Page 144 of Dukes for Dessert

“Say it,” he commanded.

“S-Sebastian.” Her broken whisper filled him with an emotion he couldn’t begin to identify. Something he knew he’d been seeking but didn’t know what to do with now.

True to his word, he parted his lips over the little pearl of her pleasure and insinuated his finger deep into the recesses of her core.

Fuck.

Fuck! He wished he hadn’t done that.

Even as her hips surged up with a sob of bliss, he accepted that he was a fucking doomed man. He’d forever regret knowing what she felt like from the inside. What hot depths of slick velvet pulled at him with such exquisitely feminine flesh.

Everything that had ever happened before, everything that might come to pass after this, dissolved beneath the devastating perfection of the moment. He suckled and slid, licked and laved, all the while rocking his finger inside of her, letting her body drench him with the gripping, pulsating release that took her much too soon.

Thighs clamped against his shoulders and her hands fell to the bed beneath her, bunching and ripping at the coverlet. She screamed in breaths and sobbed his name—or at least raw, broken syllables of it. Over and again. Both an invocation and a benediction, a plea for mercy and a hymn of praise.

Beautiful spasms clenched his fingers, inviting him deeper as she bowed and writhed like a wild creature set free after so long in captivity.

A devil’s whisper slithered through him in the dark. Seduce her. Claim her. Release your cock and finish making her your own.

She will not stop you.

9

Surging away from her, Sebastian stumbled to the small water closet and stuffed himself inside, slamming the door.

Panting as if he’d only just run for the train, he braced both of his hands on the tiny sink and stared at someone he didn’t recognize in the mirror.

He’d the same sand-colored hair, once kept long but now cut fashionably tame. The same pale whisky eyes and sunbaked skin, weathered over his brawny bones just enough to leave winsome grooves that deepened when he smiled.

Except now, they were carved with something he’d never spied on his own features. Something he did not battle often. If ever.

Fear.

Stark and sinister, it glared back at him, creating an ugly portrait of features so often and so frankly admired.

In his entire life, he’d given over to indulgence. To a rebellious rejection of all things considered decent. Tasting the vitality of life had become a tonic to the rigid rejections he’d experienced in his youth.

And yet, he’d always known what he was doing. What his actions might do to him. He took risks, knowing the outcome always tended to turn in the favor of people like him. Strong. Handsome. Proud. Teutonic. Charming. Male. Skilled. Noble. Educated. Wealthy.

Ruthless.

Indeed, he generally only need smile in the direction of a lady to entice her, and it took a few inviting compliments to see her legs parted.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been denied something—someone—he wanted.

And here he was, wanting someone more than he could ever remember, and apparently her favorite word was no.

It should have been enough.

This taste of her. This pleasure he’d promised. He was a libertine and a hedonist and all the things of which she’d accused him.

By choice. The vices and violence, the pleasure and the pain had been measured and controlled by palatable doses. He’d seen so many other men have their sins turned against them. Losing their money to wagers. Their health to sexual disease. Their dignity to drink or the drugging euphoria of other substances.

He’d flirted with all of it and promised himself to none. He was ruled by his passions, not owned by them.

Until now. Until her.

Veronica Weatherstoke was a dangerous phenomenon. An obsession he could feel building in his blood, threatening to overtake him completely.