Page 16 of A Virgin for the Rakish Duke (Romancing a Rake #3)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

J eremy listened to the soft rustle of a beautiful woman undressing. He wanted to keep his mind clear, and Harriet had a bad habit of clouding it. Knowing that a thin veil of fabric was all that separated him from her half-bared body did not half-help.

Is it coincidence that she knows Eloise, and now so does Simon Winchester? Or that Ralph should just happen to be where he should not be. Ralph, who cannot put aside business for even a moment, is suddenly set on buying his sister a new dress.

He forced his gaze from the curtain, which shifted as Harriet's body moved against it. Still, the image of her swam to the surface of his mind. Stripped to her shift, the fabric clinging to the curves of her body. Curves he knew because he had touched them. Explored them.

What harm would it truly do to indulge in a little adventure? She craves freedom and excitement, and I crave her. A seduction would only make our faux betrothal more believable. One can always tell lovers. Men and women who know each other's bodies...

He stood and inched across the room towards the shifting drapes. Deep carpet muffled his footsteps, but the movement stopped.

“Jeremy?” Harriet mumbled.

Jeremy hovered, more than an arm's length from the curtain.

But can I trust her? Is this part of a plan, to make me seduce her and then expose me as a rake and a scoundrel?

It seemed purely paranoiac. He shook his head to dispel thoughts of Simon Winchester. The disturbingly well-connected Simon Winchester.

“Yes?” he replied, voice rising in pitch.

A small sound came from behind the curtain, an exhalation as though of surprise.

“I thought I heard you get up,” Harriet said.

“I did,” Jeremy replied, moving closer still.

He reached out to the curtain and allowed his fingers to stroke its velvety surface without betraying his touch. When he felt pressure from the other side, he snatched his hand away. He heard the minute gasp again and returned his hand to the curtain.

There was a small sound as of stockinged feet shuffling over plush carpet. The curtain swayed, and the pressure came again. This time, he found his fingers coming into contact with something soft.

Not her hand reaching out as I am. Not her fingers, as it was the first time…

He pressed his hand inward, and the curtain molded itself around the form on the other side.

Jeremy pressed with all five fingers, feeling the deliciously soft contours, feeling the substance of what he was touching give way, submit before his probing.

Even through the thickness of the drapes, he could feel the island of hardness at the center of that mound of femininity.

He pinched it between thumb and forefinger and heard the urgent intake of breath from the other side.

A wolfish grin settled onto Jeremy's face. Thoughts of trust and conspiracies vanished from his mind. Thoughts of seduction and a particular kind of adventure became foremost.

This is ill-advised…

A small voice chastised him. The same voice that had told him it had been foolish to indulge in games with Eloise De Rouvroy on a night when he should have been winning over the Winchesters.

He didn't listen then, and he did not listen now.

While resuming his tactile study of what was surely a breast through the material of the curtain with one hand, he pressed the other against it lower down.

Harriet squeaked, and he felt her figure stepping back quickly. No, leaping back. He grinned and prepared to tear the curtain aside, when a sharp knock rattled the door. Mrs. Painter's voice followed.

“Milord? Milady? I am sorry to disturb, but his Lordship the Earl of Oaksgrove is without. I had clean forgotten that he had made an appointment today for the furnishing of a dress to his sister. I am terribly sorry, but I simply cannot let a man of his rank stand on the pavement, not when he has a longstanding appointment.”

“I am a Duke. I outrank him,” Jeremy snapped, moving to the door.

Or trying to. Harriet reached through the curtains to seize the tail of his coat. He halted, glancing over his shoulder. She was still concealed by the curtain, only a bare arm visible.

“But he made an appointment. I must admit him. Do you know him, Your Grace?”

“I do, we are old friends.”

“Oh, then all is well. You will not mind sharing the shop with an old friend.”

The relief in Mrs. Painter's voice was palpable.

“Remain where you are,” Jeremy whispered, doubtless quite unnecessarily.

That bare arm seemed quite naked all the way to the shoulder.

He wondered if she had removed her shift as well.

He looked back towards the door, and Harriet flattened her hand against his back as though to push him away.

Instead, she ran it up between his shoulder blades and beneath his long hair to the nape of his neck.

He fought the urge to arch his back, refusing to give her the power over him that she sought. His skin seemed to ripple at her caress. His battle was not so much for control as a savage pleasure derived from prolonging the sensation through denial.

Ralph's faint voice reached him along with the voice of a woman greeting Mrs. Painter. And then he heard the proprietor make mention of a Duke.

The sensible course of action is to go through so that Ralph never sets foot in this room and risks finding Harriet. But I am not going to do the sensible thing because that would not be anything like as thrilling.

He remained where he was as Harriet's stroking hand descended his back and almost lingered at his waist. Almost , because as the door opened and Ralph stepped into the room, Harriet's hand dropped further and squeezed Jeremy's buttocks.

“Penhaligon, old chap. What a coincidence that you were coming in here as well as I. What brings you here?” Ralph exclaimed.

“The same as you. A present for a young lady. But mine is not my sister,” Jeremy spoke with a grin that he knew Ralph would recognize.

“Ah, you old hound, you!” Ralph chortled, slapping Jeremy on the shoulder, “I thought it was about time you had a new bit of...”

He looked back at Henrietta, who watched him with a raised eyebrow and a secretive smile.

“A new companion,” Ralph finished with a wink that only Jeremy could see. “So, where is she? Are you going to introduce her?”

“Not here,” Jeremy said hurriedly.

But Ralph had spied the dresses and a pair of shoes on a stool beside the curtain, where Harriet had placed them before stepping into the curtained area. He glanced at Jeremy with a knowing smile before nodding towards the drapes.

