“If you continue to exercise the limb…” Her lungs constricted and she let her words taper off.
“Yes?”
Her hands ventured higher, finding well-developed thigh muscles and no scars. “If you—If you exercise the limb and soak it often, you will see much improvement.”
Sweat beaded in her cleavage. She shut her eyes, and her strokes became more vigorous. She was in peril of reaching his hip…and
A hand settled on her shoulder. “Mrs. Chatham, perhaps now is a good time to introduce me to the butter churn?”
“Oh, thank goodness,” she fairly breathed the words and withdrew her hands from their hold on his leg.
She was clumsy, getting off the floor. Her legs wouldn’t cooperate, and her corset stuck to heated skin. Whalebone jabbed her. More strands of hair had come loose and were clinging to her cheeks.
“Here.” The duke grasped her by the elbows and helped her upright.
They were quite close and quite intimate. Her limbs were heavy, and her blood was sluggish in her veins. She was sweetly drowsy. She couldn’t leave if she tried.
He’d bound her with a spell.
The center of his eye was a black pool. The fire’s blaze danced bronze-like and dangerous in that dark depth. An auburn wisp fell over his forehead. She brushed it back, tucked it neatly along his temple.
“You should put your leg in the churn.”
“I should.”
They were somehow closer. Velvet-covered breasts brushed a wall of silk, and the duke’s hand slid possessively, neatly into the curve of her waist.
She allowed herself the luxury of tracing his jaw. Barely-there afternoon whiskers scratched her fingertips. Simms would take care of them, but for this moment those whiskers belonged to her.
His nostrils flared. She’d swear he scented her.
The duke’s one-eyed concentration was so, so…intense. She’d burn up from it. A little wetness trickled between her breasts, the single, private drop taunting her.
“You’re flushed, Mrs. Chatham.”
“Velvet was a poor choice to wear today. Spring in Kent seems…warmer than usual this year.”
“Indeed.” He didn’t break his potent stare.
His claiming hold on her waist slid comfortably over to the small of her back. And jammed her against him.
She ought to take matters in hand. She was an older, experienced woman after all. “I’m not going to let you do this.” She was breathy and desperate.
“You will.”
“Oh,” she whimpered, weak-kneed, clutching his waistcoat.
Apparently, that was all the duke needed. She gasped when his fingers tunneled her hair. Pins dropped to the floor. His mouth hovered over hers a final, agonizing second. They’d waited for this a long, long time. There was no going back.
If a single kiss was all she’d have of Lord Nathaniel, they’d do this right.
Something to make the one-eyed, dragon duke never forget her.
Their mouths met in a fury of bone-melting, seize-the-moment lust. The first contact obliterated her senses. Singed them down to her toes. She gave him a remember-me-for-the-rest-of-your-life kind of kiss. The duke set out to do the same. His embrace was passionate. Demanding. They could be floating on a wave. Lost. Happy. Together.
The memory of his lips would warm her many a cold winter’s night, though their kiss wasn’t pretty.
It was…
Hungry, carnal, scorching. All take…and take…and take.
Slickness poured like warm honey between her legs. Lust consumed her.
Their anxious, desperate hands sought skin and found none. Until she reached for the duke’s exposed smalls. Hip muscles clenched underhand. She scraped her fingernails along that hip.
He answered with a guttural growl against her mouth.
What delicious power. It was shocking. Wonderful. She wanted more.
She flattened her hand against him, seeking bare skin.
The duke broke their kiss. He staggered backward and grabbed the mantle with both hands. His head hung low.
“You can’t do that.”
Heels scraping backward, she put some distance between them. She was dazed, checking her surroundings. “Do what?”
“Touch me like that. It was—” His mouth pulled a grim line.
She was certain he forbade himself from finishing. She had no such compunction. “It was what? Overwhelming? Annihilating yet elevating at the same time?”
His laugh was low and lusty, the kind a woman heard from the corners of midnight gardens and dark alleys. “You have a talent for words, Mrs. Chatham.” He pushed off the mantle. “I can only say mine were of a baser nature.”
She wished to hear them, but this thing between them was too potent. Another kiss and they’d set the room on fire. Or find their way to his bed.
Whatever modesty his waistcoat afforded him was long gone. His breeches were shamelessly tented, and a rakish side-smile changed his visage. “Do we repeat this? Your rubbing oil of amber on my leg, my soaking it, then more…rubbing?”
She set her knuckles on kiss-swollen lips, stifling a giggle. Oh, he was awful, grinning at her.
“I like this game of ours, this patient and physic,” he said.
“Your Grace!” She was properly scandalized. “Please. Soak your leg.”
