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Her arms went around his neck, pulling him closer. He slid a hand behind her head and cradled it as he deepened the kiss. This wasn’t a teasing, exploring kiss. This was a kiss full of hunger and need. Her heartbeat hammered in her ears almost as loudly as the rain was hammering on the roof.

He grazed her earlobe with his teeth and sucked it into her mouth. The tips of her breasts came to stiff attention. His mouth traveled lower. He nibbled the place where her neck met her shoulder as his hands slid down to her shoulders, pushing down the wide, low neck of her muslin gown to free the tip of one breast. He sucked it hard into his mouth and she gasped. A fiery bolt shot through her and landed between her legs.

But the dirt floor was wet, so how could they… Her thoughts and words fell in a jumbled heap about her feet as his hand slid from her lower back, and down to her thigh. He urged her leg upward until it was supported by his hipbone. Her petticoat rode up. She found herself precariously balanced on one foot, her back against a post, as he pushed the skirts of her gown farther up.

His hand found the back of her thigh and then slid between her legs. He made a hiss of satisfaction as his fingers found the evidence of her desire and slipped easily over her, around and around, until her body seemed to jerk with each light touch as though he was a puppeteer and she were his to control.

His eyes bored into hers. Something tight inside her snapped free. Her gasps turned into wanton moans.

“Put your arms around my neck.” In the next moment, he’d lifted her up. She had to wrap her legs around him as he pushed her back. She heard buttons popping. He rubbed his member up and down her wet slit, teasing that bud of pleasure with the slippery heat of its head until she was whimpering and aching for him. He pressed forward, filling her so quickly that she gasped. Everything inside her was tightening, fluttering… How could she already be so close to her climax?

He paused, his eyes flashing. “You like this?”

“Yes,” she gasped. She hadn’t known this was possible. There might be many things that she didn’t know.

With her legs wrapped around his waist, his slightest movement nudged against her. She’d thought that she was close to release, but instead she seemed to slip into another plane. She clung to him as he pleasured her at his own pace, whimpering shamelessly with each thrust as her hands dug into his shoulders. He bent his head and sucked one of her stiff nipples into his mouth, hard, and she moaned.

The release that she needed was still just out of reach. The tickling ache of his mouth on her breast flooded her with heat. Every muscle in her body drew taut. His hands gripped her buttocks. He thrust deeper, grinding against her, his member seeming to swell inside her…

The ecstasy caught her off guard. Her channel began to spasm, the contractions so fierce and hard that they made her cry out. She seemed to be swept up into the white glare of the storm itself, and then everything exploded into darkness.

It took some time to come back to herself. Or even mostly herself. Aftershocks of pleasure jolted her. Gradually she realized that she, the Duchess of March, had just been taken against a post in an abandoned farm shed.

West held her steady as she unwrapped her legs from his waist, testing to see if they would support her weight. The throbbing between her thighs threatened to buckle them. She tried to ignore it. She ordered it to stop. It didn’t. Another tremor of pleasure went through her.

She reminded herself that nothing that they’d done was in any way dignified or respectable. And then West pulled her into his arms and rested his chin on the top of her head. The casual intimacy of the gesture was the most shocking thing of all.

She really ought to say something. This was the second time that they’d… well, done it outdoors. He couldn’t get the idea that she enjoyed being tumbled like a… And yet, at least in this one moment, the warmth of his chin and the way that she fit against him felt suspiciously like… bliss.

In the deep silence, cradled against his chest, she could hear his heartbeat gradually slowing to its normal pace.

Wait. Silence?

She drew back and cleared her throat. “I believe that it has stopped raining.”

He frowned as he turned his head to listen. “I believe that you are right.”

And then, in the silence, she heard the most frightening thing that she could imagine: The sound of slow, stealthy footsteps outside.

Chapter Twelve

Hush, hush, hush.

There was no mistaking it. It was the sound of someone sneaking through the wet grass just outside. Her heart thudded with dread.

West had already buttoned his breeches. He held a finger to his lips and slipped away to the boarded-up window.

With shaking fingers, she did her best to arrange her gown and tiptoed to the window too, where she peered through a crack in the boards. Outside were weed-infested cobblestones.

Hush, hush. Two more stealthy steps sounded even nearer. Whoever it was must suspect that they were inside, for he was moving with deliberate slowness down the windowless side of the building. At any moment he would come around the corner, see the door, and…

West lifted a board and hefted it in his hands, brandishing it like a weapon.

Hush, hush, hush… the footfalls began again. And then, around the corner of the building, poked a head. One golden eye regarded her from a barred pupil. The rest of the animal appeared. It was a brown and white nanny goat with a bit of frayed rope tied around its neck. It flicked its ears irritably as a fly buzzed around its face, then lowered its head and tore at the lush grass bursting from between the cobblestones.

“A goat.” Pomona sagged back against the wall, one hand to her chest.

West lowered his makeshift weapon. “We have been menaced by a goat?” He began to laugh. “Why, you had me quite convinced that there was a man out there armed with a gun!”