The Rake's Wicked Proposal

Regret? How could Grace possibly regret anything so wonderful? So liberating?

She swallowed. ‘No.’

‘No?’ He raised dark brows.

Grace shook her head, her smile slightly self-derisive. ‘I could never regret something so—so beautiful.’

Lucian knew that most women in Grace’s position would certainly have done so—that women of the ton did not give themselves so generously as she just had. Or if they did they did not admit to the emotion so freely.

But, as Lucian already knew, Grace was not ‘most women’. She was different from any woman Lucian had ever met—of the ton or otherwise.

He looked down at her searchingly, noting her almost shyness as she avoided meeting his gaze. ‘But something is troubling you…?’

Her throat moved convulsively before she spoke huskily. ‘You did not—’ She looked up at him searchingly. ‘Is it that you do not want me…?’

Lucian gave a disbelieving grimace. ‘How can you possibly think that when we have just made love together?’

A delicate blush coloured her cheeks. ‘Because although I lack…experience in such matters, I know enough to realise that you have not—you did not find the same release…’

‘Feel how much I want you, Grace.’ Lucian took one of her hands and guided it down to where his arousal was still rigidly hard beneath his breeches, groaning low in his throat as he felt the tentative caress of her fingers against him. ‘I want you, Grace,’ he assured her gruffly. ‘I very much want you. In fact, I would enjoy nothing more at this moment than to sit naked in that chair over there—’ he looked ruefully across at the winged armchair beside the fire ‘—and watch as you remove the last of your clothes before you come to me, placing your legs either side of mine, and lower yourself upon me, taking all of me inside you. Do you remember telling me that you like to ride astride…?’

Lucian recalled their conversation on that subject very clearly. Just as he remembered the eroticism of his own fantasies following that claim.

‘I remember.’ Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright.

Lucian nodded. ‘I would like you to ride astride me, Grace. Slowly. And then with increasing speed.’ His jaw clenched just at the thought of it. ‘I would like you to ride me in that way until I reached the same release as you have just experienced.’ He gave a shake of his head. ‘I fantasise about your doing all that with and to me, Grace. I just have no intention of it becoming a reality.’ His voice hardened over the last.

She tilted her head quizzically to one side. ‘Why not?’

Lucian gave a rueful smile. ‘You are a virgin, Grace—do not deny it when I have felt the barrier of your innocence for myself,’ he added with gentle rebuke as she would have spoken. ‘What we just did—what you experienced just now—did not take away that innocence. It is an innocence I wish you to keep until you marry, Grace.’

Grace had felt the leap of his hardness against her caressing fingers as Lucian talked of her nakedness, of her taking him inside her as she mounted him. ‘If you are so determined on that—’

‘I am.’ His tone brooked absolutely no argument on the subject.

Grace nodded. ‘Then is there no way that I could—? That you could—? Is there no way that I can give you the same pleasure, the same release you have just given me, without the taking of my innocence…?’

His jaw clenched. ‘There is a way, yes…’

‘Then I would like you to show it to me.’

Lucian groaned low in his throat as Grace looked up at him so trustingly. How could he refuse her? How could any man refuse her when he wanted her so desperately and she so innocently offered him paradise?

Nevertheless, Lucian knew that was exactly what he had to do. ‘You are an innocent in the ways of men, Grace. It would be wrong of me to—to take away any more of that innocence than I already have.’

She shook her head. ‘I do not feel as if you have taken anything from me, Lucian. On the contrary, I feel liberated! Is that how men feel too after—after—?’

‘It is called a climax, Grace.’