Page 24 of Her Duke Next Door
He kissed her languidly, licking into her mouth as if it was the very thing he had a purpose to ever do in this life. He held her as though she was fragile and beautiful. Mary slid her hands down his biceps, feeling the thick muscle covering his arms. She smoothed her hand up his chest, grasping the lapels of his jacket as he parted her lips further with his tongue, deepening the kiss.
Against her, she felt a rigid hardness. She gasped into the kiss as she realized it was Dominique’s arousal, piqued and interested in her. Her, of all the beautiful women he likely knew; he was aroused forher.
Desire raged through her, a fiery blaze that she did not deny herself in that moment. She fell into the flames and let Dominique kiss her until she was pliant. He kissed her, and kissed her, and kissed her, until she was dizzy with desire and there was an ache between her legs that had not been sparked by another person in many years.
“You beautiful creature. The insolent-tongued woman.”
He laughed into another kiss.
“I would have this tongue venture everywhere I asked of you,” he murmured, licking into her mouth once again, holding her jaw to naturally part her lips. She looked at him with hooded, heavy eyes.
“What would you ask of me, Your Grace?” she asked boldly, breathlessly.
He pushed that hard length against her, suggestively letting her know just how endowed he was. For a moment, she had a hot, fierce thought of being tangled up in her bed, the Duke dominating her in her own bedroom, and her, slipping her hand into his breeches and pulling him free.
She moaned at her own thoughts. Her breasts pushed against her bodice as he surged back toward her, clasping her face and tugging on the chains in her hair. She heard it slip to the floor, priceless emeralds crashing against the stones. But she did not care for this chase of desire dripping between their mouths was delicious, and she never wanted to stop.
The Duke pulled away to catch his breath. He pressed his forehead to hers. Desire burned around them, restricting anything else that may have distracted them from one another. At that moment, they were just two people, gazing at each other.
“Lady Yore,” he breathed. “You have plagued my mind all week. For longer. You have walked through my dreams and I have thought of little else since I met you.”
Dominique groaned against her mouth, kissing her deeply once more before pulling away.
“Let me protect you,” he said. “Give me your blessing to do so and I shall make sure both you and Eloise are safe from that wretched man.”
At the reminder of the new Earl of Yore’s threat, reality crashed into Mary. She drew back, the passion flooding out of her. Looking at the Duke, and how his legs had parted to accommodate her, his flushed cheeks and swollen lips, the hard length that he adjusted to conceal with the ends of his coat. She was sure her own face was red, too.
“Do not walk away from me, my lady,” Dominique told her. And she very nearly gave into the command, to his every whim, but she was reminded that she was independent and had given Eloise a good life on her own. She could face the Earl of Yore if it meant Eloise would be safe.
“I cannot stay,” she murmured, anguish drenching her voice. “He is my late husband’s uncle. Lord Yore will never leave me alone if I ignored or even refused him. His nephew was quite the same. Demanding, entitled, as this society raises you all to be. But what about the wives, like me, who simply wished for a happy life and instead received misery and a husband who never wanted me or what I could give?”
She inhaled, refusing to cry. Her past with Patrick Leeds was something she had processed over many years. She refused to let it be unburied now by Hugh’s threats and Dominique’s insistence.
“Your husband was unfaithful?”
“Not quite,” she answered. “But he… He yearned obsessively for—” She did not feel comfortable sharing that her husband had stalked her sister. “I am sorry, Your Grace butby staying with you and accepting your help, Icannot guarantee either my own safety or my daughter’s.”
She pulled away again, completely. She put distancebetween the two of them.
“I can protect you,” he swore. “Goddamn it, woman, why will not you let me?Allowme to.”
“No,” she whispered. “No, Your Grace. I truly cannot let you. This was a mistake.”
She lifted her chin and hardened her heart. That was what she was good at. It was how she had made it from London to the countryside in the first place. By building up that wall and protective barrier of her own making.
“Before you ever look to protecting me, or judging my situation and decisions, perhaps focus on your own life. You have a daughter there who you neglect.” Her words landed with the violent precision she intended. “You want to protect me, Your Grace, but how long before you are itching to leave again? Not only would you leave your precious daughter but also the woman and child you swore to protect. Would you stay for us? Would you leave and risk Hugh Yore coming back to taunt me? Your promises remain empty.”
“Do notjudgewhat I do to survive and?—”
“Survive,” she spat. “Your daughter has wept almost every birthday, wondering if you would leave her waiting again.” She did not mean to be so honestly cruel to this extent but she could not stop the words spilling from her mouth. Dominique cringed back, and she recognized the weight of shame as it crashed over him. “Do not focus on grown women who can deal with their own problems.”
In a moment, he had pulled on that mask of defiance and deceit as he smirked at her. “Ah, forgive me for assuming. Only when I entered that study it did not quite look like you weredealingwith your problems.”
“Well, I was,” she snapped. “It is what I have always done, Your Grace. I have endured and I have dealt with everything that ever fell into my path.”
“How so?” he asked. He looked at her as though he saw through her and any façade she might try to hold onto. As though he might understand. “What has the world thrown at you, Mary?”
“An uncaring husband,” she said flatly. “But I am not the only woman who has endured that.”
