Claiming the Courtesan

She could do this. She could do this.

For God’s sake, it was only a kiss. She was the notorious Soraya. Surely she could kiss a man and survive the experience.

Tentatively, she pressed her mouth against his. He tasted familiar. He should. They’d been lovers for a year. He remained impassive as she rubbed her lips across his, testing taste and texture. His lips were firm beneath hers, firm and smooth. And utterly unresponsive.

Clearly, he meant to make her work for her reprieve.

Of course he did. She had to remember this was about revenge and nothing else. The bargain for her kiss was just a twisted plan concocted in the tortuous labyrinth of his mind.

Well, if she could become London’s greatest courtesan from her unlikely beginnings, she could certainly kiss a man into forgetting his coldhearted agenda.

Verity took a deep breath, trying to ignore his damned evocative scent, and used her imagination. She began to copy the way he’d kissed her earlier, coaxing him into joining her. The muscles of his legs hardened beneath her hands. She didn’t look down to check if anything else was hardening.

But still he didn’t kiss her back.

“What’s the matter, Your Grace?” she taunted softly against his skin. “This was your idea, if you recall.”

“You’re yet to engage my interest sufficiently,” he said in a negligent tone.

His answer would have infuriated her if she hadn’t heard the unsteadiness in his voice. Making her service him was apparently to be part of her penance. Service him without engaging his participation, it seemed.

Except he was far from unmoved. She briefly considered bringing her hands further up his thighs to confirm that.

Soraya wouldn’t have hesitated. Verity was more cautious. This was meant to be just a kiss, after all. She didn’t want to end up flat on her back while the duke “plowed” her, to borrow his regrettably graphic terminology.

She returned to her task with renewed determination. And still he didn’t surrender.

“I know you’re trying to teach me a lesson,” she panted against his cheek.

He didn’t bother to deny it. “And are you learning anything?”

“I’m learning you’re not the only one who is as stubborn as a mule.”

She could tell he laughed against his will, and she fought not to find that sudden glimpse of his humanity disarming. “You know, Verity or Soraya or whoever you are at this moment, sometimes your gall takes my breath away.”

In spite of everything, she smiled. “I hope not just my gall does that, Your Grace.”

He started to reply, but she slammed her mouth against his and began to use her tongue in an open-mouthed, passionate kiss. This time Kylemore answered her with desire. Not because he wanted to, Verity knew, but because he had no other choice.

That was her last rational thought for a long time as the kiss swept her up in a conflagration of dark pleasure she’d never known before. It was hot in this firestorm, hot and dangerous, but she hurled herself into the blaze without a thought to her own protection. His arms lashed around her as he dragged her across his lap.

Shamingly, Kylemore was the one who eventually pulled back.

He lifted himself slightly away from her. She lay on the bench. Somewhere in that tempestuous kiss, he’d brought her beneath him. A few moments more and he’d have been inside her. The weight of him, hard and hot against her belly, even through her skirts, indicated that was still a possibility.

Even this wasn’t enough to return her to reality. Without a squeak of protest, she lay beneath him lost in delight.

“If I don’t stop now, I won’t,” Kylemore said tautly. His expression was strained. The arms he supported himself upon imprisoned her in a cage she could summon no great eagerness to escape. “Unless that’s what you want.”

“Want?” she repeated stupidly, blinking up at him. Her mouth felt swollen and her heart pounded as though she’d run from him instead of surrendered mindlessly to his importunity.

“Shall I take this embrace to its natural conclusion?” Briefly, he was the courtly lover she’d known in London.

She sucked in a shaky breath to steady her rioting responses. The creaking of the coach was loud in her ears as she scrambled to gather her scattered thoughts and, even more importantly, her scattered defenses. Fleetingly, she remembered the duke describing his kiss as innocent. It had been about as innocent as Lucifer overseeing an orgy in hell.

“Madam?” he asked, then very deliberately pressed his erection into her stomach.

The crude gesture brought her back to herself as nothing else could have. All the lovely bonelessness drained away from her body as she stiffened in unspoken rejection.