He wasn’t sure he’d heard her correctly.
“Show you?” he repeated, as if suddenly incapable of comprehending English.
Her blue eyes, luminous in the lamplight, darted away. “Forgive me. I know better than to think a duke would find a woman like me of interest when he could have any woman he desired.”
Her voice trembled a little and he hated it.
He gathered her hands in his, and even that simple touch between them was charged enough that he had to steel himself against his response to her.
“Poppy, my dear.” He dipped his head so that he could look into her eyes. “Our kiss today should be proof enough that I’ve no lack of desire for you. If you must know, I would like nothing more than to show you all the ways we could pleasure each other.”
He’d been up half the night thinking about them.
“But…?” To her credit, she didn’t look away now, but lifted her chin and stared him boldly in the eye.
“But,” he said, trying to be as gentle as possible, “though I do not account myself to be a particularly good man, I do have lines I am unwilling to cross. One of those is ruining virgins.”
She shook her head, her pretty mouth tight with some negative emotion he couldn’t read. She pulled her hands away, and he fought the urge to grab them back. Finally, she said, “Aside from the fact that the very notion of ruination is a ridiculous concept created by men in order to subjugate women, there’s also the fact that—whether you believe it or not—I am ruined already. Just the fact of my being here with you now means that I will be a pariah in polite society once we end our betrothal.”
He felt her words like a punch in the gut. “I will not let that happen,” he ground out.
“You won’t have a choice,” Poppy snapped. “You seem to think you are able to control the world around you with the snap of your fingers, but that is not the case.”
He glared at her, wanting to argue, but also knowing full well that she was right. He had the power of his title, but that didn’t mean he could ensure that polite society accepted Poppy among their numbers once it was revealed how she’d been compromised tonight.
“It’s not as if I have any real care for what society thinks of me,” Poppy continued. “And it is very likely that I will remain a spinster once we go our separate ways. I only mean to indicate that since I’m already ruined, your objection is a moot point.”
“You don’t know that to be absolute,” he argued, unable to think of someone as vibrant and lovely as Poppy spending the rest of her life alone. “There may come a day when you meet a man who is able to convince you to marry him. And that man may very well object to what you propose here tonight.”
Her brows narrowed. “Any man I decide to marry would not care whether I’d had lovers in the past or not. And frankly, if you believe I’d give a fig about what some hypothetical man in the future would think about what I did with my own person, then you clearly don’t know me at all.”
Langham cursed and ran a hand through his hair in agitation. “I did not intend to insult you. But you must know that this proposition is not without risk. And all that risk would be on your side. What if I get you with child? We would have no choice but to marry, something you have said you do not want.”
If he’d thought that would bring her up short, however, he was to be sorely disappointed.
“There are ways of preventing conception,” she said with a frown. “I should have thought a man of the world like yourself would know about them.”
He closed his eyes and asked the heavens for patience. “Yes, of course I know of them,” he said with a frown as his traitorous mind whispered that if she was so hell-bent on giving herself to him, then it was foolish of him to deny her.
“Then I fail to see what the proble—”
He cut her off with an exasperated growl “I don’t want to hurt you.”
Poppy pulled back from him with a start. “Hurt me how?”
Langham pinched the bridge of his nose in agitation.
“I could hurt you physically,” he said finally, unable to stop himself from taking her hand, needing to touch her even as he tried to dissuade her from this action neither of them could take back. “The first time is often painful, and you deserve better than to be introduced to lovemaking by being taken on the floor in a damned folly, for pity’s sake.”
Her expression softened, and she reached up to place her palm over his cheek. “You foolish man,” she said in a tender voice. “I don’t care about that. I care that it will be with you. Someone I care about. My friend. None of the other worries will matter.”
The way she called him friend made his heart lurch in his chest. When she made as if to pull her hand away from his face, he placed his over it.
His objections died away in the light of the mix of bravado and fondness he saw in her eyes. “Whatever am I to do with you?”
In answer, she gave a smile that spoke of triumph but also incalculable sweetness.
