The Duchess and the Highwayman (Hearts in Hiding 1)

She gave a small nod. “It’s true; I have been disappointed before, but I do trust your word.”

“Who was this man who let you down, Phoebe? You’ve never said his name. This protector of yours…he promised to protect you and then didn’t?”

“He promised a great many things.” She shook her head, then raised her arms and twined them around his neck, wordlessly resting her head against his chest.

He stroked her hair, the comfort he felt suddenly making him realize how ill at ease he’d felt until now. Having her forgiveness meant more to him than he’d believed. “You can feel safe with me, Phoebe.”

The ground beneath them was soft, and he drew her down beside him, sitting with his back against the trunk and one arm around her shoulders. Gently he kissed her brow. Her eyes were closed, but when she smiled, a great spreading happiness seemed to infect his veins. He turned a little, and she opened her eyes, her lips parting so that instinctively he drew closer and kissed her.

Her mouth flowered beneath his, and he deepened the kiss, stroking her cheek with one hand while his other slipped beneath her bodice to cup her breast. He expected her to open her eyes in outrage and push his hand away, but instead, she yielded to him, her body shifting to accommodate him in the soft hollow of earth beneath them while her mouth grew hungrier.

The lust he’d felt earlier raised its nagging head, and he checked himself once more, not wanting to proceed if there were any hesitation on her part, but she seemed under the same spell. She didn’t protest when he took the hem of her dress and slowly raised it, watching her carefully to gauge her reaction.

Above them, the sky winked blue, glimpsed beneath the dense canopy of the forest.

Hugh broke contact to shrug off his coat. He laid it down, drawing Phoebe up and onto her knees. “You don’t want to spoil your new dress,” he whispered. “Perhaps you’d better take it off.”

Her eyes widened. “But then I’d be…”

“All but naked,” he supplied. “That is, unless we remove your petticoats and chemise and corset.” Just saying it made him as hard as a rock. The idea was as intoxicating as it was novel. Imagine! He would see her naked. In the daylight. He’d never seen a woman in all her glory quite like that, but now he wanted Phoebe ‘just like that’ more than he’d wanted anything before.

“I’ll help you.” He was already shimmying the garment up over her body by the time her smile popped out, her eyes shining at the wickedness of it all. That was good. He didn’t like to think she might not be an equally willing partner when it came to pushing the boundaries quite so far.

“And what of you, my Lord?” she whispered with an impish look at his nether regions.

“Oh, my pleasure will be seeing you revealed, layer by layer, like some tasty morsel. My ultimate pleasure can wait.”

The undergarments she wore were not the fine linen of a lady. Somehow the utilitarian petticoat, gleaned from the miller’s wife’s trunk, rough and coarse, struck him with guilt.

“I shall buy you the finery you deserve, Phoebe. Without the expense of a wife, you shall be clothed as you’d wish.”

“And when you take a wife I’ll go naked?”

He laughed. She was smiling, teasing him for she knew how it was. “I’ll always want you, Phoebe.”

“Always?”

“And how do you know that?” she asked. But when he pulled her final layer over her head—her chemise, having just unlaced her corset—he could not speak. She was exquisite. Her soft, pert breasts were revealed for the first time, unbound and in all their glory, their small pink buds an invitation for him to swoop and take into his mouth. But equally in evidence was the gentle undulation of her belly, which tapered into a pair of creamy thighs at whose juncture a thatch of dark hair hid a world of hidden delights.

“Because I’ll never get enough of this, my darling,” he murmured at last, sliding down to take her right nipple into his mouth while his other hand contoured her belly before sliding between her legs.

She was already wet but she gasped when he touched her, and he could hear the smile in her voice as she stroked his head. “Music to my ears, of course, Mr Redding, but that is what gentlemen say when they want a lady, is it not?” She shivered as he got to work pleasuring her, adding, “You’ve not had too much of a struggle to get me where you want me, so you needn’t say things you don’t mean.”

“I should be hurt, Phoebe.” He chuckled as he sucked at her nipple, rolling it over his tongue, loving her small, involuntary gasps and jerks as he found just the place to tease her. “You seem to think I don’t mean what I say. It’s clear that you more than just like me. If you hadn’t

said it so plainly, I don’t need any more evidence than this.”

He rose above her for a moment to meet her eye while he unbuttoned himself. “Tell me again. I want to hear you say that you want me as much as I want you.”

“Only if you keep doing to me what you were doing before,” she groaned, relaxing back against the tree and closing her eyes.

“There, see what you do to me.” Hugh kissed her mouth as she positioned his long body against her curves, guiding her hand to his member. He gasped again, then growled, “I’m ready to explode…but only when you’ve had your pleasure. I want you to want more, Phoebe. I want you!”

It was pure delight. A wicked, sensual, carnal encounter spontaneously taken beneath the trees, and into which she entered with as much enthusiasm as he, despite the morning’s poor start.

Carnal delights with Phoebe were greater than any pleasure he’d ever experienced.

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