Artemis arched into Dominic as he continued to drop teasing kisses down the line of her neck and across her shoulder, making her shiver. “I’ll allow it.”
“Good,” he said. And then he gently cupped her jaw and pressed his mouth to hers.
His kiss wasn’t hard and wild, but gentle and teasing. A seductive slide of firm yet satin-smooth lips with only an enticing flicker of his tongue. Artemis moaned her frustration, and he drew back a little and chuckled softly. “What’s wrong, my dear Artemis?”
“You’re teasing me,” she returned with a playful pout.
“I might be.” He caressed her cheek with the back of his fingers. “I find that a little teasing makes the pleasure sweeter.” He placed a featherlight kiss at the corner of her mouth, right near her mole. “Don’t you?”
“That’s all well and good, but I was led to believe there’d be some mussing and rumpling of my person. And right now, I don’t think a single hair on my head is out of place.”
“Impatient minx.” Dominic smiled against her lips.
“Well, we don’t have all night.”
“No, we don’t.” His dark-gray gaze locked with hers. “But I wish we did.”
Oh. My. Goodness.Liquid longing pooled between Artemis’s thighs. “So do I,” she whispered. And then at long last, Dominic claimed her mouth in exactly the way that she wanted.
He kissed her with a fierce urgency, his mouth hot and demanding, his tongue a slick, delicious lash as it plunged and stroked and twined with hers. As he pushed her down onto the cushions of the settee, his fingers speared into her hair, scattering pins. One hand roughly dragged at her sleeve, exposing more of her shoulder, and then he was feasting upon her neck with decadent licks and hot, ferocious, open-mouthed kisses.
Dear God. This wasn’t just a ruination. It reallywasa debauching.
And it was magnificent.
Dominic moved, taking his weight on one leg. And then Artemis felt his hand slide beneath the multiple layers of her skirts and stiff petticoats and along her fine lawn drawers until he found the juncture of her thighs. There he paused, long fingers stroking her hip in small maddening circles. “Are you wet and wanting, Artemis?” he whispered, his voice low and raw with lust. “Can I stroke you here?” One of his wicked fingertips danced over the gaping slit in her drawers, ruffling her curls.
Artemis bit her lip. She should say no. Her aunt might walk in at any moment.
But hell’s bloody bells, she wanted Dominic’s touch right there so very badly. She wanted it so much, she was trembling. Quivering like a barely set blancmange. She couldn’t deny him or herself. She wasn’t strong enough. Not when she felt like this, so wanton and abandoned and wonderful. “Yes,” she managed, her voice no more than a thread of sound between jagged, panted breaths. “To everything.”
A low growl of approval rumbled in Dominic’s throat. And then his mouth was on hers, absorbing her moan as he slid his finger between her slick folds and then began to mercilessly tease her clitoris. He expertly rubbed and flicked and pinched that little nub of throbbing flesh, working her into a mindless frenzy. And all the while he murmured coarse yet deliciously erotic words of praise and wonderfully filthy suggestions in her ear—about what he was doing to her; about what he would like to do with her if they were somewhere else and completely alone…
Oh, sweet heaven. Never, in all her life had Artemis been so aroused or so skillfully pleasured that within mere moments, she’d plunged headlong into a cataclysmic release. Dizzying, thought-robbing bliss rushed through her body in a hot spectacular wave. If she cried out, she wasn’t aware of it.
As her body’s quaking eased and her breathing slowed, Dominic continued to gently nuzzle the hollow of her neck. Even though his hair was a little ruffled and his black silk cravat askew, somehow, his mask was still in place.
Artemis, on the other hand, was disheveled beyond repair. She was a thoroughly rumpled, highly satisfied mess. And she couldn’t stop smiling…right up until the moment the library door flew open, and she heard Aunt Roberta snap in a voice as harsh as a whip, “Artemis Jones! What in God’s name are you doing withthatman?”