Page 18 of The Devilish Pleasures of a Duke

His tongue encircled her nipple, a slow tease of sensation that intensified her breathless pleasure. “Believe me, it is.”

“What about your injury?” she asked, her muscles tightening.

He raised his head and kissed her wetly on the mouth. She moaned again. “What injury?” he asked, managing to sound guileless and wicked at once. “You have a beautiful body, Emma Boscastle, and a keen mind. I kept looking at you today during the wedding.”

“Because of my mind or my body?” she whispered wryly, wondering why his confession should scandalize her when what he was doing was far worse. Her nipples stiffened impudently against his mouth. She was practically offering herself, her breasts at least, to his advances.

“Both,” he answered with a fleeting smile. “You appealed to me. That is all I know.”

“You desired me…at the wedding?”

“Yes,” he said, hesitating only slightly. “Does that offend you?”

“In front of witnesses?” Her voice was almost inaudible. The clamoring in her body drowned out everything else, the measure of her breath, the deep ticking of her pulses.

He was taking soft, sensual bites of her breasts, and she seemed unable to discourage him. Thick warm fluid lubricated the folds of her sex. She could only imagine what it would feel like for his agile swordsman’s hand to touch her there, to penetrate her aching recesses.

“It’s too much,” she said in a raw voice, her spine bowing.

“I have to be honest,” he murmured, “it’s not enough for me.”

She swallowed. “There is such a thing as being too honest. Certain thoughts shouldn’t be expressed.”

He appeared to ponder this, but obviously at no great concern, for his attention soon returned to kissing her throat and nibbling tenderly at her breasts again. “I disagree,” he said in a low disarming voice. “We are both of us past the age of indecision—and both of us have made love before.”

“Certainly not with each other.”

“Isn’t that what makes this all the more tempting?” he challenged quietly.

Tempting.

“I’m a widow,” she whispered. “That part of my life is over.”

“You’re a woman, Emma. That won’t ever change.”

She felt a bittersweet little twist of acknowledgment, of longing. “It has.”

“I do not remember ever being this attracted to a woman before,” he said thickly.

His hand drifted from her hip to the hollow between her thighs. She bit back a sob. His touch, or lack of it, was torture. Her cleft pulsed in silent need. She dared not move.

She glanced down, realizing her legs were bare, and her gown was bunched around her hips. How different they were. How carelessly this man sinned while she diligently pounded sin with her bare fists back into the gutter where it belonged.

In fact, she could imagine her students’ exclamations of wicked glee if they could see her now. Emma Boscastle in bed with a dashing aristocrat, having merrily abandoned all the principles that not only the academy represented but those she had made personal sacrifices to uphold.

“I am at your mercy, madam,” he said unexpectedly into the lengthening silence.

She gazed up at his beautiful face with cynical resolve. “At my mercy?” she asked faintly.

“I think I’ve lost my senses,” he whispered, his voice penitent.

“Well, you certainly won’t find them under my gown.”

He laughed and slid his large arms around her waist. “Emma, oh, Emma. I’m dying of desire for you. Why do you have to be a Boscastle?”

“I’ve asked myself that same question on many occasions.”

He slid his hand up her belly to her neck and undid the buttons of her gown. Her soft white breasts swelled, the pink rims peeping above the silk.