Page 75 of How to Love a Duke in Ten Days

“Ready?” The word was a breathy whisper as his lips nudged at the sensitive flesh of her earlobe and his hand caressed over her breast to drift along the silken skin over her ribs, and the quivering expanse of her belly.

Alexandra squeezed her eyes shut, her jaw locking. Any moment he would touch her. He would claim her.

Shewasn’tready. She didn’t—

The little drag of his teeth against her earlobe shocked her away from her thoughts and shot an electric sensationthere.

She clenched her thighs together, her intimate muscles pulsing around emptiness.

Confused, distraught, she reached to him for comfort, and he lifted himself so her arms could encircle him, so she could clutch at the curious columns of muscle bracketing his spine. “I don’t know if I can—” She hated that her voice sounded so young. Hated that she was so utterly at his mercy. “What do I do?”

He paused, his fingers splayed just below her belly button, and rested his head in his other hand. “You do nothing, darling,” he crooned. “I want you to let go of all control. Just lie back and let me teach you. And in doing so, I will learn you, as well.” He nuzzled at her, his beard grazing her cheek, his lips seeking hers in the dark.

He found them as his hand brushed over the sealed seam of her thighs, nudging them open.

She didn’t resist him. Was afraid to. If she never denied him, he’d never technically have the opportunity to coerce her into anything. To force her.

Once her legs had parted enough, he curled his kneebetween them, resting the weight of his muscled thigh against her open one.

The hair on his body was softer than she’d imagined, less crisp on his legs than on his chest. Why she noted that, she couldn’t tell. Perhaps because she was doing her utmost to catalogue pleasant things.

Perhaps because she was trying to ignore that place. The one now exposed to the ever-cooling night air.

He didn’t allow that for long.

His fingers slipped through the little tuft of hair there, his chest emitting an animal sound as he found the smooth, swollen flesh inside.

Alexandra’s throat slammed closed. Her eyes squeezed shut. Her jaw clenched and her lips compressed beneath his kisses. She clung to him, her hands clawing into fists.

Instead of pulling away, he folded over her, allowing her to tuck her head beneath his chin and tremble her way through this.

His fingers found pliant, silken skin and he danced around it in the softest circling strokes until Alexandra recaptured her breath. Her heart still pounded. The muscles in her limbs refused to unknot, but… it didn’t hurt. She didn’t fight the queasy revulsion as she’d expected to.

In fact, his movement over her most intimate place incited a strange, almost… rosy sensation. One which poured and crept over her skin in a languid, heated blush.

Without her permission, her legs parted wider and his appreciative husky moan washed her in warmth.

He drew a quick finger lower, carefully laving through the slippery substance he found there. Just as Alexandra gasped, her protestation died on a strangled breath as he parted the ruffles of flesh protecting the silken peak and he grazed it with a featherlike stroke.

Alexandra’s entire world blurred. She lost control of herlimbs as they seized with shivers, but not of the usual sort. A needle of foreign, frightening pleasure lanced her with such force, her body locked with it. She was suddenly afraid if she moved, if she breathed, whatever he’d just done would never happen again.

But it did. His fingers explored the pliant ridges of her sex and teased around the now-throbbing peak. Slipped and slid over it, beneath it, discovering her mercilessly as he emitted a carnal encouragement at each unbidden jerk and gasp.

Some of the dark, erotic sounds, she realized, were too high-pitched to be coming from him, but surely she’d never made such noises.

Beneath the clever ministrations of his fingers, something inside her core melted, twisted with exquisite, rapturous heat. His fingers were so incredibly wet, gliding over every tender recess, leaving sweet trails of pleasure in their wake. Teasing her, driving her to the brink of. Of…

Something.

Alexandra’s hips lifted from the bed, as a visceral jolt seized her. “Piers?” she gasped.

“Let it come, darling,” he breathed. “Don’t fight it. Embrace it.” All his movement centered on the throbbing peak then, awakening from her body an unholy delight.

“I… I…” It tumbled over her like a rogue wave, seizing her limbs and dragging her away from herself, from shore, from any solid ground. She lost herself in the wondrous, terrifying power of it as he coerced her into throbbing, thrashing, delicious spasms of incomprehensible pleasure. Just like beneath the water, every sound was both amplified and muffled. Every movement dreamy and slow. She surged against ecstatic pulses of bliss until they reached a fevered pitch, and her body twisted to escape them.

Her husband kept her thigh captive with his own as he pulled her head above the water, so she could breathe. His stroking fingers slipped away from her bud, lower, to explore the cascade of moisture he’d elicited.

Alexandra could do nothing but lie there, limp and misted with sweat. Marveling silently as she tried to remember how to move her limbs. Tried to decide if she ever wanted to.