential, either. “Show me how I command you.”
He gave her a smile that would make the devil himself blush.
“As my lady commands,” he purred.
