Page 79 of Her Beast of a Duke

“I know you are.” She leaned forward, linking her fingers beneath her chin in a pretty, innocent way. “And now I find myself hungering for dessert.”

“You have not finished your main course.”

“How can I, when the man who is the true course is looking at me as though I am the only thing he wishes to devour?”

A small smile lifted the corners of Oscar’s lips as he stood up from his seat, making quick work of clearing the table to another surface. Then, he tugged her up.

He bent her over the table between one breath and the other, and Isabella gasped as her nightgown was tugged up to her hips.

And then his fingers were pulling her apart, exposing her in the most intimate way, and she felt the wet press of his tongue as he tasted her again.

She moaned softly, already pushing her hips back into his face. He licked and licked at her until her thighs trembled, until she gripped the table and threatened to claw marks into it.

When he slipped two fingers into her, alongside his tongue, Isabella’s voice cracked loudly in the room, her cry filling the space.

The candles continued to flicker on the windowsill nearby, and she watched the flame, thinking that Oscar was a flame in her. He scattered her shadows and brought to light everything about herself she thought was unpretty, everything that would not win the heart of a suitor.

Yet somehow he saw all of her, and hewantedher.

When she climaxed, it was a shattering thing that had her jolting against the table, her hips circling against his face in pleasure she could not hold back. It crashed over her in a tidal wave, and she gasped out his name, reaching back to snag his hair between her fingers.

The sounds he made into her folds were obscene, but she found herself yearning for them. The delightful sounds of attraction—the sounds of him eating her like the finest sweet treat he had been granted.

And when her release ebbed, and Oscar gave a low groan against the back of her thigh as he caught his breath, she turned to him, her eyes hooded.

On his knees, Oscar looked up at her.

“What dress do you despise wearing to balls?” he asked her, once again making her stop and wonder.

“You ask the strangest things,” she said, still breathless.

He kissed the fullness of her thigh before he pressed his face to her skin. “Maybe I want to know so I can tear it off you to free you from its confines.”

Isabella clawed through her pleasure to find a true answer, her skin burning at the thought he proposed. “I despised the debut dress my mother picked out for me. It was pale pink, and I did not want to be known as a delicate pink flower. I wanted to feel more powerful than the dress allowed me to feel.”

When he didn’t answer at first, she wondered why. But then he pinned her with a heavy, aroused gaze as he stood up to claim her mouth.

Pulling back, he murmured against her lips, “You are no delicate flower, Duchess. You have more power over me than you can fathom. No withering posy could bring me to my knees as you do.”

Before she could answer, he had undone his breeches and was sliding into her. Everything else—every strange question, every vulnerable answer, every heavy silence—was gone, replaced by a drowning desire that they both burned through.

Chapter Nineteen

That night, they stayed in Oscar’s chambers after the maids had cleared the table.

Isabella fell asleep next to him, aware that, at any moment, he might ask her to leave. But the night grew deeper, and he did not order her out.

Instead, she tumbled into a lust-addled sleep, sated and boneless, and Oscar’s body tucked behind hers. His arm draped over her waist, their bodies pressed to one another, skin-to-skin, and the last thing Isabella remembered was drawing her fingertips up and down his arm. She toyed with his fingers, marveling at the sheer presence of him.

But she was awakened by the sound of low groaning, broken up by a loud shout.

“Help him,” Oscar shouted. “Help him—help—help me.”

Isabella was fully awake at once, not wanting to push him awake in case he startled and confused her with his nightmares.

Now, it made sense.

He was not just angry and distressed in slumber; he was back on a battlefield, wounded, and watching his other wounded comrades. His words were deeply anguished, torn, and pained.