Page 65 of The Good Duke
Simon stormed to his feet with an alacrity that sent his chair scraping noisily upon the hardwood floor. “You’rel-leaving!” Dread leant a stutter to his now usually steady speech.
“Didn’t I say as much, Your Grace?” Persephone returned with a bored drawl, made all the more dismissive by the fact she delivered it at the door she now marched towards.
Simon flew across the room. He managed to reach her side just as she clasped the ornate door handle.
He slapped a palm against the panel and kept it shut. More importantly, he keptherhere.
Persephone cast a side-eyed glance his way. “Are you kidnapping me,Your Grace?” The fiery glitter in her eyes dared him to try it.
“Of course n-not!”
And he wouldn’t. He’d learned long ago not to cross Persephone Forsyth. Though neither had he ever been on the receiving end of her wrath.
When he made no attempt to remove his hand from the door, Persephone glared in that foreboding way of hers. Ever so slowly, she folded her arms at her chest.
That deliberate crossing of her olive-hued limbsalsobrought Simon’s gaze down a fraction to the plumped orbs. Those magnificent, still high but now fuller breasts beckoned. He ached with a hungering to fill his palms with that tantalizing flesh and discover for himself if they were as pillowy soft to touch.
A nagging, dangerous, and increasingly familiar lust bolted through him.
I’m not a greenhead anymore.
Only… Perhaps it was the bold, self-possessed woman she’d become and her absolute apathy towards his new title of duke when, since his return to London, he’d been met by everyone else with a fawning obsequiousness. But he found himself gripped by, and possessed of, an inexplicable hungering for this all-grown-up Persephone.
She moved her gaze over Simon’s face. The anger melted from her delicate features, and, as if suddenly dazed, she blinked slowly.
Her big, expressive eyes locked with his.
Something shifted in the air, a charged, volatile energy that crackled like the earth just after a lightning strike.
Simon shifted so that he leaned an elbow against the carved oak panel, and his arm framed the side of her head.
The long, graceful column of her neck moved wildly in a telltale sign he’d gleaned from years of experience with former lovers bespoke desire.
Close as he and Persephone were, the scent of her—lemon and apple blossoms—filled the air around him.
Simon drew a deep breath and inhaled the innocent fragrance that clung to Persephone’s person; the blend of sweet and tart proved an unanticipated temptation.
Did she dab that perfume behind the shells of her ears? Or…was she more wicked and bold and placed a dash between the deep crevice between her breasts?
Simon dusted a finger along the curve of her cheek and stopped his light caress at the small freckle she’d formed at some point from the sun near the corner of her jaw.
“Tell me, Persephone,” he said huskily, “what is it you want of me? Tell me and I’ll do it to keep you here.” In this moment; in this room.
Her lashes fluttered in a whispery soft dance.
With a grin born of pure male satisfaction, Simon lowered his mouth, wanting to lay claim to hers, needing to possess her lips so he could know, once and for all, the taste and feel of Persephone and the woman she’d become.
Then, and only then, would he be able to put these forbidden thoughts of her from his mind.
Chapter 11
In this instant, in this parlor Simon had repurposed for a bright, less staid office, with Simon’s mouth so very close to Persephone’s, and his gaze locked on her lips, everything happened in both slow motion and with an astonishing speed.
As Simon’s mouth came closer to hers, all the thoughts in her head swirled, even as the earth seemed to stop spinning.
My God, is he going to kiss me?
Heisgoing to kiss me!
