One Dance with a Duke by Tessa Dare

clutching his neck. His hands slid backward to fist in her hair, and she followed his example, at last twining her fingers in those dark, touchable curls. Oh why hadn’t she removed her own gloves? She would have given much at that moment to feel his hair sliding between the sensitive webs of her fingers. But she took heart in the little growl he gave when her gloved fingertips stroked his nape. Satin did have its advantages.
    He paused to draw breath.
    Oh, don’t stop. Don’t stop
.
    She caressed his neck again, and he renewed the kiss with even greater vigor. Her body went soft to thebones. His lips were insistent, demanding. But what he demanded was not her surrender, but her escalating response.
    She hadn’t known kissing could be like this: not a conquest, but a trade. A steady bartering of caresses, licks, gentle nips. She’d never known the corner of her mouth to be so exquisitely sensitive, until he touched the spot with his tongue.
    Oh, this was dangerous. Delicious, but dangerous.
    He was not just teaching her, he was empowering her. And he was forcing her to reveal far more of herself than she ought. How could he fail to sense her desire for him, when she purred with it? When she drew his lower lip into her mouth to mirror the way he gently sucked her upper one? And oh—oh, Lord—once their tongues had done
this
, how could she convincingly use this same mouth to refuse him?
    And then she finally stopped thinking and gave herself over to sensation. Blissful, all-consuming sensation. Her body sang, shivered, ached. She needed more. She needed to feel his hands on her body, somewhere below the neck. Everywhere below the neck.
    Lacing her fingers behind his collar, she pitched forward. Her breasts met the welcome resistance of his hard chest. And he rewarded her by sliding his hands from her shoulders, to the small of her back, over the swell of her hips and all the way down to her bottom, which he cupped firmly in both hands. He pulled, bringing her hips flush against his. Pleasure, sharp and intense, burst through her.
    He moaned.
“Amelia.”
    Here was a gesture she couldn’t reciprocate. For she didn’t recall his Christian name, and to call him “Morland” seemed just wrong. She certainly couldn’t call him “Your Grace”—not with his hands on her backside.
    Then his tongue was in her mouth again, and she couldn’t have called him anything at all.
    After some time—it might have been minutes, or hours or eons, for all Amelia knew; this kiss had rendered her quite insensible to such frivolous things as the passage of time—he gently pulled away. Shamelessly she chased him, pulling his face down and pressing one last kiss to the corner of his lips.
    He laughed—a breathless, husky, arousing laugh.
    “So,” he said, “not a chore, I think.”
    “No.”
    He regarded her closely. One eyebrow quirked. “That wasn’t your answer, was it?”
    “No,” she said hastily. “Or … I don’t know. My answer to what?”
    “I’m confused.”
    “So am I.”
    She slid her hands from his neck and clutched them together in front of her. Oh, what a miscalculation this had been. She’d asked for the kiss. She’d hoped it might be enjoyable. She hadn’t expected it to alter her understanding of the world. How was she supposed to tell him,
No, no, a thousand times no. Take your insulting proposal and begone
, when every corpuscle in her body was screaming,
Yes, yes! Please, Your Grace, may I have some more?
    “Perhaps we should begin again.” He covered her knotted fingers with his. “Lady Amelia, will you do me the honor, et cetera.”
    “Did you just say ‘et cetera’ in a proposal of marriage?”
    “No, I believe I said ‘et cetera’ in reprising my proposal of marriage. Have you arrived at an answer yet? I think you’re stalling again.”
    “I’m not stalling.”
    He drummed his fingers on the tops of hers, making it quite clear to them both that she was, indeed, stalling.
    “We