And it will make everything more difficult.
She did not say the last. Instead she said, “You control me.”
He stared at her for a long moment, and she wished he would touch her. Instead, he left the bed, and she thought she might have ruined everything. But he was back within minutes, his shirt and boots gone, clad only in black wool trousers and the black bands of ink at his arms and the stark white of the bandage on his shoulder.
She drank him in, every inch bathed in golden candlelight, and she wondered at him. How had this glorious god of a man, built like a Greek statue or a Michelangelo, come from one of the finest aristocratic lines in all of England? There was nothing mincing or foppish about him. He was the most masculine thing she’d ever seen, all power and grace and strength.
Her gaze rested on his good hand, clutching the cravat he’d tossed away earlier, the long stretch of cloth at once promise and threat.
“You worry about control,” he said.
Her heart began to pound. “Yes.”
He extended the cravat toward her. After a long moment, she took it, and he lay down on the bed, extending his arms up until his hands met the slats of the headboard.
Her mouth went dry at the look of him, spread out before her, broad and beautiful. And he was beautiful. He was perfect in every way.
And then he said, “Take it. Be in control,” and desire coursed through her, hot and heavy and far too powerful to resist.
She ran the cravat through her fingers, eyes wide, and said, “Are you certain?”
He nodded once, his grip tightening on the headboard. “Trust me, Mara.”
She inched up the bed, naked but for those silken stockings, watching his gaze on her, loving it. Kneeling beside him, she said, “You wish me to tie you to it?”
He smiled. “I wish you to do whatever you like to me.”
He was turning himself over to her. To her pleasure. And all she could think was that her pleasure was somehow inexorably tied to his. The thought gave her courage, strength to do the unthinkable, to straddle his torso, the heat of her pressed against his naked skin. He groaned and closed his eyes, lifting his hips from the bed, pressing up against her, his body making promises she hoped desperately that it would keep. His eyes flashed. “But if you plan to blindfold me, love, do it now. Before you torture me with this view any longer.”
Blindfold him. Good Lord. Did people do such things?
She wanted to. Desperately.
She couldn’t help the smile that spread at the words, and she loved the way he laughed when it appeared. “You minx. You enjoy it.”
“You want me.”
“Want does not begin to describe the way I feel about you,” his low voice promised. “Want is nothing compared with the level of desire I have. With the desperation I feel. With the way I long for you.”
She leaned over, unable to resist pressing her lips to his, taking his mouth in a deep, thorough kiss that she’d learned from him—in long, lush strokes that left them both breathless.
When she lifted her head, it was to find her courage. She slid the cravat over his eyes, and when he lifted his head from the pillows, she reached behind him and tied it tightly, loving the way his body tensed beneath her, loving the sound of his exhale, low and harsh and perfect.
She leaned forward, pressing her breasts to his chest, being careful of his wound as she whispered in his ear, “You are mine.”
He growled at the words. “Always.”
Not always, though.
She couldn’t have him always. It wasn’t the life he deserved—married to a scandal, to a woman no one would ever accept, to a woman London would never forget. As long as she was with him, he would be the Killer Duke.
And he deserved to be so much more.
But tonight, she could pretend.
She pressed long kisses to his warm skin, across one shoulder and up his good arm, where his tattooed muscles strained against his grip. She couldn’t resist running her tongue along the edge of that inked spot, worrying the dips and curves until he growled his pleasure and she moved on, lower, along the outside of his chest and then across it, paying special attention to the scars dotting his chest and stomach. Kissing them. Tracing their raised surfaces with her tongue.
He hissed at the sensation, and she lifted her head. “Do they hurt?”
“No. It’s just—” She waited for him to finish. “No one has ever wanted to touch them before. Not like this.”
She wanted to touch them. She wanted to touch every inch of him, and the realization made her bold. She lifted herself up and slid down his body, working at the fall of his trousers, sliding buttons from their moorings—instinct and desire overtaking experience. He lifted his hips from the bed, allowing her to slide the trousers down, revealing him, long and hard and perfect.
And hers.
She sat back on her heels, taking him in, spread out upon his bed, his good hand locked at the headboard, knuckles white, straining to stay there. Eager to give himself up to her.
Turning himself over to her.
Giving up his control. For her.
She reached for him then, hand trembling, uncertain. She stilled, an inch from him. Closer.
He sensed it. “Mara,” he said, teeth clenched, anguish and desire making the words thick and lovely.
She wanted to give him everything he wanted. But—“I don’t know what to do,” she confessed, the words somehow easier because he was blindfolded. “I’ve never—I want to do it correctly.”
His breath came in a short, panting laugh. “You can’t do it wrong, darling. I promise. I want you too much.”
She leaned forward, taking her confession with him. “I’ve only ever dreamed it,” she told him. “In the dark of night. I’ve wondered what this would be like.”
