Page 49 of From Duke Till Dawn
“Why should you, when I’ve given you no reason to forgive me?” She raised and lowered her shoulders in a half shrug. “I wouldn’t, were our situations reversed.”
“If you’re looking for assurances I won’t gain my retribution...” He stared up at the dark sky, smeared with clouds and smoke. He was on new footing, learning himself with each movement forward. Nothing felt certain—including his identity. “I can’t give them.”
“I wouldn’t believe you if you did,” she answered wryly.
“I don’t lie.” He sounded hurt, even to his own ears.
“That wasn’t what I said.” She took a step toward him, the fallen flower pressed flat beneath her foot. “In my line of work, it’s about knowing people. That’s how you turn a profit. By understanding their hearts, even if they can’t understand them themselves. I didn’t go to Eton or Oxford. Didn’t learn to read until I turned sixteen. But I’ve been studying people for decades.” She narrowed her eyes. “And what I’ve learned about you,Your Grace, is that you’re not the placid lake you think you are. You’re a stormy sea. More complex than even you realize.”
His breath caught. These had been his private thoughts, and yet she’d seen right into him, as if all his efforts to protect himself had been for nothing.
Only Cassandra could do this to him. Of all the people he’d encountered in his life, onlyshehad the insight, the sharpness of mind and feeling, to gain entrance to the center of his labyrinth.
She narrowed the space between them further. He didn’t move away or avoid her. Instead, he stood still.
Her hand came to rest flat on his chest.
Surely she could feel his rapid pulse. But she didn’t tease or chide him. Instead, she stared up into his eyes.
“There’s a shadow in you,” she whispered. “A hunger, a darkness. You didn’t believe that part of you existed.”
“I was raised to believe in the innate goodness of myself,” he breathed.
“Youaregood.” She smiled a little, a very little. “Don’t doubt that. But you’re not perfect.”
“No one is.”
“You believed I was.” She fired this bullet gently. “That’s why you’re hot as a boiling kettle with me. I wasn’t the flawless woman you thought me to be. And,” she added, even more softly, “I made you feel things. Rough, frightening things. About me. About yourself. I cut up your orderly map of the world and set fire to the pieces. That’s unforgivable,” she whispered.
His throat was raw, aching. “You rip me apart.” He gripped her hand where it lay on his chest. It was soft but not delicate. It belonged to a woman who knew how to pull herself up from a precipice. It was a weapon. “I have no ammunition against you.”
“That’s not true.” Her eyes were large and dark. “You could do me a great deal of damage.”
“I know,” he rasped. He burned with the conflicting needs to cause her pain and to protect her.
Her smile flashed. “In your hand, you hold my very life.”
“Is that all?”
“What else is there?”
“This.” He pulled her closer, until her chest was pressed tightly against his own. He brought up his arms, enfolding her. Cassandra was curved and lush and warm, and she stared up at him with her eyes huge and her lips slightly parted. She clutched at his shoulders. She was strong and vulnerable, and he was drawn to both parts of her.
For a moment, they only looked at each other, but their breaths mingled, both coming quickly and in short gulps as if preparing to dive beneath the surface of the sea.
He brought his lips down against hers. She opened for him at once.
They had not kissed since he’d learned of her deception. Before, he’d been almost reverential, treating her like a flawless, precious creature. He knew better now. She wasreal. And he didn’t know who he was anymore. But a furious hunger released in him now, and he wanted... He wanted everything.
He took possession of her, claiming her lips with his own. And she fought back. Not by pushing him away, but by pulling him even closer, through her own burning demands. Their mouths tugged and bit and snapped. They were feral together, their tongues swirling and hot. She held fast to his shoulders. Her nails dug through the fabric of his shirt, biting into his flesh. The tiny needles of pain sent lightning through his body, stiffening his cock.
She moaned into his mouth, and he swallowed the sound whole, taking it into himself. Devouring her. Losing himself.
He spun out of control, holding her so tightly it had to be painful, yet she made no sound of protest. The tighter he gripped her, the more frenzied her kisses became.
Everywhere he was on fire for her.
“I need inside you,” he rumbled. He was torn in different directions, each need pushing him further and further away from his conceptions of himself. “I want to hurt you, but I also want to worship you. I want to fuck you.” He couldn’t believe he spoke such thoughts aloud. She should pull back. Slap him. Run away.
