The Duke's Guide to Correct Behavior (17 page)

S
he tried telling herself that she was only in this room to retrieve something to read. Herself responded that she was a liar and that she should just admit that she wished to catch a glimpse of the duke when he returned from the Earl of Daymond's ball.

She continued to look for a book, refusing to even consider
Agricultural Practices in the Midlands
, Mary Shelley's
Falkner
, or Thomas Moore's
The Epicurean
.

Perhaps she would have to admit to herself that not only was she a liar, but that she had no interest in any kind of book at this moment. So much for liking to read.

Thankfully she heard the door open before she could wade through all the lies she was telling herself, and she pushed a book—she didn't know which one it was, but knew she didn't want to read it—back onto the shelf and turned to leave the room.

Before she could exit, however, he burst in, one
hand already ungloved, pulling his cravat off as he strode toward her.

A flurry of white fabric as gloves and cravat came flying through the air, and then he had her in his arms, her back pressed to the bookshelves.

“Do you want this?” he asked, heat in his eyes.

She couldn't speak, not even to tell him a book spine was poking her in the back. She just tilted her head back, closed her eyes and waited for the inevitable kiss.

Which, she realized after a few moments of eye-closed waiting, was not inevitable after all. She opened one eye, and he was still there, his face hovering above hers, the heat in his eyes not lessened, if anything even more intense.

“What is it?” she asked in a whisper. When she really just wanted to ask,
Why aren't you kissing me?

“I promised I wouldn't ever use my privilege.” His voice was rough and raw. “You have to tell me—‘Marcus, I want this.' Otherwise I won't—I can't do something you might not want.” He sounded so torn, as though it hurt him to say it and yet he had to.

Silly man
. “Oh, so you want to know how it would sound when a young lady wishes for you to take liberties?” She smiled and raised an eyebrow, because two people could play that eyebrow game. She spoke in a low voice. “Marcus”—it was the first time she'd said his name—“I want this.”

And even as the
s
of
this
had left her lips he was kissing her, his mouth warm and soft, his hands on her arms, almost tender, his palms moving on her bare skin.

She reached up to cup his cheek, feeling the stubble that had escaped his most dukely ministrations. It chafed against her fingers, but it was a delicious hurt, and she wanted to rub her face against his, to feel just how different he was from her.

For one thing, he was very male, and that fact was making itself known somewhere near her waist.

He still hadn't done any more than kiss her and touch her arms, and yet with all that seemed to be happening, she felt a smug sense of satisfaction that she had done this to him.

Although she had to admit he was having an effect on her as well, making her insides tremble, and her brain stop thinking, and her body wanting to engage in all sorts of activites she hadn't even dreamed of when flipping through the pages of
The Epicurean
. No offense to Thomas Moore.

She slid her hands around the back of his neck, anchoring her fingers in his hair, pulling herself up off the offending book spine and closer to his body.

His hard, lean body, with that lovely wall of chest pressing into hers (not that she knew if
she
had a lovely wall of chest, but he definitely did), and he intensified the kiss, sliding his tongue along the seam of her lips until she opened, softly. His tongue slid inside and she welcomed it, and him, and felt a rush of sensation all over her body as though she had been set on fire.

Which she almost felt she had.

Only there was no way fire could make her
feel this—delicious, this worshipped, nibbling her as though she were a rare treat, his tongue tasting hers, sucking her lip into his mouth. His hands had slid lower so they were on her waist, holding her to him, as though she'd wish to go anywhere—silly man!—and the hard warmth of his bare hands seeped through the fabric of her gown to her body. She shivered at the sensation.

Well. If she were asked now if she liked to kiss, she would have to say yes. Because she liked this an enormous amount, even more than new gowns, or brandy late at night with Dangerous Dukes, or seeing what a virile man's throat looked like.

She moved her hands down his back, feeling the flex of his muscles as he kissed her, devoted himself to her mouth. A part of her wanted to rip his shirt from his body so she could see what she was touching, but that would mean she'd have to concentrate on something other than what his mouth was doing, and she did not want to do that, not at all.

Not when it felt so incredibly good.

But people did need to breathe to survive, so eventually he drew away, panting, resting his forehead against hers, still with his hands on her waist, but his thumbs higher now, on her rib cage. She wanted so badly for him to put his hands
there
, there where she hadn't realized she was so sensitive.

Forget listing everything she knew about him; apparently there was a lot she didn't know about herself. Like how right it felt to be held by him, like this, and how much she liked it when he
lightly bit her mouth, and how delicious it felt to have his hardness pressed against her.

All of that. Plus a lot more, if she could just clear her brain to think of it.

But he was still here, still breathing fast and loud into her ear, and she couldn't think straight.

“Why?” she asked after a few moments.

He chuckled, and she felt the rumble of his laughter against her body.

Suddenly she wished she were better at telling jokes so she could feel his laughter all the time.

“I couldn't stop thinking about you all evening,” he said, speaking softly into her ear, “and it wasn't that the evening was bad, it was surprisingly not awful, but I kept wishing you were there so I could talk to you about the party, and the music, and catch your eye when someone said something ridiculous.” He exhaled, and her skin prickled at feeling his warm breath. “Which was often.

“And also,” he added, and Lily could hear the humor lightening his tone, “I knew I had to practice precisely what I must never do with a proper young lady.”

Of course. Because she was not proper.

She took a deep breath and pushing herself away, against the bookshelf again, this time welcoming the stab from the book spine. A reminder of just how foolish and shortsighted she was.

“Did I say—” he began, taking his hands from her body, and in pulling away, leaving her suddenly feeling cold. “But I did say something wrong. I
did
something wrong.”

She shook her head. “You didn't. I asked, you answered. It is fine.”

He touched his finger to her mouth. “So lovely,” he said. “I don't wish to hurt you.”

