Page 68 of Duke of Wickedness

He tried to hold on to that thought, even when it felt foolish and fleeting.

He should pull away. He should pull away. He should?—

“I want you to make love to me.”

Davidjerkedaway, surprised beyond words.

Ariadne blinked up at him, clearly a little nervous, but determined. Her head was held high, her shoulders squared. She was excited—excited, when young ladies were taught to treat lovemaking as one of life’s greatest terrors, shrouded in mystery until marriage, with the only hints they ever received being about how much it would hurt, how it was something they had to endure.

But she trusted him. It was clear that she wasn’t afraid, becauseshe trusted him.

He felt that urge to rub at his chest again. Maybe hewassuffering from an angina attack.

“You do know that this will be something that might affect your matrimonial prospects,” he said. It would be unjust of him not to. “You know I don’t hold with all that ‘purity’ nonsense, and of course I’d never tell anyone, but, sweetheart, you aren’t exactly the smoothest liar. Is this the kind of secret you’re prepared to keep? Perhaps for the whole of your life?”

She gave him a reassuring smile, but it wasn’t a dismissal.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I don’t know who I will end up marrying. I don’t know anything about what the future will hold. But,” she went on, holding his gaze, “I do know that I don’t want to marry a man who will hold a past against me. And I do know that I want this. I want to experience thiswith you.”

David closed his eyes. He didn’t know why. He just—he needed to close his eyes.

“Of course, little bird,” he said, even as he knew it was a very, very,verybad idea. A catastrophically bad idea, really. “Anything you desire. That was what I promised you.”

He would keep his word. A man who didn’t keep his word was nothing. David paid his debts, and he upheld his vows. He would not go back on that, not ever, and especially not with her.

He opened his eyes to see her happy smile.

And maybe this was a catastrophically bad idea in the making—well, there was nomaybeabout it—but that happiness made it worth it. Forget the deals. Forget the debts.

“Well, good,” she said brightly. She looked around the dark garden, her mouth twisted up to the side. “Right. Well. This isn’t theideallocation, I’ll grant you?—”

He started to laugh. Really, she was magical. It was extraordinary, this ability of hers to shake him out of dark moods without even trying.

“Don’tlaughat me,” she said, shoving at his shoulder.

He, of course, laughed harder.

“You are a gift, little bird,” he told her. “But you are also out of your bloody mind if you think we are going to do thishere.Orif you think we’re going to do it tonight,” he added when she opened her mouth to respond, the gleam in her eye a little too mischievous to mistake. “You have asked for something, and I intend to see it done right.”

She pouted.

“Oh, very well,” she said, sounding enormously put out about it.

He kissed the pout off her mouth. It was too tempting not to.

And it was all too easy to get lost in the feel of her touch, the taste of her, the sheer heady pleasure of being in her presence.

He got so caught up, in fact, that he almost didn’t hear the footsteps coming up the path until it was too late. He was so enchanted by her that when they had to bolt away from one another, he didn’t feel nearly as horrified as he ought to have done at the near miss.

Instead, he smiled and stuck his hands in his waistcoat pocket. As he walked back to the ball, he had to keep himself from wearing a too-foolish smile on his face.

CHAPTER 18

“Ariadne, there’s someone here to see you!”

Ariadne ground a knuckle into the center of her brow at Helen’s words. She was beginning to have an instinctive response to anyone coming to see her.

If a gentleman was at the door, she was going toscream.