Alarmed by the odd sensations, Iliana brought her hands up to push at his chest, her lips opening on a protest. Her mouth was invaded at once by his seeking tongue. Gasping in surprise, she found that the hands that had started out pushing at him began tugging at his bare shoulders instead as her legs suddenly grew weak beneath her.

Sensing her response, Duncan smiled against her mouth, the tension leaving his body. He was sure he had found the way to her key. In a few minutes she would be begging him to unlock her secrets. Placing his hands at either side of her waist, he slid them up to cup her breasts through the material of her gown. When she jumped slightly in his arms in surprise, then moaned, he squeezed gently, then continued to massage a breast with one hand as the other slid down to cup her behind and draw her against him. This time he was not startled by the hardness that pressed against his own. He savored it as the temporary obstruction he was now sure it was, then set about removing her gown, distracting her from the fact that he was doing so by deepening his kisses and caresses.

As soon as he had her gown undone, he urged it down her shoulders, then rolled it off her hips. It slid to the floor with a rustle as he quickly stepped backward to the edge of the bed. Catching Iliana up in his arms, he dropped to sit upon it, settling her on his lap and continuing to kiss her as he set to work unlacing her undertunic. Pushing that off her shoulders a moment later, he left it to gather in a pool at her waist as his hands slid to caress the soft flesh he had revealed. He enjoyed the weight of her generous breasts in his palms briefly, finding their hard centers with his thumbs and teasing them to excited life, then found it wasn’t enough and tugged his lips from hers.

In that brief moment after he abandoned her lips, Iliana blinked her eyes open, amazed to find herself seated on his lap, naked but for the undertunic gathered around her waist. Alarm bells began ringing inside her head at once. Then her husband closed his lips around one of the ripe nipples he had bared to the afternoon air, and she cried out in surprise and need, all protests forgotten as new sensations, more powerful even than those he had roused before, clamored to life.