Page 46 of Dukes for Dessert

She hardly believed now she’d been so innocent. A man like David Fleming would never have been let near her when she was a debutante, yet he was proving to have far more worth than the too-charming bachelor earl who’d been the correct man to marry.

“We should go inside.” David’s voice remained low but took on an edge. “Lest I do something even more devilish.”

Sophie shivered agreeably. “Perhaps I wish you to be devilish.”

David kissed the bridge of her nose. “Do not tempt me.”

“I wish …” She leaned into him, running her hand down his coat. The warm man beneath stirred, the rumble in his throat like a caress.

“I know what you wish. I wish it too.” David cupped her cheek, turning her face up to his. “I want you, Sophie. Want you with an intensity that’s killing me.”

His next kiss told her he’d been containing himself until now. He dragged her up to him, his mouth searing as he opened hers. Sophie’s head went back, David holding her upright as her knees weakened.

She felt his hand on her backside then her thigh, teasing her legs apart. He stepped between them, his hardness apparent through her skirts.

Here under the trees no one would see them. He could lift her, hold her against the bole of the large elm behind her, satisfy the ache that never let her rest.

“Please,” she heard herself whisper.

David answered with another kiss, grip tightening. He wanted it as much as she did—his mouth, touch, and body told her this as loudly as if he’d shouted it.

The virtuous man he claimed he wanted to be would have pushed Sophie from him in shock, perhaps lecture her on propriety as he dragged her to the house. A bad man like David only kissed her harder, a groan in his throat.

“Dear God.” David wrested his mouth from hers and stepped back, hands on her shoulders, fingers biting down. “Sophie, what the devil are we doing?”

“Being consumed with need?” Sophie tried to speak glibly, but she trembled so she could barely form words.

“Obviously. But if we do not walk sedately to the house, I will be carrying you back with our clothes in shreds, and your uncle will take a bullwhip to me. Never mind that he’s a kind man—he has the wrath of God on his side.”

Sophie shook her head, her hair tumbling. “He would never …”

“Perhaps not literally, but he would cast me out. I want …” David dragged in a breath. “I want everything to be right.”

“The world isn’t right,” Sophie said sadly.

“I know. But I want to stand with you and face it. Not with us looking debauched and depraved.”

Sophie let out a little sigh. “I am finding virtue not worth the trouble.”

“I agree. But …” David’s eyes held sadness and resignation. “I refuse to save you only to ruin you. It cuts at me to wait, but I will.”

It cut at Sophie as well. She was already ruined—did he not realize that? In the eyes of the world, it no longer mattered what Sophie did. Because of Laurie, she’d been painted as a whore, and that was the end of it.

David gently straightened her hat then put his arm around her and led her to the gardens, silence enveloping them.

Only the breeze spoke, the rushing sound in the branches like water, but it couldn’t soothe Sophie’s fire or troubled spirit.

For the first time in his life, David enjoyed a sojourn in his own house. He’d spent most of his adult life avoiding it, the memories too thick.

After his mother’s death, his father, in grief and pain, had filled the house with mistresses and rakes. He’d hosted lavish entertainments that ran between puzzling to frightening to a small boy, from drunken routs to outright orgiastic gatherings.

David had found relief with school and friends, but he’d grown up surrounded by decadence and easily fell into that way of life himself.

Now, viewing his home through Sophie’s eyes, he discovered the beauty in it. Though his father had been broken inside, he’d had unusually good taste in art and architecture.

Keeping himself away from Sophie was more difficult. David wanted to seize her and kiss her at every turn, slide her against the wall and drink his fill. He wanted to rid her of her clothes, slowly, a button at a time, and touch the body the falling fabric revealed.

Never in his life had he been so close to a woman he’d wanted, and yet neither of them removed a stitch. Madness.