I Love the Earl by Caroline Linden Page B

didn’t she?” He gave her a sly grin. “Say it.”
    “Rhys.” It suited him, a vaguely foreign name with an air of wildness about it. She said it again, letting it linger on her lips.
    “It sounds like an invitation when you say it that way.”
    “Everything I’ve said has been an invitation tonight.”
    His eyebrows went up. He dropped the poker and rose to his feet. “Indeed! May I express my eternal gratitude to God and all the saints that you accepted me? There’s not another woman like you in the world, Maggie.”
    She liked that nickname, better than Meg as her brother called her. Perhaps it sounded a bit more sensual and wicked in Rhys’s faint accent as well. Regardless, she arched her neck and smiled. “And now?”
    His expression sharpened on her. “Now, love, I intend to prove my devotion.” He lifted Clarissa’s garland of roses from her head and set it aside. “You’ve no more need of thorns with me.”
    She laughed. “Much deterrent they proved!”
    He ran his fingertips lightly down her cheek, turning her face up to him. “For such a rare and beautiful bloom, I would brave a thousand thorns.”
    When he touched her and looked at her this way, she felt beautiful. No one else seemed to embrace her as she was. “Do you love me?” she whispered.
    Rhys stilled. “I do.”
    Margaret smiled. “Then kiss me again.”
    He kissed her until her head swam. His nimble fingers unhooked her gown and lifted it over her head. Margaret gave up fumbling with the line of buttons that marched down his waistcoat, which prompted a low laugh from Rhys, and settled for untying her petticoat as he stripped off his garments. He made faster progress than she did, and she still wore her stockings and shift when he scooped her up and carried her to the bed.
    “Thank goodness you kept some furniture,” she said as he loomed over her, his knee between hers.
    “The first thing I shall buy,” he said between hot kisses along her neck, “is a grand new bed, fit for a countess.”
    She would be a countess, no longer Miss de Lacey but Lady Dowling. She hadn’t even thought of that.
    “And then,” Rhys went on in a low growl, “I shall keep you in that bed for hours every day. Our servants will be outraged.”
    “Will they?” She could hardly speak from the thumping of her heart. Oh heavens, she had dreamed of this for so long, and never once imagined how desperate it would feel. How the slightest brush of his fingertips over the swell of her breast could make her skin sizzle. How his lips at the base of her throat could stoke some unknown urgency inside her. How she, sensible plain spinster Margaret Emily de Lacey, could curl her legs around his hips to hold him to her, rocking her hips to satiate the growing ache between her legs.
    “Maggie,” he rasped. “Maggie, my God.” He had lifted her breasts from the low confines of her corset, and now sucked one nipple between his teeth. She quivered, and then almost arched off the bed as his fingers slid between her thighs to settle directly on a spot that was so exquisitely sensitive, it was almost painful.
    “Shh,” he murmured. “Trust me . . .” His palm flattened on her belly, and his thumb stroked softly, all over her sex. After the first shock, it was only pleasure she felt, rippling though her body and limbs until she was shaking. She barely felt him nudge against her, his body easing into hers as his hips rocked against hers. Every time she tried to focus on the sensation, he bit down on her nipple or stroked her a little harder, and by the time she forced her eyes open, his thighs were flush against hers, and she could feel him deep inside her.
    That was when he paused, and inhaled a long, ragged breath. “I’m trying to be gentle, love, but—”
    The ache had only grown more demanding. She moved restlessly beneath him. “Don’t stop, then.”
    His eyes burned. “I wasn’t considering stopping.” He kissed her, then pushed himself up on one