Page 104 of How to Love a Duke in Ten Days

“Oh.” She swallowed, unsure of what to do. Or if her legs would carry her anywhere.

“Go. Inside,” he ordered.

“Will you… come and find me later?”

He bodily turned her and all but shoved her toward the hotel entrance, and in her stumbling astonishment she missed his reply.

Alexandra smoothed her hair as she dreamily drifted through the shadows back toward the nearest door, not looking in the direction of the conclave of revelers on the far end of the deck.

All she could feel was the slickness between her legs as she walked.

All she could think of was what would happen next once her husband came to find her.

Because he still had a prize yet to claim.

And his desire hadn’t been satisfied.

Sweet merciful Christ, was it possible to expire from wanting a woman? Could a man completely go mad with desire? Lose his humanity altogether?

Because Piers was perilously close to just that. Giving in to the beast.

By the time he had nigh limped across his room to his wife’s adjoining door, he’d thrown his cuffs, ripped open his jacket, untied his cravat, and shucked his shoes.

He made a pathway of distinct intention before pausing with his hand gripping the door separating them.

Never in his life had he been in such a state. His cock hard and heavy as wrought iron, an insistent, pendulous weight aching for one touch from her. His bollocks drawnunbearably close with a need so pervasive, he could feel the clench of a building release even now.

Every muscle stretched taut over his bones, screaming to surge and grip and thrust and fuck.

Thus, his hesitation.

He’d fuck her tonight. The minute the door was open. The very second her scent reached him. The moment her sweet form came into view.

He’d seize her and bend her over the first smooth surface he could find. He’d toss her skirts over her head and part the globes of her soft ass so he could watch himself spear into the sex he’d made slick and swollen and ready.

Oh, he’d fuck her. He’d fuck her well and plenty.

And when his senses returned to him, he’d berate himself for a fool for the rest of his bloody life.

He didn’t want her to be another regret.

He couldn’t go in her room, he realized on a tortured groan. In this state, he was more animal than man, and the moment he sensed sexual submission, he’d mount her, he’d rut upon her like a stallion in the frenzy of an all-consuming primal drive to mate.

And she’d offered her body already for the taking.

She wanted him to plant a baby inside of her.

His cock surged at the thought, eliciting a vague nausea deep in his gut.

With a tortured grunt, he palmed himself over his trousers, expelling a strangled noise as textile abraded turgid flesh.

He could do it.

She was hiswife.

And yet… there could already be a child. No matter how prettily she denied it. How ardently he wanted to believe her. He must be certain.

He must.