My Fair Marchioness (Scandalous Affairs Book 3) by Christi Caldwell (best short books to read txt) 📗

riveted by her slightly parted lips. Encouraged, emboldened, he turned her hand in his and kissed the top, worshiping the other side of those long and beautifully real fingers.

Her chest rose and fell, the little rasps of her sighs as she breathed in and out. The headiest sounds of her desire raised his by degrees.

She bit her lower lip, her slightly crooked teeth sinking into that plump flesh, and he fought the groan that rumbled in his chest.

“I want to kiss you,” he said hoarsely, torn between wishing she were the voice of reason and desperately wanting her to want that embrace, too.

“And I want you, too, Harris.” Her response came throaty and sultry, and with a groan, he drew her atop his lap.

His mouth was on hers in a moment, her kiss as raw and unbridled as she was with her truths, and he devoured her mouth, wanting to consume her. She angled her head, and he deepened his kiss.

As he adjusted her so that she straddled his legs, the muslin skirts of her cloak and dress shifted in a hedonistic rustle, and he sank his fingers into the expanse of flesh he exposed. “I have wanted to do this since I kissed you in the Marble Room,” he rasped against her mouth.

She moaned, and he took advantage of that whimpering capitulation and slid his tongue inside to toy with hers.

Julia lashed her tongue against his. All the while, her hips rocked in time to the sway of the carriage, her body moving against his in perfect rhythm. Harris reached a hand between them and found those honeyed curls between her legs.

She instantly stiffened.

“Let me in,” he coaxed, nipping lightly at the corner of her lip. “Let me feel how much you want this, too.”

Julia hesitated a moment, and then with a sigh, she eased her legs and opened herself fully to his search. “This is wrong,” she panted, her breath coming in noisy rasps as she moved in time to his stroking. “I-I should s-stop.”

“Ah, but do you want to?” He slipped a finger inside her wet channel, and she whimpered. “If you tell me, Julia, I will.”

“Please…” His entire body screamed in protest. He made to withdraw, but she covered his hand with hers. “Don’t.” That last word emerged as a desperate plea.

Emboldened, Harris added a second, stroking her. There grew a restlessness to Julia’s thrusts, a frantic, frenzied rhythm. Whimpering, she buried her face in the crook of his shoulder, and he teased her with his touch.

“Come for me, love,” he urged, breathless, wanting to feel her surrender. Wanting to give her this pleasure. He increased the cadence of his fingers inside her. “You are so beautiful,” he whispered, pressing a kiss against her temple.

Julia gripped the front of his jacket, her fingers forming little claws in the wool as she clenched and unclenched the material. She cried out, but anticipating her surrender, Harris was already taking her mouth in a kiss that devoured and silenced. She ground herself into him, thrusting wildly, pushing herself into Harris and his touch in a moment that went on forever, one that he wanted to go on forever.

She tensed and collapsed against him, breathing but a single word. “Harris.” And he was certain there wasn’t a more magnificent sound than those two syllables, his name falling from her lips.

Harris held her close. Folding his arms around her quaking frame, he rubbed his hand in a slow, smooth circle over her back.

The carriage rolled to a stop, rocking slowly forward and then back before coming to a complete halt.

Julia jerked upright, the top of her head catching his chin, and he grunted.

“Bloody hell,” she whispered, scrambling off his lap and back onto her bench. She’d just managed to shove her skirts back into their proper place when the servant drew the door open.

The footman, Stebbins, who’d proven himself unabashedly smitten since she’d joined Harris for breakfast earlier in the week, held a hand up.

“Where are you going?” Harris asked.

“When I said I intended to help, Harris, surely you didn’t think I intended to remain comfortably inside this carriage while you and Her Grace’s servants saw to handing out the goods?” she asked with a wry little twist of her lips. With a murmured word of her gratitude, Julia allowed herself to be helped down.

Harris hurried after her, jumping down.

She’d already taken full command of the execution, and he found himself besotted for reasons that had nothing to do with his body’s physical awareness of her and absolutely everything to do with the control she took.

He found himself falling back and letting her take that control she sought and exercised so magnificently. Accepting a basket from Davies, a footman, Julia handed out the items to children who assembled around her. She had the look of a lady dropping breadcrumbs while little birds gathered around her.

He frowned.

Only, they weren’t little birds, but rather, the smallest, saddest-looking children. Their garments hung open in a sorry state of disrepair, hems having long since lost the threading that held the closures together.

Julia worked quickly, doling out her offerings and offering smiles and kind words as she did. How very different she was from the last woman with whom he’d kept company, a woman who’d gotten so very offended that he’d dare hand out flowers to peddlers who’d use those scraps to resell.

There came a light, little tug on his jacket.

He looked down.

A little girl with the widest, biggest brown eyes stared up at him, her little face gaunt and smudged. “Ye got stuff, too?” she asked hopefully.

Did he?

She turned a hand up, displaying a reddened, coarse, callused one that matched Julia’s in all but size.

And his heart wrenched, painfully.

“Well?” the little girl prodded impatiently.

“I do.” And taking