Page 148 of Dukes Are Forever
A thousand thoughts danced across her expression: uncertainty, disbelief, shock, confusion, hope.... But the one that finally settled was an odd sense of understanding, as if sheknewwhat he was trying to say.
"Tell me what?" she whispered.
He closed his eyes to avoid the way she sought the truth of him with her own gaze. The truth he'd barely begun to recognize himself.
This wasn't supposed to happen.
He wasn't supposed to feel this way.
He wasn't supposed to want her.
To crave her.
Not just physically, but her smile, her teasing flirtations, the way she would link their fingers and rest her head against his chest, as if listening to his heart beat.
Her affection.
Adele was a dream he'd never expected to dream again.
He couldn't say it.
Instead, he kissed her again.
Poured everything he had into that kiss, his hands curling through her tangled hair, his body meeting hers and bending it back until she practically lay in his arms. He ravished her mouth, breathing in the taste of her, hungry for each and every little part of her. Hungry to consume her, though it was not merely passion he sought, but her.
Her.
I thought you were dead, and I did not know until that moment what you meant to me.
Somehow, her smiles had become a gift he lingered over. Somehow, without him even realizing, Adele had crept into his heart—into his arms—and started to lure him out of the darkness of his world.
He'd been granted a second chance. And this time, he wasn't about to waste it.
They staggered.
Then the desk was there, and he hitched her up upon it, sweeping a hand across the desk to clear it. Paperwork cascaded across the carpet like fluttering moths. But the center of his awareness was locked on her. On the fistful of skirts he held. The cold, clammy feel of the fabric against him, as he yanked them out of the way, stepping between her parted legs. Of the taste of her mouth as she kissed him back as if she had nothing more to lose.
And maybe she didn't.
"Adele—" He kissed her again, a slow, soul-shattering kiss. Caught both hands in her bodice and tore. Then he was burying his face against her throat, tracing his lips across the smooth slope of her breasts. The puckered bud of her nipple slipped over his lips, and he sucked hard, finding life in her gasp, feeling heat blooming beneath his hands and mouth—
Alive. Alive and so beautiful.
Her heart pounding beneath his touch.
Warmth flooding to the surface, stealing away the chill of her skin.
Alive. Alive. And it made his heart beat too. Made him realize that he'd been many years dead in some ways, until she forced her way into his life and made his heart beat for the first time in seventeen years.
"Malloryn," she whispered, fingers threading through his hair as she arched against him, offering him all of her. "I want you. Inside me. Now."
He freed himself from his trousers and then grabbed her by the hips.
"I thought you were dead," he said again, filling her with one smooth thrust.
But it was heat that surrounded him.
A living woman in his arms, one who gasped in shock and threw her head back as he took her. He tried to be careful. Tried to restrain himself. To maintain some sort of grip over the passionate demands of the craving as his bloodlust rose, threatening to overwhelm him.
