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Anna was only in her very early twenties, and yet there was such wisdom in her eyes, so much understanding for what he had been trying to convey with words that, to him, seemed too trite, too dismissive.
He did deeply regret that he had been too busy with his own life to allow him to be close to his uncle and cousins, because now it was too late.
Was all of life like that? he wondered.
Was life, time, so fragile that it had to be grasped with both hands?
Was that how Anna had felt when they’d spoken two days ago? As if time, life, was passing her by? That it would continue to pass her by?
Was that how he now felt, standing in this churchyard, gazing up at his family crypt, where so many of his ancestors lay, including his own father? Did he feel that if he did not seize life, seize the things he really wanted, that he would lose them forever?
Rufus had become very introspective over the past couple of days as his thoughts dwelled on just that problem. Knowing that he hungered for something.
Or perhaps someone?
“I—” He stopped as the heavens suddenly seemed to open up above them, a deluge of rain falling down on them both. “Let’s get you into the church out of the rain.” He took a light hold of her arm as they hurried down the pathway.
Even with her shawl pulled up over her hair Anna was soaked through by the time the two of them reached the church vestibule.
“Do you love the rain as much as I?” She laughed with happiness as she removed her shawl before looking up at Rufus. He removed his hat, sweeping the dampness of his dark hair back from his brow. “I always feel that it cleanses everything and makes it brand new.” She continued to smile as she looked out of the arched entryway at the falling rain.
“Would it cleanse me, do you think, if I were to stand out in it?” Rufus mused unsmilingly.
She turned to look at him quizzically. “You already look very clean to me.”
He smiled ruefully. “I am talking of my past, Anna. Do you think the rain would cleanse me of that?”
Anna’s breath caught in her throat at the intensity of his gaze. “A person’s past,” she spoke carefully, “is exactly that, surely?”
“Is it?” He grimaced. “And what if that past has been less than reputable?”
“But honourable? Always honourable?”
His mouth twisted into a grimace of a smile. “Oh yes, always honourable.”
“Then it must be accepted as the past.” She shrugged. “For the past cannot be changed, we can only hope for the future.”
Rufus felt something shift deep inside him, as if a key had just been turned to open a part of him that had been locked away.
“Anna,” he murmured gruffly as he moved to take her in his arms. “Beautiful, wise Anna.” He rested his cheek against the silkiness of her hair.
Anna had no idea what was happening. Did not fully understand what Rufus was saying. But she did understand that he was in need of warmth and understanding, possibly because of that visit to his family crypt, that she had not been mistaken in how alone he had seemed.
Her arms moved about his tapered waist as she rested her head against his chest, and she became instantly aware of the rapid beat of his heart.
They stood like that for some minutes. Long, delicious minutes, when Anna simply enjoyed holding and being held. A time out of time.
A time that surely could not last.
“Would you be ready to do the church flowers now, Miss Anna?”
Anna pulled sharply out of Rufus’s arms, her face blazing with colour as she turned to look at Mrs Faulkner, the baker’s wife. She had arrived to help arrange the flowers. As she did every Saturday...
Something Anna had completely forgotten in Rufus’s company.
“His Grace was sheltering from the rain, and I was keeping him company,” Anna announced brightly as the elderly lady looked at the duke suspiciously. Unlike some in the village, Mrs Faulkner was not a gossip, thankfully.
Anna quickly made the introductions before announcing that it really was time for the two of them to go into the church and see to the flowers.
Rufus eyed her with amusement as he took his leave. “A pleasure to have met you, Mrs Faulkner. We will meet again soon, I hope, Anna,” he added huskily.
Anna was too embarrassed to reciprocate, too mortified at being caught in the duke’s arms by Mrs Faulkner, to even be able to look at Rufus again before he turned and left them.
* * *
“Did you arrange this deliberately?”
Rufus looked at Anna as she sat to the left of him at the mahogany table in the smaller dining-room at Banbury Hall, her head bent as she looked down at the folded hands on her knees, the softness of her voice sounding hurt rather than imbued with her usual fire.
