To Pleasure a Duke (The Husband Hunters Club 3)

He didn’t answer, saying instead, “I’ve wondered whether you might be willing to pose for me. With your clothes on, of course.”

She smiled a wicked little smile. “Where’s the fun in that?”

He reached for her, tugging her close. She tilted back her head, watching the heat gathering in his eyes, waiting for what she knew would come.

To her surprise he didn’t carry her to the bed, but lifted her onto the table in the central part of the boat, edging her thighs apart and standing between them. Slowly, intently, he began to unfasten her b

odice. Her breath caught in her throat as first his fingers and then his mouth began an intense exploration of her breasts. She cupped the back of his head, pressing him close, lost in sensation.

By the time he reached beneath her skirts, she was damp and aching, wanting him urgently. It was her fingers which opened his breeches and caressed the hard length of his cock, drawing him to the entrance to her body, wrapping her thighs about his hips as he drove forward.

Voices sounded outside and then their captain, his voice drifting down from the deck. “We’re about to head off. Do you need anything, Your Grace?”

Their eyes met. Eugenie bit her lip. “No, thank you,” Sinclair called in reply. “I have everything I need right here.”

The boat rocked, began to move.

With his eyes closed and beads of sweat on his brow, Sinclair groaned softly as he thrust again, taking his time. Their buildup to ecstasy was gradual, relentless, and she wondered if she would ever reach her peak, and then when she did it was so tumultuous she felt as if her heart might stop altogether.

Afterward they clung together, weak and shaken. Dreamily she said, “Why did your uncle hang that sketch?”

He lifted her in his arms and she clasped her hands about his neck, resting her head against his shoulder.

“He admired it,” Sinclair admitted. “He was the only one who didn’t think I should take up more gentlemanly pursuits, like horse racing. He even encouraged me to keep drawing and painting. He did a little sketching himself but he always claimed he didn’t have my talent.”

“And yet you stopped?”

“Yes. At least . . . lately I’ve been playing about with my paints again,” he said wryly. “Much to my mother’s disgust.”

“Well, as far as I’m concerned you can paint from dawn to dusk.”

The words came out before she considered them, and then she flushed and hid her face from him. “That is, if I had anything to say about it. Which obviously I don’t.”

He set her down on the lavish bed and she watched him as he began searching through some of the drawers in the table. “My uncle said he’d left some here somewhere . . .” Soon he found what he was looking for, a sketch pad and pencils, and held them up.

“You said you wouldn’t mind,” he reminded her, rather diffident.

Eugenie, who wasn’t at all sure about this, managed to put on an air of ease. “How should I . . . eh . . .”

“Just like that. Perhaps lean back a little, and hold the blanket to your breasts. Like that.” He smiled at her. “Oh yes, very nice.”

After a moment, with the silence broken only by the scratching of his pencil on the paper, she said, “You won’t hang this one in someone’s boat, will you, Sinclair? I don’t think my family would appreciate it.”

He grinned. “This one is strictly private,” he answered her. “This one is for me.”

“Good.”

They smiled at each other and Eugenie knew with a sense of sheer relief that Sinclair, her Sinclair, was back.

She’d fallen asleep.

He wasn’t surprised. She must be exhausted after all their adventures, despite their brief respite at Framlingbury. He leaned back in his chair, stretching out stiff muscles, raising his arms over his head, opening and closing his fingers. He’d enjoyed drawing her, and then watching her sleep. Her riotous hair fell over her cheek, tangled strands tumbling down over the side of the bed toward the floor. Her arm, soft and pale and rounded, was caught in a shaft of light from a narrow strip of window in the deck above, and she breathed softly, peacefully, like an innocent child.

He felt happy. A sense of deep contentment he couldn’t remember ever feeling before. The movement of the narrow boat, the occupation of his eyes and his fingers, the making of a work of his talent and imagination. All in the company of a woman he was besotted with. If only life could always be like this.

But of course it couldn’t. How could it be? The world was still outside and soon it would interfere with them, tearing them apart.

There was another possibility.