Page 77 of Caught by the Forbidden Duke
He had been in this position, or something like it, more times than he was going to enumerate, but it had never once felt like this. Pushing the robe from her shoulders, he drew the nightgown up over her thigh, watching her jaw. She drew in a breath through her nose and held it.
“All right?” he said.
She answered by sliding her hand from his chest to the back of his neck and pulling him down.
He put his mouth to her throat and worked his way up—the curve of her neck, the soft place below her ear where he could feel her pulse against his lips—and she turned into it, her hand sliding into his hair.
Then he drew back and looked at her face, and his hand moved up the inside of her thigh slowly, and her breath caught.
And, holding her trembling gaze, he touched her.
She was warm and wet, and he shuddered, watching her jaw as he worked his fingers against her, watching the way her brow drew together and then let go. When he found the right pressure, her hips shifted toward him, and she made a sound through her teeth, low and bitten off, that went through the whole length of him.
Her grip on his hair tightened. Then her hand slid from his hair to his wrist—not pulling him away—and he moved with her, watching her face because he simply couldn’t look away from the tension gathering in her, from the way her breath came shorter, her throat bared to him.
Her eyes were shut. Her lips were parted. Her hand had left his wrist and fisted in the linen at his shoulder.
“Look at me,” he said, voice tight, restrained with all the desire he did not feel he could safely let spiral out of control at this moment.
Her eyes opened—dark, very intent—and she held his gaze for as long as she could, mixing in with the desire was a warmth that made his heart feel too big for his chest.
“My God, Belle,” he groaned, the pet name falling from his lips not of his volition.
At the sound of her name from his lips, she shuddered, turning her head against the pillow in the same instant her voice broke on his name, low and stripped of all pretense.
He was hard, and had been for some time, but he made no move to press for more. He lay down beside her instead, pulled her against his side, and stayed there while her breathing steadied. She settled against his chest with the ease of someone who had already decided it was where she meant to be.
The fire went to embers. “Dominic,” she said, after a while, his name coming out drowsily.
“Mm.” He pressed a kiss to the base of her throat, even as the scent of her completion spiced the air and teased him mercilessly.
He had to grab on to fistfuls of the bedsheets to keep himself from ravishing her completely.
“In the entrance hall. Today.” Her cheek was warm against his chest. “You said you’d been trying to find the right time to say something.”
Hehadsaid that, because right in that moment, all the words had been bubbling on his tongue, battering to be let free. Words of how beautiful he’d thought she’d looked when he laid eyes on her walking down the aisle towards him. Of how much he ached for her, even more so now that she was here with him, but
“I’ll tell you when I’m sure,” he said instead, all the things he couldn’t say settling against his throat.
She was quiet for a little while before she said, “Mm, all right,” now sounding even drowsier than before.
He listened as her breathing slowed, evened out, and then she slept.
He lay in the dark with his arm around her and looked at the ceiling.
For the first time in a long time, he fell asleep quickly.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“The tuner was here this morning,” Dominic said. He opened the door and stepped back. “He said it was well-made.”
James went in at something near a run.
He crossed directly to the piano, stopped two feet from it, and stood there with his arms at his sides, taking stock of it. He pressed both palms flat against the cabinet, not lifting the fallboard yet, only feeling the grain of the wood.
He said, “It’s lighter than the one at Fairmont House.”
“Mahogany,” Annabelle said, coming to stand beside him. “It will carry a brighter sound.”
