Page 83 of A Scottish Bride for the Duke
“No one saw.”
“Even so.”
“Are you not my wife?” he demanded. “If I cannot touch you in private, then what can I do?”
“This is hardly private.”
“I can’t wait until this ridiculous farce is over.” He leaned in still closer, his breath hot against her temple. “And I can have you back in my bed where you belong. Too many gentlemen are looking at you.”
“I dressed to turn heads,” she said serenely.
“In that dress, no one else but me should be able to see you.”
She grinned up at him, entertained by the very idea that he could be this possessive. “Are ye jealous?”
“Of them? No. They don’t get to have you.” He pulled her closer, indecently close, and she only allowed it for a moment or twobefore drawing back. “But they shouldn’t be able to see as much of you as they do.”
“You’re being ridiculous,” she scolded.
“Am I? But you look delectable.”
She laughed. “No one else is thinking that.”
“Are they not? I think I can see those precise thoughts behind at least three gentlemen’s eyes.”
“And ye?” she demanded, brows raised. “Half the ladies in this ballroom had hoped to marry ye. I endure that with equanimity.”
“Now who’s being ridiculous,” he said, a tenderness in his voice as the hand on her back stroked up to her shoulder blades. “No one here is looking at me with you beside me.”
Isobel’s heart swelled. She looked up at Adrian, feeling as though her chest was too full, as though she might float away.
And she had a horrifying, terrifying realization.
This man, cold and quiet, who had warmed only for her, who touched her as though she was something special and delicate, as though she was his to break—this man who had tried to save his cruel father for the sake of love, even though it near killed him—had become everything to her.
She loved him.
She wasin lovewith him.
And she had no idea if he could ever love her back.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Your Grace.”
This was the most fun Adrian had ever had at a ball. When Isobel had first approached him about returning to society, he had almost sighed to himself at the thought. He associated ballrooms with tedium, with duties he would rather not perform.
The experience was elevated with the feeling of Isobel beside him. Every time she moved, it moved them both; he was so finely attuned to her.
He kept his hand on the small of her back, that delectable curve, and she sometimes glanced at him as though she knew every direction his thoughts took. Every filthy imagining.
She was a good girl. And he would make good on his promise to ravish her slowly later.
This dress—the one that showed altogether too much of herself for his liking, and yet which he delighted in—would be removed slowly from her body. He would follow it with kisses. With his fingers and tongue and lips. Maybe even his teeth.
She liked it when he did that, and he liked it when she hungered for him.
“Your Grace,” a voice cut through the haze of his thoughts.
