Page 89 of The Duke and Lady Scandal
Midstep, she paused and spun to face him. “It is?”
“Yes. I know it’s not reasonable to keep you from your work or your friends.” He shook his head, recalling the fear and anger that had overtaken him last night. If he’d been able to lay hands on M, he would have destroyed the man.
“Thank you.” She rushed toward him again, slid her arms around his middle, and he wrapped one arm around her.
God, how easy it would be to lose himself in her sweetness. But he couldn’t. Not now. Not until M was found and imprisoned. Not ever if he truly wished the best for her.
“Alexandra,” he managed to get out, his voice raw and rough.
She’d laid her head against his chest, and he could feel something in him rending apart.
He didn’t press a kiss to her hair as he wished to. Didn’t pull her closer or wrap her fully in his embrace.
And when she registered the stiffness with which he held her, she looked up.
“You haven’t come to shout at me,” she said on a hoarse whisper. “You’ve come to end this.”
“You deserve better, Alexandra.” Those were the words he’d repeated to himself on the cab ride. He murmured them under his breath, singed them into his brain. His damned heart could go on bleeding, but his head knew this was right.
Shediddeserve better than what he could offer.
Alexandra pushed his arm away and stepped past him. This time, she didn’t pace. She walked toward the veranda door and looked out on the garden.
One glance back at him and she pushed the French doors open, heading out onto the sunlit stones.
She didn’t stop there. He knew exactly where she was going.
When he followed her and found her behind the wall of the hedgerow, she wasn’t pacing this time. She stood waiting for him, and she looked just as bewitching in the garden when it was drenched in sunlight as she had under the glow of the moon.
“Tell me here, where you kissed me, that you feel nothing for me,” she demanded.
“I feel a great deal for you.” He swallowedagainst the next words, knowing he shouldn’t let them loose. “You have my heart, such as it is.”
She unclasped her crossed arms and reached for him.
He couldn’t stop himself any more than he could stop his next breath. And as soon as he was in her arms, all his logic and resolve fled. He kissed her cheek, nipped at the edge of her ear. Only when he felt a pin hit his hand did he realize he’d slid his fingers into her hair.
Alexandra arched into him, lifted onto her toes, and seamed her body with his. He happily took her weight, and then her kiss, and the taste of her drew him under.
She gave him everything he craved, her warmth, her passion, her wonderful willful heart, and God, how he wished he could give her everything in return.
He turned so that her back was against the hedge, and she immediately hiked one knee up toward his hip.
“I imagined this the night you kissed me,” she said as he trailed kisses down her neck.
“Me too, love,” he told her before licking at the base of her throat. “Me too.”
Her skirt was as complicated as a puzzle box, layers and flounces, and then petticoats with layers too. But as soon as his fingertips met hot bare flesh at the top of her stockings, it was all worth it. He wanted to drop to his knees and taste her. He wanted to rip past her drawers and dip his fingers into her heat.
But when he felt her fingers fumbling with the buttons at the fly of his trousers, he reached down to stop her. Dipping his head, he pressed his forehead gently to hers.
“We can’t,” he told her on a ragged exhale. “Not here. Not like this.”
“Don’t you dare tell me I deserve better.”
“But you do.”
With a little growl of frustration, she pivoted away from him. “Why do you get to decide that?”
