He knelt before her, his hands moving to her ankles, and looked up at her from underneath his lashes. The sight made her heart skip a beat.
“Do you trust me?” He murmured, and his voice dripped like honey between her thighs.
“Yes,” she said, without hesitation.
The word felt monumental. Logically, she should not trust him: he was a rake, a man who had spent years avoiding anything that resembled genuine feeling. The Duke of Wynford was a man who had made it abundantly clear from the beginning that this was temporary. And yet here she was, looking at him with absolute faith, offering him something infinitely more valuable than her body.
Her trust. Herheart…everything she had that was worth giving.
He ran his hands up her calves slowly, and she felt the tremble that ran through her at the contact; she felt it echo through her entire body. He pushed the silk of her skirts up to her knees, then higher. The firelight played across her skin, and she could feel the rapid flutter of her pulse beneath her own skin, could feel the heat building inside her with every inch of fabric he pushed aside.
“Anthony,” she whispered, and there was uncertainty in her voice now, a nervous edge because she did not entirely know what he was about to do.
Because this was beyond anything in her limited experience, beyond anything she had imagined when she made her list all those weeks ago.
“I’m going to make you feel good,” he said, his voice rough. “That’s all. Just let me.”
She nodded, her breath coming faster now, and he pushed her skirts higher still, baring her thighs to the firelight. Herstockings were tied with ribbons just above her knees, and he untied them slowly. She watched the rise and fall of her own chest, felt the heat building inside her.
When the stockings were gone, he pressed a kiss to the inside of her knee, then higher, tracing a slow path along her inner thigh.
She gasped, her hands fisting in the cushions beneath her, and she felt a dark wave of sensation roll through her.
She had never wanted anyone the way she wanted him. The realization should have alarmed her, should have sent her running from this room and this man and everything he represented. But it did not. It simply was, as inevitable as sunrise, as undeniable as the pull of the tide.
Somewhere along the way, between the boxing match and the university lecture and the fortune teller’s tent, between all the items on her list and all the moments in between, she had stopped wanting him in the abstract way one might want adventure or freedom or escape.
She wantedhim. Specifically. Particularly. The man, not the idea of the man. The Duke of Wynford, who stood in boxing rings and let himself be hit, who arranged dinners with his own hands because he did not want servants present, who looked at her as though she was the only person in the room who mattered.
The man who was currently kneeling before her and making her come undone with a precision that suggested he cared very much about her pleasure.
“Relax,” he murmured against her skin. “You are with me. We will explore this pleasure together.”
He hooked his fingers into the linen of her drawers and pulled them down slowly, giving her time to object. She did not. She only watched him with wide, dazed eyes, her lips parted, her breathing unsteady.
When he finally put his mouth on her, she cried out, her back arching off the sofa, and she felt his hands on her hips, holding her down. He worked her with his tongue, slowly at first, and she learned what it felt like to come undone under someone else’s control.
“Oh God,” she breathed, and her hands moved to his hair, fisting in it, holding him there as though she was afraid he might stop.
The sensation built inside her, relentless, overwhelming, until she was trembling beneath him. Her thighs tightened around his shoulders. Her breath came in short, desperate gasps.
“Say my name,” he demanded, pulling back just enough to speak, lips glistening.
“Anthony,” she gasped.
God, but he was so handsome.
He hummed against her sensitive flesh, and she jerked. “Again.”
A gasp. “Anthony?—”
He returned to his work, relentless now, and within moments she was shattering beneath him. His name on her lips rang out in a broken cry that seemed to tear itself from her throat.
Caroline lay back against the cushions, her chest heaving, her eyes closed, and for a long moment, she simply existed in the aftermath. The firelight moved across her closed eyelids, and she felt impossibly exposed and safe all at once. She felt as though something fundamental had shifted inside her. Some barrier between who she had been and who she was becoming had simply dissolved.
This was not what she had imagined when she wrote “have a proper, passionate first kiss” on her list. This was so far beyond a kiss that the word felt inadequate, felt like calling an ocean a puddle.
She opened her eyes and found him watching her, still kneeling before her, his hands still on her thighs.