Drew closed the small gap between them and brushed Venus’s mouth with his.
Lightning flashed through him to lodge in—
He jerked his hips back and his head up.
He was not a virgin—he’d accepted more than one invitation to dance in some high flyer’s bed—but he’d never felt this overwhelming emotion before. It was more than lust, though it was definitely that, too.
He put a good foot of space between him and Venus. He might not be a virgin, but she was.
Venus blinked at him as if she were waking from a dream. He felt rather proud of himself until she opened her mouth.
“That’s it?” She frowned.
“Of course that’s it.” He frowned back at her. “What more do you want?”
“I—” She blushed. “I don’t know. I just feel as if there is more.”
“Well, there’s not.” Damn it, the randy part of his brain was picturing in maddening detail all the other things he could do with her. It didn’t help that he’d seen her naked at this very pond—which he hoped was just as cold today. Once he deposited her safely at the vicarage, he might have to take a brisk, deflating swim.
“Oh.” She bit her lip. “I didn’t mean to insult you. It was very nice.”
Splendid. Now she was criticizing his lovemaking skills. If only he could show her—
“Do you suppose we could do it again?”
His cock almost jumped out of his breeches. “No!”
God give him strength. Here he was, trying to be noble even if it killed him—which it most likely would—and she was tempting him beyond any man’s ability to resist. Not that she knew it, of course. She’d no idea the fire she played with, but he could feel it building, and it was hot enough to incinerate them both.
He should jump in the damn pond right now.
Venus’s face had gone white. She turned away, but not before he saw the glint of tears in her eyes. “You don’t have to shout.” She sniffed and then blotted her nose on her sleeve. “I’m not going to attack you or anything.”
His cock pleaded with him to encourage her assault. He reached for his handkerchief instead. “When we are married, I’m going to see you have a handkerchief for every day of the year.”
Her head whipped around, her jaw dropping. “Married?”
His eyebrows shot up. “Yes, of course. What did you think I meant by kissing you?”
Venus’s tears dried like magic as anger replaced mortification. She wanted to hit something, preferably this idiotic man standing in front of her, holding out his damn handkerchief and looking at her as if she were the insane one. Now that she’d recovered from the newness of the experience, she remembered how he’d jumped away from her.
“You kiss me and find the experience so repugnant you almost run to the other side of the pond, and now you talk of marriage?” She grabbed her skirts so as not to grab his throat and raised her chin to look down her nose at him. “Perhaps I don’t wish to be married to a man who doesn’t enjoy kissing me.”
He shoved his handkerchief back in his pocket. “Of course you’ll marry me.”
“Of course I won’t, your grace.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Why not? You’re acting as though you own all you survey.” Venus stepped up to him and poked him in the chest with her finger. “Well, you don’t own me, sirrah.”
“For the love of God, woman.”
His hands shot out and grabbed her, hauling her up against his body. One hand pressed her into a very large bulge below his waist and the other urged her chin higher. His mouth swooped down.
This kiss was nothing like the last. It was hot and wet, and somehow his tongue found its way past her teeth, plunging deep, sweeping through her.
Her knees gave out; if he hadn’t been holding her up, she’d have melted into a puddle at his feet. Part of her was melting.
“See?” he said, lifting his head and brushing a kiss over her cheek. “I like kissing you. Now we should—”
“Again.” She stretched to reach his mouth, running her hands through his hair and wiggling against his body—and the interesting protuberance—as she did so. “Please, Drew?”
“No.” He straightened, but he didn’t push her away. “We shouldn’t.”
She could tell it was only his brain protesting; his heart—and other organs—didn’t agree. She would persuade him. She kissed his chin.
“Stop that, Venus.”
“I don’t want to.” She nibbled on his bottom lip.
He held out for another moment; then he made a small, guttural sound, almost of pain, and opened his mouth.
She tried doing what he’d done, probing his dark heat with her tongue.
Things got somewhat frantic then. His hands moved all over her—her back, her derriere … oh, they slid up to touch the side of her breast. Her nipples hardened into tight little peaks, and she leaned back, silently inviting him to continue his explorations.
He stopped. Damn it, his scruples must have reared their ugly heads again. Well, she would fix that. She slipped her hands down his front, aiming for the bulge in his breeches.
He grabbed her fingers before they could reach their target. “Careful, Venus. We are rapidly approaching the point where it will be impossible for me to stop.”
