Page 23

In all his years as a devoted sybarite and rake, he had never once had to convince a woman to let him lick her cunny.

This was a first, and it made him strangely hard.

Not just because he would be the first to make love to her thus, but also because he would glory in making his prim Miranda come thoroughly undone.

He wasn’t going to stop until she had spent at least twice on his tongue. Until she was arching her back and crying out his name to the heavens.

He smiled at her in reassurance and kissed the soft patch of skin nearest his lips. “I am certain. I’ll go slowly. If you don’t like something, you need only tell me, and I’ll stop.”

She nodded, catching her lower lip in her teeth, her raven hair spilling over his pillow as he had spent every night since he had met her dreaming it would. “And this is… Men and women do this in bed together?”

He kissed closer to her sex, the heady scent of her filling his head with a haze of desire. “And in carriages and on desks and tables and out of doors and wherever else the mood strikes them.”

“Oh,” was all she said.

He took that as a sign that he should proceed. “Then your lessons shall commence, darling.”

That thrilled him, the thought of him as lust-addled teacher and she his proper pupil, legs spread for his lascivious attentions.

He pushed at her thighs, the soft whisper of her skin gliding on the sheets the only sound in the hushed silence of the room.

She was open to him fully, like a summer flower, his to pleasure, his to claim.

Rhys bent his head and slowly, painstakingly licked the perfect pink bud peeking from her folds, demanding his worship.

The taste of her—sweet, musky, and more delicious even than her cream ice and cornets—invaded his senses.

She gasped, stiffening beneath him. But she tasted so good, the slick heat of her clitoris pulsing beneath the tip of his tongue, that he couldn’t resist suckling despite his intention to ease her into the joy of the pleasure he could bring her.

She cried out, her body bucking beneath him. “Rhys.”

His given name.

He sucked harder, drawing on her swollen bud, the taste of her on his lips, his tongue, his cock practically tunneling into the mattress.

His fragile grasp on his control shattered, and he was lost to everything but her pleasure.

He worried her with his teeth, the light abrasion earning him a lusty moan and another jolt of her hips.

This time, it wasn’t surprise that moved her, he knew.

He burrowed his face deeper into her folds, using his jaw and the prickles of his whiskers, rubbing his face on her sex so that he was coated in her scent, her slick juices, and she was writhing beneath him, legs moving restlessly on the sheets as she angled her body to accept more.

He would wear the perfume of her pussy on his face all night long and wake in the morning to it.

By God, he wouldn’t allow his valet to shave him.

Not until the scent had faded, just in case he would never be able to bury his face in her cunny again.

Just in case the icy Miss Lenox made a return, bringing with her regret and a renewed determination to resurrect her defenses against him.

No, he must not let that happen. He couldn’t; he wouldn’t.

He would please her so well tonight that she would have no choice but to agree to another month.

Although, now that she was gasping and beneath him, her cunny hot and demanding against his lips, Rhys couldn’t possibly fathom one month with Miranda ever being sufficient.

He toyed with her pearl, flicking his tongue over her and then sucking, before licking down her seam to her entrance. Unable to resist, he drove his tongue into her again and again, the silken glide of her hot entrance and the scent of her clouding his mind with pure, animal lust. Still not enough.

He replaced his tongue with his finger. First one, and then another, the hungry grip of her cunny so damned good.

She was hot and wet, her grip on his fingers tight, the fluttering of her walls telling him she was almost where he wanted her to be.

His lips settled over her swollen nub, and he alternated between sucks and licks, simultaneously sinking his fingers deep and curling them forward, finding a place that he knew would take her over the edge.

With a strangled cry, she came, trembling beneath him as her cunny contracted around his fingers. He stayed with her, continuing to thrust in and out as she drenched him, flicking his tongue over her clitoris in gentle strokes. But he wasn’t finished yet. She owed him another spend.

And he intended to have it.

The Duke of Whitby’s tongue was a revelation.

Miranda was beyond capacity for thought or speech.

