My Naughty Minette Read Online Free Page B

played over her body?
    She’d dreamed so many nights of lying beside Lord August and basking in the warmth of his embrace. She’d dreamed of him touching her and kissing her with lustful abandon. In fact, she had wished for it so badly that when she awakened to find it happening, she thought herself still in the throes of a dream. Long moments had gone by when she was half asleep and half awake, long moments before she became aware that she was actually, in true reality, in Lord August’s bed.
    Her blasted sleepwalking. She ought to have confessed to her brother that it had started again. Warren would have locked her in, or asked Townsend to station a footman at her door.
    Then you wouldn’t have had this.
    But she
shouldn’t
have this. My goodness, he was making free with her person in a very licentious way, and he wasn’t finished yet. In his defense, he thought her a kitchen maid, and she let him believe it, because otherwise she would have to go away, and it was August, whom she had loved and idolized for so many years...
    Oh, he was so warm and so large and so
real
next to her, and had apparently gone to bed tonight without any clothes. In her folly, she’d allowed him to undress her too, and give her all manner of caresses, things she hadn’t even read about in romantic novels. At least she didn’t think she had. The language was often flowery and nonspecific.
    While she lay there trying to think back to some of the more instructive passages, August stroked her skin, and fondled her breasts and put his mouth upon them, teasing her nipples with his teeth until she shuddered in a helpless kind of trance. Minette knew she ought to stop him. She
really
ought to stop him and leave. But it felt so good, and she would never, ever have another chance to feel this way, especially once he was betrothed to Lady Priscilla.
    And so she dithered and sighed, and clutched his thick, dark hair that was so much softer than she had ever believed. She wished she could see him, see his warm, muscled body lying beside her. Of course, she’d memorized every aspect of his hands, and his face, the only parts of him that showed outside his clothes. If only she could see the rest of him. If only this encounter between them was real, and not some dream-launched caper that would only lead to misfortune.
    “Mary,” he sighed.
    Yes, Mary. She was Mary for this hour. She’d stay an hour and then she’d tell him she had to go back to the kitchens. Servants rose at early hours. She was Mary, a naughty, wanton servant girl who’d crept into the Earl of Augustine’s bed to warm him on his birthday night.
    Minette Bernard, this has gone on long enough. You’re playing a dangerous game.
    Just a half hour, perhaps, and then she’d find the strength and opportunity to go. It was only so pleasant to be hugged and touched and caressed by the long-time lover of her dreams.
    “You’re very quiet,” he said. His fingers found her face in the dark, and traced down her cheeks to her parted lips. “What now, my angel? Would you like a chance to use this pretty mouth?”
    “To kiss you?” she asked. She tried to use a different tone and inflection, the way the servants talked. If he discovered her identity now...oh, what a terrible scene.
    “Yes, to kiss me.” He knelt up in the bed. She could hear his movement in the darkness, and feel the mattress dip. She could just make out the outline of his body. So large and strong. He reached and groped for her hand, and pressed it downward along his torso.
    Oh, my. He placed it on a hard, hot shaft of flesh, and moved it up and down. She didn’t know if she was touching him or...well. What else could she be touching? But this part of his body was so big and stiff, so much larger than it looked tucked in his breeches. Not that she spent a great deal of time studying men’s breeches. Only August’s breeches, when he wasn’t looking at her, of course, and she knew she’d never seen anything this