Page 143 of The Ladies Least Likely

His tongue dove into her mouth and the arc of sensation shot through her body to that hungry place at her core.

She tilted her head back and sucked on his tongue, reveling in his groan of passion, reveling in the dance of their joined mouths.

He hauled her up further and without hesitation she straddled his groin, pushing her hot aching place against his hardness, fitting herself to him like a puzzle with several layers of clothing keeping them from a perfect fit.

He leaned her back in his arms and bent his head and pulled at the loose drawstring at the neck of her gown with his teeth.

Before she could gasp or scold or tell him how much she was looking forward to it, his mouth grazed her breast, worked down to a nipple, and closed over that begging bud, sucking with teeth and tongue.

She went boneless, a hot pool of breathless sensation, a melting arc of pure need.

She nudged her hips against his cock, rubbing shamelessly, and felt no shame either in the panting mewl that escaped her when he closed one big, warm hand over the breast he’d just explored and moved his mouth to the other.

This was pleasure like she’d never known, and an ache like she’d never known, an inferno she wanted to throw herself into.

She clung to his shoulders as she gasped and writhed under the onslaught of his mouth, teeth, so-clever tongue, ready to let him do anything to her, ready to follow him into the maelstrom and?—

“ Ahem . I left you more than sufficient time to be done with this already,” came the voice, loud and firm and disapproving.

“Go—away,” Harriette panted, writhing against Ren’s hips. His guttural agreement came out against her nipple as he lifted his head from her breast. His expression looked as dazed and fierce as she felt.

“I will not,” Princess snapped. “Someone has to vow to Fritz that you honored your promise of marriage, at least as soon as you found out about it. You wouldn’t have me lie to the man’s face, would you?”

“Franz Karl.” Harriette groaned and pulled the bodice of her gown back into place.

The name was a cold wind snuffing the flames of desire.

Good heavens, hadn’t she just finished telling herself she couldn’t have Ren, instructing herself to be chaste and reserved?

And it had taken less than five minutes for her to crawl all over him like an alley cat in heat.

Ren held completely still, and she realized that, for him, Harriette’s voluminous morning gown was all that lay between Princess and utter indecency.

“Really, your Highness,” she said, which was how she addressed her friend when she was supremely annoyed, “you are interrupting a delicate situation. I am—er, preparing to sketch Ren in the altogether, and he won’t appreciate witnesses.”

Princess snorted. “What man alive doesn’t appreciate a woman witnessing him in the altogether?”

“Rhette,” the man beneath her whispered, his expression strained.

He moved his leg, hiding his damaged foot beneath her hem.

She turned in his lap and spread her skirts over his nether regions to hide him properly.

Her new position snugged his cockstand directly into the crevice of her bottom, and when she squirmed again to add an inch or two of space between them, he groaned and clutched her hips.

“Renwick doesn’t,” Harriette said as primly as she could, given that she was perched on the erection of a mostly nude man.

She met her friend’s exasperated gaze and nodded toward the small heap of Ren’s clothing on the floor, beside which stood his custom-made leather boots.

“Truly, I’ll be good. But can you not—go into the next room or something, and give the man his modesty? ”

Princess, too, looked at the boots, then looked at Harriette, understanding.

“Very well,” she said, “I will withdraw into the morning parlor. But,” she tossed over her shoulder as she took her portable writing desk out the door with her, “if I hear the faintest sounds of copulating—or anything wet and smacking, anything at all—I shall call up everyone below and bring them with me to separate you.”

“No smacking sounds from us!” Harriette called after her, then slithered off Renwick’s lap.

His fingers around her wrist gave her pause. “Is that all we shall have, Rhette?”

It was all they ever could have: stolen kisses and the brush of bodies, but no promises, no future.

She couldn’t bear for him to see her weakness, even though it was Ren, and she hid nothing from him.

She forced herself to give him a careless curtsey, as if he held her hand to lead her out into a dance.

“I can give you the afternoon, milord, but that is all I can promise. And you must let me sketch you. I know exactly how I might finish your portrait, now.”

She made short work of the sitting. She had to.

Ren watched her with hooded eyes, slouched on the couch with a linen sheet over his lap, his good leg propped on the edge of the couch and his scarred leg tucked beneath the sheet.

His bare feet and bared chest, muscular body, and lazy, sensual gaze were the most powerful aphrodisiac she could imagine.

This wasn’t stealing, not this. These sketches were his last gift to her, a salve for her longing when she was far away and had nothing but memories of this time in his arms. She made sketch after sketch, her crayon flying across the pages, imprinting him indelibly upon her eyes just as he was imprinted on her heart.

She couldn’t give him a lifetime. She couldn’t even give him one day.

But she wanted to make this single afternoon last as long as possible.