Page 96 of How to Love a Duke in Ten Days
Suspicion surged through him, chasing away the clouds upon which he danced and weighing him deftly to the ground. He gazed into her eyes. Such beautiful eyes, a brown so amber that the shades in her hair set a certain fire to the color. Not red, but close.
If only he didn’t read secrets in their depths. If only her thoughts weren’t so infuriatingly opaque.
Perhaps she wasn’t dishonest withhimabout feelings for Forsythe, but with herself. Sometimes Alexandra was the most logical woman he’d ever met. And other times, she spoke the most utter nonsense. She’d claimed to have no prior romantic entanglements, and no interest in such.
And yet, she’d taken a lover.
She claimed that lover hadn’t been Forsythe.
In this moment, so much of him wanted to believe her, even though his shallow, black heart screamed that to do so would be folly.
What if he fell for her? What if he fucked her?
What if she then gave birth in nine months to a golden-haired genius with Forsythe’s unctuous features? The very idea had him contemplating walling the bastard in with his ancestor and leaving him to rot.
Piers would hate himself for allowing it. For being as weak against her multitude of charms as his father had been.
He’d hate her for being so deceitful.
He’d hate the child for not being his.
After the life he’d led, a deception of this magnitude would be his undoing.
He couldn’t allow this fate. No matter how much his body yearned for her. No matter what sort of spell she weaved with her wit and her wisdom.
He would wait to claim her. He would wait until the machinations of fate were more under his control.
He would not allow himself to fall. It was better that way, for them both.
If he never loved her, he could never hate her.
But that didn’t mean he couldn’t set about some machinations of his own.
No matter what happened in ten days—eight now—he could still lay siege to her body. He could—he would—pleasure her, and then he’d take what pleasure she could give. If two people such as they couldn’t share trust or love, at least they could indulge in this. This connection threaded through the warp and weft of his very fabric, thrumming within him a constant erotic longing.
Oh, he’d have her.
He’d use his hands and mouth and skill to erase the memory of any other man, so that by the time he took her, she’d not only have forgotten the feel of her former lover inside of her.
She’d have forgotten his name.
“Where did you go?” she whispered gently. “You’re miles away.”
“I was visiting the future,” he said casually.
“Oh?” Her brows rose. “And what did you see there, pray?”
“You,” he murmured, inhaling her vaguely tropical scent. Sweet and citrus. Intoxicating.
“And what was I doing?” she inquired.
He leaned in as low as he could while maintaining their waltz. “You were screaming my name.”
She blanched and would have stumbled had he not such a solid hold upon her. “W-what?”
“You were crying out blasphemies to every god you don’t believe in while you came apart in my arms.”
Her breath sped against him. Her limbs trembling a little.
