Page 52 of Misadventures with a Duke

“Bastien!” Thank God my voice finally breaks free from the shackles. “Oh please.”

He hears me. And he gets it too. I know that as soon as he lifts his head, the depths of his stare fiery and alive, like the focus of a wildcat in the dimness of a forest. A shiver takes over me at once, but I don’t feel like his prey. I’m ready to be his she-cat, giving back as good as I get.

“Do it.” I speak to the one aspect of his gaze that doesn’t match the rest. The tiny hitches of hesitation, lingering at the corners between his eyebrows and eyelashes. I run a soft finger across one of them. With my other hand, I push the waistband of my yoga pants into the area between his parted lips.

Do it.

Holy shit…please!

But he twists up and away, pulling the rest of his body a similar direction. When our gazes meet again, it’s only from inches apart. He’s lying beside me again, his weight back on an elbow, one hand sliding over my ribcage. The light from the kitchenette limns the stunning landscape of his shoulders. But I hold back from exploring those muscled hills. My need to fulfill other cravings is much stronger.

So. Much. Stronger…

“Wrong direction, Monsieur le Duke.” I grab his wrist and push his hand back toward my throbbing groin. “Here,” I plead, raspier now. Harsher.

“Mierde.” Bastien gulps with similar brutality. Drags in air past his locked teeth. “Raegan—”

“No. Here. Help me. You know how.”

God, do you know how. I tell him that part with a grateful sigh as he slips his big hand down, cupping me from the outside. But after a few seconds, it feels like trying to tango to a waltz. Doable but wrong. Incomplete.

“Please,” I husk—and slide his hand beneath my pants. Yet this time, there’s not even partial satisfaction. He’s at a full stop as soon as his fingertips graze my trimmed mons. “Please. Like this.”

“Raegan.” His voice rides the same sandpaper tone as mine. “If I touch you…flesh to flesh…I do not know if I can stop.”

I palm the side of his face, hoping my expression conveys gratitude for his sweet concern. Yeah, the stuff that pours out of him even as his erection announces itself along the top of my thigh. Oh, my word. What did they feed those eighteenth-century secret service guys? Whole sides of beef?

“Then we’ll have to get creative. We did before, right?”

He closes his eyes as if the waltz has hit a record scratch. Mutters something beneath his breath in French. For all I know it’s a nursery rhyme, but every membrane in my pussy reacts with filthy connotations instead. That’s an extremely good thing, since the man clearly comes to a decision—thank you Jesus, the right one—and pushes his hand a few inches lower, sliding easily into my freshly soaked core.

“Oh, Bastien!” I buck up by a similar number of inches, reveling in the double hit of contact that brings. More of my leg against his hard-on, straining between the annoying barriers of our clothes. More of my intimate tunnel around the length of his firm, long finger. “That’s…nice,” I croak out somehow. “Oh, yeah. Really…nice.”

The last part is my stammering effort to encourage more of his verbal finesse. Along with those hefty eighteenth-century dinners, someone must’ve been making those soldiers read up on silky love song lyrics.

“Get these pantaloons gone with glorious haste, woman. I must behold the nirvana of your nude flesh.”

Especially a little ditty like that.

As soon as I hurl aside my yoga bottoms, my moan is punctuated by lightning glare from the window. During the thunder roll that quickly follows, Bastien is quiet. Too quiet for a man who’s kept his fingers buried in my sex this whole time. Who’s kneading me there with matching intensity despite his new attention to the mute button.

It’s bizarre but kind of hot.

Not as hot as the moment he hooks a leg around mine. His hold turns into purchase for his increasingly urgent pushes along my thigh. I turn my hand over on that side, hoping to help him out. Since there’s already a damp splotch in the fabric there, I get immediate friction.

He groans hard. Harder still as he rolls his hips to work more of his magnificent dick into my grip. But he’s already so massive. Too much to wrap fully with my fingers due to the thickness of his breeches.

He doesn’t seem to care. He’s as frantic as me now, chasing his pleasure with urgent pumps into my hand—but still with no words at his lips. Nothing beyond that single moan. Is he even still with me? Or has he finally flown off, nearly two hundred and fifty years into the past, to instead be with Magique? Should I ask him? Or say anything? And what if that answer is yes? Does it change my mind about wanting to surrender to him like this? About wanting to watch him giving in to me? About gazing at the open desire across his face and knowing I was the one who brought him here so far?

About being the one who gets to hold him, even as things go even further.

He’s grinded hard enough now to unseat a button on his breeches. And from the moment I feel even the firm, wet tip of his perfect penis, I long for more. Especially because it’s so easy to get it now.

Two twists of my wrist have him falling into my palm, swollen and hard and huge.

And then his snarl is in my ear, lusty and heavy and bursting.

“Raegan. Oh Raegan.”