How to Catch a Duke (Rogues to Riches #6) - Grace Burrowes Page 0,54
sweetly beneath his fingertips. She moved against him, a slow, sinuous reawakening of desire that was both more delicate and more insistent than her previous caresses.
“I want…” She dragged her sex along the length of his cock.
“Have what you want, Abigail.” A watchful, hopeful corner of his awareness realized that she needed to hear her name. She needed him to call her home to her own joy.
“Please, Abigail.” He took himself in hand and used his cock to stroke her intimately. She closed her eyes, and Stephen glossed his thumb over intimate folds. “Say you’ll have me.”
She opened her eyes, took his wrists, and pinned his hands to the pillows. “Yes.”
The next two minutes were the most hard-fought battle for self-control Stephen had ever waged. Abigail pressed herself down over him in slow, rocking increments as she held his hands fast beside his head. He could have wrestled free—probably—but why on earth would he want to?
“Move, I beg you,” he whispered when she’d hilted herself on his arousal. “However you please, but, Abigail, please move.”
She moved—moved his whole world and the moon and stars beyond. He had the sense she was exploring the boundaries of her own pleasure while she enlarged his. He’d experimented with delayed gratification, with toys, bindings, drugs, and odd positions, but none of that was half so arousing as the knowledge that Abigail was taking her pleasure of him.
This lovemaking proceeded at her whim and wish, and his great honor was to be her attentive escort on the journey.
She hitched closer and her undulations quickened. “I like this.”
“Good. I love it.”
She smiled down at him, the loveliest sight he’d ever beheld. “So naughty.”
Well, yes, he was naughty, and she liked that about him, so he matched her thrusts and then raised the stakes. She apparently liked that too, because she bundled in close, and Stephen wrapped his arms around her, the better to drive her ’round the bend.
And that, of course, drove him ’round the same bend, until they were a single magnificent creature, writhing across a glorious firmament of pleasure and panting in a shared rhythm.
Abigail subsided against his chest, even as echoes of passion communicated themselves from her body to Stephen’s cock. He used his waning arousal to send her off again, and that nearly sent him off again, which was not biologically possible.
But this was Abigail, and anything was possible.
“You are so good at being wicked,” she whispered some moments later.
“Not wicked.” Loving. “Attentive, inventive, possibly inspiring. Please, not wicked.” He kissed her cheek and pulled the blanket up over them.
“We’ll make a mess.”
Stop, he wanted to say. Don’t let the world take you away from me so soon. “This is an old sofa. Don’t be like those fools who can’t linger in a lovely moment. Have a little nap. Dream of me, and when you awaken, I might be hard inside you again, making your dreams come true.”
He’d never quite managed that feat before, but it was a delicious fantasy. Abigail looked as if she wasn’t sure whether he was teasing.
He wasn’t sure either.
She eased away from him and curled up against his side. “You nap too.”
Lovely idea, lovely woman. “I will be here when you wake up, Abigail,” he said, spooning himself around her. “I will be right here.” Unlike a certain courtesy earl who’d apparently had the bed-manners of a stud colt.
She took Stephen’s hand in hers and wrapped it around her middle, settling his palm over her breast. “See that I don’t waken alone.”
She dozed off, her breathing becoming soft and slow, while the dragon on the ceiling appeared to smile down upon them. Stephen remained awake, mentally sifting through the puzzle of how to convince Abigail Abbott to become his duchess.
His truly, forever, one and only duchess.
Chapter Nine
“This is serious.”
Quinn’s duchess sounded serious, and Jane looked serious as she watched two enormous dogs get to know each other in the afternoon sunshine.
“They’re playing,” Quinn said. “Becoming acquainted. They seem quite compatible.” The new dog, Hercules, was the larger of the pair, also the younger and more willing to frolic. Wodin was trying to stand on his dignity and even mustering an occasional growl for form’s sake, but when Hercules went gamboling off among the hydrangeas, Wodin woofed and gave chase.
Much rustling in the bushes ensued, as well as some barking.
“I don’t mean the dogs are serious,” Jane said. “I mean that Stephen would procure that dog for Miss Abbott is serious.”