Page 134 of How to Love a Duke in Ten Days

Could it be that his aim was to terrorize her, to illustrate just how easily he could take everyone she cared about from her if she failed to pay?

Which now included her husband. A man she’d only known for nine days.

Ten, at the stroke of midnight.

She tossed and turned, wresting herself into a sitting position as a memory of something he’d said tore through her.

The idea that I could have died without making love to you is untenable. Impossible.

She made a sound of pure disbelief as a not altogether foreign ache settled low in her belly. Lower. Intimate muscles clenched around a slick sort of emptiness the moment before she sprang from the bed.

No time for contemplation, not when there was still a chance she could change her mind.

The idea that de Marchand might be the only man to completely have her. That her husband might learn the truth. Or worse.

That she might die before making love to him…wasuntenable.

Impossible.

Especially now, when her desire surged with more intensity than her fear.

She padded across the floor and pressed her ear to thedoor once again. The dim light of a lantern still glowed beneath the seam, but all sound was smothered by the blustery night.

Drawing in a deep breath, she gripped the door latch and inched it open with the flat of her hand.

She heard her name before she peeked her head around, an answer—an invitation—poised on her lips.

At the sight of him, all her wits deserted her, the powerful tableau stealing what breath she had in her lungs and what words her mind could form. She gripped the latch of the door tighter, steadying herself as a dizzying rush of blood invaded her head.

Redmayne was, indeed, recumbent upon the edge of the bed, eyes closed, head tossed back, throat exposed. A strapping leg stretched along the snowy linens of his mattress, the other foot anchored on the floor. One hand curled into the sheets, gripping rhythmically.

The other around his sex.

Her heart leaped into her throat, and she had to swallow several times, gaping as he dragged his fist down the thick, sleek shaft, pausing at the thatch of onyx hair, before pulling the opposite way.

His features twisted into a grimace of something akin to pain, but not quite. The grooves at the edges of his eyes deepened with strain, as though his lids would never part again.

The wind, welcomed in by his open window, noisily tossed that one recalcitrant forelock over those sealed lids as his breath hitched and released.

For a second, or maybe an eternity, Alexandra stared at the organ he stroked between his legs. Duskier in hue than the hand around it, it jutted proud and thick and… long enough to make each fall of his fist quite the journey.

It would never fit inside of her, there was simply no possible way—

Her core tightened, almost insistently, releasing an alarming rush of moisture.

A dark pleasure sound dragged from his chest, a perfectly timed rejoinder to her body’s invitation.

The sculpted contours of his torso bunched and released, knotting with slow thrusts that could have hypnotized her if he’d not growled her name.

Then groaned it.

She glanced back up his body to find his eyes still closed.

He didn’t know she stood there.

And still he said her name.

Was this how he wanted her? She marveled, mesmerized by the play of the lantern light, gilding the roped crests and valleys of his abdomen as he slowly rolled his hips in long, torpid motions, pausing with a labored breath before he pulled back.