Page 57 of Dukes Are Forever
As for his wife....
This had not gone the way he'd planned.
None of this had been expected.
Adele was cool, rational cunning, a woman who deliberately toyed with him every time she rearranged his dinner table. Someone who arched a brow at him as she pushed her metaphorical chess piece across the mental playing board between them, her eyes telling him,"Your move."
Not a book-throwing harridan. Not a woman who raked her nails down his back as he made her scream with pleasure. And he wasn't the type of man to throw a woman down upon his desk and fuck her without a single thought beyond the all-consuming drive to be inside her.
He looked at her then.
Finally.
All torn skirts, tangled hair, and flushed skin. Her ravaged mouth. The bite marks on her throat and shoulder. There was no hiding what had happened here.
Fuck.She was driving him insane. Malloryn tilted the decanter to his lips and swallowed half the brandy before he could rearrange his thoughts well enough to contain them.
When he lowered it, Adele was still blushing.
"I didn't hurt you?" he asked with a rough voice, and that was yet another serious problem. He never lost control like that.
"No," she whispered, and her cheeks grew even pinker. "It was...."
It was.
And he'd liked it. That thought burned behind his ribs. He'd liked every single moment of what had happened between them. Liked shoving his way under her skirts. Liked the gasp she made when he curled his fist in her hair and—
Malloryn rubbed his chest, feeling dangerously unhinged. This wasn't him.
Or not the man he'd made himself into.
The last time he'd felt like this he'd been seventeen, in love, and blind to the world around him. When he'd lost everything and stood in the ashes of what Balfour had made of his life, he'd finally understood what his father, now dead, had been telling him all these years.
Emotions were weaknesses. Love was a ticking time bomb, an Achilles heel. And he could never, ever, allow himself to feel like that again.
Two facts arranged themselves in his head: Adele breached something inside him, left him shambling for control.
Adele was dangerous.
She undid everything he'd made of himself and stripped him raw. He couldn't think when she'd grabbed him by the shirt and kissed him, and that was terrifying, especially right now, when Balfour was out there again, trying to destroy him.
He'd survived the last time Balfour came against him.
Barely.
He couldn't afford to give in to weakness now.Anykind of weakness.
"Here." He helped her to her feet, locking instantly on the brief wince that narrowed her brows. "Youarehurt."
"No." Adele collapsed against his chest, looking up at him with pleasure-dazed eyes. "Just a little weak-kneed and—"
Her face suddenly blanched.
Fetching his cravat, he offered the rumpled linen to her. "For the mess."
Face flaming, she turned around and tidied herself as best she could, whilst he pretended to fix his shirt in the reflection in the window.
It wasn't often he forgot himself.