With a sigh of relief, he covered her mouth with his own, savoring the soft feel of her lips against his, and the little moan of pleasure when he took the kiss deeper. Once they were both breathless, he rested his forehead against hers. “If it was your intention to distract me from my apprehension over being trapped in this godforsaken folly, then you’ve succeeded admirably.”
She just managed to stifle her laugh.
* * *
Poppy should have been nervous, considering what they were about to do, but instead she was filled with a giddy sort of elation at finally giving full rein to the desire—and yes, affection—that had been building in her for days. A week ago she’d have thought anyone who suggested she’d feel comfortable seated on the lap of the Duke of Langham was a prime candidate for the nearest asylum. But the joy she felt in this moment was so far removed from her initial feelings for him that she might as well be a different person.
With an eagerness that made her tremble a little, she slid her hands into his surprisingly soft hair while he worshipped her mouth with his. Slowly, decadently, he stroked his tongue over hers. At the same time, his hand caressed her collarbone and downward over the exposed skin of her upper chest. His every touch ignited a path of flame along her skin. She’d heard passion described as burning before, but she’d never quite understood why until now. It was as if her whole body was on fire for him.
When he lowered her bodice to reveal her breasts, she gasped at the sensation of the cool air on her exposed flesh. But her surprise soon turned to pleasure when he stroked his palm over her. With an unexpectedly gentle touch, he slid a thumb over the hardened peak. Poppy felt the contact all the way down to her core, and when he replaced his hand with his hot mouth, she inhaled sharply.
Suddenly, desperately, she felt the emptiness at her center, and almost as if he could read her mind, Langham rucked up her skirts and shifted her so that she straddled him.
The position placed her aching core against his hardness, and when he took her mouth again, she flexed her hips and almost cried out at the friction.
“Gently, sweet,” he hissed, as if in pain, gripping her hips to curtail her movements. “Much more of that and we’ll be finished before we begin.”
Poppy wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but since he was the expert and she the novice, she was willing to accept his tuition. Once she’d stopped shifting on his lap, he reached up and brushed a lock of hair from her brow. “I knew you’d be gorgeous all mussed and flushed like this. From the moment we met, I knew.”
That took her aback. “You were thinking of this when we first met?” she asked, aghast. At their first meeting she’d been torn between running him through or putting a bullet in him. She was definitely not thinking of the way his mouth would feel on her—oh dear Lord, was that his mouth on her bosom again?
He gave a decadent pull on her nipple with his mouth, and Poppy couldn’t stop herself from moaning. “Of course I was,” he said, as he kissed his way back up her chest and over her throat and settled his mouth over hers again and biting down a little on her lower lip. He said, “I wanted you from that moment. But you were determined to hate me, so I put you from my mind.”
She frowned, wanting to reply, but the way he scraped his teeth over the place where her neck met her shoulder sent a shiver of sensation through her, and any coherent thought she might have held was lost in the maelstrom. When Langham’s wandering hand gathered her skirts and slipped beneath them to stroke up her stockinged leg, she dropped her forehead to rest against his shoulder.
So slowly that she almost cried out with frustration he caressed up her inner thigh, lightly gliding a finger over the moisture gathered there, in that place where only she had ever touched herself before.
The touch was almost unbearably pleasurable, and when he dipped inside her, she moaned at the sensation.
“That’s it,” he whispered, adding another finger to his ministrations as she moved mindlessly against him, striving toward something she couldn’t name.
When he sped up the movement of his hand, she too increased her pace, and soon she was rocking against him, holding on to his shoulders for leverage.
When Langham somehow managed to flick the sensitive bud above where his fingers thrust into her, she felt herself come apart. She didn’t know what was happening, just that she was mindless with pleasure. For a brief moment she was outside of herself somehow and at the same time more herself than she had ever been before.
“Perfection,” Langham whispered in her ear.
But something didn’t feel finished somehow. “That wasn’t it, was it?” she asked with a frown. She slipped a hand between them and felt where his erection tented the front of his trousers.
