Page 46 of If the Duke Demands

In one fluid motion, he turned her in his arms and pushed her back against the set wall, his mouth swooping down to capture hers and swallow her words as he kissed her into silence. Her hands clenched into the hard muscles of his shoulders as his body pressed against hers, and she stiffened beneath the startling onslaught of his lips, of his hips pushing into hers, all of him demanding possession of the kiss. And of her.

Aching heat flashed through her, shooting out through the tips of her fingers and toes. With a moan of need, she melted into the embrace. Her hands no longer clenched at him to hold him away but to pull him closer.

Stroking up and down her sides to encourage her to eagerly return the kiss, he mumbled something against her lips she couldn’t quite make out…

“Open,” he cajoled against her kiss. “Open for me.”

Then he pulled back. A soft whimper of protest fell from her at the loss of him, until she felt his thumb caress over her chin, pull down with a gentle tug, and part her lips.

His mouth returned to hers, and this time when he kissed her, his tongue slipped gently between her parted lips to plunder the moist depths of her mouth and coax her into returning the new intimacy between them. One that left her trembling, hot, and bewilderingly wanting more.

Tentatively, she touched the tip of her tongue to his, and he groaned in response. Her pulse raced at the masculine sound. He liked it…Good heavens, helikedwhat she was doing to him! Seized by a wanton urge brought on by the scandalous way they were behaving and by the electric pulse of the opera unfolding next to them, she boldly caressed her tongue over his as she slid her hands across his broad shoulders to run her fingers through the silky hair at his nape.

Her body shivered and flamed in turns, craving his kiss and his touch even as she knew she should run away. This was Sebastian.The duke.The man who had never paid her any mind before this season except to chastise her for causing trouble. An old friend she’d known practically all her life. She shouldn’t be feeling these kinds of sensations with him, these kinds of wicked pleasures…and oh, such pleasures! When his hand swept up to cup her breast, his fingers teasing at her nipple through her dress, she stopped thinking and simply let herself feel.

“Sebastian,” she whispered as the aria’s high notes vibrated into her. She arched her back to bring his hand tighter against her and increase the devilish pressure on that aching, hard point he squeezed between his thumb and forefinger.

“I told you that you stirred my blood, Miranda,” he murmured heatedly as his lips once more found hers, this time to alternate between nipping sharply at her bottom lip with his teeth and soothingly stroking over it with his tongue. “Did you think I was lying?”

“Yes,” she whispered honestly.

He laughed, and the deep sound tickled at her lips. “There’s something about you that draws me…the way you pulse full of life, the way you make me laugh—”

“The way I keep letting you kiss me,” she said with a stab of self-recrimination.

He grinned appreciatively at her. “That, too.” He kissed her again, long and deep and possessive, to demonstrate to her exactly how much he liked it. “You are very inspiring, Rose, in every way.”

She shivered at the loss of his heat as his hand left her breast and wandered down her body. “Am I?”

“Surprisingly so.” His hand caressed languid circles across her belly, with each turn stroking achingly lower. “So much so”—he moved his mouth away from hers to kiss along her jaw and back to that sensitive spot just behind her ear that made her tremble—“that if we had a box all to ourselves”—his hand slid down her belly, as if seeking out the heat aching at her core—“I would be sorely tempted to show you exactly how much.”

She moaned at his wicked words. The heat of his hand soaked through the thin velvet of her gown as if it wasn’t there at all and seeped into her lower belly, blossoming the ache between her thighs just beyond the ends of his fingertips. Her existence became nothing more than his hard, strong body holding her against the wall, the masculine scents of brandy and tobacco filling her senses with each breath of him she inhaled, and the heat of his fingers caressing tender tracings of silent promises against her belly.

She buried her face helplessly against his shoulder as she trembled, all the blood inside her seeming to pool and pulse right there between her legs. Right where she ached for his hand to touch, to caress just a few inches lower—

“Rose,” he whispered huskily, his body now shaking as hard as hers. His lips teased into a smile against her temple as he alluded to her words from their earlier conversation, “Let yourself be tempted…Tell me what you want from me.”

“I—I don’t…” Fresh confusion swirled through her, mixing with the sweet arousal he flamed inside her. “I don’t know.”

“Do you want me to kiss you?”

“Yes,” she sighed out.Oh, very much.

His mouth captured hers again in an intense kiss that so thoroughly plundered her mouth that her toes curled inside her slippers. She clung to him, breathless and weak-kneed.

He murmured against her lips. “Do you want me to touch you?”

“Oh yes,” she answered in a breathy whisper that turned into a moan when he did just that, when his hand slid lower and pressed into the valley between her legs as she’d longed for him to do.

He cupped her through her skirt, but the velvet might not have been there at all given the heat that seeped into her. For a moment, neither of them moved, and there was only the sound of their breathing and the rush of blood through her ears with each pounding beat of her heart. Then he gently rubbed against her, slowly increasing the pressure until he ground the heel of his hand hard against her. A wonderful and wicked shudder swept through her, and she gave over to the urge to step her legs apart, to give him greater access to that aching place between her thighs. A pleased growl sounded from the back of his throat.

“Tell me what else you want, Rose, how else I can please you.” Not ceasing in his caresses, which were somehow both a torment and a pleasure, he trailed his mouth back to her ear and whispered hotly, “Do you want…something else?”

The words crashed over her with the final notes of the aria, and she snapped out of the fogged reverie he had cast over her.

Something else…She knew exactly what he meant, what temptation he was dangling in front of her now. Just as she knew that tonight he’d been caught up in the passion of the opera and his jealousy, that he wasn’t thinking as a duke who had set himself on finding the perfect duchess but as a man who wanted to flee himself, if only for the evening. The irony was biting. Unlike Robert, Sebastian now saw her as a physically desirable woman rather than as the pesky girl in braids who had grown up next door. But he still wasn’t seeingher.

What he saw when he gazed at her was escape.