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His instant response was gratifying, but she required more reassurance.
“But last night in the gardens…”
“I spoke with her, nothing more. She is someone I know from my past, but she has no hold on me.”
“Theodora,” she began.
“You,” he said at once. “I don’t desire any other woman in attendance, Phee. Just you. If we do this, we are promised to each other, at least until the house party’s end.”
His cock was already hard once more, insistent and firm against her. And her body was shameless. Her mind had been made for her. How could she possibly resist him? How could she resist how they were together?
“I have one stipulation,” she said breathlessly before thinking better of the limitation she had set upon herself. “Or perhaps two, rather.”
He smiled down at her, dimples bracketing his mouth. “I agree.”
She blinked. “You have yet to hear them.”
His grin only deepened. “I don’t need to hear them. But if you insist, do go on.”
“You are saying you will agree to anything?” she pressed.
He gave a devil-may-care shrug of his shoulder. “I sincerely doubt any request will shock me.” He paused, giving her a curious look. “It’s not ropes, is it?”
“Ropes?”
“You don’t wish to bind me and keep me at your mercy, then?” He sighed. “I wouldn’t have minded, you know.”
“Why should I wish to do such a thing?” she asked, even as a wicked heat burned into a rising flame within her.
He chuckled, the sound low and velvety. “Many reasons, but I shan’t ramble on now. Your stipulations, what are they, love?”
She liked the way he called her love. And the way he called her Phee. In fact, she liked everything about the Duke of Prestwick, most especially the shadow of whiskers on his jaw, the way he kissed, and how his naked body felt against hers.
Also, his tongue.
“This only lasts until the house party’s conclusion,” she said. “And it must remain our secret. No one can ever know, not anyone in attendance and most certainly not your sister.”
She didn’t think she could face Aphrodite again with her dear friend knowing what she had done.
“I shall be the soul of discretion,” he said easily.
Too easily. He made it all feel simple. As if she could have everything she wanted and then return to London as the proper widow and mother polite society knew her to be.
A dark lock of hair had fallen over his brow, and she smoothed it away, a burgeoning rush of tenderness for him threatening to overwhelm her. “Do you promise me?”
He traced her cheekbone with his thumb. “You have my word as a gentleman, Phee.”
She turned her head to the side, finding the pad of his thumb with her lips. “Then the answer is yes.”
He rolled his hips against her, allowing her to feel how massive and hard he was. “You won’t regret it.”
She hooked a leg around him and arched her back, making him glide along her folds. His thick length slid over her highly sensitive pearl. She was no longer herself, Lady Corbett. In his arms, in his bed, she was Phee, wanton and wicked. She dared to reach between them, her fingers encircling the thick base of him. He was hot velvet, and she loved the way he felt in her hand, the power it gave her as he groaned and shuddered, pumping into her as if he were helpless to resist.
And maybe he was, because so was she. They could be helpless together. She stroked him, growing bolder. She had never touched another man this way, had not wanted to. But she reveled in learning every nuance of him, the way his breath hitched when she circled the head of his cock, how he thrust into her touch and murmured her name, the rasp of his stubble over her bare breast.
These were secrets she was learning.
Secrets she would keep for later, when she was alone again and this time in Apollo’s bed was naught but a memory. So, reminded of the temporary nature of their time together, she brought him to her entrance and kissed his neck, daring to flick her tongue over the place where his pulse beat fast and strong.
