Page 36 of His Enemy Duchess

Perhaps the rules are different for a wife…

No one had given her a manual, though one would not have gone amiss.

“Nevertheless… I want to thank you,” she said.

“You can thank me tomorrow when we visit the modiste,” he replied.

Sophia felt her stomach drop. “What? Why? There is nothing wrong with my attire.”

“While my mother’s comments were incredibly inappropriate, she was right. You are going to need a new wardrobe befitting your new position. Remember, you reflect on me, and when we return to Society, I don’t want there to be any trace of the spinster you were before,” he said and put his papers down, looking at her directly now.

“But… there isnothing wrongwith my dresses!” she reiterated, her frustration breaking through her nerves. “If I am wearing them, then theyarebefitting a duchess because I am one.”

“They are perfectly fine, like you said.” He got up and walked towards her. “A duchess shouldn’t be satisfied with justfine, however.”

She held her ground. “Why are you pretending to care, when you actually don’t? Do you always do as your mother tells you? Is that it? Are you a high-and-mighty duke who can’t disobey his mama?”

“Careful,” he said in a thrilling rumble.

“It is a valid question.”

He tilted his head, taking her in slowly, from head to toe and back again. “Perhaps you need to be shown instead of told.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

He smiled darkly. “Let me educate you. Let me show you the power you would be relinquishing if you stay the way you are—your wardrobe, at least.”

She still did not understand, but he came closer still.

“Are you secretly a modiste?” she mocked breathlessly, her body already responding to the touch he had not yet graced her with.

“No, but I thinkthisneeds a man’s touch. You get to transform my manor, I get to transform your attire.”

He traced his fingertips up the long sleeves of her day dress, her skin desperate to be rid of the material so she could feel his touch properly. As if hearing her wishes, he tugged hard on the seam beneath the peak of her shoulder.

The fabric tore with a titillatingrip.

“Thomas!” Sophia gasped.

“I am not done yet,” he replied, tearing her other sleeve too, and dropping the remnants to the floor. “Capped sleeves show off your slender arms. And this…?”

He reached behind her neck, unfastening the buttons of the gauzy collar that she wore to be conservative. He ripped the additional garment away, letting it float to the ground.

“I doubt I need to tell you why it’s better this way,” he said softly, trailing his fingertips down the column of her throat and over the swell of her breasts to her neckline. “All the gentlemen will want to be me. All the ladies will want to be you.”

She gasped as he rent the front seam of her dress in two, exposing her short stays and the flimsy chemisette beneath. Yet, rather than rail at him for ruining her dress or storming out in a fury, she searched his face, the hunger in his eyes awakening a craving within her.

“Improved stays will be purchased, too,” he told her. “I want to look at you and be so distracted that I will agree to anything, even changing the table in the dining room.”

“There is nothing wrong with my stays eith?—”

His head dipped, his hand tugging aside the top hem of her stays, his lips closing over an erect nipple. As he sucked lightly, a splinter of promised pleasure leaped into her chest, rippling down her stomach. She stumbled into him, and his arm encircled her waist, her neck arching as he continued to pull desire out of her and into her with each suck.

She almost cried out in indignation as he drew his mouth away, kissing up the column of her throat while his hands made swift work of her stays, tossing the garment away.

His strong hand kneaded the plump flesh of her breasts through the thin fabric of her chemisette, his lips finding hers in a fierce kiss as he walked her backward to the desk.

The small of her back nudged the lip of mahogany, seemingly acting as a cue for him to lift her and set her on the edge of his desk. Papers scattered, a quill rolled off, but he either didn’t notice or didn’t care—strange for a man who liked everything in its place.

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