Scoundrel of My Heart (Once Upon a Dukedom #1) - Lorraine Heath Page 0,69

admitted that she wasn’t missish at all when it came to entangling tongues, the duke would have selected her without bothering to read any of the other solicitations he’d received. Griff didn’t want to consider that eventually the man would have this, would know what it was to experience her passion.

Drawing back from the kiss, he intertwined their fingers, and it seemed as intimate a thing as entangling bodies lost to rapture. After leading her over to the window, he once again took possession of her glorious mouth. If he’d never been wounded, he wouldn’t have this now, her in his arms, moaning low as he plundered. But it wasn’t enough, in this darkened room, with only the moonlight. He wanted more, wanted to give her more.

Feasting along her neck, he journeyed up to her ear and took the small lobe between his teeth as he freed the buttons of her nightdress. When he was done, satisfaction swept through him as she gave her slender shoulders a little shrug that eased her out of the linen and sent it gliding down her magnificent curves to the floor, leaving her bared to him, awash in the moon’s silver glow.

“My God, but you’re beautiful.”

She trailed her fingers over his chest, circled the tip of a finger around his nipple, as though mesmerized by the darkened disk, and he was glad he hadn’t taken the time to grab a shirt when he’d run from his room. “So are you.”

Before she set them on a path of no return, he spun her around, so she faced the stars that seemed even more brilliant as they glowed now that the rain had stopped, draped her plaited hair over one shoulder, pressed himself against her, and settled his mouth at the curve of her neck where it flowed seamlessly into her shoulder. So smooth, so silky.

“Watch the sea, Kathryn.”

And in the future, when you look at it, remember me.

She shouldn’t have brought him here, but this place had always been her sanctuary. After the awfulness they’d endured by the Thames, she’d been in desperate need of a sanctuary and had thought perhaps he’d been as well. Someplace to heal not only the physical wound but any emotional ones as well. She’d seen the toll that the duke’s betrayal had taken on Althea, couldn’t imagine that it hadn’t taken an equal one on Griff. To have plunged from the summit of Society with nothing to soften the landing when he’d hit the nethermost realm of existence.

But now whenever she visited this little corner of the world that she loved, she would be reminded of him. She would hear his laugh in the wind that swept over the cliff, the low deep rumble of his voice sharing secrets in the parlor. She would see his blue-gray eyes as he watched her in the sunlight, his smile in the moonlight.

And in the sea, whenever she looked at the sea, she would recall what it was like to have his hands caressing her breasts, his heated mouth languidly trailing over her back, along her spine, down one side and up the other. While in the distance, the water reflected the moonlight, and she wondered if it absorbed its glow as her flesh did the amazing sensations he created, or if it tossed it back to the sky, more brilliant than it had been when received.

She loved when he glided his bare chest up her back, from her hips to the top of her shoulders. Then his mouth, open and hot, was on her nape, and his fingers were skimming lower, lower, past her ribs, over her belly, circling there, teasing, tracing along her hips, arrowing down slowly, giving her time to object to the intimacy. Instead, she placed her hands over his larger ones, partaking of the journey.

As he neared his destination, she glided her fingers over his wrists and forearms, over the coarse hair that wasn’t dark enough to hide the raised veins or the taut muscles that now defined him, clasping the muscles just above his elbow, holding firm as his deft fingers tiptoed over her curls and parted the folds, before circling tenderly over the sensitive bud that had never known a man’s touch. The wondrous sensation that tripped through her explained why seasoned women went to his club in search of unfettered companionship.

While Kingsland had called upon her, had even kissed her on occasion, nothing they shared had ever been like this, all-consuming, devouring, passionate. So