desire as he moved in her. The slide of him was divine. In and out, his path eased by her readiness.
He sealed their mouths in a kiss. She tasted herself on his lips, on his tongue as she wrapped her arms around his neck and deepened the kiss. Hyacinth nipped him as he had done to her. He groaned into their kiss, pumping faster.
Their joining was furious and sweet all at once. He reached between them to play with her already sensitized nub, and that was the spurring she needed. She reached her second crisis on a cry he swallowed with his voracious kiss. As she clenched and spasmed around him, he sank deep, his body tensing.
He ended the kiss, throwing back his head as his cock pulsed and the jet of his seed flooded her. They were united, joined so perfectly. So beautifully. Tom collapsed against her, and Hyacinth held him tight as pleasure continued to shimmer through her. Her fingers stroked his sweat-dampened skin.
She pressed a kiss to his cheek, reveling in the way this big, strong man felt atop her. How right the weight of him felt. How perfect the pounding of their hearts, almost as one.
Filet de boeuf aux truffes with sauce champagne had never tasted as decadent as it did this evening. They dined on the floor in a pile of pillows. Hyacinth was wearing his shirt, her pale, curvaceous limbs peeping beneath the hem of it. He had not seen a more erotic sight. He was dressed in nothing more than his trousers.
He expected they had given the servants cause to wag their tongues belowstairs with their antics. However, considering the household was Brandon’s, he had to suspect they were accustomed to ardor taking precedence beneath this roof.
Hyacinth seemed to read his mind. Her gaze sought his over the mounds of pillows. “What must the servants think of us?”
“I expect Brandon pays them well enough to think nothing of anything that occurs within these walls,” he said, trying not to think what his friend was about with his mistresses here.
He took a bite of his filet, the burst of flavor on his tongue as welcome as it was delicious. He would have to remember to commend the chef. As expected, Brandon’s staff was impeccable. But of course. Only the best of everything for the Duke of Brandon. He was known as a voluptuary for a reason.
Hyacinth’s expression changed, a pink flush creeping on her cheekbones. “Of course.”
God, she was beautiful when she blushed.
Actually, she was beautiful. Full stop. No qualifiers necessary.
“What is it you are not saying, darling?” he asked her.
“Lottie said there is a chair here that is used for…relations.” The pink deepened to rose.
Tom could not stifle his chuckle. “This would be your friend of the other evening? The one Brandon whisked away?”
“Yes.” Hyacinth pressed her hands to her cheeks, as if she could wipe away the signs of her embarrassment. “Oh dear, I ought not to have said so. She will have my hide if she knows I asked you about the chair.”
“Did she see the chair herself?” Tom asked, intrigued about the supposed chair and her friend’s interest in his friend both.
“Good heavens, no.” Hyacinth bit her lip, looking adorably torn between the desire to confide in him and maintaining her friend’s confidence. “She was quite dismayed that he did not go chasing after her. Indeed, she reported that he was quite the gentleman.”
Tom pondered that news while he chewed on another bite of filet that seemed to melt in his mouth. “Gentleman and Brandon are two words I never thought to hear inhabiting the same sentence.”
“Pray do not tell the duke Lottie has set her cap at him,” Hyacinth said, before taking a sip of her wine.
He was briefly mesmerized by the rise and fall of her lush breasts beneath his shirt.
“Surely not marriage-minded?” he asked, for Brandon had always scoffed at the institution, unlike Tom.
But that had been before.
Now, things had decidedly changed for him.
He was no longer looking for a wife. For now, he was living life by the moment. All he wanted was Hyacinth.
“Naturally not,” she said, replacing her goblet on the carpets with ginger care. “Lottie holds the same poor opinion of marriage as I do. I fear her marriage was not any better than mine, though her husband was not as loathsome.”
Tom studied her, doing his best to tamp down a wave of fury at the thought of anyone ill treating her. Especially the