How To Distract a Duchess (13 page)

Her mouth softened and her lips parted, an unspoken welcome. He claimed her with his tongue, first in gentle exploration and then in bold thrusts. Her fists uncurled and she grasped the shoulder tabs on his tunic, tugging him closer.
 

His hands found her waist and pulled her tight against his aching groin. His fingers played in the indentation of her spine, tracing the length of her exposed flesh. Everywhere he touched she was warm, almost feverish.

God love the Hindus for inventing the sari,
he thought as he plucked the gem from her navel and explored that secret space with his thumb. She moaned into his mouth.

He began unwrapping her, pulling end of the sari that was draped across her breasts.

“No, please,” she whispered.

“There are a hundred people on the other side of that door.” He continued to slide the silk over her shoulder. “The only way you’ll convince me you truly want me to stop is to scream.”

He cupped her chin and sampled her lips again. She was sweeter than spun sugar. “What’s it to be, madam?”

She looked up at him, her eyes enormous in the moonlight.

“I won’t scream.”

“I promise you’ll have no regrets,” he said.

Artemisia couldn’t bring herself to move. She trembled as Trevelyn continued to draw the silk drape over her shoulder. The fabric caressed her skin, but it was nothing compared to the caress of his gaze. He tugged at the long strip of cloth, easing it from the waistband of her thin petticoat. The silk gave way and she felt the sari slide around her. She stood still, hardly daring to breathe. Fire raced through her veins. Reason told her this was the path to perdition, but for the life of her, she wouldn’t stop him.

“What are we doing?” she whispered in disbelief.

“What I’ve wanted to do since the moment I first saw you,” he said with a quick brush of his lips on her temple. “When you waved your luscious bottom in my face.”

Heat seared her cheeks. The man had unsettled her from the very first as well. So much so that even though she knew what they were doing was the worst kind of foolishness, she felt compelled to plunge ahead.

As he continued to unwrap the sari, she turned to speed her disrobing.

“If you were prepared to keep me as your lover, you must have wanted this too,” he said softly.

She stopped turning, face away from him. “Only since the day you first announced you weren’t shy,” she admitted.

The last of the silk sheared away, and she stood in only the tight half-blouse and straight petticoat. He lowered his lips to her neck. A rivulet of pleasure coursed over her skin as his fingers found the lacing at the back of her bodice. With great gentleness, he spread the opening and pulled the blouse up. She lifted her arms in surrender and her breasts sprang free as the garment slid over her head.

He reached around and cupped her breasts. No teasing touches this time. He held her, his palms hot beneath them. He thrummed her nipples with his thumbs until they became stiff peaks of longing. She whimpered at the crackle of heat lightning that seared her from her breasts to her womb. She’d ached for him to hold her this way. The joy of his touch now was almost more than she could bear.

She was bereft when his blessed hands left to slide down her ribs, the surprising calluses at the base of his aristocratic fingers nicking her skin, setting off a chain of sparks in their wake. He grasped her hips and pulled her close so she could feel his hardness. Artemisia surprised him, and herself, by arching her back and pressing her derriere against him.

He groaned.

A thrill of power rushed through her and settled in her groin. She was the focus of his desire. As such, she had the power to please or thwart him, to grant him pleasure or dash his hopes. She reveled in the measure of control this gave her. Then he kissed her shoulder and worked his way up her neck to suckle her earlobe. Her control quickly slipped away.

She’d never felt more tinglingly alive. Every square inch of her skin was charged with anticipation. She waited for his touch, the deft flick of his fingertips, the moistness of his mouth, the warmth of his palms as they slid over her.

He tugged her petticoat over her hips and let it drop to pool at her bare feet. She was glad her costume required her to go without drawers. His hands found her buttocks, teasing the crease beneath each round cheek, then cupping them and kneading the tender flesh. Artemisia’s heart pounded between her legs.

Slowly he turned her to face him. His gaze traveled from her face down to her moonlit breasts, over her ribs and narrow waist to the flare of her hips. Her breath hitched as he studied the triangle of dark curls at the apex of her legs. His mouth lifted in a satisfied smile.

“You are nothing short of magnificent,” he said with reverence. Then he bent his head and paid homage to her breasts.

His breath warmed her nipples, teasing them with the nearness of his mouth. His tongue drew circles around her areolas. When he finally took one into his mouth, her knees nearly buckled.

 
“This will never do,” she said, stepping back.

 
He gave her a confused look.

 
“I like you better
naked.
”

 
“Never let it be said I failed to fulfill a lady’s wish,” he said with a grin. With her help—and sometimes hindrance when she insisted on kissing him instead of tugging at his clothing—he peeled out of his costume.

 
Her Mr. Doverspike was no longer merely an aesthetically pleasing collection of lines and planes, a puzzle of light and shadow. He was naked, bared body and soul. She reveled in the sight of him, hard, strong and undeniably male.
   

“Oh, Thomas, you’re beautiful and I never told you.”

“Your eyes always did, even if the words never came. And it’s Trevelyn, Your Grace,” he said as he enfolded her in his arms. The warmth and frisson of his bare skin on hers was heaven itself. “Call me Trevelyn. Or Trev, if you like.”

“Oh, yes, Trev. I definitely like.” She was surprised at the huskiness in her tone. “I suppose given the circumstances, it is rather ridiculous for you to call me ‘Your Grace.’ Perhaps, you’d better call me Artemisia.”

“No, if you’ll allow me, I think I’ll call you Larla,” he said with tenderness. “It’s your secret name and I intend to discover all your secrets in short order.”

He scooped her up and bore her to the fainting couch in the corner. There he laid her down with gentleness. Then he stood over her, his hot gaze claiming every inch of her.

