Page 135 of How to Love a Duke in Ten Days

Above him, perhaps? Not pinned beneath. Not from behind.

Unbidden, she remembered the pistoning slams of her attacker’s hips. Short, quick, dry, tearing. That was how she’d assessed men must be inside a woman. How they moved in order to—to finish.

But this…

She took an unbidden step toward him, then another. This gentle glide of his hips was like some magnificent, primal dance, his every muscle perfectly controlled. No violence or frenzy.

This won’t take long.

Alexandra blinked several times, blocking the words.

What if it did with her husband? Come to think of it, none of her previous encounters with Redmayne had beenabbreviated. And, so far as she could tell, he’d already pleasured himself for longer than her entire ordeal with de Marchand had taken.

He seemed in no great hurry to finish. As if he’d learned to become patient with the agony gripping his expression.

Almost… as if he enjoyed it.

The breeze brushed her nightgown against her body, abrading nipples so puckered and sensitive, she could bear it no longer.

She peeled it away with a humbled sense that she might be the only creature ever to creep so close to the Duke of Redmayne without him knowing it. He was always so ready. So aware. But in the throes of this wicked, beautiful act, he was utterly vulnerable and yet preternaturally male.

“God,” he breathed, his hand sliding faster, his fingers tightening. “Alexandra.”

“Piers.”

CHAPTERTWENTY-SIX

At the sound of his name, Piers bolted upright and dragged the sheets across his lap. The sight of her did nothing to curb the climax gathering in the twin weights beneath his cock.

He’d have thought her a vision he conjured, a lust-shrouded fantasy. Naked. Ethereal, ephemeral. Possessed of a delicate, unearthly beauty.

If not for the insecurity flickering behind the heat in her burnt-whisky gaze.

Stymied, he closed his eyes and opened them again, just to be sure.

At the sight of her, his cock was beset by an insistent, painful throb so agonizing, he ground his teeth together.

In his fantasy, she’d been sliding her slick body down his shaft, those perfect, pert breasts swaying in a most tantalizing manner every time her hips met his.

And, miraculously, there they were. Thereshestood. In his bedroom. Pale and proud and nude, shivering inthe breeze that fluttered at her heavy locks, making them shimmer like the tresses of some pagan goddess.

He dragged his eyes away from her pink nipples. “Alexandra. What are you—what do you—?”

“You said my name.” She swiped a nervous tongue across her lower lip, just the one, as her eyes locked on the sheet barely concealing the ridge of his erection.

He grimaced. How long had she been there? How long had she watched as he stroked himself to an illusion of her?

God, but his mind couldn’t have conjured anything close to the magnificence of reality.

“Did you say my name because… because you imagined me doing… that to you?” She nodded to his hand, now clutching the sheet to him.

Panic surged above his lust as he searched her frustratingly placid features. Was she disgusted? Aroused? Afraid?

What should he answer?

He decided upon the truth. At the very least, it would drive her back to the other side of that door. Because he could think of no reason on God’s blighted earth that she would be in here with him unless…

“No, Alexandra. No, you weren’t stroking me with your hand, not in my mind.”