He looked down at her, her head on his shoulder, her eyes half-shut with the ecstasy of her feelings, her red lips parted and her breasts moving the soft lace that hid them.
“This is how I have dreamed you might be,” he said and then she felt his hands go to her hair. Very gently he pulled away the diamond pins.
“No, no – ” she whispered.
It was too late. Her hair came tumbling down, cascading over her shoulders, half-veiling her cheeks and now the Duke was kissing it wildly, his face buried in the soft silkiness of it, his lips finding her lips through a veil of hair.
“This is how I knew you would look,” he murmured. “This is how I have imagined you not once but a thousand times. My sweet, my darling, I adore you, I worship you, you are everything to me, my whole life.”
He held her a
