Page 124 of How to Love a Duke in Ten Days

“We can wait,” she whispered against his ear, smoothing a hand down the iron cords of his back. “Three more days. I don’t want you to regret—”

“I don’t fucking care about that anymore, I just need to be inside you.Now.” The hand in her hair curled into a fist, tugging her chin higher, exposing her throat to him so he could stroke and lave at the delicate skin there, nipping at it with his teeth.

His other arm lifted her against him, parting her legs so he could settle his hips between them.

Pinning her.

Pinning her down.

Pulling up her skirts.

Cold shards of sharp ice extinguished what heat had built in her womb, dousing it with a terror so pure andabsolute, it seized every part of her until even her skin felt scoured raw by it.

She couldn’t speak.

Couldn’t scream.

Couldn’t breathe.

Feebly, she tugged at his arms to no avail. Panic stole the strength from her limbs just as brutally as it had seized her throat.

Her fingers curled into talons, nails biting into the flesh of his arms. He hissed, but the pain only served to inflame him further, causing him to press more insistently against her.

Helpless tears sprang to her eyes. Every one of her muscles locked tight and finally,finally,she was able to sob in a breath, dragging the strength into her lungs to push into her trembling limbs.

With a burst of power, drawn from the deepest recesses of her pain, she heaved him away from her.

He stumbled back a step, emitting an oath of puzzled opposition.

Alexandra sprang forward, bolting around him, evading his reach.

“What—Alex—?”

She shook her head again and again as she backed away from him. Injected with an instinct and an energy as old and necessary as life, itself, she turned on her heel and fled.

Fled his body and his unslaked desire. Fled the intimidating sex he’d meant to drive inside of her, and the desperate sound of her name ripped away from him by the wind. Wind that now tore the tears from her eyes and whipped her with loose tendrils of her damp hair, stinging her cheeks and invading her mouth.

She ran until she ran out of beach. Pumping her legs soswiftly, she wasn’t certain her feet touched the sand. She ran until her lungs threatened to burst. Scampered up the stairs even though her ankles ached, and her thighs seized.

She ran away from ten years of grief and pain and guilt and fear. She ran from the almost doglike confusion clouding her husband’s savage features. From constant anxiety for her friends, and the persistent threat of discovery. Of death. Of retribution.

And even as she ran hard and fast and long enough to possibly kill her, a part of her knew it was all for naught.

Because she could never escape what she’d done. What had been done to her.

When she had such demons chasing her, she didn’t even notice if hotel staff or guests gawked as she raced through the hotel to her rooms, locking the world out.

Every part of her hurt. Burned. Inside and out.

Wanting to go nowhere near a bed, she dove into the corner between her wardrobe and the wall, pulling her knees up into her chest and locking her arms around them, making herself as small as she possibly could. Her trembles became quakes, and then bone-clenching convulsions.

She tried to stop. To breathe. To cry. What little logic she still possessed began to lose hope. To fear that this was her new reality. That she’d been pushed beyond the brink of sanity. Her body was no longer her own. Her fears no longer contained.

She’d become her worst nightmare.

Helpless.

Even against herself.