Page 133 of Dukes Are Forever
"Why don't you come up to bed?" she whispered. "You look tired."
"And you look like you have no intentions of luring me to bed to sleep."
"I could stay with you," Adele murmured, the hem of her robe draping over the chair as she knelt on it. "We could grant each other sweet dreams."
Malloryn brushed his knuckles up her thigh and then slowly looked up, his lashes stained copper in the lantern-light. "I don't think I would be very good company tonight."
"That's nothing new," she said, with a smile and a twitch of her brow.
"Adele."
"You've barely slept in days."
Please. Tell me why.
His head lolled back in the chair, roughened stubble darkening his cheeks. "Not tonight. It's… the anniversary of Catherine's death tomorrow."
Adele's hand froze on his cheek. "Oh. I'm so sorry."
"Don't be," he said with a sigh, turning his face into her hand. "It's been years. I barely remember her sometimes. But I cannot help thinking it an ominous occasion. Balfour's going to do something, strike out somehow. I can just feel it."
"You're as prepared as you're going to be. You'll defeat him, I know it."
Malloryn kissed the back of her hand. "Go back to bed. One of us should get some rest."
"And you?"
Malloryn lifted the glass. "Maybe I'll come up in an hour or so."
Push him.
Adele slid into his lap.
Malloryn shot her a challenging look.
"You owe me a kiss," she murmured, sliding her hands up his chest. "You cannot simply kiss me on a rooftop and then pretend nothing more is going to come of it. You cannot simply wash my back, and then not touch me again."
"We shouldn't."
"I don't care what we should or shouldn't do. I want you. I want your kiss."
There was a long, slow pause, as if he fought some inner battle.
And then finally conceded.
"Then take it," he whispered.
Night marked his eyes with shadows, and she traced her fingers over the thin curve of his upper lip, ignoring the way he watched her. Ignoring the questions in those eyes.
Instead she leaned down and replaced her finger with her mouth.
The kiss was softer than anything they'd previously shared.
The faint teasing caress of his tongue against hers. The startled intake of his breath, closely followed by the dart of her own tongue. Every time she kissed him, she grew a little more intoxicated with the taste of his mouth and the way he threw himself into each kiss with a passion that defied his cold reputation.
Sweetness turned to hunger. Adele shivered as his hand slid up the back of her neck, fingers tangling in the fine hairs there.
He reached for the ties of her robe, but she batted his hand away, captured his wrist.