She grinned. “Why would you want to stop?”
“Because you’re a virgin, damn it.”
“I imagine you can fix that.”
His face looked strained, as if he were fighting an inner battle. “We should wait until our wedding.”
“No.” She loved him with a fierce, true love that filled her with courage. “I don’t want to wait.”
“But we’ve known each other only four days.”
“It doesn’t matter. It could be four days or four years or forty years—I know that I love you, that I will always love you.” She searched his eyes. “Don’t you feel that way, too?”
“Yes,” he said, and she could see he was telling the complete truth this time. “I’m sure everyone will say we are mad, but yes, I feel it. I love you, too.”
She laughed, tugging his shirt free of his breeches. She was going to explode with happiness. “Then show me.”
Drew was obviously more adept at getting women out of their clothes than she was at getting men out of theirs. She got her arms tangled up with his more than once. Finally he made a growling sort of noise and grabbed her hands.
“It will be faster if you let me do it.”
Venus was all in favor of speed so she acquiesced, and in another moment, she was as naked as when she’d first met him. More importantly, he was as naked.
“Oh.” Now she could touch everything she’d only seen before. She ran her hands over his hard, warm chest and followed the springy blond hair down to—
He grabbed her hands again.
“Hey!”
“Another time.” He picked her up and laid her on their clothes. “If you touch me now, it will be over before it’s begun.”
She didn’t understand, but he sounded as if he knew what he was talking about—and he started to kiss her. Mmm. His clever mouth moved to her shoulder and then to her breast. “Oh!” His lips closed over a nipple. “Should you be … ahh.”
She didn’t care if he should or he shouldn’t; what he was doing felt so good. His mouth and tongue played with one nipple while his fingers teased the other and then wandered lower, stroking down her side to her hip.
She moaned. Her body was awash in strange, wonderful sensations. Every part of her that Drew touched grew hot and desperate. But there was one very desperate part of her he hadn’t yet touched; his fingers lingered just a few inches away. She spread her legs and arched her hips to encourage him to proceed in the right direction.
He took the hint.
“Ohh.”
His finger slowly, delicately, slid around the small point. Her hips jerked.
“You are so wet, so ready for me, Venus.” He sucked on her nipple as his finger continued to tease her.
“Ohh. Drew. Please.” Her hips twitched and wiggled as if she was doing some very odd dance. She should be embarrassed—the vicar’s daughter, naked outdoors, moaning with lust, begging to be taken—but there was no room for embarrassment in her heart.
“Your wish is my command, my love,” Drew said, his voice breathy and strained. He lifted himself over her and came slowly into her body.
“Oh!” She felt a brief, burning pain, and then Drew was deep inside her, filling the part of her that had been so empty just moments before.
“Are you all right?”
“Mmm,” she said. “Yes.” She shifted her hips. Her body had already got over the shock of penetration; now it wanted him to move.
And move he did, being careful to keep his weight on his forearms so he didn’t crush her. In and out.
She grabbed his hips. The spot that had been so tense before was tense again. Each time he moved, he pulled her tighter and tighter …
“Drew. I-I need—”
Nothing. He slid deep one last time, and she felt something hot and wet pulse into her just before a drenching pleasure took her breath away.
She felt wonderful.
Drew slid free and moved to the ground beside her, pulling her up against him.
“Mmm.” His body and the sun were warm on her naked flesh. She could barely open her eyes. “What did you do?”
He chuckled. “Magic, my dear duchess.”
“I’m not your duchess yet.”
“But you will be shortly. Very shortly. By the time we make it to the vicarage, your parents will be home. You will look well and truly compromised, and I’m sure your father will wish to marry us on the spot.”
She drew a lazy circle on his chest. Drew was probably right. Mama and Papa would be terribly shocked.
She waited to feel embarrassment, but she’d become a complete wanton. She felt nary a drop of remorse. “That would be fine.”
“Good.” He laughed and kissed her nose. “You’ll be my duchess, Venus, but more importantly, you are my love.”
She grinned at him. “I’ll be your duchess of love, and you’ll be my duke, no matter how much you dislike the title.”
He put a slow, lingering kiss on her lips. “As long as I have you by my side, my dear duchess-to-be, I can bear being Greycliffe.” Then he kissed her again.
It was another half hour before they finally made their way to the vicarage.