The Regency Season: Decadent Dukes. Кэрол Мортимер

investing further.

      Until one day Rufus realised he had so much money he could easily buy himself a house in one of the most fashionable areas in London, along with the servants needed to run such a residence, whilst he quietly continued to amass even more wealth.

      He had enjoyed the company of ladies during those years too, of course. Very much so. He had stayed well clear of married ladies, however, nor had he wished to become entrapped into a marriage with one of the simpering young debutantes of the Season.

      The young debutantes and their families were desperate to make a match to one of the richest men in England. His family connection to the prestigious Dukes of Hawksmere and Northamptonshire were not to be dismissed, either.

      Cynical perhaps, but Rufus had no illusions in regard to London Society and how those loveless marriages were decided upon. And he wanted no part of it—not the suitable marriage, nor the demure miss, who would no doubt have been advised by her mother to lie passive and unmoving in the marriage bed while her husband impregnated her. After which she could banish him from her bed until her lying in was over. When the whole miserable cycle would begin all over again.

      An heir was now necessary, of course, but Rufus had every intention of choosing his own wife when the time came.

      The young woman seated on the branch beside him was not of the ton, nor was she a married lady or a simpering debutante. Nor did the circumstance of their meeting—she was currently as unclothed by choice as he was!—lend itself to any outraged cries of ruination on her part, if he should steal a kiss. Or two.

      Which Rufus had every intention of doing.

      Sitting as close as they now were, Rufus could appreciate just how delectably kissable Anna’s slightly moistened lips were. They were naturally rosy in colour, and there was an endearing dip in the centre of the fuller lower lip.

      Her unfastened gown was still gaping down slightly at the front, allowing him a tantalising glimpse of her wet chemise as it clung damply to the fullness of her breasts, tipped with pert nipples the same rosy-red colour as her lips.

      To kiss or touch those would be going too far, but that did not mean Rufus could not be aroused by the sight of them.

      He raised a hand to cup her cheeks, her skin feeling as soft and smooth as silk as he turned her face gently towards him.

      Her eyes widened in alarm as Rufus held that gaze to slowly lower his head towards hers.

      She gasped softly. “Perhaps we should not do this.”

      And perhaps, if Anna’s breath had not been so soft and fragrantly warm against his lips, if she had attempted to avoid his kiss by turning away, then he might have been able to resist.

      As it was, Anna did none of those things, but instead remained as still as a statue as Rufus placed his lips gently against hers

      He pulled back only slightly. “Open,” he encouraged gently.

      “Open?” she asked, breathing softly.

      Rufus ran the tip of his finger lightly across her lips, parting them slightly before once again claiming them with his own.

      She tasted delicious. A combination of honey and mint, the latter a freshness that made his lips tingle, followed by that tempting sweetness. The enticing dip in her bottom lip begged to be tasted by his tongue before he slid fully into the heat of her mouth.

      Rufus continued to kiss her, to taste her, as he pressed back against the trunk of the tree, his arm about the slenderness of her waist as he pulled her in tight against him, the softness of her breasts pressed against the hardness of his bare chest.

      He groaned low in his throat as he felt the shy, tentative stroke of Anna’s tongue against his own. Then she became bolder still, sucking his tongue deeper into her mouth, slowly at first, and then more demandingly as her confidence grew.

      Anna came to her senses with a gasp, wrenching her mouth from Rufus’s the moment she felt a firm and hot hand cupping her breast, his knowing fingertips caressing the swollen and sensitised tip.

      She used her free hand to push against his chest as he seemed reluctant to release her, her eyes wide, cheeks flushed, her breasts—the breasts he had touched so intimately!—rising and falling as she breathed quickly.

      She had never experienced such a kiss, such searing intimacy, in all of her life before today.

      She had meant the kiss to be merely a meeting of lips, in order to satisfy her side of the bargain, but the way that Rufus had kissed her—and she had kissed him—was nothing, absolutely nothing, like any other kisses Anna had suffered through in the past.

      Instead she had felt claimed by him, by having his tongue in her mouth. Had felt as if she claimed him when she had felt drawn to return his passion.

      His firm and chiselled lips had initially been surprisingly soft against her own, causing excitement to flutter wildly beneath her breasts. And her breasts had seemed to swell beneath the dampness of her chemise as the kiss continued, the rosy tips becoming an aching tingle, with an unaccustomed warmth spreading through the whole of her body before it had centred as a pleasant ache between her thighs.

      It was an excitement that Anna had thoroughly enjoyed, until she had felt that hand cup her breast, and realised she had put a stop to these unexpected intimacies. Before it was too late.

      The fact that she had needed to place her hand on the muscled nakedness of Rufus’s chest in order to push him away, and that her hand still rested against it, caused her to recoil back so sharply that she lost her balance on the branch completely.

      “Steady, Anna!” Rufus warned harshly as he reached out to clasp both of her arms to prevent her from falling, his back pushing harder, painfully so, against the rough bark of the tree trunk behind him in order to maintain his own balance. “Perhaps we should get down from here? Before one or both of us is injured,” he added grimly, his lids narrowed to hide the expression in his eyes.

      How had this woman aroused him so quickly and so heatedly? So thoroughly that he had touched her more intimately than he’d intended. To the degree that he had been on the edge of losing all control.

      He was a man of two and thirty, and had bedded more women than he cared to remember since losing his virginity at the age of sixteen. The intervening years had rendered him both jaded and cynical where women were concerned, and he now approached all sexual liaisons with the same lack of emotions. All he wanted from his encounters was a release of his sexual tensions.

      What happened just now had felt neither jaded nor cynical, but fresher and more arousing than anything Rufus had experienced before. Just as Anna herself possessed that same freshness of spirit.

      Because she was fresh, you idiot, he rebuked himself. Any fool could see that Anna, despite the sharpness of her tongue, was a virgin, an innocent.

      He had not meant to go so far as he had. He’d intended only to kiss her, to have a little fun himself, whilst at the same time punishing Anna a little for her recklessness in being alone out here in the woods, making herself vulnerable to any man who happened by. That the man had been him was purely coincidental.

      One touch of Anna’s parted lips beneath his, the shy and then demanding caress of her tongue, and Rufus had felt himself stir with a pulsing, aching need for more. So very much more.

       And that, Rufus old chap, is the road to perdition!

      Because no father was going to allow a man—even a duke!—to take his daughter’s virginity without demanding some sort of recompense.

      “I shall go down first,” Rufus rasped harshly before releasing her to turn away and begin his descent, his thoughts grim.

      If Anna had not stopped him when she had—

      Then both of them would have tumbled out of the tree and put an end to the disturbing interlude that way, Rufus assured himself, his good sense having returned to him the farther he removed