A Most Unladylike Proposition - Chapter 17

The single word undid James. He had never felt this fevered mix of emotions before. Her slight weight was the most erotic pressure he’d ever experienced, even as her shy kisses reminded him of her inexperience and humbled him further. He was already on the edge of his self-control, and yet equally desperate to prolong the moment for Diana, who deserved all the tenderness and care he could muster within himself.

He took her lips again, this time in a long, gentle kiss that spun on and on. He kept his hands firmly fixed in the fabric of her skirts to stop himself from touching her, but when she pulled back and moaned in frustration, he asked, ‘What’s wrong? Tell me what you want. What you need.’

‘I don’t know,’ she replied, her tone laced with frustration. She collapsed against him. ‘I don’t know,’ she repeated.

‘Do you trust me?’ Unlike the times before, this time it was a question, not a demand.

To her credit, she did not reply in the affirmative. Instead, she said, ‘I desperately want to.’

He conceded her point with a small nod. And because he wanted her to understand, he said, ‘That feeling that is building inside of you is normal. It’s…unsatiated desire. Need.’

She had the gall to roll her eyes at him. ‘I know very well that women are not susceptible to the vices of the body in the same way that men are.’

Her words might have humoured him had they not devastated him so completely. ‘I assure you, my lady, that pleasure is not a vice and that women have just as great a right to it as men do.’

‘Are you always so liberal when it comes to female physical autonomy?’ she asked.

‘No.’ But James made himself a promise right then, and he repeated it to her to solidify it. ‘But I will be with you. When we are married, I will show you what it is to lose your body to another, to a single moment in time. I will drive you wild. And you will love it.’

‘Show me now.’