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

that she, Julia Corbett, of the Dials would go and lose her senses and reason and fall so hopelessly for a gentleman?

Gentle hands came to rest upon her shoulders, and her body immediately stiffened, but then Harris lightly massaged her shoulders, forcing the tension from her person, and she leaned reflexively back into him and the warmth and support he offered.

“It is going to be all right, though, Julia,” he whispered against her ear. “I will be with you.”

When he uttered those words, there was nothing else she longed for more.

She remained that way, continuing to selfishly take of his kindness, a kindness he’d certainly not feel were he to know he held an impostor in his arms.

Drawing in a deep breath, she turned in his arms. “Harris—”

“Do you know, Julia, I’ve been staring at this tray for nearly twenty minutes.”

This time, her plans to tell him were brought to a halt for a different reason—confusion. She cocked her head. “My lord?”

He caught her plait and teased the ends of those strands knotted with a bow. “Do you know, I quite despise that formal title on your lips. There is a wrongness to it. It is Harris,” he corrected.

He couldn’t be any more wrong. Between the stations and lies that divided them, there was no other way in which she should address him—if even at all.

Still, she stole his name for herself one more time. “Harris,” she allowed.

“The pastries,” he resumed, motioning to the items in question. “I headed to the kitchens and knew Her Grace’s cook would have them waiting. I collected them, and I’ve been staring at them since, and thinking about what I said to you earlier. I told you I counted pastries.”

At the look he gave her, a look she struggled to make sense of, she shook her head. “I don’t understand what you’re saying, Harris.”

“I realized how I’d taken luxuries for granted. That since I was a mere boy, I’d not appreciation for the plights of others. And I didn’t even really have one, until now. And that is humbling, and shameful, and wrong.”

“You didn’t live in my world, Harris—”

“That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have been aware of it,” he cut her off. “The point I’m making, Julia, is… the duchess? She wants to shower you with every luxury you went without. And you have more reason than absolutely anyone to take whatever gift you are given.”

Her eyes slid shut. The Lord was punishing her. There was nothing else for it.

But then, the devil had always lived stronger in her, and it was why she opened her eyes, leaned up, and kissed Harris, delaying the inevitable and taking this last moment from him.

Harris stilled, and then his hands were immediately on her. His fingers sank into her hips, and he kneaded that flesh, working his hands over her person, scooping her under her buttocks and drawing her close.

“You deserve more than a stolen moment in a carriage or on a piano bench,” he rasped between kisses.

Drawing back, Julia took his hands firmly in hers. She angled slightly away from him, her chest moving with the same desperate force as his. “I deserve to decide who I want to have this moment with,” she said, breathless. She’d managed to hold on to her virtue, a nearly impossible feat in the Dials, and reveled in the power that came in giving herself to the man she chose. She wanted this. She wanted this one moment with him to take with her when she went. Taking his palms in hers, she brought them to her breasts.

His eyes darkened, and he instantly curled his palms over those swells. Then, ever so slowly, he glided the pads of his thumbs over the pebbled peak of each, teasing her nipples.

She bit her lip to keep in a moan.

He continued to tease that flesh, and then, lowering his head, he kissed her through that fabric, the thin cotton a flimsy barrier to the heat of his mouth. Nay, instead, it only lent a heady eroticism, a kiss that promised everything, with only the thinnest of divides between his lips and her breast.

Harris sank onto the bench and drew her closer so that she stood between his legs. With a restraint that proved he left this moment fully in her hands, he slowly loosened the belt at her waist.

Julia moved his hands away, and then, holding his eyes with hers, she made quick work of untying it. Shrugging out of her wrapper, she let it fall to the floor behind her, and then, tugging her nightdress up, she tossed it aside so that she stood naked before him.

He sat motionless, and then, the same way he’d touched her before, he palmed her breasts, filling his hands, and she’d been wrong. This was the headiest, most erotic of acts. Leaning forward, he flicked his tongue along the tip of her right breast. Back and forth, he continued that erotic love play.

She moaned, her legs going weak beneath her, but he filled his hands with her buttocks, keeping her upright and continuing his worship. And then he drew a sensitive tip deep, suckling of her.

“Harris,” she pleaded, tangling her fingers in his hair and urging him on.

He continued laving her breast, his mouth making wet, noisy, suckling sounds that only raised her desire to a fever pitch. Of their own volition, her hips moved as she arched them in time to his ministrations.

Harris shifted his focus to the previously neglected pebbled tip, bestowing the same attention to it. A hot, heavy wetness formed between her legs, and she couldn’t bring herself to feel a proper shame.

Moaning, Julia let her legs fall open.

“Do you want this?” he asked harshly, cupping her between her legs.

“I should say I do not,” she panted. She lifted