In the Flesh Read Online Free PDF

voice.
    “No, Beatrice. If I let you go, you’ll run away again, and I want to talk to you.” Swiveling her around in his grip, Ritchie’s arms were still unyielding. They held her like iron bands, keeping her jammed up against the hardness at his groin. His cock felt warm and lively against her belly despite the layers and layers of her petticoats.
    “It seems to me that you want to do considerably more than talk to me!”
    The words came out without her bidding, and worse, her body seemed to have acquired a mind of its own now, too. Her hips jerked and rocked, bumping her abdomen against Ritchie’s loins as if deliberately massaging and caressing him.
    What in heaven’s name am I doing?
    Her thoughts whirled as he growled. Not quite as loudly and plaintively as Ambrose Chamfleur had done, but still in a way that recognized her desire.
    But I don’t want you! No! No! I don’t!
    Everything she’d ever read and been taught about ladylike behavior suddenly became nonsense. Stern words that had once tolled in her head were fading, fading. And there was no champagne or other intoxicant to lay the blame on this time. Not even the affection she’d felt for Tommy or misplaced feelings of fondness such as she’d experienced for Eustace.
    No, with this man there was nothing more than instinctive antipathy at very first sight, and a low animal reaction to his maleness.
    And yet still her hips churned and circled, rubbing her groin against Ritchie’s.
    “I can’t deny that, Miss Weatherly. I want to see if that beautiful body of yours is really as luscious as the photographs suggest. I want to touch your skin, stroke you between your legs…taste you there.”
    His tongue…oh, his tongue…
    Had the ceiling above them opened? It seemed so. From the summer night sky itself, there shot down a bolt of lightning that struck Beatrice and took her breath away. Her legs, the very ones that Ritchie seemed so eager to put his face between, turned as weak as wet wool, making her sway wildly.
    No! No! No! she railed again as his arms tightened around her, I am not a fainting miss who has the vapors just because this barbarian is trying to shock me!
    “I’ll thank you not to make such crude remarks, Mr. Ritchie.” She stiffened her spine and fought his grip, but it simply became more robust. “They may impress a certain type of woman, but I actually find them boring, even juvenile.”
    “Oh Beatrice, you’re such a little liar.” His breath against her cheek was as sweet and clean as his utterances were impure. He smelled a little of whiskey, and that only made her want to taste him. His mouth…his skin…oh, his cock.
    Yes, his cock…I like calling it that!
    Wicked thoughts, radical thoughts. But they didn’t linger, because at that moment Ritchie’s mouth came down on hers, devilish and hard.
    The kiss wasn’t a bit like Tommy’s or Eustace’s. It was dry at first, hot and firm and purposeful. No tentative, boyish explorations. No messy meanderings with lips that were sloppy and vaguely slack. Ritchie’s mouth was strong and businesslike, and totally controlled. And when at last things did get wet, that was different, too. His tongue was a dart of power, pushing into her mouth and subduing her. Down between her legs, she seemed to feel it too, just as he’d described.
    Sometime in their flight from the conservatory, she’d snatched her belongings from him, but now, as she tasted his tongue and her own flicked and played around it, her bag, her fan and her dance card tumbled forgotten to the carpet. She needed her hands. She needed them so she could explore his back and his shoulders through the fine dark cloth of his coat, and cling on to him when her knees went weak again.
    She needed them so she could cling on when her hips started to press against him of their own accord, driven by a divine madness and a desperate hunger for the same intimate sharing the Chamfleurs enjoyed.
    Her body was electric, as if filled