How to Catch a Duke (Rogues to Riches #6) - Grace Burrowes Page 0,52

of a gander, actually.”

“Ganders don’t care what their knees look like,” she said, standing, “and I don’t care what your knee looks like.”

He peered around at his study, which now resembled a theater dressing room. Abigail’s stockings were draped over the back of the reading chair, her dress adorned the desk. Stephen’s waistcoat and shirt were half falling off the bookshelf, and his coat graced the reading table.

“The knee is ugly,” he said. “I’ve tried ignoring it, but then the lady eventually catches sight of the scars, and she’s horrified, so I’ve tried keeping my breeches on, and that limits the opportunities. There’s always waiting for dark and moonless nights, but—I hate this.”

“You hate being imperfect.” Abigail knelt and started on the buttons of his falls. “I’m none too keen on some of my shortcomings either. My breasts are different sizes. I never noticed, until Champlain kindly pointed it out to me.”

“He pointed it out to you?”

She finished with his falls. “He made something of a study of the matter, and even wanted to measure…It’s all ridiculous. Do men go around measuring their cocks?”

“Some of us, figuratively if not literally. Promise me you won’t run shrieking for the carriage?”

Abigail wrapped her arms around him and pressed her cheek to his bare chest. “I won’t run shrieking to the carriage.”

“There’s something else. About my canes.”

She swiped her tongue across his nipple. “Hmm.”

“I can’t…you know…unless my cane is within my reach. That feels lovely.”

She teased him for a moment, long enough to get herself stirred up—more stirred up—then she sat back. “I will take off my chemise when you remove your breeches.”

“Dear God, Abigail, that’s rather…Oh, very well. You first.”

He’d risen to her challenge, but she had expected no less of him. Taking off her chemise was harder than she’d thought, though. Perhaps one lost the habit of physical intimacy, or perhaps one learned the price of folly. Abigail remained kneeling before Stephen and drew the shift over her head.

“The right one is larger,” she said, looking down at her bare breasts.

“Nonsense. They are both perfect.”

If Stephen’s expression was any indication, they were. “Champlain was an idiot,” Abigail said. “Thank you for illuminating that fact. Your breeches, Stephen. Now.”

He stood, put a hand on her shoulder, and used her for balance as he stepped out of his breeches and kicked them onto the reading chair.

When she’d risen to stand next to him beside the sofa, he took her hand and bowed. “Miss Abigail Abbott, may I make known to you Lord Stephen Wentworth, in all his abundant natural glory, and more than a bit aroused. Will you please come to bed with me?”

She wrapped her hand around his shaft, which was arrowed straight up along the midline of his taut, muscled belly. “Yes. Yes, absolutely, I will come to bed with you.”

“Don’t you want to inspect my knee?”

“No. Stephen, I do not want to inspect your perishing knee.”

He pulled her close and fell with her straight back onto the sofa.

Stephen did not normally make a fuss about taking off his clothes. He was usually too eager to get to the part about mutual pleasure and bone-deep satisfaction. Abigail Abbott, however, had ambushed him.

He hadn’t been able to manufacture subdued lighting, a big bed that sat low enough that no steps were needed to climb into it, a perch for his canes, and other accommodations that freed him to focus on frolicking. Instead he was sprawled on the pulled-out sofa in a room full of ledgers and correspondence, sunlight finding its way through the cracks in the curtains.

Abigail crouched over him, her breasts a soft wonderment against his chest. “There’s a name for this,” she said, nuzzling his neck. “When the female is atop the male. I forget what it is.”

“You will forget the day of the week, if I acquit myself properly. The term for it is happiness, at least for the male. I want to be inside you.”

Oh, that was gracelessness incarnate, that was.

She nipped his ear. “One did get the impression you were interested in making my intimate acquaintance. Guess what I want?”

To have me inside you. “To have the size of your breasts compared by a man with science running in his very veins.” A trickle of science, next to a roaring torrent of lust.

Abigail brushed her sex over his cock, and the roaring torrent threatened to overflow its banks.

Get hold of your damned self, bucko. Show the lady some consideration. Stephen palmed Abigail’s breasts and she ceased sucking