You don't wish to, but you will
.

If she had thought him virilely handsome before, it was nothing compared to how he looked now—a flush on his cheeks, his eyes heavy-lidded, filled with desire, his bare throat just inches from her mouth.

She was in so much trouble. And yet she knew this was not at all the worst kind of trouble she could be in. If she were honest with herself for a moment, beyond not wanting to read a single book anywhere, she'd have to admit that she wanted to find out what other kind of trouble she could get into, with him, in here.

What kind of trouble they could get in together.

Which was why she leaned up to kiss the side of his mouth and then scurried past him out the door and up to her bedroom—before she could be any more . . .
troublesome
.

T
hat was definitely more than two minutes. And he'd liked it far better than what he'd always managed to do, in its entirety, within two minutes.

He thought of his evening as split into two segments: before he'd arrived home from the ball and after, Before Kiss and After Kiss.

Compared to this last kiss, the first one had been merely an aperitif. A sip of something pleasant, to be sure, but lacking the heady power of a
snifter full of brandy or a satisfyingly rich glass of port.

But it was even better than any of that. It was . . . well, he didn't think he'd ever drunk anything so delicious as her mouth, the way she pressed her body against his, how she'd stroked his back, and the low moan he recalled, deep and soft in her throat.

Damn, he wished he could just stride up to her bedroom and take her, satisfy his body's urges—and hers—in a lot longer than two minutes.

Judging by how hard he was, his cock wanted that, too.

The thought of her in his bed was enough to make him take a few steps to the door, only to be stopped by his own conscience (his cock objected mightily). He had promised her he wouldn't abuse his privilege of who he was, and beyond that, it just wasn't right.

Things were easier, to be sure, when all he cared about was brandy and gambling and the occasional cat.

But those things didn't satisfy him. Not that he was satisfied—sexually, at least—right now, but he was satisfied in other ways. The way Rose held his hand and talked to him, and that because of her influence he was finally living up to his ducal responsibilities by examining the books, possibly even meeting with some of the people who managed his estates.

Hiring a housekeeper who was not the most unpleasant woman ever.

Redecorating.

Making this ducal mansion a home. For him. And Rose. And her?

When did he become a man who preferred being home to carousing? Cavorting, she called it?

He smiled at the memory.

He could pinpoint the moment precisely—when he looked into that little girl's eyes and saw emotions he recognized, and knew he was able to do something about it. About all of it. And would, if he could just prove to the world—not to mention himself—that he was the best and most proper person this tiny, precious creature had to take care of her.

And that did not mean taking advantage of her caretaker.

He tried to forget how Lily felt in his arms, against his mouth, and concentrated instead on the books he had gotten out from his library to take to bed.

And they would be the only things he would take to his bed.

T
hat vow didn't feel quite as honorable a few hours later when he'd finished leafing through Charles Lyell's
Principles of Geology
—while no doubt a fascinating subject, it could not hold a candle to the “Principles of Lilyology.”

Which he would love to explore in more depth. Perhaps even write Volume 2 of the series.

She was just down the hall. Just there. He could get up, tap on her door, and—no. No, he couldn't.

But what would happen if he did?

Marcus lay back on his bed, his hand sliding down to grasp himself. He'd managed to stop thinking about the After Kiss for a few hours, but now he was damned if he could think of anything else.

She'd be wearing a thin chemise—no, wait, she'd be wearing his nightshirt, her essence all over it. Because it would be too big for her, it'd be slipping off her shoulders, revealing her neck, her collarbones, the top of her neck.

He'd stand there at the door waiting for her to invite him in. He'd said he wouldn't presume, so anything that happened now had to be on her impetus.

“Come in,” she'd say with a smile, turning to walk away from him, the shirt thin enough for him to see her back and the curve of her buttocks.

That the nightshirt was made of thick cotton in reality did not intrude on his fantasy, because this was his fantasy, damn it.

Anyway. He'd step inside, closing the door behind him. She'd walk to the bed and sit down, beckoning him closer. Of course he'd go, he wasn't an idiot.

He stroked his cock, feeling it get harder with each of her imagined movements. That he hadn't even gotten to see her underneath his own nightshirt was a testament to how poor he was at this kind of thing. But at least it had already gone on for five minutes, and he hadn't finished yet.

He'd sit beside her on the bed, he thought, and she'd slowly undo the tie of his dressing gown—damn, he'd forgotten he was wearing a dressing
gown, and that was crucial in his scenario. He didn't want to be fussing with buttons and cravats and hose and trousers, he just wanted to get naked with her as she, too, got naked.

Dressing gown. Right.

She'd slide the dressing gown off his shoulders, putting her hands on his neck and pulling his mouth to hers.

And then they'd kiss, and he could slide his hands on her legs, up her thighs, pushing the nightshirt up so he could feel her skin against his palm. She'd groan, low and deep in her throat, for him, just for him, and touch his chest and his back and then reach for his cock, emitting a small sound of surprise at his size.

Because this was, after all, his fantasy. He didn't make a habit of comparing the size of his penis against other men, but he thought he likely was larger than most men, mostly because he was larger than most men in general. It stood to reason, if not scientific method.

Because a scientific method of gauging penis size would just be odd.

His hand moved faster and faster, gripped his length harder, and all he could think about was her, and the softness of her skin, and how her eyes would be blazing gold, and how her breasts would feel under his hands . . . his mouth.

How she'd taste . . . everywhere.

It was that image that brought him to a shuddering, satisfying climax, leaving him panting and sweaty and shaking in his bed, the momentary completion leaving him, contrarily, wanting more.

More that he couldn't take unless she wanted it, and more that if he took he would most definitely not be living up to the new standards he'd set for himself. Even by the old standards, that behavior wouldn't be acceptable.