Page 70 of The Duke of Deceit

A puzzled frown registered her confusion.

Chuckling softly, he leaned over to kiss her again, languidly and heatedly. Then he straightened to remove his buckskin breeches, his eyes never leaving hers as he stripped them off.

He was completely nude now as he stood in front of her. Jess could barely remember to breathe as she cast a lingering look over him, noting all the sculpted muscles that made him resemble of one Lord Elgin’s marbles, the breadth of his shoulders, the faint trail of dark hair across his abdomen leading lower still to…Oh my.Apparently, every inch of him was hard and sculpted.

She bit her bottom lip as she pondered touching him again, of letting her fingers play over his bare flesh and exploring—

“Don’t you dare,” he scolded gently as if he could read her mind.

She whispered, “Because it will hurt?”

“Because it will feel too damn good,” he growled.

Before she could question that logic, he crawled onto the bed with her. His heavy weight depressed the mattress and rolled her toward him on the satin counterpane, which she didn’t mind at all when it allowed him to wrap his arm around her and nestle her close against him. Being held was nice, and when he caressed her bare bottom with his rough palms… Oh, soverynice! The warmth of his smooth skin, the tenderness of his mouth on hers as he kissed her with a deepening yearning that left her nearly panting, the way his hands roamed over her body—she let out an unbidden whimper of pure need.

He rolled her onto her back beneath him, and her heart stuttered with nervous anticipation. His eyes glowed with desire as she stared up at his handsome face, darkened by the moonlit shadows.

“I told you I’d prove to you exactly how beautiful you are, my Jessamyn. You are beautiful here,” he murmured as he kissed her lips. “And here.” He trailed his mouth down the sideof her neck and over her shoulder, his hot lips leaving a trail of goosebumps in their wake. “And simply breathtaking right here.”

He lowered his head to brush his lips across her breasts.

A long sigh escaped her when he placed a delicate kiss to each nipple, as if to soothe the aching that tightened them into hard points.

“And simply delectable.” He closed his lips around her nipple and suckled.

The pull of his lips penetrated into her and sparked an unbearable need through her limbs to her core. Jess couldn’t stop herself from arching her back off the mattress to lift herself up against him in wanton invitation. Her fingertips pressed harder into his shoulders, and she bit back a rising moan as his hard sucks pulled her deeply into his mouth. When he wickedly flicked the tip of his tongue against her in fluttering little licks, a liquid heat rushed all the way down to that throbbing spot between her legs, where he’d touched her before.

Despite the way she writhed beneath him, she still felt compelled to protest, “I’m not del—”

He nipped her gently in punishment.

An erotic jolt of pleasure shot through her and ripped away her breath, only for her to shudder when he soothed away the sharpness by laving his tongue around the nipple as if licking at a spoonful of cream. The unexpected mix of sensations left her trembling, panting, and aching, yet she could do nothing more than wrap her arms around his neck and wiggle her pelvis beneath him in desperate yearning for the pleasures he’d given her before. For an even greater pleasure she instinctively knew he was capable of granting her.

“And you’re so very beautiful…right…here.”

His hand slipped between her legs and caressed her, just as he had done at Vauxhall.

Joy crashed through her. She hadn’t been prepared the first time he’d touched her there, and the sensation had been simply overwhelming. But now, she knew what to expect. So she spread her legs wider in hopes of having his fingers soon stroking inside her again, so deliciously filling her with every plunge and retreat…

He groaned and teased his fingers along her feminine folds, caressing and tickling, until she felt his fingers grow slippery from her wetness. He murmured against the bare flesh of her breast, “Soverybeautiful.”

But he didn’t slip inside her tight warmth as he’d done before, and she lifted up her pelvis to beg him to claim her again. All the tiny muscles inside her throbbed keenly with anticipation—

Instead, he slid down her body and brought his mouth against her. Rightthere.

“Lucien!”

Her hands grasped his head as he lay between her thighs and began to kiss her there, just as he had kissed and teased at her nipples only moments before, sucking and nipping and licking to soothe away the unbearable ache. Then he pushed aside her folds and delved into the tight warmth beyond. It wasn’t his fingers that stroked into her now as he’d done before, that wonderful touch that had brought her to the point of unbearable release—it was his tongue, and every wicked thrust only went deeper inside her, as if he wanted nothing less than to devour her.

She melted like molten wax. Heat licked at her toes, teased at her breasts, and flamed up her legs until it burned right there beneath his mouth, but the little muscles inside her didn’t relax. Instead, they tightened around his tongue in a shameless attempt to pull him even deeper. Soft mewlings of need cameunbidden from her throat and wordlessly encouraged him to increase this impossibly sweet yet agonizing torture.

He did as she bade and hooked her legs over his shoulders, rolling her higher onto her shoulder blades and lifting her from the mattress until he supported her beneath with his large palms on her bottom, which squeezed and released in time with each thrust of his tongue. He had opened her impossibly wider to the merciless assault of his seeking lips and thrusting tongue, and she moaned loudly in complete surrender.

“Do you like that, my love?” he asked, each word tickling her wet folds.

“Yes.” She squeezed her eyes shut against the rising wave of pleasure. “Oh yes…” And then—“Oh!”

She gasped as his lips closed around the sensitive little nib buried in her folds. Then, when he sucked—