The truth was that he made her feel like the kind of girl she’d never been. Light, airy. Charming beyond measure.
He made her feel the way she’d always imagined it felt to be Vivi.
Eleanor still couldn’t believe that she was the one sitting here, on the edge of the Duke’s bed. That he hadn’t picked Vivi when he’d had the chance.
But she had no intention of throwing this away. This was her chance at last. To experience everything she never had before. To be that girl some part of her had always dreamed she could have been, maybe, if things had been different.
“I would tell you I don’t bite, little one,” Hugo said in that smokily amused way of his. It reverberated up and down her spine, then pooled somewhere low in her belly, where it began to pulse. “But that would be a lie.”
“I’m not afraid of you,” she managed to say.
Hugo looked amused. Something like delighted.
“No, you are not. And it is one among many reasons you are under my skin.” He studied her. “But still, you’re still looking at me as if you expect me to eat you alive.”
“Oh,” Eleanor said softly. “I thought that was exactly what you intended to do.”
Hugo let out a breath. Or perhaps it was a laugh. Either way, it shimmered in Eleanor like light.
“You’ll be the death of me,” Hugo muttered.
And then he was moving. He hooked an arm around Eleanor’s waist and hauled her along with him as he crawled toward the center of the bed. And then, marvelously, he stretched out on top of her and settled the whole of his lean, hard body between her legs.
“Breathe,” he told her, and she knew she wasn’t mistaking that unholy amusement in his dark gaze. His eyes looked even more like whiskey tonight, or perhaps it was just that this close, she couldn’t pretend that she was anything but drunk.
On him.
“I’m breathing,” she whispered.
“See that you continue,” Hugo ordered her in his lazy, aristocratic way. “I haven’t killed a virgin yet.”
And Eleanor loved the fact that he knew. That she didn’t have to make any long, drawn-out confession. When she’d thought about this moment—in those few and far between moments when she still imagined that this was any kind of possibility, that she might give herself to a man—she’d always assumed that she would have to offer extensive explanations. She would have to tell a reasonable story about why a woman her age had never quite managed to get here before, horizontal on a bed. She would have to talk about how distant she’d always felt from others her age, in part because she’d felt so responsible for Vivi, and how that had always seemed to leave her on her own. And she’d never been able to conjure up a way to tell someone that story without coming across as some kind of freak. Better to lock all that away. Better to convince herself that not only didn’t she care, but she didn’t feel the same things others did.
But Hugo didn’t seem to care about any of that. Not why she was a virgin at twenty-seven. Not how. The only thing he seemed to care about was that he was the one braced over her, gazing down at her as if she was a treat. As if he wanted nothing more than to bury himself in her.
As if it was only a matter of time before he did.
It took Eleanor long moments to realize what that sensation was that snaked his way through her. A blistering sort of relief.
Because she felt safe. Somehow, someway, Hugo Grovesmoor made her feel safe, here in his bed where that should have been the very last thing she felt.
She hadn’t known that was possible.
“Stop thinking so hard, little one,” he said then.
“That’s easy for you to say,” she retorted. And his mouth was at her neck, so she felt it when he smiled.
“This is very simple,” he told her, and there was a serious note beneath all that lazy heat. “If I want you to do something, I’ll tell you what and how to do it. Otherwise, all you need to do is enjoy yourself.”
Eleanor frowned at him, and he must have sensed it, because as he looked up that smile of his widened.
“That sounds very selfish.”
“Eleanor, please.” Hugo shook his head. “You cannot possibly be more selfish than I am. I promise you.”
And then he put his mouth against her skin again, and Eleanor stopped thinking about anything.
Hugo took his time.
He tasted her everywhere. First he ran his hand over every part of her he could touch. He traced her collarbones. He tested her figure, spending a lot of time on her waist and the generous curves above and below. He made her writhe side to side beneath him, and when he had enough of that, he stripped her of her wrapper and her silky little nightie, and he did it all over again.
But this time, he used his mouth too.
He took her nipples in his mouth and sucked on them until she sobbed. He played with her. He made her arch up against him and cry out, over and over, and only when she felt limp and outside herself did he shift down the length of her body.
And then put his mouth between her legs.
Shattering the world into a white hot panic.
He licked into her. What he’d done with his fingers in the library had been astonishing enough, but this was worse. Better.
This was unlike anything Eleanor could possibly have imagined.
And when that wall came at her this time, she wasn’t afraid of it. She let him throw her over the edge once, then again, and she shook and shimmered all the way down.
When she opened her eyes again, Hugo was naked too. And he was crawling his way over her again, his eyes locked to hers.
“You’re holding up beautifully,” he said, that curve in his lips. “I haven’t even had to tell you to lie back and think of England.”
“I always thought that would be unsanitary,” she blurted out. That curve in his mouth bloomed into a real smile.
“You may well be the death of me, Eleanor. Here. Tonight.”
“It always sounded so...” She trailed off, aftershocks still shuddering through her.
“It is so,” Hugo told her. “That’s what makes it so much fun.”
And then Eleanor’s attention was stolen away by the way Hugo settled himself against her once more.
And this time, she could feel everything.
That beautiful chest of his, chiseled and perfect and hot to the touch. But more than that, there was that heavy, foreign part of him that she could feel nudging up against the place where she was soft and melting. It made her shudder.
She reached down between them and wrapped her hand around him. His breath hissed out of him, hard. And there was that strange glitter in his eyes.
Eleanor pulled her hand away. Guiltily. “I’m sorry,” she said hesitantly. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“You didn’t hurt me.” Hugo’s voice was strangled. “I promise you, there’s no possible way you could hurt me. But hold off on that for now.”
Eleanor realized in the next instant what she’d done. She did read, after all. And she had certainly watched enough television in her time. But nothing had prepared her for how different it was in real life. Hugo was big and sculpted and stunning, and still he shuddered when she touched him. How could she have known? A thousand Hollywood movies were nothing next to the feel of his body above hers, and the way that silken length of his had burned itself into her palm.
Hugo shifted.