Ten Things I Hate About the Duke - Loretta Chase Page 0,124

out on his side, to lean upon one elbow. “I wish you would come here,” he said. “Closer. Or I’ll come to you. You are a duchess. And I’m yours to command.”

She set down her empty glass on its side in the grass beside the rug and moved closer to him. She lay down, and looked up at him, and he saw all the stars he wanted in her eyes.

He bent his head and kissed her, deeply and deeper still. Oh, she tasted like ambrosia made especially for him. He tasted champagne and Cassandra and fire and ice, tempest and tranquility.

There was a kind of peace in having her storming alongside him. Boadicea. Fearless and loving. So loving. Who, looking into her stony grey eyes, would have guessed at the depths of passion behind them, and the depths of affection.

He lifted his head, and traced her jaw with his fingers. “I love you,” he said.

“I know.”

“And I love the way you hate me.”

She smiled and slid her fingers through his hair. “The ways. Ten ways.”

“Then I’ll have to love you ten ways. And ten times ten.”

“Yes,” she said, a sigh of a word.

He drew his hands over the contours of her face, the fine arch of her eyebrows, the curve of her cheekbones, the line of her jaw. He followed the outline of her neck and shoulder. Like her character, her features were strong, but soft, too. He changed his position to slide his hands over her breasts and her belly and down. All this while he traced mainly the way her clothing shaped her. But this, too, was Cassandra. And then there was Cassandra underneath.

He began to undo her clothing, layer by layer. The belt and the dress fastenings, and the sleeves that needed to be detached from the little clouds that filled them. And at last he could pull the dress over her head, a flurry of silk, while she laughed, but softly.

“So much work,” she said. “Yet how well you do it. There are advantages to marrying a man of experience.”

“No, no. This is the first time.”

“With me.”

“The first time like this.” The first time it truly mattered. The first time it was a precious moment.

The corset came next, and the sleeve puffs, and petticoat. Then he paused, and traced her again, his hands following her shape under the fine linen chemise and over her belly and legs with their thin pantalets and the silk stockings below.

“Closer now,” he said. “Closer to the real you.”

“I should like to be closer to the real you,” she said.

Preoccupied with her, he’d forgotten. “Right. Only fair.” He freed himself of his coat, with her help. She untied his cravat without help. The waistcoat followed.

“Oh, Lucius,” she said, and she drew her hands over him as he’d done her, her fingers trailing over his face and down his throat and over his chest and his belly and without hesitation lower still, where his cock shoved against his trousers. “It seems you’re ready,” she said.

“I’ve been ready since I woke up this morning. I’ve been ready for weeks. But I want this to be as perfect as it can be.”

“Ah, well, then.” And she let her head fall back again and stretched her arms above her head and said, “Do as you wish with me, Your Grace.”

The wanton pose wanted to undo him and throw his careful plan into disorder. He had to remind himself that this was the only wedding night they’d ever have. He slid down and kissed her foot, her ankle, and trailed kisses up her lower leg to her knees and upward still, to the place where the pantalets opened, at the sweet junction of her legs, but the chemise still veiled it.

By this time he was trembling, and she was, too.

“Lucius,” she said. “This is torture. Beautiful torture, but torture all the same.”

The chemise came away, and all the rest, and then there was nothing but Cassandra, as she was. He flung away the rest of his clothes, trying not to be hasty but unable to quite manage. He drew her into his arms and kissed her, deeply and hotly, and received the same in return. A long, wild kiss in the nighttime, while their hands moved over each other, learning, memorizing, reveling.

“So beautiful,” he said. “Oh, Cassandra.”

“You, too,” she said. “Come, make me truly your wife.”

The words blazed through him, and he obeyed. Feverish caresses now—the perfect swell of her breasts, the elegant curve of waist