“She is rather shy,” Jeremy quickly put in, stepping back against the curtains.

Harriet was now massaging his buttocks, squeezing and sometimes pinching. He fought the instinct of his body to flinch and tense with each new teasing touch.

“Say no more! Our friend Penhaligon is seeing someone he should not be,” Ralph crowed, “wait until the others hear this. But we have business that must be attended to, so I will leave you to your secret, eh?”

Ralph grinned, and Jeremy returned the smile sheepishly. The two newcomers left the room, closing the door behind them. Jeremy breathed a long sigh of relief and then whirled to face the curtain, tearing it open.

Harriet was dressed in one of the gowns she had taken in.

It glittered with gold and silver thread woven richly across a dress of cream.

It clung to her, accentuating every curve and revealing new lines that Jeremy had not noticed before.

It left her arms and chest bare. Revealing the tops of her bosoms.

She stood coyishly before him, a small smile on her face, arms by her sides. Her chest heaved, and her breasts presented themselves to his eyes with each deep inhalation.

Jeremy stepped forward, forgetting who was in the other room. He drew the curtains closed behind him.

“Is this seduction?” Harriet asked innocently.

“It is, but I am unsure who is the seducer. I had expected it would be me.”

“It seems you have the practice and the experience,” she affirmed, placing one hand delicately on Jeremy's chest.

“We are playing a dangerous game. I don't think Ralph would look behind the curtain. Nash certainly would, and Reuben too. But then I have never known Ralph to abandon business for a woman, and yet... here he is.”

“I don't want to talk about my brother,” Harriet told him, “perhaps it is the dress or my recent brush with death, but I feel quite...”

“Wanton?” Jeremy offered.

“ Reckless ,” she whispered back.

She rose onto her tiptoes, lips reaching for his.

Jeremy held himself away from her, moving just enough that she had to reach afresh to bring her lips close.

Then he dropped to his knees before her.

He caught her hands, kissed the centers of her palms, then each finger in turn, guiding them over his face and into his hair.

His mouth found her midriff, lips roving over the thin fabric, searching out the heat of her body beneath.

She tightened her grip and pressed his face against her body, sighing in pleasure. When he glanced up, she stood with eyes closed, head tipped back in abandon. The sight made him grin.

Such pleasure from such a simple act. He was glad she was not seasoned. There was a great satisfaction in giving pleasure that had never been experienced before.

He grazed his head down to her thigh, breathing in deeply and opening and closing his mouth. Tasting and feeling, wetting the fabric with his tongue. He descended to her stockinged feet, kissing them.

“Is this seduction or worship?” Harriet whispered in a voice so low that it was almost indistinguishable from the soft susurration of breath.

“There is no difference. Not if it is done right,” he rumbled.

“Which?”

“Either.”

She laughed softly. “Tell that to the Winchesters.”

The laugh became a strangled, outraged gasp as Jeremy's fingertips ascended her legs beneath her skirts.

He looked into her eyes as he felt for the silken band of her stocking and began to peel it down.

She made a frantic grab for it to cease its removal, but he slapped her hands away, rolling the stocking down until it was slipping from her foot.

Jeremy caught her bare foot in his hand and pressed his mouth reverently to the delicate arch, then her ankle.

Then her calf, tracing a path up the curving muscle, lifting her leg as he did.

He licked the inside of her thigh, his head now hidden beneath her dress.

Harriet clamped her thighs together and pressed the dress down over her womanhood.

Jeremy simply licked the line formed by her two thighs squeezed together, following it upward until he had reached the dark thatch of hair that concealed her inner sanctum.

Strangled gasps and squeaks were stealing from Harriet, and she was clutching at his head through the dress more than she was trying to hold in place her makeshift modesty cover.

Reaching up under her skirts, Jeremy cupped her wonderfully round and pert buttocks as he introduced his tongue to her womanhood.

She suddenly thumped down heavily on a stool at the back of the curtained area. It overbalanced, and she fell backward with a cry of surprise. She sprawled on her back, Jeremy between her legs, continuing his scandalous activity.

“Is everything quite well in there?” Mrs. Painter asked.

“Quite well, Mrs Painter!” Jeremy called out, “This cream dress is quite exquisite. I think we shall be taking it.”

“Very good, Your Grace. An excellent choice. The Queen of Denmark has recently worn something very similar. I will leave you to it.”

Jeremy glanced up at Harriet. He knew that his hair would be wild, ruffled by her skirt and her thighs as well as her clutching fingers.

Harriet's face was flushed to the roots of her hair, and her eyes bright as candleflames.

Her bosoms seemed about to burst from her low-cut dress, so pronounced was her breathing.

She sat up, seizing his face between her hands and crushing her mouth to his.

Then she broke away, brow creasing, licking her lips. Jeremy laughed.

“Yes, that is what that taste is. Something that not every woman experiences.”

“Merely the followers of Sappho and those fortunate enough to have been... worshiped,” Harriet shot back breathlessly, kissing him again and longer, as though to make a point.

As she spoke, Jeremy was hiking up the skirts of the dress, exposing her pale, soft legs.

In the next breath, he was ushering her back to the carpet and lowering his head once more.

Harriet gave a helpless squeak and then clamped her hand over her mouth as though remembering they were not alone.

She writhed and squirmed as he resumed his worship of her.

Her thighs, smooth and alabaster, began to quiver and tense moments before they clamped tight around his head, heels digging into his shoulders as her entire body convulsed. Those convulsions tore through her in waves, wild and ungovernable.

Jeremy did not relent. He held her there, his mouth coaxing every last tremor, prolonging the exquisite torment until she shattered in his hands.

Until the fierce, unbearable tension melted from her limbs and she collapsed boneless against the floor, undone, her body nothing but quivering aftershocks and release.