Page 45 of Duke of Wickedness (Regency Gods #4)

The anguish in his voice made her own heart break for him—for the mother he clearly still mourned and for the boy who had seen his parents’ failures all too clearly.

“And I can’t,” he managed, voice thick. “I can’t do that to you, my darling. I can’t . If I looked at you and saw that I’d done that to you… I think it might actually kill me.”

He was afraid, Ariadne realized. It seemed obvious now, and it seemed ridiculous that she’d never considered it before.

She understood how she had missed it; she’d grown accustomed to seeing him as the one in control of things, the one who had served as her guide through everything she wanted to know.

It hadn’t occurred to her that he might feel lost, too.

Ariadne hadn’t always been brave, but she thought that maybe this meant she knew the weight of bravery better than others. She knew how to dig for it, how to fight for it when she needed it.

She needed it now. She could be brave now.

And, if she was very, very lucky, that would be enough to keep her hope burning.

“Do you make a habit of going to brothels?” she asked.

This abrupt shift clearly surprised him.

“I—no,” he said.

“Do you harass your maids?” she pressed.

His horror couldn’t be faked. “Christ! Of course not.”

“And do you regularly ruin ladies?”

He was beginning to understand what she was getting at. It had taken him long enough, she thought fondly.

“I probably ruined you just now,” he said, jerking his head back toward the ballroom. “You were only now just shouting at me about it.”

Despite herself, Ariadne smiled. He couldn’t have set things up better for her if he had tried.

“It needn’t mean ruination,” she said, smiling shyly at him. “You know what it would take to fix things.”

He looked frankly terrified, but he didn’t leave.

“Ariadne—”

She kept talking. She didn’t want him to convince himself of his own insufficiencies, and she didn’t want to lose her own nerve.

“You aren’t your father,” she said flatly.

“I didn’t know him—” Which was lucky for the late duke, she thought furiously but did not say.

“—but I know that much. Moreover, I am not your mother. If you betrayed me… Well, actually, I wouldn’t have to do anything, because my brothers would murder you.

And that’s if Catherine didn’t get to you first.”

“That’s what Percy said,” David muttered.

Ariadne found the idea that Percy knew anything about any of this to be unsettling in the extreme, but she decided to handle that horrifying little detail later.

“I am not afraid of you,” she said. “I’ve been ready to throttle you a dozen times this month, but I’ve never been afraid of you. So those other things—they don’t matter.”

He hesitated before his next objection, and the light inside her grew.

She needed that light. She needed all her courage to get through the next part.

“Here is what matters,” she said, her heart pounding in her chest. “I love you. I love that you showed me what I wanted to see when I asked you. I love that you use your power to make the world safe for people who don’t.

I love that you care enough to try to protect me—even if you are unbelievably, idiotically misguided for doing so. ”

She stepped forward then, because she could not hold back any longer. She was relieved beyond measure when he didn’t shy away from her touch as she laid her hand on his arm.

“So,” she said, feeling the way he trembled with tension.

“The past doesn’t matter. Yes, some marriages end badly.

But some don’t. And this—” She waved a hand between them.

“Things between us right now are already terrible. I miss you.” She sniffed, but kept going.

“I miss you so much that it is killing me. So if you don’t love me back?—”

“I do.” The words came out of him in a rush.

Ariadne felt as though her heart might burst out of her.

“You do?” she asked, breathless.

“Yes,” he said, and some of the tension bled out of him. “Yes, I do. Of course I do. I just… I’m afraid, Ariadne. This might be the most selfish thing I’ve ever done—ever even considered.”

He was biting his lip, his anxiety palpable, and she reached up to cup his face this time. He leaned into the caress like it was a lifeline.

“Be selfish,” she said. “For once in your life, take what you want. Demand what you need.”

“I want all of you,” he said, his eyes drifting closed.

She tugged his face down.

“David,” she urged. “Look at me.”

He did, his eyes bright, tortured.

“I want all of you, too. If you will be mine, I will be yours.” The words held the weight of a vow, and she let them. She was making her own future. She was grasping what she wanted with both hands, and she was not letting go. “Body and soul. You and me. No regrets.”

He sucked in a gasping breath, and then he was kissing her, grasping at her, pulling her close with the same fervor that she offered him.

“I love you,” he told her between kisses. “I love you. God, how I love you.”

And then he started to laugh and she, understanding him perfectly, started to laugh, too, because it simply felt so good—so wonderful—so perfect .

“I adore you,” she told him. “Just the way you are.”

“I’m the luckiest bastard in London,” he told her, pressing his forehead to hers. “What did I ever do to deserve you?”

This question proved rhetorical, as he kissed her before she had any hope of answering.

They kissed and kissed, then kissed some more. She let her hands start to roam, feeling the slope of his shoulders and the muscles of his back. She made a mental note to ensure that he started eating more; the past month had left him looking and feeling thinner than he ought to have done.

Then she giggled into his kiss some more because she had the right to make sure he did such things, now. She got to have him—to keep him. She got to care for him. Love him.

In that moment, the luck felt as though it was all hers.

“If we keep going on like this,” David said when they had been kissing for a good long while—and yet, not nearly long enough for Ariadne’s tastes, “we are going to make a scene.”

Ariadne thought about the years she’d spent trying to be the perfect Society miss. And then she thought about the Duke of Wilds, the rake to end all rakes, here in her arms, all hers. To have and to hold.

“Good,” she said. “Let them talk.”

David gave her a look that was delighted and falsely scandalized. There were still dark circles under his eyes, and he still looked weary. The pains of the past month would not disappear in an instant, after all. But his happiness shone through. To her, he was as bright as the sun.

“I’m already in love with you, my darling,” he said chidingly. “You don’t need to be any more perfect.” He bent close to her, one hand at her waist, pulling her close enough to him that she could feel his hardness in his trousers.

“Besides,” he murmured in that way of his, the one that never failed to make her shiver, “I want to do things to you that are not properly done in a garden. Let me take you somewhere we can be really alone, won’t you?”

Ariadne had no objection to that. He scooped her under her knees, a display of athleticism that left her gasping with how alluring she found it, and carried her off through the gardens.

Her giggles echoed behind her as he carried her off toward the life they would build together.