Page 56 of The Matchmaker Meets her Duke
"You've made a fool of me."
"No." She shook her head rigorously. "No."
"For how long have you scorned me behind your back? How long have you been hosting your parties to my ignorance?"
"Iamsorry that I kept that from you, Emmett. I see now that I shouldn't have. But I gave up that gossip column the day that I married you, I swear it."
"Just not your precious matchmaking."
"Emmett, I don't think that I could ever give that up."
He held her direct gaze, did not blink as he answered straightforwardly, "And I never expected you to."
Pandora arced a bemused eyebrow, ready to call him out on his falsehood. But Emmett made a dismissive sound in his throat. "Initially I did. But I was coming around. Ihadcome around. I wanted to surprise you."
She clasped her hands, waiting patiently for her husband to complete his statement, then realized that he had. "Emmett? Surprise me with what?"
"It doesn't matter now."
"Emmett." Tentatively, she reached toward the sheets and took his hands in hers. They were so strong, and smooth, and finely cut, and so familiar. Memories of those hands slipping onto her thighs, stroking her in her most intimate of places flashed behind her eyes, and Pandora dropped his hands at once as if burned by his touch.
Emmett raised a bemused eyebrow at her. "What is it?" he asked.
Pandora cleared her throat and waited a long moment before she spoke. She feared her voice would sound husky, revealing the state of her aroused mind. "Nothing," she said, and quickly returned to the topic at hand. "Please, tell me," she said. "What did you want to surprise me with?"
"Someries Manor," he divulged.
"Where is that?"
"One of my properties. I was renovating it."
"Oh." Pandora tried to put two and two in her head. But she hated to be presumptuous.
"For you, Pandora." Emmett rolled his eyes. That had to be a good sign. His spirits were lifting. Or he was in a lighter mood, at least. But Pandora didn't heave that breath of relief yet. It wasn't over yet. "I wanted to give it to you," her husband continued, "for your matchmaking parties, for whatever in the heavens you pleased to do with it."
A warm flush of color warmed Pandora's cheeks. She felt shy and embarrassed beyond words. While she had been running behind his back, getting Edward to host her parties under his guise, and even suspecting Emmett of frolicking with women, or at the very least keeping a secret from her too, he had been doing something utterly different. He had been renovating a Manor. To gift to her.
Emmett was staring at her intently, and she wanted to bury her face in her hands. She couldn't hold his gaze. "That's what all that business you were lying was all about."
"It doesn't matter now." Not unkindly, he sat up on the edge of the bed. "It was forward of me to expect much from you. Including your trust. I'm not deluded about this union of ours. Wearein a marriage of duty and of convenience. It's what we set out to be in the beginning. It's all we'll ever be."
"No," she said. Without taking the time to think much of it, she took his face in her hands. "I don't believe that, and I know you don't mean that." She took his hand and placed it gently on the rise on her bosom. "Duty and convenience do not do justice to the way that I feel."
"Pandora," he said. A single word. But his voice had lost all of its hurtful and resigned edge.
"Duty and convenience is not the reason I wake in the morning and reach for your side of the bed, or keep your every letter like little treasures until the next." Her voice had died down to a whisper as she said, "It doesn't explain the way that my heart sings when we're next to each other or the way that my body cries for you from a bare touch."
His breath had turned ragged in her ears. He shook his head, but he didn't take her hands away from his face. He didn't retreat from her touch.
"Tell me that it's not real," she said. "Tell me you don't feel all of that and more. Tell me you don't love me. Because I do. I love you, Emmett Groves, you stubborn hard mule of a man. I love the way that your face catches the light when you're happy, the way that your eyes laugh before the rest of your face does."
His arms had looped around her waist, pulling her close to him until she could almost taste the brilliant, mouth-watering scent of him. His hand ran through her hair, sending the lush curls tumbling down her back. A thrill traveled down Pandora's spine, and she shivered in his arms. She struggled to gather her thoughts still. She wasn't done, oh no. This man had taken his time and care renovating a Manor just for her while she had been running around behind his back hosting forbidden matchmaking parties. She hadn't even begun to make it up to him. "And the way–" he was tugging gently at the knot behind her back, and words failed her. She pulled her thoughts together still. "The way the corner of your lips quirk up when you tease me." Her knot came unloose in a final decisive tug, sending her dress into a sprawling heap around her feet.
"And the way that my body…" she shivered when his warm, wicked mouth found her neck, "my body comes alive when you're near."
"Like this?" he asked innocently, his strong yet gentle hand sliding up the apex of her thighs, and Pandora gasped. Liquid warmth swirled in her belly, in that sweet center of heat between her legs. "Yes," she breathed dreamily, all the words flying out of her head like treacherous little birds. "Yes, please."
His hand stroked her tenderly, one finger parting the damp folds of her cleft until he wasthere,right inside of her slippery, throbbing seam.
