Page 55 of The Seduction of an English Scoundrel

His lids lowered over his piercing blue eyes. Jane sighed in pleasure, only to sabotage a potentially perfect moment by asking, “You didn’t even mind that she said you bored her to tears?”

His lips lifted in a smile. “Do I bore you?”

“Oh, no.”

“Well.”

She could practically feel the heat that radiated from his body. It penetrated her skin, spread into her blood and bones, sapping her strength.

“Aren’t you going to do anything about Buckley?” she asked, watching his face in fascination.

He leaned a little closer. Jane’s pulse points took off at a reckless gallop. “Why should I? He appears to have good taste in women.”

“Helene is beautiful,” she murmured, even though privately she thought the woman deserved to fall into a rabbit hole and never be seen again.

“I meant his taste in women as in you, Jane. That Belshire elegance is impressive.”

“Well—”

He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her deeply, drank from her lips as if his very life depended on reducing her to breathless acquiescence. She brought her hand to his chest. Her fingers met a wall of granite muscle beneath which his heart beat in the heavy cadence of desire. Hard. Warm. Devastating male to the last inch.

“Yes,” he whispered. “Touch me, Jane. Allow me the same favor.” He stroked his fingertips from her shoulder down into the valley between her breasts, brushing back and forth across the distended peaks until she gasped. “We shall make our own luck, you and I,” he murmured as he set his teeth to the edge of her ear.

His mouth moved down the arch of her throat. She had no idea what he meant by luck—it was all she could do to control the quivers of arousal that rocked her body. Within moments his capable hands were traveling up and down her slender frame in patent possession, caressing the indentation of her waist, the slope of her belly, the warm hollow between her thighs. Incredible. In a heartbeat he already knew her body better than she.

She flexed her spine, felt the excitement coursing through her blood. When he touched her, she became her unleashed self, different, lush and alive, so ripe for his seduction, burning with the most outrageous urges she could imagine. Every brush of his chiseled mouth, every foray of his fingers sensitized her skin.

“Come closer,” he said in a husky voice, drawing her against him until she was practically straddling his thigh, his hand hooked around her bottom. “That’s better, isn’t it?”

“Better for what?” she whispered, the hunger inside her so deep it actually hurt.

He had realized in the chapel that she had a sensual body, a man’s private fantasy. Now he indulged that fantasy by exploring those luscious curves, the soft globes of her breasts, the shapely backside that sat so plushly between his thighs.

“I wanted to do this on your wedding day,” he admitted, burying his face in the white mounds of her breasts. His hands tightened around her rib cage. “I was entranced by you even while you waited at the altar.”

She arched her back and gave a breathless laugh of shock and pleasure. “Well, considering the scandal I caused myself, it’s a good thing you didn’t act on your impulses.”

He tugged down her sleeves, giving him access to her tempting breasts. His mouth closed tightly around a dusky nipple, drawing the pebbled crest between his teeth to tease with his tongue. He resented even the dress of hers that came between them, the fact they weren’t exactly in a spot conducive to uninterrupted exploration. This was reckless, impetuous, insane, and he loved every moment of it. Of course he would not allow anything to go too far. But for now he was aroused past the point of reason.

He moved his left hand down to her ankle, stealing up her skirt until his fingers closed around her knee, tickling the silky underside. Seconds later he was touching the creamy skin above her stockings, drawn to the warm delta of dewy flesh between her legs. He imagined the pleasure of tasting her there, being inside her, and desire knifed through his body.

She shivered as he tangled his forefinger in her nest of curls, but her shock was soon replaced by a longing so intense she could not move. She had wanted her freedom from Nigel, the chance to find her own love, but was this what she had bargained for? Her blood sizzled at this intimacy, and even though she was afraid, anticipation electrified her nerve endings. Being with Grayson was beyond anything in her experience or personal fantasies.

He groaned against her mouth. “Oh, my God, Jane, you’re trembling all over. Just relax and let me give you pleasure.”

“Relax? I feel as though I’m going to die.”

“You’re not going to die. Well, perhaps in a way, but trust me, it will be very nice.”

“Trust you?” she whispered unevenly. “Just look where trusting you has taken me.”

Then stop me, he thought, because he couldn’t find the willpower to end this exercise in self-torture. She had never been touched like this before, and the last thing he would do was deflower her on a garden bench. Yet he wanted to. He wanted to bury himself inside all that sultry heat and unawakened fire. The scent of her filled his mind with black selfish passion. His whole body shook with it.

Jane buried her face in his neck, trying to fight the glorious sensual haze that hung over her. When he parted the damp folds of her sex and pressed his finger inside, she was too surprised to resist, too distracted by the unbearable rush of pleasure to mount a defense. It was enough to cling to sanity as the friction of his petting took her to the edge and released her to the waves of sensation that inundated her. Oh, the wonder of it. The dizzying pleasure. Her head swam with a blur of colors.

He held her so tightly that she found it hard to draw a breath, to return with reluctance to earth. In the distance she heard a swell of laughter, voices growing louder like the buzzing of bees as a group of guests approached the maze. She turned her head in apprehension.

“I think—”