looked up at him searchingly. “What is it you want from me?” she finally murmured softly.
“Everything!” he assured her heatedly, his gaze feverish. “I’ve longed to be with you again, to touch you again,” he murmured achingly. “Will you allow me?” His hands were against the buttons at the back of her gown.
Anna swallowed before answering, knowing she should say no, that she would regret this madness tomorrow. That she would have time to regret it for the rest of her life.
But it was a regret she knew would be all the deeper if she now went against the dictates of her heart. She needed this memory with Rufus in order to make the rest of her life bearable without him.
“Yes,” she breathed shyly.
Rufus unfastened her gown before gently tugging down the loosened material to reveal her breasts covered only by the thinness of her chemise. “You are so beautiful, Anna,” he groaned as he revealed her rose-coloured nipples. “Do they ache, Anna?” He ran his fingertips across the tips. “Are they hot and aching for me to kiss them?” he encouraged raspily even as he lowered his head and took a rosy nipple into the heat of his mouth.
Anna was so awash with sensation, in the unmistakeable knowledge of Rufus’s passion, and the desire he voiced for her so fiercely, she was unable to do anything more than arch her back as she groaned her surrender and gave herself up completely to the pleasure of being in his arms.
“You are so lovely,” he murmured as the heat of his mouth moved to pay homage to her other breast. “So very lovely,” he groaned before suckling the roused nipple deep into his mouth, lathing with his tongue, biting gently with sharp and stimulating teeth.
Rufus had never felt so aroused as he did making love to Anna. So deeply inflamed that he wanted to give her pleasure, to pleasure her, until she belonged to him completely. Anna. His Anna, whether she knew it yet or not.
He was moved by her beauty, entertained by her feistiness, enthralled with her delicious body. Her breasts were perfect, the taste of her nipples as addictive as her mouth, the skin of her thighs so silky soft as he caressed their length beneath her gown, between her thighs so wet and inviting as he touched her through the slit in her drawers.
“Rufus?” she gasped as he eased a finger inside the moist heat of her.
“Let me, love,” he encouraged softly as he eased a second finger inside her, her inner muscles grasping his fingers, at the same time as he pressed his thumb rhythmically against her pulsing core.
Rufus suckled one of her nipples deeply into his mouth as he continued to stroke his fingers inside her, Anna arching against him as his thumb pressed harder against her.
His.
This woman was his.
“Rufus!” Anna cried out at the unimagined pleasure coursing wildly through every inch of her body, her hands clinging on to the muscled hardness of Rufus’s shoulders as she arched up into his invading fingers. She needed— Oh goodness, she needed—
“Let go for me, Anna!” Rufus encouraged gruffly.
“I do not know how!” She shook her head from side to side as the pleasure seemed almost too much to bear.
“Let go, love,” he groaned harshly. “Just let go!”
Anna gave another gasp as his words triggered something deep inside her and her pleasure washed over her in wave after wave of ecstasy such as Anna had never thought of or imagined in her wildest daydreams.
His, Rufus groaned in satisfaction, unrelenting as he rode Anna’s climax to the very end of her pleasure. Until she lay limp and gasping in his arms, her eyes fever bright as she looked up at him in wonder.
“Tell me you want me too, Anna,” Rufus urged hotly; his arousal a painful ache between his thighs. “Tell me I can have all of you.”
“Rufus?” She looked up at him dazedly, uncomprehending.
“There is no one here to stop us,” he explained heatedly. “Watkins will not return until he is called for, and your brother is occupied in the village.”
Anna was breathing hard as she slowly came back to her senses and realised the intimacies she had allowed to happen. Exactly what her wanton hungers, her desire for excitement and adventure, had led her into doing.
And how much Rufus would despise her once he also came back to his senses.
Her face paled even as she pulled herself out of his arms before moving quickly down to the bottom of the chaise and getting back onto her feet, her legs trembling as she turned away from him to pull her chemise and gown up over her swollen breasts.
What had she done? How could she have allowed this to happen?
To have allowed Rufus to touch her so intimately, and the building of that unbearable pleasure, so quickly followed by the release she could still feel between her thighs.
She had not realised when she gave herself up to his desire for her. Had not known where, or how far, her own passions would take her.
It was too much.
Rufus was too much.
He was also, no matter how much he might try to dismiss it, the Duke of Northamptonshire. And Anna would never be any more to him than another conquest. A woman to amuse him while he was in Banbury, so far away from the sophisticated amusements and equally sophisticated women he usually enjoyed in London.
She was merely an amusement to him.
A diversion, nothing more.
Anna had never met a man like Rufus before. A man so handsome. So self-assured. So intelligent. So wickedly amusing. So achingly, sinfully attractive.
She had realised the moment she’d seen him again that night, and the idea had grown as the two of them talked, as he made such delicious love to her just now, that somehow over the past six days her fascination with him had turned to budding love. A love that had burst into full bloom tonight. She was in love with Rufus Drake, the wickedly handsome Duke of Northamptonshire.
The fact that her heart was now breaking at that knowledge, as she now felt broken, would be of no interest to him. As she would be of no interest to him once he was back amongst his sophisticated London friends.
And she would not, could not, allow him to see, or even guess, her feelings for him, and the heartbreak of loving him. That would be the ultimate humiliation.
She raised her chin determinedly. “I had thought the droit du seigneur to have been abandoned several centuries ago?”
Rufus was taken aback. “You misunderstand my intentions totally.”
“I do not think so,” Anna murmured dismissively. “You invited my brother and me to dine here with you this evening, and then immediately proceeded to kiss me, to make love to me, the moment he was out of the room. You then pointed out that there is no one here to stop your attentions. And you— I— I am so ashamed!” She buried her face in her hands.
Rufus had done all of those things, but only because he had been so happy to be alone with Anna again. To be able to hold her. To make love to her.
He had obviously frightened her with the intensity of that lovemaking.
These possessive feelings were utterly new to him. Unprecedented. But that did not mean Rufus was not completely aware of what they were. What they meant to him. What Anna meant to him.
He had awoken every day these past six days full of anticipation, buoyant in the knowledge that he might see her again. Not only had he never before met a woman he desired as much as he did her, but he admired her intelligence, her sense of adventure, that wild imagination that had come up with the story of the kitten up in the tree. Anna made him laugh, at himself as much as anything else, and not in the bored or jaded way of his London friends.
She