Page 96 of Claimed By Her Forbidden Duke
“We had dinner, and we talked. I recall you telling me about your love for your mother’s horse even though she was a lower breed that your stepfather insisted on replacing.”
Something in her unspooled at the thought of him collecting pieces of information about her, as if that took them beyond their arrangement and offered more.
“Penelope, you know I would never push you to come to bed with me, but you seem… not yourself.”
“I am not,” she admitted. “Finley has been questioning me today, noticing I have been more talkative about life in general, and less talkative about finding suitors. It is not like me.”
Edmund slowly tensed, the teasing gone from his expression. “I see.”
“Do you know why I have stopped speaking about suitors, Edmund?” Her voice was hoarse, but she cleared her throat and tried to make herself sound bolder.
He didn’t say anything; he only gazed back at her, equal parts lust and fear in his eyes, as if he knew her answer.
For a moment, she let herself hope that he was waiting for a specific answer that aligned with her thoughts.
Instead of answering her own question when he didn’t speak, she posed a different question.
“Edmund, I cannot help but ask what will happen when you inevitably walk away. Soon, I will be six-and-twenty, and we will be sequestering ourselves in this beautiful house, never to walk down the street with one another, and we will pretend that we are fine with that and that it is satisfactory.”
“Is it not?”
An emotion crossed his face, and she didn’t know if he was insulted or if he thought the same as her but fronted the defensive question. Were his walls up? She could not tell the truth from his expression.
“You always planned to walk away,” she continued.
“As did you. As we agreed. You sought pleasure, as did I. That is all we can and will have.”
“Please,” she repeated. “That is all? That is the only thing we have found in these nights together?”
“Was there something else happening while I lay between your legs, or when you had your mouth on my?—”
“Stop!” she cried out, shoving against his chest.
He went to grasp her wrists, but she wrenched back, skirting around him.
“I-I am in turmoil, and you cannot even see it. Or, worse, youcanand are ignoring it because you do not like the reason for it.”
“And what reason is that?” he challenged, an edge to his voice.
“I am in turmoil because this became more than physical a while ago. We have burned in one another’s arms, b-but what about beyond that? Because I burn in my heart, too, Edmund.”
Her breath whooshed out of her lungs, and she pressed a hand to her chest, curling her fingers into the fabric of her gown.
“Because this has become everything to me, and if you can look me in the eye and speak so sharply now that I confront you… if you can say that all we have between us is pleasure… then I fear what we have means nothing to you. You have said some beautiful things to me in the heat of the moment that do not come with only admiration of a woman’s body, surely. I understand I am new to this, but do not mistake me for a complete fool.”
That emotion flickered across his face once more, and she recognized it for what it was: a wound. One that she had seen in sparse moments of vulnerability. When he let his desperation for her show. When they had kissed endlessly, languorously, and he had held her like a starved man. When perhaps it was not only what was between his legs that drove him back to her night after night.
“You cannot admit it, can you?” she whispered. “That there might be something beyond unclothing ourselves and having this release. That there might be something that made your survival from your past worthwhile beyond your revenge plan, beyond your sister.”
Edmund’s face shuttered, and he tensed. “Penelope, do not?—”
“Why?” she snapped. “Why should I hold myself back? You froze when I first tangled my fingers in your hair in this house. You could have stopped me, could have told me not to touch you, but you let me. You let me in. Surely there is a reason! Heavens, you frustrate me with these walls you keep on building. What are you protecting yourself from?”
Her voice rose to a shout now as she stormed closer, and then moved back, and then closer, only more irritated by how drawn she was to him even in her anger.
“You know why I let you in,” he snapped back. “We both know what we entered this house for, why we met in the dark, night hours. I froze that night because that was not an action I have known to come from closeness, but violence. A way to direct me to meet angry gazes. A way to force me to look at the consequences of my actions. Yet there you were, with your fingers in my hair, only wanting me closer and—”He broke off as if he had to stop himself from showing more vulnerability.
“Andwhat?” she urged. “Speak to me! Stop shutting me out. I am here. I amright here, Edmund.”
