Page 46 of Bound By the Duke

But he stood still, staring back at the challenge in her eyes.

Their relationship should be untouched by romance, he reminded himself. He had to control himself. Right now, what he was supposed to do was to make sure she wouldn’t interfere with Lottie’s upbringing.

“You presume much,” he growled.

“And you repress too much,” she shot back. “Even now.”

Her words hit deep.

“You speak of discipline like it’s devotion,” she continued. “But love doesn’t live in rules. It lives in laughter. In softness. In time freely given.”

Those words hit him harder than he cared to admit. For a heartbeat, the mask of the duke faltered, and all that remained was the man who couldn’t bear how right she was.

“You forget yourself,” he warned, though the rasp in his voice betrayed him.

Her lips curved again, faint but sure.

“Do I?” she whispered. “Or do you simply dislike that I have dared to state the truth?” She took one final step closer. “Children are meant to laugh, Percival. They are meant to climb trees and skin their knees, to fall asleep in the grass with daisies in their hair. Not just sit still in parlors and recite Latin to earn affection.”

The sound of his name on her lips was a sin. A soft, intimate caress that made his fists unclench.

His resolve cracked wide open. He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. She was looking at him as if she saw the man beneath the title.

And he hated it. And he wanted it. Craved it.

Wantedher.

God help him, he wanted her.

The silence that fell between them was deeper and dangerous this time. Aurelia stood before him, soft and elegant. Her eyes searched his face with a particular emotion. It wasn’t innocence. It was more… dark and willing.

“An hour.” Although she did not stray from the topic, her eyes hinted at something more. “Just one. Every day. An hour for Lottie to be a child.”

Her request should have sounded simple and reasonable. But the way she challenged him was ruinously intimate. Her voice trembled with both challenge and need.

Percival needed to step away. His words and decisions were final, after all.

“Her future depends on structure, and that’s it,” he told her with finality, ready to leave before he did something regrettable.

But Aurelia was not done.

“You claim to protect her future, Duke. What about the present, which only looks like silence and stiff collars and a father who doesn’t laugh?”

He gritted his teeth; his patience was wearing thin. So without a word, he turned.

“I have had enough,” he growled, then began to walk away.

Aurelia followed, her steps shrinking the distance he had tried to create. “Why do you run from me?”

Her question unnerved him.

He looked back at her with a frown. “Don’t flatter yourself, Aurelia.”

She lifted her chin higher and smiled. “Walk away, then.”

Everything about her body screamed a dare that irked him, pulling at the competitive side of him that wanted to play her game if only to see her redden in embarrassment when she lost. The smug, casual way she crossed her arms over her chest, pushing up her pert breasts, teased him, but he reluctantly tore his eyes away, looking somewhere safer.

When his gaze fell to her mouth, he knew what she was smiling at. She saw what he was trying to hide, and that made her want to test him.