Oh. My. Word. “That’s n–not the point.” When he ran kisses up her throat to her ear while also kneading her breast, she moaned. It felt so good, so wicked. “At least one of us . . . must be there, or people will . . . notice . . . So we have to leave . . . well before then.”
“And we will. But that still gives me plenty of time to feast on you,” he whispered, then nipped her ear as if he literally meant to devour her.
“What do you . . . mean?”
“I’ll show you.” He pulled back to stare at her, eyes glittering like blue flames in the lamplight. “It finally dawned on me that I can introduce you to pleasure without ruining you. You’ll walk out of here as chaste as when you came in.” Dragging up her skirts, he backed her toward a sofa, then settled her down upon it as gently as a bird settling onto her nest. “And then you’ll know . . . whether it’s worth marrying for.”
The mention of marriage confused her. He didn’t want to marry—he’d told her so. Had he changed his mind? Had she?
Heedless of her fixing on that word, he pushed her gown up to her waist, exposing every part of her below. When she started to close her legs, he murmured, “No, no,” and pushed them carefully apart. “I want to taste you here . . .” He licked her inner thigh. “And here . . .” He licked her other inner thigh. “And then I want to sip your honey.”
Good Lord, what did that mean? The “fallen females” had said naught of sipping honey when they’d tried to explain what lying with a man entailed.
Then his hot mouth covered her mons and his tongue flicked her soft folds, and she nearly lost her mind. So that’s what he meant by “honey.”
But he wasn’t exactly . . . sipping it. He was stroking and flicking and caressing her tender flesh with his mouth and tongue so exquisitely that she grabbed for his head to press him closer. He chuckled against her, then resumed lashing her most deliciously with his tongue.
Now he was thrusting his tongue inside her. Oh . . . Lord. The most scandalous sensations rocketed through her. She pushed against his mouth, and he pressed his thumb over a place she’d found it pleasant to rub herself in the past. Except that when he did it . . .
“Yes,” she choked out. “Like that . . . good heavens . . .”
His tongue drove into her, harder, faster, and his thumb worked her in perfect accord, until she felt as if an invisible string pulled her up into the air and she thought she might fly . . . or die . . . or quite well explode.
And then she did, her back arching, her hands clutching his head, her body shattering around his tongue and thumb.
Then she sank back depleted. Her senses were still vibrating as if the plucking of the invisible string still reverberated inside her. How . . . marvelous.
“That, my dear Diana,” Geoffrey said softly, “is passion.”
Well, well. She had been missing out on more than she realized. She lay back a moment, savoring the feeling, wishing she could tell someone how magical it was. She could only tell him. And judging from the cocky smile on his face, he already knew. She wasn’t sure how, but he knew.
Then something awful occurred to her. She sat up and pulled her skirts down to cover her delightfully sated flesh. “What about you? Don’t you want to feel pleasure, too?”
“I got my pleasure from watching you get yours,” he said smoothly as he rose to sit beside her. He was still breathing heavily, as if his exertions had tired him.
“I may not be quite a woman of the world,” she said, “but even I know that’s not how it works. You may have noticed that one of the charities we support is for ‘fallen females.’ Some of them are quite forthcoming about the process of becoming ‘fallen.’”
“Are they now?” he said, cocking up one brow.
“You know perfectly well they are. They even told me where to buy sponges to keep me from bearing a child and how to use them.” She nodded at the bulge outlined beautifully by the black silk of his breeches. “That’s how I know you are not as . . . shall we say, satisfied, by our encounter as I am.”
“Doesn’t matter.” A frown etched lines in his brow as he pulled out his watch. “By your own terms, you should leave here in fifteen minutes if you mean to preserve your reputation. So, we can either talk. Or you can pleasure me. Your choice.”
Frustrated by how he always created situations where he couldn’t go as far as she wanted, she stood up and smoothed her skirts. “I don’t want to pleasure you. I don’t want you to pleasure me. I want us to have a mutual enjoyment of pleasure the way married people do, which is clearly something you have no interest in.”
As she started to move away, he caught her hand. “It’s not that I don’t want to. But I dare not marry until I’m sure of . . . certain matters.”
“I’m not saying you should marry me. I’ve never said that. I’m saying I want to experience the same lovemaking that married people do. Because as wonderful as your pleasuring me was, it doesn’t tell me if sharing a bed with a man is equally as enjoyable.” She tugged her hand from his. “I’ve heard it can be painful for a woman.”
“So I’m told.” He rose, his face reddening. “But mainly, I’m trying not to ruin you.”
“I don’t care if you ruin me! Besides, if a man has relations with some widow he’s just met, why do other men nudge and nod and congratulate him, but if a woman does the same with some man she actually knows, she’s ruined?” She began brushing her skirts, trying to smooth them so no trace of their enjoyment . . . of her enjoyment remained. “I reject the idea that it ruins me in any way.”
“So do I!” he said. “But the very care you’re taking not to be seen with me demonstrates that you do accept the idea. Hell, at this very moment you’re trying to hide what we did. You have no more choice in the matter than I do. Unfortunately, you and I don’t run the world. We don’t even run Great Britain.”
She tipped up her chin. “Well, we should. We’d do a better job of it.”
“I’ll go tell the king at once,” he said dryly. “I’m sure he and his ministers will step right down and allow us to take the throne.”