Page 127 of Pride: The Rogue
His gut clenched into vicious knots.
The Duchess of Argyll leaned up and whispered close to his ear. “I shall take your silence as a ‘yes’, then, Mr. Latimer.”
He grunted. “I didn’t take yours as a question, Your Grace.”
“No,” she remarked. “I suppose it wasn’t.”
As other guests enthusiastically threw themselves into the game at play, Latimer folded his arms at his chest and, for the duchess’ benefit, stared at the ridiculously trite action taking place at the front of the room.
With a low, throaty laugh, the duchess settled long, cloying fingers upon his upper thigh.
“Oh, now you’re just pretending,” she whispered.
Wholly unmoved, he made a discreet attempt to free his leg.
The duchess tightened her grip and leaned up and in, pressing her large breasts against his sleeve.
“Do you know your former friend, the current Duke of Argyll attempted to seduce me? He spoke of the forbidden: me bedding my stepson and he bedding his dear stepmama,” she said throatily, rubbing herself against him like a cat in heat.“I rejected him, of course, but not before I teased him with a promise of what would never be—he and I, as lovers.”
“Teased him?” he drawled.
The duchess lifted her lust-filled gaze to Latimer’s and blinked confusedly. She’d been so lost in her licentious imaginings, she’d forgotten Latimer’s presence.
“You know what I mean,” she purred.
“Do I?”
The duchess giggled. “You’ll make me say it, you dear man. I ensured he got hard and remained that way.”
The lofty peeress was so smug in her place over Latimer in this world and their arrangement, she didn’t think anything about openly lusting over Latimer’s mortal enemy.
A muscle ticked at the corner of his right eye.
God, how he abhorred her and all these depraved, lofty bastards.
The duchess tapped her fingers rhythmically upon his leg to grab his attention.
Her eyes twinkled. “You needn’t worry; there is nothing between me and the current Duke of Argyll.”
Not yet.
As cunning as arrogant, she’d mistaken his silent disgust for jealousy.
Undoubtedly, the duke and his ‘dear stepmama’ would, at last, bring their years of unslaked lust to a culmination after the duchess married Latimer. On the contrary to her wrongly drawn conclusion, Latimer couldn’t muster a shred of rage, or, for that matter, even the slightest hint of annoyance at that certainty.
He’d never feel anything remotely close to possessive about this woman.
There was, however, a young lady who the mere thought of her with another seared in Latimer’s veins like a poison in his blood.
And there would be someone noble and respectable to take her for his wife.
No, it’d be one of thegentlemenhere, now…
Latimer did a sweep of the gentlemen who’d been brought forward as potential bridegrooms for Livian to choose from.
Flaring his nostrils, he fought to slow his breathing.
A task that, as he looked about at the men who’d potentially be Livian’s husband, became a task to rival Atlas’s overhead hold on the earth.