He shook his head. “Don’t tell me. I don’t want to think of you dreaming of another.”
Shock coursed through her. “It’s never been another,” she said. “It’s always been you.”
And it was her turn to touch, her hand settling on the length of him, feeling him leap and harden even more—if it were possible. He groaned his pleasure, long and loud, and she reveled in the pure, masculine sound. “You’re so hard.”
“I am. For you.”
“And soft, too,” she said. “Like velvet over steel.”
One hand released from the headboard, coming toward her for a split second before he seemed to recall his promise. Before he forced it back to its position. “Not as soft as you.”
“You seem to be having trouble,” she said, her hands running up and down the hot length of him, loving the way his hips moved with her.
He tilted his head. “Are you teasing me?”
She grinned. “Perhaps.”
He scowled. “Remember, Miss Lowe, turnabout is fair play.”
A thrill shot through her. “What a pretty promise.”
The growl again. He couldn’t help himself, the glorious man. “Harder,” he said.
“I thought I was in control,” she said.
“Love, if you don’t think you are in control, you are mad.”
She smiled again, increasing the pressure of her touch. “How could I know I am in charge?”
“Because if I were in charge, we would not be playing silly games.”
She laughed at that, and he said, “I love the sound of your laughter.” She stopped. “It’s so rare. And I want to hear it every day.”
It was the most beautiful thing anyone had ever said to her.
She rewarded him with a long stroke, down and then up his shaft, until his breath was coming hard and fast. “Tell me . . .”
“Anything,” he promised.
“Tell me how you like it.”
He moaned at the words, long and low. “I like it however you wish t
o give it.”
She leaned forward, kissing him on the lips, surprising him briefly before he reciprocated, the kiss wild and wanton and wonderful. She pulled away and whispered, “Would you like it if I used my mouth?”
He swore, harsh and dangerous, and she took the foul word as a yes, sliding back down the length of his body and considering the length of him . . . wondering what might feel best.
She hesitated too long, evidently, because he called out her name, the word an agonized plea. She pressed a kiss to the tip of him, loving the way he leapt in her hands, against her lips. “Tell me,” she whispered to the most private part of him.
He did as he was told. “Suck it.”
The instructions were scandalous, utterly improper.
And all she wanted.
She did as she was told, following his harsh, aching direction, experimenting and learning with tongue and lips and pressure until he prayed and swore and moaned her name, his head rocking back and forth, his hands desperately clinging to the bedposts as she gave him everything for which he asked.
As she worshipped him.
As she loved him.
Until she realized that it wasn’t enough. That she wanted everything. And she stopped.
“No . . .” The words panted from him as she pressed a final kiss to the throbbing, crimson tip of him. “Why?”
She lifted herself over him then, spreading her legs wide over his hips. Holding him straight until the tip of him touched the curls that protected the most intimate part of her.
The part she would give him.
The part she would never give another.
He shook beneath her. Literally quaked. “Is that— Oh, God. Mara.” She smiled, spreading herself wide, letting the tip of him slide through her secret folds. “Love, you’re so wet.” He swore, the words blasphemous and beautiful. “So hot. So beautiful.”
She smiled, working herself over the head of him. “You can’t see me, how would you know that?”
“I always see you,” he said. “You’re burned into me. I could be blind for the rest of my life, and I would still see you.”
The words took her as much as his body did, as she slid down the hard length of him, and he fit inside her so perfectly that they both sighed, half prayer, half blasphemy. He stilled at the sound of her pleasure. “It doesn’t hurt?”
She shook her head. “No.” It was glorious. “Does it hurt you?”
He grinned. “Hell, no.”
“I shall move, then, if that’s all right with you.”
He laughed. “You are in control, love.”
She was in control, lifting and lowering herself on him, testing the pressure and speed, pausing every now and then to revel in a particular angle. A specific pleasure.
He let her guide the moment, whispering his encouragement, lifting his hips to meet her when she found a particular cadence or rhythm that he enjoyed. She memorized those, coming back to them over and over, loving the way they seemed to destroy him with desire and sensation.
It was glorious.
But there was something missing.
Him.
His touch. His gaze. The piece of him that she desperately wanted. She didn’t want to control him. She did not wish to take this moment for her own.
She wanted to share it.
So she did, leaning up to remove his blindfold, pulling it over his head and flinging it across the room, not caring where it fell. His gaze was hot and heavy on her, and she nearly swooned when he instantly captured the tip of one of her breasts in his mouth, worrying it. Loving it.
And still, he kept his hands locked on the headboard. Until she released him with simple, honest words. “I am yours.”
Free, his hands fell to her hips, his strong, gentle grip guiding her hips in perfect rhythm, changing the angle, giving her the chance to find the movement that brought her immense pleasure, and she was suddenly rocking hard and fast against him, crying out as his fingers found the heat of her, pressing and rolling in that secret place until she could not bear it any longer.
