It Had to be the Duke - Christi Caldwell Page 0,19

he had all those years ago. How very good this was. His smell. This moment. How very good she felt. This pleasure. His touch.

Then he slid a second finger inside and proceeded to move those long, powerful digits within her. A quiet cry escaped her.

“I love the feel of you,” he praised.

I love the feel of you touching me.

His gaze locked with hers; passion burned from those endless depths. “It has always been you.”

And her heart soared.

Those words floated in her mind, along with her echo of agreement, but she could not get them out. He’d reduced her to a place of acute sensation, where desire and the power of his pleasuring made it impossible for her to form a coherent word.

He continued stroking her, the drag exquisite as he drew Lydia deeper into a web of wanting, and she was content to find herself wrapped up in his spell over her.

The place between her legs throbbed and ached, and Lydia’s hips took on a rhythm of their own. She thrusted and retreated. Thrusted and retreated. The sensation built, drawing her up to that exquisite cliff she longed to fall from, and then Geoffrey kissed her, claiming her mouth once again, and that joining of their mouths, that special, intimate reunion, tossed her over the edge.

Lydia screamed softly, but Geoffrey swallowed her cry. His fingers continued to move within her, gliding inside, teasing, caressing, until he’d drawn every remnant of pleasure from her, and she collapsed against him.

His arms came up, and he folded her in the deepest, warmest embrace.

Struggling to get her breathing to rights, Lydia simply lay against the powerful wall of his chest and allowed herself that slow descent back to reality.

“I’ve scandalized you,” she said against his neck.

“An impossibility. You know me, love. I can’t be scandalized,” he said in his teasing tones, hoarsened ones, that put a dreamy smile on her lips.

Love.

How easily they’d slipped back into the way it had been.

Alas, the present always reared its head. With a sigh, she sat back on his lap. “My friends will be looking for me.”

He waggled his eyebrows. “That never stopped us before.”

Lydia laughed, a breathless giggle. Giggling? At her age? “Yes, but they are more protective than they were then,” she explained, brushing her fingers along the dusting of silver at his temples.

“I’m older,” he murmured.

“More distinguished, and dashing for it,” she said softly. “If that is possible.”

He laughed, his broad, powerful frame shaking against hers. He thought she flirted. Or teased. And yet, she didn’t. “I’m quite serious, you know. I have quite the discerning eye, Your Grace.”

They shared another smile, and then Geoffrey shifted her off his lap, guiding her skirts back down, signaling this time, this moment they’d stolen together, was at an end.

A profound regret swept through her.

“This was…” she paused, reaching for a word. “unexpected, Geoffrey,” she said softly.

“Which part?” He winked, drawing a laugh from her, and Lydia caught a throw pillow and slapped him playfully with it. His amusement faded, replaced with a somberness she couldn’t recall from him. Nay, that wasn’t altogether true. There’d been one time, that last time. “I should be going. My whole mission and all.” Was it her own feelings of regret at this latest parting that accounted for an imagining of that same sentiment from him?

“Yes, and Althea and Dorothy will be looking for me.” Lydia would resume the discontented, rather lonely life she’d lived this past year.

Ever the gentleman that he’d been with her, Geoffrey helped Lydia from the sofa, and together they made their way across the room to the doorway.

Turning the lock, Geoffrey clasped the handle of the door and drew the panel open. “After y—”

“You!” Althea’s horrified exclamation exploded in the room.

Lydia’s stomach dropped as she took in her and Geoffrey’s audience. She took in the four people present: her friends to the Duke of Mowbray and Baron Davenport who comprised the gathering.

“Don’t go taking that tone with our boy,” Mowbray snapped.

Althea scoffed. “Oh, come. Your boy hasn’t been a boy for some thirty years now.”

A small commotion erupted, as each respective pair dissolved into a clamorous defense of the other.

While the group quarreled, Lydia slid closer to Geoffrey.

“If we think this interfering is bad, can you imagine what their poor children have endured over the years?” she whispered.

“Mowbray’s son’s reputation certainly makes sense now,” Geoffrey spoke from the corner of his mouth. “Oppressive busybodies.”

“No good ever came from their relationship…” the baron was saying.

Althea chortled.

“You think that’s