Page 95 of A Virgin for the Rakish Duke

Jeremy propped himself up on one elbow and grinned down at her devilishly, like he meant to do it all over again. The muscles of his chest rippled as he moved, and Harriet felt her breath catch in her throat for the umpteenth time this past hour. God, he was handsome. And hers forever now.

Outside, somewhere, the world went on. Doors opened and shut. Voices echoed faintly in the distance. The celebrations at the wedding breakfast were still in full swing.

“I don’t want to go back out there,” she murmured instead, brushing her fingers along his bicep. His arm tightened around her instinctively.

“Then don’t,” he chuckled roughly. “Let them wait.”

Harriet smiled, slow and wicked. “I thought I married a Duke. Someone respectable. Responsible.”

His lips grazed her temple. “You married a man who’s going to take you on that chaise next.”

A flicker of something pulsing lit in her belly again. Her thighs squeezed. She let her hand trail down his stomach, over the hard, beautiful lines of his washboard torso, down the ‘v’ carved between his thighs. He caught her wrist before she could go further.

“Again,” he said with a low chuckle, “in a moment.”

Their foreheads touched. She felt his smile before she saw it.

And in the quiet that followed, Harriet breathed. Really breathed. No corset. No expectation. No caution. Just skin. Just sweat. Just sunlight and satisfaction and his heavy hand on her thigh like a weighted promise.

There had been a hundred versions of the future. She had imagined herself in many of them. But this one, this moment, sprawled indecently on this floor, with this man who held her like she was the one thing he had never learned how to live without… this one was hers and hers alone.

The End?