His gaze was on hers, his lids heavy with desire, and she placed her hands on the bed by his head and whispered, “Don’t stop.”
Don’t stop looking at me.
Don’t stop moving in me.
Don’t stop loving me.
He heard it all. “Never,” he promised.
She gave herself up to ecstasy. And to him.
And only once she had taken her pleasure did he take hers, rocking once, twice, three times against her, and crying out her name, releasing high inside her, holding her to him—still joined together—until their heartbeats calmed as one.
After long moments, she stirred, the chill from the room making her shiver in his arms, and he pulled one edge of the massive coverlet over her, refusing to let her out of his arms.
Instead, he buried his nose in her neck and said, “I can’t get enough of you. Of that scent. You make me want to buy every lemon in London so no one can get a whiff of you. But it’s not just lemons. It’s something else. It’s you.”
The words warmed her. “You’ve noticed my scent?”
He smiled at the words he’d used with her a lifetime ago. Repeated her reply. “It’s impossible to miss.”
They lay there in silence, his good hand stroking over her skin, up and down her spine like a benediction. She wondered what he was thinking, and was about to ask when he broke the silence with “What if I cannot fight again?”
His arm. She turned to kiss the warm expanse of his chest. “You will.”
He ignored her platitudes. “What if I never regain the feeling? Who am I then? Who will I be? What am I if not unbeatable? If not a fighter? If not the Killer Duke? What is my value then?”
Her heart ached at the questions. He would be everything she’d ever wanted. He would be all she’d ever dreamed.
She lifted her head. “You don’t see it, do you?”
“What?”
“You are so much more.”
He kissed the words from her lips, and she was desperate for him to believe her, so she put all her love, all her faith, into the caress. And when he ended it, she whispered. “Temple, you are everything.”
“William,” he corrected her. “Call me William.”
“William,” she whispered the name against his chest. “William.”
William Harrow, the Duke of Lamont.
The man she’d destroyed. The one she could restore. She could give him back the life she had taken. She could return him to his former glory—to the world he’d loved, the women and the balls and the aristocracy. The world he could not have if he did a stupid, noble thing and married her.
No. This was the greatest gift she could give him, even if it would take the greatest sacrifice she had ever made.
The one where she gave up everything she wanted.
The only thing she wanted.
Him.
She wasn’t his dream. She wasn’t his goal. She couldn’t be the wife, the mother, the legacy. “We cannot marry,” she said, softly.
He kissed the top of her head. “Sleep with me tonight, and let me convince you tomorrow why it is the best of all my ideas.”
She shouldn’t. She should leave him now, while she had the strength. “I can’t—”
He interrupted her with a long, lush kiss, one filled with something more than passion. With something she did not wish to identify, for if she identified it, she might never do what needed to be done.
“Stay.”
Her heart broke at the word, dark and graveled on his lips. At the desire in it. At the promise in it. At the knowledge that if she did, he would do everything in his power to keep her. To protect her.
At the knowledge that if she did, he would never have the life he deserved. One free of scandal and ruin. One fr
ee of the memories of his past and his destruction.
He was too perfect. Too right. And she was all wrong.
She would only ruin him again. Only destroy everything he ever wanted. She had to leave him. She had to leave before she was too tempted to stay.
And so she told one final lie. The most important one she’d ever tell.
“I will.”
He slept then, and once his breathing was deep and even, she told the truth.
“I love you.”
Chapter 19
He woke at peace, for the first time in twelve years, already reaching for Mara, eager to pull her into his arms and make love to her properly. Eager to show her all the ways it was right for them to marry. Eager to show her all the ways he would make her happy. All the ways he would love her.
And he would love her, as strange and ethereal as the word seemed, as much as he’d never thought it would have place in his life. He would love her.
He would start today.
Except she was not in the bed. He came up with a handful of empty sheets, too cool to have been left recently.
Dammit. She’d run.
He out of bed within seconds, already pulling on the trousers she’d stripped from him the night before, doing his best to block the memory from his mind. Not wanting his reason or judgment clouded by the things she made him feel. Passion. Pleasure. Sheer, unadulterated frustration.
He was dressed and down the stairs within seconds, out to the mews to saddle his horse and in front of No. 9 Cursitor Street within thirty minutes. He took the stairs to the orphanage three at a time and was inside before most people could knock. It was a good thing the door was unlocked, or he might have torn it down himself.
Lydia was crossing the foyer when he entered, stopping her mid-stride. He did not hesitate. There was no time for pleasantries. “Where is she?”
The woman had learned from a master. “I beg your pardon, Your Grace, where is who?”
He had gone more than thirty years without throttling a female, and he was not about to start now. But he was not above using his size to intimidate. “Miss Baker, I am in no mood for games.”
Lydia took a deep breath. “She is not here.”
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