“I’m very thankful for these trousers you’re wearing,” he growled into her ear.
And she could feel his thankfulness. And he felt very thankful. In fact, his significant thankfulness was grinding up against her cleft, and she felt herself growing quite…appreciative.
His lips, once soft and gentle, were growing more ravenous. They parted more and she gasped at his scent of mint. He pushed against her lips, letting himself into her mouth. His tongue swept in, teasing her. And she wanted him. She wanted to kiss the Adonis that he was, learning seduction from him the way he had been learning fencing from her. So she mimicked his movements until his groans saturated her.
Here she was, kissing the handsomest duke lauded by society. The woman, the spinster, who by all other gossip was on the shelf, not to be taken down again. Well, he had noticed her on the shelf for some inexplicable reason, and he had taken her down off of it to take a look at her. Who was she to deny herself the pleasure of being handled?
His hands gripped her thighs and pushed her up further against the wall. He stepped closer, in between her legs.
“Wrap your legs around me,” he whispered.
And it was the most natural thing in the world to do so. To grip him between her thighs. To hang onto him, and to feel him, through the few layers, rubbing against her core. The layers were so thin, she could feel him, base to tip, as she pressed herself along his arousal.
His fingers pressed into her quads and squeezed. His moan didn’t stop as his hands slid to massage her bottom. When one ofhis hands slid up to release her shirt from her trousers, the warm fingers against her skin shot through at a startling rate.
She tugged her lips free. “We have to stop.” Her head fell lightly against the wall. Eyes closed. Breath hard.
He pressed a kiss to her chest. “Yes, we do.”
She released her legs from his hips, and he stood back. He pulled on his shirt and ran his fingers through his hair.
He opened his mouth to say something.
“Don’t.”
“You don’t know what—”
“It doesn’t matter. Don’t say anything. Don’t claim honor and ask me to marry you. And don’t say you weren’t going to do that. Even if you weren’t. I don’t want to know.”
And she really didn’t want to know. If he were an honorable gentleman, he would have asked her to marry him. Honor demanded it. But no one had witnessed their actions, so he could get away without asking her. But did she want to know that he was that kind of man? No. Right now she wanted to know if he was the kind of man to respect her wishes. Demands, really. And he owed her that much. And now she saw her opportunity to exploit the situation. If it was a sham—which it was—then it would be a damn good sham for her.
Her sisters had been wrong. She had shown herself to him, and he was still holding back. So be it. She could put her guards up again. It was easy. She literally trained nearly every day in putting her guards up. This would be no different. But if he was getting something out of this, besides the fencing lessons he hadn’t explicitly asked for, then—botheration!—she would get something out of this too. Damn it. And since she now knew what she could get, all that remained was to ask for it.
Ask and ye shall receive.
“All right…”
“This is what we’re going to do.” She placed her hands on her hips. “You want to continue these fencing lessons—”
“I wouldn’t call them lessons—”
Really, the man could be a bit obtuse. “What would you call it when a person meets privately with someone to study and mimic their expertise in a specific field with the objective of improving their own skills?”
“Observ—”
“Don’t.” She held up her hand. “Please, don’t insult my intelligence. We’ll continue your…lessons.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “And because you owe me—”
“I owe you? For what?”
“For the lessons.”
He crossed his arms, clearly not having bought into the lessons business.
“And because you owe me”—she rushed to say—“for the lessons, you can give me some lessons of my own.”
“In what?”
“Seduction.”
