“I may never feel that again,” she continued. “With anyone. You have the experience to know what passion is, and I have spent twenty years not knowing. I am asking for one night. One night to understand what it feels like before I spend the rest of my life without it.”
The silence that followed was so complete that she could hear the fire popping.
Lucien rose from his chair. He crossed the distance between them in two strides, cupped her face in his hands, and kissed her.
The kiss was nothing like the alcove. The alcove had been stolen, urgent, driven by a need that neither of them had been prepared for. This was deliberate. His mouth moved against hers with an intention that made her breath stop, and when his tongue touched her lower lip, she opened for him without hesitation.
Her hands found his waistcoat. She gripped the fabric and pulled him closer, and he came, one knee pressing into the chair beside her hip, his body angling over hers. His fingers threaded through her hair, loosening the pins, and the strands fell around her shoulders in a way that made her feel undone before he had removed a single piece of clothing.
He broke the kiss and looked at her. His breathing was uneven, his pupils blown dark, and the careful composure of the Duke of Fairmont was nowhere.
“You are trusting me,” he murmured, his thumbs tracing the line of her jaw. “That is enough. That is everything.”
He kissed the corner of her mouth, her jaw, the pulse point beneath her ear that made her gasp. His hands moved to her waist, drawing her closer, and she let him, her body softening against his.
His mouth trailed lower. He pressed his lips to the curve of her neck, tasting her skin, and Elinor’s head tipped back, her fingers twisted in his hair. The sound she made was quiet and unguarded, and she felt him shudder against her at the sound of it.
“Lucien.” His name left her mouth on a breath, half protest, half permission.
“Tell me what you want.” He murmured it against the hollow of her throat, his hands sliding up from her waist to the fastenings at the back of her dress. His fingers found the first hook and paused. “Tell me, Elinor.”
Her cheeks burned. Her pulse hammered in her throat. But she had asked for this. She had chosen this. And if she was going to have one night to learn what passion felt like, she would not spend it whispering safe things from behind her walls.
“I want you to touch me.” Her voice shook, but she held his gaze. “Everywhere. With your hands. And,” she swallowed. “And your tongue.”
Something shifted in his face. The tension in his jaw gave way to a slow, devastating smile, the one she had seen him aim at ballrooms full of women but had never felt directed at her with this much heat.
“There she is,” he said, his voice low and rough. “The bold one. I was wondering when she would show up.”
He unfastened the first hook. Then the second. His mouth followed where the fabric loosened, pressing kisses to the slope of her shoulder as the dress gave way beneath his hands. The firelight caught her skin, and his breath left him.
“You are extraordinary,” he said against her bare shoulder.
He drew back to look at her. Her eyes were dark, her lips swollen, her hair half fallen from its arrangement. The dress hung loose around her arms, and she made no move to pull it back. She watched him watching her, and the vulnerability of it should have frightened her, but the way he looked at her was not appraisal. It was reverence.
“I want to see you,” he said. “All of you. Not because I have earned it, but because you are choosing to let me.”
“You talk too much,” she whispered, and there was a tremor of laughter beneath the want in her voice.
He smiled against her mouth and kissed her again, deep and slow. His hands eased the dress further from her shoulders, down her arms, and she shivered as the cooler air met her skin. He pressed his palm flat against the bare curve of her waist, and she arched into the contact.
Then he lifted her.
She made a startled sound as his arms gathered beneath her, and he rose from the chair in a single, fluid motion. The chaise lounge beside the fireplace was narrow and worn, and Lucien laid her across it with a care that contradicted the urgency she could feel in the way his hands shook.
She looked up at him, her hair spread across the cushion, her dress pooled at her waist, her spectacles catching the firelight. Her hand reached for him, fingers curling into the open collar of his shirt, pulling him down.
“Stay,” she breathed.
He lowered himself over her, bracing his weight on one arm, and kissed the space between her collarbones. When his lips traced lower, following the line of her stays, her back arched off the chaise and she said his name again in that broken, breathless way that she could no longer control.
His hand slid to the bottom of her chemise and lifted it, his fingers finding the soft folds between her thighs. She opened to him, allowing his fingers to glide between the slick petals. His thumb found the hardened pearl and teased over it.
“Please,” Elinor gasped, arching against him.
Lucien needed no further invitation. He slid down until his mouth found the center of her pleasure. He flicked his tongue against her pearl. She writhed against him, and he gripped her hips. He teased her with his tongue, again and again, tasting the honey that flowed from her as her pleasure increased.
She felt herself quiver as she reached a crescendo. He swirled his tongue and was rewarded with her body arching and shuddering as her pleasure peaked. When her cries subsided, he trailed kisses down the inside of her thighs.