Pain.
She reached for him, wanting to stop it, but he resisted, pulling away from her touch, instead moving to lift one of her feet in his enormous hands. “I want you here,” he said, gruffly, unlacing her boot. “I want you naked,” he said, punctuating the slide of the boot from her foot as he set it on the arm of a chair perched nearby and set to work on the second. “And I want you mine.”
Mine.
The word curled through her on a flood of desire, robbing her of breath. When had anyone ever wanted her like this? When had anyone ever honestly desired to claim her? Yes, men wanted her body when she dressed in her bold silks and satins and paraded through the casino as Anna, but this was different. He wanted her – Georgiana – in a way no one ever had. Not even the man she had given herself to all those years ago.
But the way he spoke that word – Mine – it was not a request. It was, instead, a gruff promise. A claiming. A possession.
And she found she wanted to be possessed.
Very much.
The thought was punctuated by the slide of her second boot, removed with a single, firm tug and tossed to the floor as Duncan returned his hands to her stockinged feet. He took her ankles in his hands, lifting her legs, parting them, stepping between them. She instinctively wrapped herself around him, pulling him closer until they met, hard and hot, where they each wanted the other. She threw her head back as he pressed into her, and he wrapped one strong arm around her waist, holding her weight, keeping her arched and open to him.
“Say it,” he growled, meeting her eyes, his free hand coming up to palm one aching breast. “Say it, and I’ll give you everything you want.”
She did not have to ask what he meant. She knew. Knew, also, that it would not be a lie. Somehow in this mad world, in this mad time, she had come to adore this man. She had come to belong to him. And it was beautiful.
But it could never last.
But nothing beautiful lasted – was that not the lesson she had learned all those years ago, wrapped in warm arms and crisp hay? Love was fleeting and ephemeral, the desperate dream of a naïve, innocent girl.
And so she would give herself to this, and then walk away and live the life she intended.
But first, freedom.
First, him.
“I am yours,” she confessed.
He rewarded her with a deep, wonderful growl and a long, devastating kiss that ended with him pulling her to the edge of the desk and setting his hands to the fall of her breeches, working at the buttons with intent skill, unfastening them one after the other until the trousers loosened and he slid them down her legs, taking her stockings with him.
“My lady,” he said, Stepping back, watching her with vivid concentration. She could not meet his gaze, too keenly aware of what she must look like – shirt hanging open, loose around her shoulders, the last vestige of her clothing.
Too keenly aware of her past, of the lies she’d built around her about this act. Of the fact that she’d only ever done this once before.
“Look at me.” The words were full of command, and she should have hated them, but she didn’t. Her gaze snapped to his, recognizing the power in him.
Wanting it.
“My lady.” He whispered, the words both prayer and promise.
“Open for me.” The command stole her breath, and she hesitated, not knowing if she could. It was one thing to bare herself to him in the dark waters of his transcendent swimming pool, but another thing entirely to do it here, in broad daylight.
It had never been like this. The only time she had ever come close to this experience had been a decade earlier, with a man who had lied to her. Ruined her. Left her.
There had been nothing about those fleeting, life-altering moments in the hayloft at Leighton Manor that had come close to this moment with this man.
Nothing about that time that even approximated this. This was freedom – the last breath of her life before she committed to a new world as aristocratic wife, committed to nothing but her daughter’s legacy.
And so why not enjoy it?
Why not welcome the moment and drink from its cup?
Lifted her chin, pressed her shoulders back, bold as brass. “Make me.”
Something wicked flared in his beautiful brown eyes. “You think I cannot?”
“I think you wish me to do your work for you.” She willed him forward. Willed him to touch her.
Instead, he took a step back and sat in a leather chair that stood by the desk, leaning back, deceptively relaxed. Nervousness flared deep in her, but she resisted it.
His gaze raked over her as he stretched out in the chair, his booted feet mere inches from her bare ones. “Open for me,” he repeated.
She gave him a small smile. “It shan’t be so easy.”
He raised a brow. “No. It shan’t.” He lingered on her breasts, and her skin heated at the regard as he moved his gaze down, toward the place she wanted him quite desperately. He watched her until she thought she might die from his attention. Just when she was about to give in to him, he said, “You are going to open for me, and when you do, you will regret not doing so when I asked.”
Her eyes widened. “Is that a threat?”
His lips curved in a slow, near-mercenary smile. “Not in the slightest.” He lifted one hand and set it to his jaw, assessing her with a long, leisurely look, his index finger stroking over his lower lip in a gesture a lesser woman might deem pensive.
Georgiana was not a lesser woman. The movement of that finger was not pensive. It was predatory.
And every inch it moved on his lips seemed to light a fire in her.
“You will regret it, though,” he went on, “as every moment you are not open to me is a moment I do not touch you. A moment you do not feel my hands, and my mouth, and my tongue.”