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“When I leave, I will not be able to protect you any longer, Charlotte.” He closed the space between them, and she backed toward the stairs, taking the first step. “The life of a Duchess is not so terrible a fate as a life of solitude.”
“As if you would know—“
“What it is to be lonely? I did, for very long.” He reached for the banister. “I cannot resign you to it nor to ruin.”
“Where was this virtue when first I suggested our plan? What has changed?”
“Everythinghas changed!”
The words came out as a cry. He ran a hand over his mouth, fearful of drawing attention. Charlotte snatched his mask away—and the sight of his face, his beautiful, twisted face—knocked the breath from her lungs and the sense from her head.
Without a word, she threw herself at him, wrapping her arms around his neck. He didn’t hesitate, not for a moment, grabbing her waist and spinning her so as not to lose balance. They fell against the crushed velvet stairs all the same, softly, in a pool of dark fabric.
He was atop her, an arm behind her back to have cushioned their blow. He didn’t move, their temples connecting, breathing into the crook of her neck. It drove her wild, the gentle brushing of his breath on her bare skin. When he drew away to look at her, she found that same hot wildness in his eyes, too, dark with lust.
It had notallbeen a lie after all.
“Finally,” he whispered, closing his eyes.
He leaned in, and she came undone beneath him.
His kiss was light at first, testing. His lips grazed against her own, back and forth, as though asking for her permission. She leaned up, driven purely by desire, and bit his lower lip to let him know justhowmuch permission she accorded him. It sparked something furious in him, for his kiss was no longer light but desperate. He locked her upper lip in his own, and it felt like fresh honey tasted. A song was plucked from her—not a song but a poem—easing gentle sighs and moans from her mouth as he unearthed her longing. She hadn’t known she couldfeellike this.
Humming, warm, crazed.
She softened into him, her fingers looping in the hair at the nape of his neck, holding onto something, anything, that might feelrealand stop her drifting. He kissed her deeper still, his tongue pressing past her lips to dance with her own, as his grip on his waist tightened.
His body was moving against hers then, undulating like waves on the sea, and a heat like no other pooled at the junction of her thighs. She felt something hard and all-powerful against her leg, and she threw her head back as she realized what it was.
“Benjamin,” she breathed, and he buried his face in her neck, lavishing the expanse of skin above her clavicle.
He paused only to say, “My name in your mouth is like heaven,” before nipping at the skin of her bosom.
He squeezed at her breast over the fabric of her gown and groaned, pressing himself against her thigh. When his eyes opened, it seemed as though he wanted to pull away, frightened.
Charlotte held him against her, desperate for more. “Don’t leave me, sir. Don’t stop…” she commanded gently, rolling her head back and forth on the step behind her. She drew his head back up to kiss him, moaning between pecks, “Benjamin. Oh, Benjamin…”
Anyone could walk in and catch them, a guest, a member of the household,anyone. Yet she didn’t care. She didn’t care for a thing in the world beside the ache between her legs and her desire to see it quelled.
She hazarded at where to start. Plucking his hand from where it had wrapped itself in her hair, she pressed it down the length of her body, over her breast, her corset, down to her thigh, and then over until—
“There,” she called.
“Here?” he answered, and a smile swept across his lips. “Is there where you need me, Lady Charlotte?”
She bit her lip and acquiesced.
Solemnly, he cupped her core, and wavelets of pleasure traveled over her rump and up her back. He looked the picture of boyish charm, contented, proud to be looming over her with suchpower, caught up in their folly as well.
And then he began rolling his palm against her, not so much to reach any sort of satisfaction, but enough to tease her into supplication. She pulled at his hair, drawing herself up, and it feltgood.
Wordlessly, he slid a hand beneath her heavy skirts where he would find her bare, hot and dripping down her petals. The feel of his naked skin on hers had her speaking in tongues as he stroked and pinched the skin beside her seam.
He was playing with her, even now, on the precipice of equal ruin and gratification.
My Benjamin.
His calloused pointer finger paused at her entrance.
