One Dance with a Duke (Stud Club #1)

They stood there in silence, just touching. Both staring at his hand, as if she were a gypsy fortune-teller, peering into his palm to divine the future.

He said quietly, “I’m not a murderer, Amelia. I know I’ve flattened a man in front of you and behaved like a brute since the night we met. But with God as my witness, I hadn’t raised my hand in violence for fourteen years before our wedding day. I don’t know what the devil you’ve done to me, but you make me lose control. You make me laugh. You make me chatty. You make me hard with a word, or even a look—and there’s damn near nothing I wouldn’t do right now to get inside you. But don’t run from me as if I were a villain, and don’t ever lock me out. I didn’t kill Leo, I swear it.”

She lifted her head, and their gazes tangled. He didn’t even try to mask the vulnerability in his eyes. At last, this was something he needed from her. She was a nurturer, and he didn’t want to be nurtured. She was a care-giver, and he didn’t wish to be looked after. But she had a trusting soul, and he needed this—someone to believe in him.

It just wasn’t in her to refuse.

“I know. Oh, Spencer, I know you didn’t.” She lifted his hand, dropping a kiss in the center of his palm before pressing it to her cheek. “In my heart, I never believed you did.”

He sucked in a shaky breath. “Then why—”

“I was afraid. Of getting hurt in other ways. To be truthful, I still am.”

His thumb stroked her cheek. “I would never hurt you.”

“I don’t think you can promise me that.” She squeezed his bruised fingers. “But it makes things a bit more equal, to know that I can hurt you, too.”

His gaze fell to her lips. He said simply, without any trace of irony, “You are killing me.”

He moved through the doorway, taking her into his arms in one swift motion. Together they fell to the bed, and his lips found hers. With no preliminary, he pried her jaw wide, probing her mouth with deep, unrelenting sweeps of his tongue. She clung to him, surrendering to the wild passion of the kiss, her only goal to take from him as much as she gave.

He lifted his head and stared into her eyes. “We’re going to do this.”

Again, that thrilling little word. We.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“No fears tonight. No regrets tomorrow.”

“None.”

He sat back on his haunches and pulled her up, until they both stood on their knees in the center of the bed. After fumbling with the row of buttons at her back, he peeled the bodice from her torso, and she helped by wriggling her arms free of the sleeves. He found the laces of her stays and impatiently yanked them loose, casting the entire undergarment aside within seconds and eagerly taking her br**sts in his hands, through her thin summer chemise.

She swallowed hard as he admired them, lifting and kneading the soft globes with his fingers. He seemed lost in those curves—his touch unhurried, his breathing slow and thick. Her ni**les grew painfully hard, gathering to tight, prominent peaks that chafed against the thin fabric.

He eased her neckline down. The gap wasn’t generous enough to afford him access to her nipple. Instead, he bent his head and suckled her straight through her shift. Oh, God. The sensation of his soft tongue licking her through the rough fabric … it was so intensely pleasurable, she couldn’t help but moan.

She reached for the hem of his shirt, tugging it free of his waistband and sliding her hands beneath, running her palms over the tight muscles of his abdomen and the faint trail of hair leading to his groin. Emboldened by his gruff sound of approval, she slid her hand downward, cupping the rigid length tenting his breeches.

“You’ll have to tell me what to do,” she said, lightly tracing the shape of him.

He raised his head from her breast. Seeming to abandon his efforts to undress her, he finished pulling his own shirt loose. “There aren’t any rules to this. If I do something to you, and you enjoy it”—he yanked his shirt over his head and tossed it aside—“there’s an excellent chance I’ll enjoy it if you do the same to me.”

“Oh. Very well.”

As he reached for the closures of his breeches, she bent forward and took his nipple in her mouth.

He hissed out his breath, and she jerked back. “Not good?”

“Good,” he assured her, sliding a hand over her neck. “Very good.”

Smiling to herself, she bent and tried again. This time she licked first, teasing the small, flat circle to a tiny bud. He groaned as she fitted her lips around it, suckling gently, then nipping with her teeth.

“Holy God,” he grit out.

Heat surged between Amelia’s thighs. She’d never felt so sensual, powerful. With a few swipes of her tongue she’d incited a man to blasphemy, and she cupped the proof of his rampant desire for her in the palm of her hand. As she transferred her attentions to his other nipple, she tentatively stroked up and down his length.

“Enough.” He clapped a hand over hers, pressing her palm firmly to his groin.