Page 32 of Til Death Duke Us Part
Breathing hard and body buzzing, he rolled to the side of the bed he hadn’t just marked and rested an arm over his eyes. “Damn.”
“Yes, that.” A little chuckle, deep, amused, satisfied. “We should rise.” Said with a reluctant sigh.
He slung his feet over the edge of the bed, rubbing his chest. Her reluctance skated across his skin. It wanted in, wanted to become his. But he’d never been reluctant to leave a woman’s bed. “Up, lazy bones, or”—he grasped the edge of the sheet beneath her and tugged it up and off the mattress—“I’ll roll you off the bed.”
She squawked and jumped to her feet, clutching the blankets to her naked form beneath a glare that would have singed the hair from a lesser man’s head. Then something shifted. She lifted her chin like a queen and let the blankets fall.
His face must have shown his appreciation. His cock certainly perked up—so soon, too—and he put a knee on the bed to crawl toward her, but she turned on her toe and strutted off.
“If you touch me before I’ve had a cup of tea—at least one—you’ll never see this”—she wiggled her perfectly round arse—“again.”
He dropped to his belly on the bed. He’d never obeyed a woman so quickly in his life, and likely never would again.
He’d never had such easy conversation with a lady, and why was that? The lack of expectations between them? The fact that she already knew his faults? He suspected so. Also that she was funny and bright, and talking with her felt like all the things that had gone wrong in his life had never happened. He suspected, mostly, that it was because she saw every sordid inch of his soul and didn’t flinch.
Oh, the bad waited beyond the little bubble of their brougham. It could never truly dissolve. He was still a failure, and she broke her back to feed herself. He needed to steal from the dead, and she was determined to stop him.
But for now, and for the last five hours, he could look at the end of the road and say incredibly imbecilic things like, “When I was a child, I always suspected my parents loved my half sister better than me.”
She jerked her elbow into his arm. “You did not.”
“I did! They doted on Jane. I think now it was only because she was my father’s bastard. They worked hard to make her feel loved, to make up for any censure she’d experience outside our home.”
“Even your mother?”
“Even her.”
“She sounds lovely. Your mother. I’d have liked to meet her.”
“She’d have adored you. And I suppose most men say that, but I mean it. She’d have found you endlessly amusing because you taunt me so well and so often.”
“She liked to see you put in your place. No wonder you thought she loved your sister more.”
“It was a boy’s doubt. I was silly.”
“Yes, you were.”
“I am pitiful now.”
“Yes, you are.” But she wrapped her arm around his and leaned her head on his shoulder. “My parents adored me.”
“Excellent for you.”
“Until I decided to marry Percy. Then they were infuriated with me. And when I remained determined, they gave me up entirely.”
“Disowned you?”
“Mm. Now who is pitiful?”
“Certainly not you.” He wanted to kiss the top of her head. He didn’t. That would be an affectionate, comfortable thing to do. They were simply… friends. Who were fucking. No more than that. No affection. No top-of-head kisses.
He tried not to feel disappointed about it.
“Have you ever thought about remarrying?” he asked.
“Of course. But such delusions do not last for long. Not many men want a woman like me. Widowed, poor, and covered in dirt.”
He scraped his gaze across her creamy skin. “I see not a speck of dirt.”
