Page 29 of The Duke is Wicked
The sound of a door slamming down the hall, doubtless Simon stumbling to his bedroom, had them tensing. The sensual haze surrounding them faded in time with the excruciating tick of the mantel clock. Sebastian glanced at his hands, still imprisoning hers, his expression stunned for a rare, unprotected instant. One bright spot in this mess. The Duke of Ashcroft had lost his purposeful, pedigreed dominion over himself, an occurrence she guessed few ever witnessed.
When he’d never had dominion over her.
And he never would.
Her gaze traveled down the snug press of their bodies, all six foot plus of him fastening her to the door like he’d stuck a dart in cork. His penis a rigid, entirely perceptible shape beneath his buckskin trousers. Longer than she would’ve imagined and as hard as the walnut he’d jammed her against before proceeding to kiss the very life from her.
What a situation she’d sunk herself in this time.
Finally, curious about a man. Thewrongman. The wrongduke.
But she had, as the duke in question had so tastelessly declared, asked for this.
“Unhand me, Tremont.” She yanked her arms, his grip loosening as he grudgingly complied. It was only when she looked to the ceiling to avoid his censure that she noticed the painting. Angels frolicking amongst gods and goddesses entwined on a bed of clouds. Not a stitch of clothing to be had, not so much as a misplaced cravat. “My,” she whispered and squinted to get a better look.
He turned from her, yanking his hand through his hair with a growl of pure, male frustration. She couldn’t help but recall having her fingers tangled in those strands minutes ago herself. Regrettably, the overlong curls were as soft as they looked. “Lurid, isn’t it? I should have Julian repurpose it, at least put garments on the creatures. With your rebellious spirit, I’m sure you think it’s art.”
“Be glad for my rebellious spirit. A lesser girl, a delicate society miss, would be prostrate on the carpet beneath our feet after that kiss. Have any smelling salts handy, Your Grace? If you toss those declarations of affection out often, you’d better.” Delaney sighed and shoved off the door, the wood still warm from her body. She wasn’t going to faint, but her world had taken a definite tilt on its axis. “Of course, you’re not trying to secure information from society misses, are you? You know all you need to about the opera singers and the actresses, the rapacious countesses, the willing widows. And Kitty Hazelton, you know all you need to know about her. The kisses you give them are wistful and dreamy, the real deal, while mine are a lethal form of interrogation. Conscription into your club of supernatural misfits.”
Stalking to the hearth, he grabbed the fire iron and dispersed the embers, sending sparks flying. At least, his feverish attempt to start a blaze had landed in the right spot. “Real deal? Another charming bit of Yankee jargon.” He cracked metal against stone. “If you think that kiss wasn’t the genuine article, Temple, you’re in need of a physician. For your brain. I hope to God”—he laughed and jabbed the iron like a sword in her direction—“no, Iprayfor the first time in years, that the same ragged yearning swirling through my belly is, this very moment, swirling through yours. Inflamed desire, when it isn’t appeased, makes for an unpleasant bed partner.”
Inflamed desire? An aristocratic way of describing the heat curling beneath her skin. Circumspect and erotic at the same time. And pointedly accurate.
Knees threatening to betray her, Delaney perched on a chaise lounge she’d considered asking the duke to make use of when the effort to remain on tiptoe to reach his mouth had become a painful endeavor. But for a kiss of that magnitude, a little suffering seemed reasonable. “I’d rather the desire be appeased, if you want my honest opinion.”
“Shocking,” he whispered, and levered to his feet using the fire iron like a crutch.
She looped her hand in a flaccid circle, having only a theoretical idea of what appeasement of this sort entailed. Closing her eyes, she sneaked into her attic for a spot of Latin and a quick peek at an anatomy text. “Perpetro,compleo,ultimo,conficio, consummo,” she whispered, then decided to stay to review a French extract on coitus.
When she stepped out, it was to find the incensed duke returned to her, the one with the lazily-aroused smile gone. Forearm braced on the fireplace mantel, pocket watch in hand, disdain twisting his features. “Twenty-five minutes,” he said, and closed the sterling cover with a snap. “I wondered if I was going to have to go in there and retrieve you, though God knows how I should think to do that.”
She frowned, chewing on her bottom lip.Twenty-five?It hadn’t seemed that long, but she did tend to get distracted while in her attic.
“You leave yourself completely vulnerable when you step into that attic of yours. Bloody dangerous, if anyone discovers your talent for housing information. Details you’re only beginning to admit, so I can’t reliably describe what it is from which I feel I must protect you.” He knocked the iron against his boot and gave her a molten look that had her clutching the chaise to keep from doing something she shouldn’t. “I can’t imagine, or should I say, I’m frightened to imagine, what you have up there if you were able to copy the chronology, a laborious thousand-page account of the occult, in minutes.”
She dug her pinkie into a rip in the chaise’s fabric, unwilling to confess how much she hadup there. Enough to fill a hundred libraries, a thousand. Even her brother had no idea the extent of her memorization. However, it was becoming apparent that solving this extortion problem on her own was no longer a possibility. Not with the dreams (Finn’s) and the kisses (Sebastian’s) and the League (Julian’s).
Hell and damnation.
“What did you do, Temple? Ready to tell me?” His attention strayed from the graying embers in the hearth, his watchful gaze pinning her in place as surely as his body had against the door. “I can’t help you if you don’t.”
Wistfully, Delaney watched him shove aside his coattails and settle his hands on his lean hips. Exasperation looked good on the man. Long and slim, his fingers were undoubtedly suited to the violin. And other things, as she’d hoped to find out. She found his steely gaze in the firelight, recognizing the depth of her infatuation—and her dilemma—if she found hishandsbeautiful.
She drew the toe of her slipper along a silver thread in the carpet. “It’s going to sound much worse than it is.”Muchworse.
“Spit it out, Temple.”
She chewed on the inside of her lip, then practiced saying it three times in her mind. Ready, set,go, Delaney. “Well, you see, Your Grace, I accidentally killed a man.”
Chapter 9
Sebastian propped his arm behind his head and stared at the canopy of his bed. A bracing gust of tepid air rolled in the window, dancing across his skin. His valet, Percy, had employed a decorator who’d gone wild with swaths of maroon fabric and netting said to be ducal in both color and form. Sebastian frequently woke from a nightmare imagining it looked like blood on a battlefield. Or flames. Neither image was comforting.
I accidentally killed a man.The termagant had thought to add ‘your grace’ to the confession to, what? Soften the blow?
Too, he’d love to tell her that her situation wasexactlyas bad as it sounded.
He’d listened to her story in deadening silence, plunging into a bottomless chamber, the air chill and lifeless. By the time she’d finished, his skin was clammy, his stomach churning, his mind reeling. To help her, he’d need to go back in time. When time travel wasn’t his gift, and it sure as hell wasn’thers.