Page 127 of How to Love a Duke in Ten Days

For protection.

Not against assassins, but againsthim.

Frustrated wrath welled within him as her endearingly artless seduction the night she’d proposed now became something altogether insidious.

He’d thought her an overwrought, spinster virgin who’d had too many years to research, contemplate, andcomplicatea very simple act of pleasure.

But no. Yet again, he couldn’t have been more mistaken.

The thought of their wedding night had caused her so much distress, she’d come to “get it over with.”

Her list… Those conditions he’d found both absurd and adorable. Dear sweet contemptableChrist! The entire fucking time, she’d been trying to figure out a way to not relive a past nightmare.

She hadn’t wanted him to use his tongue.

Because someone had used theirs against her, somehow.

She’d wanted them to disrobe.

Because someone hadn’t bothered to take their clothing off before—

He stared down at the garment in his hands. The stitches blurred by a narrowing of his vision as red began to bleed into his periphery.

How many times had he made use of the convenient opening with a mistress or a lover?

He’d endeavored to do the same with Alexandra the other night.

Anger tightened his shoulders, then his chest, the tension rippling down his arms until he dropped her undergarment as though it scalded him.

Turning, he searched for something to break.

The table closest to him did nicely. He kicked at it, sending it colliding into the crank press. Then he proceeded to dismantle it violently with fists and boots, fighting the horrific portrait forming in his mind.

She’d requested that they face each other…

Because she’d been taken in some dreadful, demeaning fashion.

He ripped something off the wall and smashed it onto the ground.

He’d been too aroused, too utterly entertained by her to truly wonder why she’d asked him to be gentle so as not to do her intimate damage.

Because… Because someone…

He roared as his gorge rose, and he had to swallow several times, using iron will not to heave the contents of his stomach on to the floor.

Something else violently disintegrated beneath his gathering madness.

He tried.By God, he tried not to allow the clues to conjure the images of her… like that. But alas, he’d narrowed down her ordeal to a few lurid and unthinkable circumstances.

The portrait screamed at him, and he wished she could rip open his skull and scrub the image from his mind.

So he ripped other things, clothing, linen, rending them so they matched the tattered shreds of his humanity.

God! The things he’d accused her of. The ruthless seduction he’d all but forced upon her on their wedding night. She’d requested the lights off, not so she couldn’t see his face, but so he couldn’t see her fear.

He’d been so uncompromising about her shyness, so relentless in his all-consuming desire.

And so unforgivably cruel when he’d thought she’d lied about her virginity.