 
Artemisia stretched languidly, the velvet beneath her bare bottom a pleasure in its own right, inviting him to look his fill. She felt wanton and wild and desperately wicked. Her whole being throbbed, but the ache between her legs was so intense, she almost spread them for him, almost begged him to take her right then and there.

She bit her lip to keep from it.

He knelt beside her.

“You are mine, you know,” he said. “I claim you this night.”

“This night I am yours,” she agreed. She swallowed hard, wondering what he was going to do with her. She shivered in anticipation.

  
He kissed her once more, softly, almost chastely. Then he abandoned her lips and his mouth roved over her—under her jaw, the tender ticklish curve of her armpit, the bend of her elbow, the breathless spot on her ribs. He filled the indentation of her navel with his tongue.

She writhed beneath him.

He took her nipple between his teeth and bit down. Not enough to draw blood, but enough to make her buck with desire. Her womb contracted once in sympathy with her breast.

His hand slid over her abdomen and cradled her sex. Her mound throbbed under his palm and when he slid a finger along her folds, he found a warm wet welcome. His fingertip grazed a sensitive spot and she jerked at the shock of pleasure that coursed through her.

Her breath came in ragged gasps.

“Shh, Larla,” he whispered. “’Twill be all right, you’ll see.”
 

She quieted as a child might while being soothed after a bad dream. Her solitary life had been the nightmare, though she’d never acknowledged it. She’d been so cut off, not just from other people, but from herself as well. She had no idea her own body could take her on such a wild careening ride of peaks and valleys.

Trev played her senses as a virtuoso violinist might play a Stradivarius. He was a consummate guide for this pleasure odyssey. Looking up into his desire-darkened eyes, Artemisia realized she trusted him.

Trusted him implicitly.

When his hand began moving, she closed her eyes and let him lead her through a dark place to an unknown destination. She sensed the precipice ahead as a blind woman senses a drop in the path before her, but she didn’t hold back. If she should fall, she instinctively knew he’d be there to catch her.

Perhaps the fall was the whole point.

He started to withdraw his hand. Someone was crying. It took her a moment to realize the small sounds of distress were coming from her own throat. His skillful fingers danced her near the promised relief and then whisked her away.

She was prepared to beg him to continue pleasuring her with his hand, to send her over the edge to destruction or paradise. The intensity of longing was so strong, she almost didn’t care which lay at the bottom of the long drop, so long as the unbearable need was stilled.

But then she felt his mouth on her and all coherent thought fled.

“Larla,” a voice called from a great distance. “Larla, where are ye, lass?”

I’m here,
she wanted to say, but she couldn’t seem to make her mouth work. Her world spiraled down to an ever-tightening circle of blissful agony. Every muscle in her body clenched in concert with her womb.

“Artemisia, your mother is looking for ye,” the voice said from closer at hand, perhaps just on the other side of the studio door.

Good Lord! My mother!
And that disembodied voice belonged to her father.

“Stop, oh, please stop,” she said with supreme effort. She grasped Trevelyn’s hair and pulled his head up from between her legs. “Someone’s coming.”

Trevelyn blinked stupidly at her, like a man in the thrall of a hypnotist’s trick.

Her body’s intense need retreated in the face of oncoming panic. She pushed him off her and scrambled to her feet.

“I’ve been such a fool. There’s a party going on beyond that door. Anyone might stumble into this room,” she said as she struggled into her petticoat and pulled the tight bodice over her head. The unresolved ache between her legs pounded with each beat of her racing heart. Her hands trembled.

“I locked the door behind me,” Trev said.

“But still, what if someone heard us in here?” Her face burned with the thought of the sounds that had escaped her throat while in the grip of passion. “What was I thinking?”

“You weren’t.” Trev ran a hand over his face and through his disheveled hair. “And neither was I. I ask your pardon, Larla. Here, let me help you with that.”

He turned her around and cinched the lacing on her bodice tight. Then he bent and helped her wrap the sari around her body in sensuous folds. Each flick of his fingers was agony because she wanted more than anything for him to be helping her disrobe again instead.

Embarrassment heated her cheeks. She could hardly stand to look at him.

“Larla! The bear’s getting ready to leave,” her father called. “Come bar the door behind him. Where are ye, sweeting?”

Her heart sank. Angus Dalrymple was talking off his head in public. If he kept this up, her mother would start insisting he be sent away again.

Only a few moments ago, she’d been euphoric, drowning in a flood of new sensations. Now she was utterly adrift.

“Larla?” The door knob rattled but the old man wasn’t able to open it. “Are ye there, child?”

Trevelyn slipped a finger under her chin and turned her face up to his. He dropped a quick kiss on her nose.

“We’ll make a better job of things next time,” he said. “May I call on you on the morrow, Your Grace?”

Next time.
The shining promise hovered in her mind. “Please do. If you don’t, I shall be forced to call on you.”

“Shall I come as Thomas Doverspike or myself?”

She smiled wickedly, thinking of the miniscule genitals on her Mars. “Send Thomas. Now that I think on it, I believe there’s a problem with the painting. It isn’t at all accurate to the model.”

“Phew!” Trev swiped his brow in mock relief. “I’m glad to hear you say so.”
 

The door shivered under her father’s attempts to open it. Thank God, Trevelyn had slipped the bolt behind him, but the door wouldn’t withstand a determined battering.

“Go,” Trev said.

She fidgeted with her veil and finally managed to catch it behind both ears. “What about you?”

“I’ll dress and rejoin the party in a few minutes. If you’ve been missed, it will do your reputation no good for us to be seen returning to the ballroom together.” He lifted her hand to his lips. “Save a waltz for me.”