Page 62 of His Stolen Duchess

And then he kissed her.

He didn’t rush. His mouth pressed to hers with deliberate restraint, a held breath, a storm not yet loosed. She felt the heat of him, his hand still on her cheek, the other braced on the seat between them, and for a moment she forgot the ball, forgot Lady Eastbeck, and forgot her own name.

When he pulled back, the silence that followed was not empty. It was charged.

Her lips tingled, her skin felt flushed, and her breath caught somewhere behind her ribs.

Lysander studied her face, then moved slowly, almost reverently, down to his knees before her, squeezing into the small space between them in the moving carriage. The motion was fluid, effortless, as though he belonged nowhere else. The candlelight from the coach’s side lantern flickered against his dark hair.

Georgina’s breath hitched. “What are you doing?”

He looked up at her, his expression indecipherable, but his eyes burned like molten steel.

“Perhaps it’s time I showed you how a real man treats his woman.”

He lifted the hem of her skirts.

“Do you trust me?” he asked, in a voice as low as thunder before the storm.

Georgina nodded.

“I will take care of you,” he murmured, locking his eyes onto hers. “Don’t be afraid.”

“I’m not,” she lied, as her chest hitched nervously.

Her breath fogged softly in the carriage’s dim interior—shallow, quick, and trembling as it met the velvet drapery and polished wood panels of the carriage. Her every exhale echoed like a pulse, rising from somewhere low and urgent, and stoking the embers that glowed beneath her skin.

As he sank to his knees before her, between her parted legs, Lysander did not release her from his gaze.

She could scarcely breathe.

Her gown, already loosened by the haste of earlier hours, rustled as he pushed the fabric higher, baring her thighs to the lamplight that filtered through the silk curtains.

The gentle rocking of the carriage only served to heighten the precariousness of what was unfolding—the candlelit shadows dancing across the ceiling, the patter of soft rain against the roof above, and the nearness of his warm breath between her thighs.

This is what it means to be a woman.

His hands grazed the sensitive skin of her calves, then her thighs, as reverently as one might trace a scripture. The warmthof his palms melted across her limbs, coaxing them open, making space for him.

And she gave it freely. She gaveherselffreely.

She did not expect him to show such tenderness or such restraint in that moment.

Georgina gasped as his knuckles brushed the inside of her thigh—an involuntary, trembling sound that left her lips before she could contain it. Her skin prickled with gooseflesh as his other hand mirrored the motion, a lazy, deliberate stroke that sent a current rippling through her spine.

She tilted her head back, her eyes searching the carriage ceiling, not daring to look down to see him kneeling there, fully clothed and utterly composed, while her own restraint dissolved thread by silken thread.

It felt sacrilegious. Intimate. Irrevocable.

Her thighs tensed as his thumbs pressed gently, parting her further. She did not resist. Her breath caught again, this time in anticipation, as he leaned in. The warmth of his exhale ghosted over her exposed core.

The first touch was nothing more than the pad of his finger, gliding across her soft folds as though to learn them by heart. She shivered.

Then, a flick of his thumb, just once, over that aching bud, and her hips lifted instinctively, seeking more. Her body spoke a language she did not know she knew.

She moaned, low and broken, a sound she might have been ashamed of had she been able to think clearly. But there was no space for shame here. Only sensation.

His tongue replaced his thumb—hot, slow, and devastating.