And so, as the intense sensation that had overcome her gradually ebbed, she remained as she was, naked in his bed, his head pressed between her spread thighs, his tongue tracing hot, wet patterns over her throbbing sex. And his fingers…heaven have mercy.

His long fingers were inside her, moving in a sinuous glide in time to his sinful mouth.

He lapped at her, played with her. Teased her.

Everything seemed so beautifully heightened, everything golden—his golden head so sinfully lodged between her legs, the golden lamplight playing over their bare skin, the feeling rolling over her, through her.

She was limp and sated, and yet somehow, she still wanted. Still needed.

Rhys had shattered all her restraint. She was a creature of pleasure.

Receiving all he could give her and still selfishly yearning for more.

Her hips were moving of their own accord, chasing the pressure of his mouth.

Deep within her core, that same acute ache was building anew.

Perhaps it had never truly left. And all the while, he continued to thrust in and out of her, those knowing fingers gliding through so much shocking wetness she ought to be ashamed.

Curiously, she was not. Her reaction to Rhys was natural, elemental. It was something that simply was, and she could not change it. Nor did she wish to. Not now, not in this moment.

And he seemed to revel in it. In her. He groaned into her, licking and sucking as if he could not get enough of her, using his teeth to elicit bursts of bliss so sharp she couldn’t keep herself from moaning. It was agony, it was ecstasy, and she was dangerously close to losing control again.

As if he sensed her thoughts, Rhys lifted his head, giving her a smoldering look over the expanse of her bare body. “I want you to come again for me, darling. Give me your cream on my tongue.”

Another merciless drive of his fingers, stimulating that excruciatingly sensitive place within her again as he sucked her clitoris.

And it was all she could bear. Miranda spent, head arching back into the pillow as a gasp tore from her lips, eyes closing, and everything was golden once more, stars sprinkling her vision as her second pinnacle roared through her.

The force of it was so tremendous that there was a ringing in her ears for a moment, and she struggled to come back to herself.

Miranda simply lay there, heart pounding, breathing ragged, body awash in the glow of the attentions he had visited upon her.

She hadn’t known it was possible, such pleasure.

And now that she knew, how could she go on without it?

She had been living for others for so long.

First for her parents, then for her husband, and now for her school, always driven by the desperate need to please everyone but herself.

But this new knowledge was as much a gift as it was a sword. Because wanting more was perilous, and yet how could she not risk everything in pursuing it? In pursuing him ? Perhaps she was selfish and wanton and every bit as wicked as the scandalmongers would have everyone believe.

“You’re so perfect, so lovely, and you taste so bloody good,” Rhys praised, caressing her hips and dropping a wet kiss on her inner thigh.

He was still planted between her legs, as if she were an altar at which he worshipped. She felt like a pagan goddess, on display and ready to collect her due. She felt powerful. Desirable. She felt things she had never dreamed she could feel.

“Rhys,” she murmured, reaching for him, a curious and uncontrollable jolt of tenderness surging through her, more profound somehow, than mere desire.

Her fingertips drifted over his shoulders, then his arms as she instinctively sought to draw him over her, wanting his body on hers, aligned with hers. Wanting him inside her.

“Darling.” He trailed reverent kisses over her belly, his storm-tossed eyes burning into hers so potently that she could not look away.

His shoulders were broad and strong, his clavicle a prominent ridge above a muscled chest. Fine, golden hairs stippled skin that was a shade lighter than his sun-kissed hands, face, and throat.

But she was fascinated to realize he was not nearly as pale beneath his clothes as she might have expected, suggesting that he had spent some time out of doors bereft of a shirt.

What had he been doing? There was so much she didn’t know about him at all, and yet they were naked in his bed, and his mouth had been on her most intimate place. Indeed, his lips were glistening still as he trailed kisses along the underside of her breast before taking the peak into his mouth.

At the hot, wet suction, an answering ache renewed deep within her. Further ruminations died a swift little death, supplanted by the need to feel. Her fingers threaded through his thick hair, the strands silken and cool. His touch dipped between her legs, and her back bowed from the bed.