Lady Amelia Takes a Lover by Darling Sofie

Author:Darling, Sofie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Romance, Historical
Publisher: Dragonblade Publishing, Inc.
Published: 2022-07-28T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

Amelia had seen the nude male form.

In many iterations.

Paintings…statu­ary…even as a child when she and her siblings would run around naked for entire summers at a time.

She’d known the basics of the male anatomy.

But what greeted her eyes now…

Nothing that came before was anything to this.

To Ripon’s, um, anatomy.

Muscles everywhere—arms, shoulders, chest, thighs, stomach—rippling beneath skin with a light dusting of dark brown hair. And then there was that part… Nothing in her life had properly prepared her for its…girth, for lack of a more fitting word.

Neither had anything in her life prepared her for her body’s response to the sight of him. While she hadn’t the faintest notion of what to do with a man like him, her body seemed to be entertaining ideas, as if she’d been sat to a seven-course supper after thirty days in the desert.

From the pit of her stomach heat expanded within her, as if seeking a way out and finding none. She hadn’t the least idea of how to rid herself of it.

But the man inciting this feeling?

He did.

Instinct bade her shift back, to put distance between herself and the naked man who sat not four feet away and appeared utterly unbothered by his nakedness. In fact…was that a glint of challenge in his eyes?

Right.

She noticed the paintbrush in her hand. She was to use it, if only she could remember how.

Again, instinct took over as her brush began to move, starting with the defined line of his clavicle, the subtle indent at the base of his neck, the dusting of hair across his chest, dense muscles beneath, and lower still the eye followed down the packed ridges of his stomach…and lower still…

She left that space blank, for now. She needed distance from that—and the curious feeling it lit inside her—to do what they were here for.

Her gaze lifted and followed the long line of an arm, the way shadow and light played against his skin and the bulk of the muscles beneath. In classical statuary, he wouldn’t be the David. He would be the Goliath.

A creative passion like she’d never felt ran rampant through her, as if she were infected with a fever that she never wanted to cool.

“Shift your chin down and left just a hair.”

A smile that held a hint of wickedness tipped about his mouth as he obeyed. She was commanding him—a duke—and he didn’t mind all that much.

“Keep the smile,” she said. Some part of her understood there would be a day when she would want to see his smile again. That smile hinted at the essence of the man she was coming to know—the man he truly was. A little bit grouchy. A little bit playful.

Without thinking, she shifted forward and grabbed his wrist to turn it. A second later, it hit her, and she froze in place. She’d breached the distance between them and was touching him—this nude man.

She didn’t startle. In fact, her hand seemed to refuse to move away from him. As if

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