No doubt that was because of the presence of Rufus’s butler who, having served their meal, now stood in attendance near the door.
Rufus motioned for Watkins to leave them, waiting until the other man had closed the door behind himself before answering her. “I am responsible for calling upon your brother after our meeting at the church this morning, and also for issuing the invitation for you and your brother to dine here with me this evening,” Rufus acknowledged. “But I certainly had nothing to do with your brother being called away to tend to one of his flock the moment our dessert had been served, leaving the two of us alone here together.”
Although Rufus accepted that he was guilty of persuading the young parson to allow his sister to stay and finish her meal, after which Rufus had promised he would see she arrived home safely.
Anna looked so beautiful this evening, her gown a pale lemon, with matching slippers on her feet, her hair shining like burnished gold in the last of the evening’s sun streaming through the dining-room windows, her eyes a deep and sparkling blue in her beautiful heart-shaped face.
“You are a duke, sir,” she answered him waspishly as she finally raised her head to look at him, “and no doubt capable of arranging anything you please.”
Ah yes, and there was that sharp little tongue that could amuse and arouse him in equal measure.
“Are you angry with me because of this morning?”
Anna eyed him impatiently, knowing it was not Rufus she was annoyed with, but herself. This morning she had allowed herself to forget who she was for a few pleasurable moments of being held in his arms. A pleasure she had paid for by suffering numerous questions from Mrs Faulkner as they’d arranged the flowers together, the elderly woman at last accepting that Anna had merely been comforting the duke, who had been overcome with emotion after visiting his family crypt.
“You did not have to come here this evening, Anna,” Rufus spoke quietly. “You could have used any number of excuses not to accompany your brother.”
Anna knew that.
But that part of her, which was wilful as well as impetuous, the part of her that so longed for adventure and excitement, had refused to allow her to do so.
Because she had wanted to see Rufus again. To know if her legs would once again become weak just at the sight of him. If her body would become aroused just by being near him...
A single glance at Rufus in his evening clothes and Anna had known without a doubt that she did indeed feel all of those things towards Rufus.
Achingly.
Futilely.
She was a parson’s daughter, and Rufus Drake was a sophisticated London gentleman, not to mention a duke, and at least ten years older than she.
“Anna?” He frowned as he stood up to stand next to her chair, his eyes holding hers captive.
Her heart raced. “What are you doing?”
“I believe you are well aware of what I want, what I have wanted since the moment you arrived here this evening.” His eyes gleamed with desire. “What we both want.”
It was indeed a desire, a need, that Anna echoed. With all her heart.
She swallowed. “But we should not.”
“I must, Anna.”
He bent to swing her up into his arms and carried her over to a chaise in front of the window, laying her down upon it before joining her, the heat of his body pressed close against her own, a pleasure Anna had never thought to know with him again.
“You have no idea how much I have longed, hungered, to hold you in my arms, to be with you like this again, Anna,” he murmured throatily as his head lowered and his lips captured hers.
If his hunger was even half as much as her own was for him to hold her, and make love to her, then Anna did know.
Chapter Six (#u6dc3a30a-29a3-5b98-9167-147d94a8b035)
It was as if the past six days had never been, as if they were simply continuing where they had left off that day by the pond, as Rufus’s hot, marauding tongue swept confidently between Anna’s parted lips, plundering, claiming, demanding that she respond in kind. A demand that Anna gave into willingly.
He gave a low groan of satisfaction as he felt the shy stroke of Anna’s tongue alongside his own, her hands moving up from his chest and over his shoulders before her fingers became entangled in the dark silky hair curling at his nape. He felt himself once again lost to satisfying his addiction to her unique taste.
He moaned as his lips moved to her cheek, the length of her throat, the creamy tops of her breasts. “I have hungered for this again since the day I met you, Anna. For the taste of you. For you,” he murmured urgently, knowing he spoke the truth, and that he had thought of little else, and no one else, since the two of them had first met six days ago.
“Rufus?”
“Yes, I am Rufus!” he urged fiercely. “Not Northamptonshire. Not a duke. With you I am only Rufus,” he insisted urgently.
She 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.