Langham made a strangled noise. “That wasn’t all of it, no,” he said, gently removing her hand from where she’d continued to stroke him through the fabric. “But it’s easier for an untried lady if she has reached completion before being breached for the first time.” At her stare, he said hastily, “Or so I have heard. As I said before, I don’t make it a habit of falling upon virgins.”
His expression softened, and he took her cheek in his hand. “I want this to be pleasurable for you, Poppy. The last thing I wish is to cause you pain.”
He kissed her sweetly, as if making a promise, and Poppy felt her heart constrict with affection for this man who was, she knew now, one of the kindest, most honorable she’d ever met. She no longer questioned whether she was making the right decision to share this intimacy with him—she questioned whether she’d ever want to share this with anyone but him ever again.
“I’m not worried,” she said against his mouth as she began pushing his evening coat from his shoulders.
Following her lead, he made swift work of removing coats, neckcloth, and shirt.
When his chest was finally bare, she drew in a breath at the sight of him. The muscles of his sculpted chest, lightly covered in golden hair, shone to advantage in the lamplight. Unable to curb the impulse, Poppy leaned forward and nipped his shoulder.
“Ow,” he cried with a laugh. “What was that for?”
“I couldn’t resist,” she said softly, and leaned back to sit on her heels. Running her hands over the hardness of his chest, she marveled at just how well made a man he was. “You really should not hide all this beneath clothing all the time.”
“I think the populace at large would have some objection to my going about in only the suit I was born with,” he snorted, then, pulling her against him, he kissed her hard. “But I think you’re far lovelier.”
The feeling of his heated skin against her own was intoxicating, and as he caressed her breasts with first his hands and then his mouth, Poppy began to feel that aching in her center again. But this time when the instinct to move threatened to overtake her, she felt Langham adjust his trousers between them and realized he’d freed himself. Curious, she reached and caressed a hand over the evidence of his desire for her.
He inhaled harshly but didn’t complain as she closed her fingers around the silken heat of him. When he placed his hand over hers and slid them up and down his length, Poppy gasped at the intimacy of the act.
After another stroke, however, he pulled her hand away and kissed the palm before placing it on his shoulder. Reaching beneath her skirts, he lifted her by the hips and pulled her up onto her knees. With one hand holding her upright, he used the other to place himself at the apex of her thighs.
“Just lower yourself slowly onto me,” he said in a strained voice. “You can control the pace.”
She looked up then and saw that his eyes were dark with some emotion she couldn’t name, but she couldn’t have looked away if she’d wanted to. Settling herself over him, inch by slow inch she welcomed his body into hers. She watched as Langham’s jaw tightened with every infinitesimal motion, until finally she felt fully impaled, and he closed his eyes as if in pain.
“All right?” he asked, hoarsely.
“Ye-es.” Her own voice was a little breathless as she shimmied a little to get her bearings. “It feels odd. But good.”
He laughed, but it sounded more strained than joyful.
“Is it all right if I move now?” she asked, not wanting to cause him discomfort.
“God yes,” he muttered, before lifting her a little himself. The sensation was similar to the one she’d felt before when he’d used his fingers on her, but this time it was different. More.
Bracing herself on his shoulders, she lifted almost all the way off of him, then let herself back down and felt her body close around him as she moved. Soon they found a rhythm that pleased them both, and she felt the now familiar euphoria building within her. When Langham reached out to kiss her, she was reminded of the line from the marriage ceremony “with my body I thee worship,” and for the barest moment she faltered. But then he reached between them to touch the bud just above where they were joined and the sensation was enough to send her spiraling over the edge into oblivion.
She cried out as bliss overtook her and a moment later heard Langham say her name in a guttural tone as he lifted her off him. She felt a warm moisture against her stomach.
Unable to hold herself up, Poppy collapsed against him as they both struggled for breath.
Joshua’s—she didn’t think she could ever think of him only by his title ever again—shoulder was slick with sweat where she rested her cheek, and she took comfort in the contact even as she felt tears threaten. In the aftermath of their passion, she realized just how much of a miscalculation it had been on her part to think she could simply share her body with this man then go back to her solitary life as if nothing had changed.
As if she hadn’t changed.
