Page 7 of Tantalizing the Duke
And Milly wasn’t finished.
He felt her hand guiding his to her breast. She looked up, her expression open, her desire real and unrelenting.
“I can’t do that here,” he said, his voice strained with wanting her to do exactly that.
She continued to grind into him as she turned to face him. “Then, where?”
Her words sliced through the sexual fog like a sword through butter. Her sincerity stunned him, her tenacity awed him, her utter lack of decorum thrilled him beyond reason. Yet somehow he regained just enough composure to tease her. “I’m flattered you want my company. But as you know, I don’t take part in what goes on in these rooms. I could find you someone. A young man, waiting for a woman who?—”
“No.”
The refusal was simple and immediate. She left no room for misunderstanding.
“Milly,” he tried again, ignoring the slow burn of pleasure and embarrassment spreading through him as she slipped two fingers between the buttons of his waistcoat and ran them over his chest, “you only want me because I’m the man standing in front of you.”
She gave him a smile that made him want to throw every careful word to the wind. “I want you. I’ve wanted you since I knew what wanting was. Women talk, and I’ve heard more than you think. I’ve heard what a lover you are. Soon I’ll have to obey my husband’s wishes, and I suspect that will mean I’ll have to limit my activities to include only him.”
He could hardly think, her confession tangled him so thoroughly.
She pulled him closer. “I don’t want to miss out on the chance to feel what your fingers can do inside me. Or the way your cock will feel inside me. Inside any of my openings.”
She fully intended to tease him to death, he was sure of it.
And then he realized, she wasn’t teasing.
“Three nights,” he said, the words almost a gasp, “three nights from now.”
The joy on her face left him astounded. “I intend to explore all the ways you can satisfy me, Dainsfield.” Her tone was so fiercely sincere it made him dizzy.
He had never wanted anything so much as to leave Sutcliffe’s with her.
When he laughed, it came out like a mixture of amazement and surrender. “I’m usually the one saying that. Wednesday evening, I’ll send my carriage for you.”
Milly smiled coquettishly, as if he’d offered her the world.
He suddenly felt the need to test her, to see how true was her proclamation that only he would satisfy her. “May I have a hack take you home?”
She nodded, utterly content with the scheme. “That would be lovely.”
He escorted her downstairs to the entrance, every step a slow-motion struggle against his impulse to drag her into the nearest room. With a practiced composure, he called for a footman and had the hackney summoned. As he watched it pull away, a smile like he hadn’t worn in years settled onto his face.
He turned back to Sutcliffe’s and wondered if any man had ever been happier to say the word “Wednesday.”
CHAPTER FOUR
The moonlight spilled through the gap in her curtains, painting Milly’s bedchamber in shades of pearl and black. Her body burned beneath her sheets, a restless heat that refused to be relieved by the cool night air. Sleep abandoned her hours ago, leaving her alone with thoughts of him—of Dainsfield—and the polite, devastating rejection he had delivered at Sutcliffe’s earlier that evening.
Milly groaned softly, turning onto her side. The sheets twisted around her legs like gentle bindings, a cruel reminder of desires unfulfilled. Her fingers clutched at the fine fabric, bunching it between white-knuckled fists before releasing it with a huff of frustration. She rolled again, this time onto her back, staring up at the canopy of her modest bed as if it might offer some distraction from the insistent thrum of need pulsing through her body.
“Insufferable man,” she whispered to the darkness, though there was no real venom in the words—only a breathless longing that embarrassed her, even in solitude.
She could still see Dainsfield’s face, the rigid control of his expression as she had leaned close in the hallway at Sutcliffe’s, her invitation clear when she brought his hand to her breast. His dark eyes had widened momentarily—a flash of something raw and hungry that had made her heart leap—before the mask of business proprietor had slammed back into place.
“I can’t do that here,” he’d said, his voice so low it barely disturbed the air between them,
Milly sighed, the sound dissolving into a soft moan as her body shifted against the mattress.
Her mind, traitorous thing that it was, drifted to memories of men who hadn’t been so concerned with propriety. A certain viscount, for instance, whose library had offered sanctuary from prying eyes during a house party three years ago. She closed her eyes, and suddenly she was there again, bent over his knee, her skirts rucked up around her waist, the cool air a shock against her bared skin.