One Dance with a Duke (Stud Club #1)

Oh.

Oh, sweet holy infant. What a lust-addled fool he was. She hadn’t shied away from some lascivious fantasy. This was what she wanted. A chaste, comforting embrace. A hug.

“It’s not so very difficult,” she said. “Just put your arms about me. Husbands do it all the time.”

Damned if he knew how to refuse.

His arms went around her waist, gathering her close. She was so soft, and so warm, and she all but melted against his bare chest. As some consolation to his frustrated lust, the embrace brought them closer, until her thigh wedged snug against the hard ridge of his arousal. She didn’t startle or squirm away. For his part, Spencer resisted the urge to grind his hips. And so there they sat, hugging. Him in the chair, her on his lap, and the world’s most insistent erection between them. If he’d wanted sweet torture—by the devil, he had it. In trumps.

The longer he held her, however, the more he became aware of sensations that didn’t originate in his lap. The soft contours of her br**sts soothed his pounding heart. Her eyelashes fluttered sweetly against his neck. And she smelled so good. Her enticing perfume blended her usual lavender scent with hints of vanilla and some kind of spice … was it clove? Perhaps she’d visited the kitchens today.

He stroked her back, once. Purring, she nestled closer in his lap. An unfamiliar tenderness swelled in his heart. Encouraged, he repeated the touch, skimming his fingers up the delicate ridge of her spine. Up, then down. Slipping the pads of his fingers over each vertebra, as if counting pearls on a string. The slow, steady tempo calmed them both. Their lungs seemed to arrive at some instinctive agreement, and their chests ceased struggling against one another. Instead, they breathed in a rhythm, trading the air back and forth between them. Warm. Fragrant. Intimate.

More deeply arousing than anything he’d ever known.

“Your parents,” she murmured. “Did they love each other?”

“I … I’m not certain.”

What a question. He couldn’t recall his mother much, but he remembered his father had wept when she died. They’d wept together, the confused young boy and the hardened soldier. And then they’d never spoken of it again. When he’d learned of his father’s death years later, Spencer hadn’t shed a tear. He’d lashed out with fists instead, because he’d found it too devastating to contemplate weeping alone.

She said, “Mine did. They were devoted to one another. I always thought myself fortunate to have grown up with their example.” She shivered in his arms. “Now I’m not sure. Perhaps it only prepared me for disappointment.”

He brought her closer, until the heat of her skin seared his chest. That breath they kept trading back and forth—it came more quickly now, and hot. Places inside him were softening, thawing. He recalled her words to him in the corridor: You have no idea what more I could offer you. Oh, he did. He most definitely did. He’d watch his innards removed through his navel before admitting it, but on some fundamental level, he knew why he hadn’t been able to let her go that night. Why he’d bodily removed her from that ballroom; why he’d proposed to her scant hours after that. Because this woman displayed such loyalty to a no-account wastrel of a brother, and he just one of five. Surely somewhere in that boundless reserve, she could find a spare bit of devotion for him. He didn’t deserve it, but he wanted it just the same.

“Amelia, look at me.”

Keeping her hands clasped behind his neck, she lifted her head. She went perfectly, absolutely still in his arms. She seemed to have ceased to breathe.

He kissed her. Without warning, without permission. Without even deciding to do it, but simply because he couldn’t have done anything else. He needed that breath she was holding. It belonged to him, and he wanted it back.

Her lips were warm and soft, her tongue cool and slick against his. Bracketing her face in his hands, he angled her head to deepen the kiss. She squirmed in his lap, but he held her tight, taking more. And then more. Stroking deep with his tongue, clashing teeth against teeth. He had to have this taste, this softness, this heat, and devil take it, he knew he was going to ruin everything by scaring her away, but he couldn’t stop.

He slid one hand to her breast and squeezed hard, because part of him wanted to punish her. Inside him, things were cracking and shifting with the deep, bone-shivering howl of ice splintering off from a glacier. Old pockets of emptiness were filling in; new chasms of need split asunder. It hurt. He was being rearranged in deep, forgotten places, and this woman was to blame. He kneaded harder, pinching the tight knot of her nipple, because he wanted her aching, too. It was unforgivable, and so damned unfair. Somehow she’d managed to get inside him before he’d gotten inside of her.