Page 93 of A Virgin for the Rakish Duke

Harriet rolled her eyes, and he acquiesced with a bow, moving to lock the door.

When he turned back, Harriet was already unfastening the top pearl at her throat.

“God help me,” he muttered, and crossed the room in three long strides. She met him halfway.

This time, when he kissed her, she didn’t hold anything back. There was no time for patience. She wanted him ruined. She wanted herself ruined. For his hands to shake when he touched a paintbrush next, for every breath he took to taste like her skin. She had waited long enough.

Their mouths clashed again—open, insistent. Harriet yanked his coat from his shoulders, her fingers already seeking the buttons of his waistcoat. He caught the back of her knee and liftedit, pinning her against him as her skirts bunched and tangled between them. She moaned into his mouth and scraped her teeth along his lower lip, and he groaned, deep and dark, barely human.

“You are sure?” he whispered hoarsely.

She pulled back just far enough to look him in the eye. Her cheeks were flushed, her lips parted, her bodice already slipping from her shoulders, wanton and wanting.

“Your Grace,” she rasped, “either get me out of this dress or I shall tear it off myself.”

That was answer enough.

He kissed her like he’d forgotten everything else.

One hand was in her hair, fingers spread at the nape of her neck. The other gripped her waist like he couldn’t bear to let go. There was nothing measured about it now—no teasing, no painter’s reverence—only heat, sharp and sudden and full of need. Harriet kissed him back with everything she had, gasping when he pressed her against the cool wall, her bare shoulders meeting stone, bodice slipping lower down her arms.

He caught the hem of her gown and lifted it slowly, as if expecting her to stop him. She didn’t. She let him bare her inch by inch, silk whispering up over her hips, her thighs, her ribs.

The wedding gown pooled at her feet in a sweep of satin silk and crushed roses. Her stays followed, then the fine shift beneath, until she stood in the centre of the studio in only her stockings and garters.

The light caught her everywhere.

Mid-morning sun streamed through the tall window, turning her skin to gold. Her nipples tightened under the chill of the air, her breath catching as he circled her like a man possessed, one hand brushing her hip, the other trailing along the edge of her spine, reverent but unsteady.

She watched him watching her. Watched his pupils darken. His lips part, his breath catch.

“I was supposed to draw you first…” he said thickly.

“You still can,” she murmured. “After.”

His gaze lifted to hers, and something in him broke.

His coat was gone in seconds. The cravat was a disaster; she laughed as he swore at the knot, then helped him tug it loose. His shirt followed, pulled over his head, leaving his hair tousled and his chest bare and flushed with heat.

He was gorgeous like this. All tension and muscles and barely held-together hunger. His trousers clung tightly to his hips like they were jealous of her.

“Off,” she commanded.

The word seemed to hit him somewhere visceral. He obeyed without a sound, stripping down with none of the fluidity he’d shown before. It was messy, graceless, and urgent, yet somehow all the more beautiful for it. When he straightened, fully bare in the sunlight, he looked like something out of a fever dream: muscled, lean, eyes blazing, the hard length of him standing proud and flushed between them.

Harriet’s mouth went dry.

She had imagined him before. Touched herself thinking of him. Fantasized, often, and in lurid detail. But reality was something else entirely. There was nothing awkward or uncertain in her desire now, no hesitation.

She reached for him.

He met her in the centre of the room, bare skin on bare skin, and the first press of their bodies together was enough to steal her breath. She gasped as his manhood pressed against her belly, and he kissed her like he needed her to live. His hands gripped her thighs and lifted her without a word.

She locked her legs around him instinctively. Her arms looped over his shoulders as her lips brushed his jaw. He carried her across the room, not to the stool or the chaise but lowering her onto something padded, something soft and low and warmed by the sun. A canvas. A drop cloth, maybe.

He knelt with her there and lowered her carefully onto her back.

“You should see yourself,” he rasped, leaning over her. “You don’t need to be drawn. You should be worshiped.”