Page 38 of The Rake is Taken
No need to mention he’d been jealous as well.
“I am no such thing. It’s the constant attention that’s hard to overlook. At every event you followed me to, my sullied guardian angel, I watched in amazement as people stumbled and fawned and drooled. Not only women mind you. You want to pick out the men with certain proclivities in our society. Simply place you in the room, and it’s entirely evident in five seconds.” She whipped her hand high, pointing at the blustery clouds above. “I think even the birds are entranced. I’m astonished they don’t tumble at your feet, an act of biblical proportion.”
Finn brought his hand to his lips to cover the smile, and the dimple Piper said only made women angrier in tense moments. This was delightful. He hoped Tori would tell him more about how she’d watched him those many months—as he’d watched her. Dreamed of her. Began to hunger, without even knowing what her voice sounded like.
Whatshewas like.
Now, he knew so many things about her, and his hunger was a raging clamor in his mind. If he could only get it out of his mind that she was made for him. His partner for life, should he find the courage to ask her to give up everything, which of course he couldn’t.
“Don’t laugh, you beast. You invite the grotesque attention. You wear blueallthe time.”
He looked down at his lapis waistcoat, one that closely matched his eyes, and blinked.Huh. Finding her gaze, he chewed on his bottom lip as the expression on her face circled from irritation to suspicion to something he didn’t want to define. “One question.” Gesturing like a ball bounced between them, he asked with more composure than he felt, “If we’re only friends, how could it possibly matter? My flirting? It’s like breathing, reactionary and with little meaning, as stalwart and automatic a defense as your behind-the-pillar kisses, but still I ask.”
She lowered her gaze, her hands finding her skirt and diving in, twisting the lilac silk into submission. When her shoulders rose with a halted intake of breath and the soft words spilled from her mouth, he was lost. “I don’t know…but it does.”
Her candor—when he’d found no one in his life except his family to be truthful, worthy,endearing—sent a shimmer of fury through him. Catching her around the waist, he backed her into the shadows and brought her up on her toes, tucking her as close to his body as he could without tumbling her to the dewy grass and falling atop her. Where the difference in their height would make no difference at all. Cupping her jaw with fingers that trembled, he tilted her face high. “Is this why you came after me,” he whispered, his voice hoarse. “Pour ce qu'ils veulent tous,ou est-ce plus?”
For what they all seek—or is it more?
“I return the query,” she replied in French. Poorly articulated, badly accented, but understandable. “Is my gift all you want—or is there more?”
“I don’t know,” he whispered. A lie when he knew damn well. Then he confirmed his truth by cradling the nape of her neck, drawing her into him as he bent to seize her lips. The taste of champagne and strawberries flowed into his mouth, down his body, and out the soles of his feet, grounding him to the earth and to her.
Her arm rose, grazing his waist, ribs, shoulders, reaching past his jaw and sending fingers into his hair, tangling, tugging, creating a jolt of aroused pleasure and a moan he could not contain.
She started at the sound and drew back, her expression concealed by shadow, but her wild eyes were glowing through it. If his groan wasn’t enough to tell her he was losing control, the erection pressed against her hip, an awakening he couldn’t conceal if his life depended on it, should have.
“Walk away now,” he said gruffly, his hands sliding to her shoulders and grasping, drawing her in instead of pushing her away, “before it’s too late.”
When it was already too late for him.
Shaking her head, she stepped back atop the low row of bricks circling the fountain, slanted her lips over his, and claimed him.
He sighed, giving up, givingeverythinghe’d previously withheld.
If she were going to make love to another man, experience pleasure with another man, marry another man, Finn would make sure she never forgot this passionate moment in the midsummer twilight.
This moment when she washis.
The bricks made it easy for her to loop her arms around his neck, her breasts settling heavily against his chest. Hyacinth, he concluded after days of questioning, she smelled like hyacinth and vanilla, the unique fragrance unraveling his longing and laying it out like a rug before him. He cradled her head, nipped her bottom lip, soothed with his tongue, then nipped again. Her answering shift, hip to hip, the ragged sound of delight whispering from her throat, telling him all he needed to know.
He didn’t have to handle her delicately, like a vase he feared breaking. The woman who he was certain rode a horse like a whip and rolled in the grass with Piper and quarreled with him until he lost the will to conquer her would be an enthusiastic, fearless lover, meeting him move for move, sigh for sigh, pleasure for pleasure.
Unafraid to reveal his yearning, he palmed her hip and brought her gently against his hard length, settling her rather perfectly. Even through layers, he could feel her. Warm and welcoming. “Tori,” he whispered hoarsely, “you are magnificent.” Her hair was wild, the moist air creating a wealth of riotous curls he longed to see spread beneath him as he slid inside her.
With a stuttered catch of breath, she gripped his shoulders and followed his languid rhythm, their tongues echoing the movement of their hips. It was a dance as old as time…one he’d fantasized about, sweat-slick sheets and flushed skin, the scent of her, him,them,capturing the bedchamber and defying his every concern.
Slowing the kiss, she dropped her head to his shoulder, breathless, trembling. She was close, he thought in amazement, and he hadn’t even put his hands on her, not truly. He could make her come, right here in the moonlight, while standing on a low brick wall surrounding a decaying fountain on Ashcroft’s estate. Make her rememberhimif she were to marry the duke, every time she saw the crumbling monument.
If she were this responsive fully clothed, what would she be like when he stripped her down to nothing, all those silly stratums gone, his lips and teeth, his tongue, covering every inch of her with absolutely no barriers in place?
A lewd impulse, but one he followed, fingers trailing across her belly and up the side of her body to her breast. Cupping the full mound, his thumb found her nipple, pressed, circled, making it harden like the pebbles wedged beneath his boot. Her head fell back, exposing the glorious, arching nape of her neck. Powerless, his lips were there in seconds, kissing, sucking, drawing her skin tenderly between his teeth. Her pulse tapped against his jaw, proof of her yearning, the realization sending a pulse of longing throughhim.
Hell, he could come himself with nothing more than her sighs ringing in his ears, her fingers clutching his shoulders, the sweet taste of her filling his mouth.
Desire was overriding sense, he knew, when he began calculating how long it would take to retrieve his carriage, parked a scant distance from Ashcroft’s house to avoid the throng, send a note to Julian’s townhome so Humphrey didn’t worry, then spend the next two days inside, over, beneath, and behind Victoria Hamilton.
She had no idea how inventive he could be if inspired, which he rarely, if ever, had been.