Page 67 of A Bride for the Forbidden Duke
He paused. “Yes, Duchess?”
His voice was low, heavy with his own unspoken thoughts.
“Are you to ignore me all night once again?”
He half turned to her. “I did not think there was anything you wished to say. I am not a man of many words as you know.”
“And yet you had plenty to announce to the parlor at Lindbury House,” Veronica countered, walking towards him. “Do you truly not wish for children? Or is it the fact that you do not want to bed me that stops you from wanting them?”
Surprise spread over his face, and it was the most reactive she had seen him in some time. His brows pulled up, his eyes blinking at her.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Can you not bear to take your own wife to bed and do what is needed to produce an heir?”
“I do not know where you got that idea.”
Veronica took another step forward, and he took another step back, up the staircase, once again trapped in a dance of avoidance until it snapped, and he closed the distance he himself had created.
“Ever since that night in the hallway,” Veronica began, “you have avoided me. You have… spoken as though angry with me. You switch between moments of care and thought and thenabsolutely nothing. I have all but presented myself to you in a manner of which I thought you might pursue me.”
She moved towards him once again, the foyer suddenly too big a space to cross. But the Duke took one step and then the next until they both stood on the polished floor, inches away from each other.
“Duchess…” His voice was different. Weakened. Anguish flitted across his face. “Duchess, I have wanted you more than anything I have ever wanted in my whole life.” His eyes bore into her, dark and devastated, as he moved closer. “Sometimes I cannot even think of speaking to you for you are already there, occupying my thoughts. My dreams, my waking days—you are wreaking havoc over my mind and my life. When I bathe alone, it is your body I think of. When I am alone in my chamber, it is you I dream of being beside me. You taunted my ability to create distance between us and then snap, but it is only because I desire you in dark ways, Duchess. Dark ways I cannot always change or control when I give into those desires.”
Her breath came short as she listened.
Her whisper came almost without her consent, “And you think I would disagree with these ways? You think I would not want you equally the same? That every moment I have teased you, it has not been to seduce you back to my side?”
“I have not wished to pretend it could be that,” he murmured, drawing ever-closer. “But it is, is it not?”
“It is,” she whispered.
His face pulled together as if in pain. “I am not a gentle man.”
“I have not asked for gentle.”
“I hunger for you.”
“I am yours to devour.”
“Say my name.”
“Your G?—”
“My Christian name,” he told her.
Her breath left her completely as she whispered, “Henry.”
And then his mouth crashed onto hers, feverish and demanding as she knew it would be. Veronica met his passion with as much intensity as he gave her as his hands cupped her face, his breath harsh between them.
It was almost animalistic, the way he did indeed devour her mouth, capturing her lips in his, gaining entry between them.
She gasped when he snagged her lower lip between his teeth, parting her further for him. His tongue swept into her mouthas one of his hands slid down her dress, palming his way to her breast and fondling her roughly.
“Yes,” she whimpered between their kisses, arching into him. “Be rough with me.”
“You liked it.” He pulled back, his chest heaving with ragged breaths. “That night in the hallway, I saw that spark in your eyes.”
