Her fingers reached up. They trailed the side of his face from his cheekbone down to the line of his jaw, then further, tracing the edge of his mouth with one fingertip.

Richard went very still.

"I know you wonder," she continued softly, her eyes following her own fingers with interest, "what the most sensitive part of my body is. Where to start. Where to linger."

"I’m sure I could locate it," he said, voice admirably level, "in approximately a minute. If you’d let me."

"Shhhh." She pressed one finger to his lips.

He stopped talking.

"You wonder how I like it. Slow or fast. Soft or hard. You wonder how you’ll fit inside me." A pause, perfectly timed. "You’re thinking about it right now. Are you hard yet, your grace?"

Every single functioning brain cell Richard possessed told him he was absolutely, comprehensively, done.

"Not even close," he said instead.

They both knew it was a spectacular lie. The evidence was present, accounted for, and making its case with considerable conviction against the fabric of his breeches.

Livia’s mouth curved and trailed her finger down his chest without taking her eyes off him, slowly.

Richard went very still beneath her touch, the smugness draining from his face. The great Duke of Kingsmere, terror of women’s good sense, reduced to silence by one woman.

She moved lower, watching his expression carefully, enjoying every second of his failing control. His breath caught when her hand hovered dangerously near the place where his lie had become quite obvious.

Livia smirked.

Richard’s eyes darkened. "Diana..."

Then, just as his entire body seemed to brace for her touch, she yanked her fingers away and stood upright.

He looked genuinely betrayed. "Oh, you’re mean..." he sighed.

Livia smiled sweetly. Then she turned and walked away from the drawing room, her skirts swaying behind her with far too much satisfaction. 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

When she disappeared, he looked down at his erection and groaned.

"This is not going away soon." He sank deeper into the chair and reached for his wine, taking a slow drink. Nothing in the cup was strong enough to fix what that woman had just done to him. He sat there nursing his wine, wondering what the hell that had been.

Was she punishing him? Was she fighting back against all his teasing, all his shameless comments?

Had she been merely proving she could play his game, or was she finally leaning into him? Had she touched him to torment him, or because some part of her wanted him?

Richard exhaled slowly. There was only one way to find out. He downed the rest of his wine and stood.

Halfway to the door, he stopped and ran a hand through his hair. No. He would not behave like a fool again.

He started to move again. When he reached her door, he eased it open. "Diana?" he began.

She was in the middle of undressing, the bindings of her gown already half undone, the fabric loosened around her shoulders.

Richard’s hand tightened on the doorframe. Livia turned sharply, clutching the front of her gown to herself. His eyes lifted immediately to her face.

"Your grace?"

Richard stopped. He was quiet for a moment. "You’re right," he said finally.

"I — what?"

"Sue me."

She stared at him. "I beg your pardon?"

"I think about you," he said. "All the time. Even when I don’t want to." A beat. "Especially when I don’t want to."

Livia opened her mouth.

"Don’t ask why," he said. "I know why. It’s selfish of me and I’m aware of that and I’m choosing to set that particular guilt aside for now. When you call me your grace," he continued, his voice dropping to a low, even and devastating register, "do you want to know what I think about?"

She should have said no. She said nothing, which he correctly interpreted as yes.

"I think about how that will sound." His eyes held hers without apology. "When I’m buried so deep inside you that your fingers are clawing at my back and your grace is the only coherent thing you have left."

"Oh my God—" The blush hit her like a wave, flooding from her chest to the tips of her ears in approximately one second flat.

"I think about you screaming my name." He took one step toward her. Then another. "I think about drawing an orgasm from you so thoroughly, that you forget every word you know except that one."

Livia’s breath was coming in shorter increments now.

"I think about the sounds you’d make." He was close — very close, the distance between them reduced to nothing. "Whether you’d be quiet or loud." His gaze moved across her face.

"Your grace..." Livia’s breath stuttered on the two syllables.

"I think about the different ways I would lay you down on my bed," he said, "and fuck the thoughts of every other man clean out of you. It consumes me." He said simply. "I don’t sleep well. I sit through meetings thinking about your mouth. I’ve read the same correspondence four times this week because halfway through every sentence, you appear."

His fingers drifted to her shoulders lightly. Just fingertips — tracing the line of her collarbone, moving upward into her hair, stroking slowly. Down the curve of her neck. Back to her shoulder.

Then his fingers found the sleeve of her dress. He drew it down slowly. The fabric shifted, slipping, hanging now precariously over the swell of her breasts — one good breath away from giving up entirely.

"Your eyes." His thumb traced her jaw. "Your skin." His fingers drifted down her neck. "Your lips." He stopped just short of touching them. "You have no idea what you do. I see you and I lose the ability to think about anything remotely useful." His gaze dropped briefly to where the fabric hung, then back up to her face.

"The question," he said quietly, "is how far you’ll let me go, Diana. All the way. Or will you keep pushing me away, leaving me thinking about what almost happened." His eyes locked onto hers, begging. His hands found the remaining strings of her dress. He pulled them slowly, giving her every opportunity to stop him, watching her face the entire time.

The dress gave way — fabric whispering down, pooling at her waist. Her breasts bare in the candlelight, perfect and proud, rising and falling with her unsteady breathing.

Livia couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. Her heart was throwing itself against her ribs with absolutely reckless abandon and she had no idea — none whatsoever — why she wasn’t doing anything to stop this. She just... wasn’t. His fingers moved to her breasts skimming, fingertips tracing the outer curve of each one in slow, barely-there circles.

Livia stood very still and tried to remember how breathing worked. Both his hands came up simultaneously — brushing across her nipples in one light pass.

The jolt that went through her was completely beyond her control. A sharp intake of breath, her whole body registering the contact.

He smiled, his hypothesis had just been proven correct by irrefutable evidence. "Told you," he said quietly. "One minute. Want me to find the next?"

Livia opened her mouth. Her voice appeared to have made its own arrangements and left without her.

Richard waited. His thumbs traced idle, patient circles just at the outer edges of her nipples. "I need you to respond, Diana. Want me to find the next?" He was going to make her say it. He was absolutely, infuriatingly going to make her say it out loud.

"Yes," she whispered.

The word had barely formed when Richard moved. He took her in his arms and kissed her. Livia’s hands came up, pressing against his chest, feeling the solid warmth of him through his shirt.

Her arms found their way out of her sleeves without her consciously deciding anything about it. The dress — already at her waist, slid the rest of the way down. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him closer.

Kissed him back with everything she hadn’t said and hadn’t done and hadn’t allowed herself to want since the moment he walked in.

Richard groaned against her mouth. He picked her up without breaking the kiss. Gathered her against him, her bare torso warm against his shirt, and moved — crossing the room until the window ledge met the backs of his hands and he set her down on it. His lips left hers and found her neck.

Livia’s head fell back immediately, a soft sound escaping her as his mouth moved along the curve of her throat. Her fingers found his hair and stayed there.

His hands moved to her thighs. He widened the space between them, settling himself in the gap, and ran his fingers up and down the sides of her drawers — the thin cotton the last remaining obstacle between his hands and what he’d been thinking about with an embarrassing frequency for weeks.

Just the sides. Just the edges. It was maddening. Richard pressed a flurry of kisses across her chest — collarbone, sternum, the soft swell of each breast — then back up to her jaw, her cheek, the corner of her mouth.