Page 47

“Beautiful,” he praised.

She wondered if the lack of light was responsible for his opinion. It seemed he was not aware that her stockings had been repaired more than once or that she had almost worn through the sole of this particular pair of boots.

But then he lowered his head and pressed a kiss to her shin, and she forgot to care.

Her heart flipped. A rush of longing so intense and molten that it may as well have been lava swept to her core.

“Is this what you meant when you told me the best kisses are not had on one’s hand?” she asked.

He grinned up at her.

She nearly swooned.

“Perhaps,” he said, before bending to kiss the rounded bend of each knee. “Or perhaps…” His words trailed away as he ventured higher, his lips finding the thin, worn fabric of her drawers. “Here.”

“Oh my.” She pressed her thighs together, trying to stave off the sensation between her legs and maintain her modesty both.

He slid her skirts higher, all the way to her belly, bunched up and messy. “Hold these for me, love.”

She would do anything he asked. Sprout wings and fly to the moon itself if need be.

Ophelia took the layers from him, holding them tightly. She felt at once foolish, dizzied, and overheated. She’d had a husband and experience in the marriage bed, and yet she had no notion of what Prestwick was about. She might have expired from embarrassment were it not for the fervency with which he enacted his task. He stared at every inch of her he revealed as if she were a wonder. His touch was worshipful, slow, lingering caresses that sent heat pulsing through her veins.

She didn’t want to ask him what he was about, to reveal her ignorance. She was playing the role of an experienced sybarite, she reminded herself. It was difficult indeed to recall, when everything happening between herself and Prestwick felt so astonishingly new.

He caressed her thighs, his gaze intent. “Will you let me taste you?”

“You already have,” she said weakly.

His low chuckle scraped a sensitive place inside her. “Not nearly everywhere I want to, love.”

Her hold on her skirts tightened. Warmth suffused her. Not from the orangery, but from Prestwick’s proximity, from the sinful suggestion in his words, his touch, his position on his knees. There was only one reason to lift her skirts for him, but she had no notion of how he could join with her whilst on the tile floor.

Which meant…

It was fortunate indeed that Ophelia was wearing a mask, else Prestwick would see her furious blushing.

“Where else?” she dared to ask.

He gave her a soft sinner’s smile, one that showed off his dimples and made something inside Ophelia melt. “Can you not guess?”

Oh, she could. Her willful imagination was, at this very moment, running as wild and rampant as her pulse was. Her rational mind told her such a thing wasn’t done. But the rest of her was entirely in the hands of the beautiful man before her.

“Perhaps you should show me instead,” she suggested, wondering at where this sudden boldness, so unlike her, hailed from.

“As my lady wishes.” With a gentle touch, he coaxed her legs apart.

She stifled the urge to clamp her legs back together. Hushed the voices inside her head that warned her this was scandalous and wrong. And when Prestwick’s stormy gaze lit upon the intimate flesh she revealed to him, and he made a deep sound of unabashed desire before his head dipped toward her, nothing else mattered. Not the voices, not the modesty, not anything other than the duke on his knees.

He parted the gaping slit in her drawers even farther, and she felt the humid brush of the orangery air the moment before his mouth settled upon her. He kissed her there. Leisurely at first. A light touch only. But it tore her apart, at once magical and miraculous. She gasped, hips jerking upward. And then with another helpless-sounding groan, he buried his face in the apex of her thighs, and she felt the magic flick of his tongue over her.

She nearly leapt from her perch on the table. It was only his solid form, fixed between her parted thighs, that kept her from flying to the tile. Her body’s reaction was instant. The gentle, insistent way he lapped at her stripped away any genteel layers she may have once possessed.

She was nothing but sensation, her body so very alive and attuned to everything Prestwick did. His hands were on her, caressing. Low hums of satisfaction purred from him. Ophelia had become his feast, and he was gorging himself on her pleasure. She had thought being a rake meant plying charm.

She had been wrong.

It was this ability to not just seduce but to wage war upon her senses. It was knowing her body better than she did herself. For she had never imagined it capable of such intense bliss. Sweat trickled down her spine, down her temple. She clutched her skirts with one hand whilst attempting to balance herself with the other flattened on the table. Wrought iron imprinted itself upon the backs of her thighs, and she didn’t care. Everything was too much, and yet it was also simultaneously not enough.