Page 16 of The Duke's Bartered Mistress

That was the moment his fingers reached the puckered skin around her most intimate hole. He was touching that? A gentle caress circled the outside, then his thumb brushed against her hole—

And she gasped as a bolt of need shot through her.

It was humiliating. It was wrong.

It felt so very right.

She tried to hide her moan by dropping her head against her forearms, but she couldn’t stop the way her core flooded with her desire.

He hummed again, this time almost approvingly, and his thumb dropped. As his fingers dug into her cheek, holding it to one side, his thumb dragged across her cleft. She could feel him pulling her dew from her core and spreading it around her arsehole.

Shuddering, she pressed her thighs together, ignoring his command to keep her legs spread for him. Good God, how was she supposed to withstand this torture? She wanted to thrust back against his hand. She wanted to grind against the desk in front of her. She wanted to reach under the complicated bundle of her skirts and find her clitoris and massage herself to orgasm.

She wanted his cock in her.

The realization startled another moan from her.

Who was she? What was going on?

She’d once forsaken her family and Society’s good graces to make a marriage for lust, but even Roger hadn’t drawn this kind of reaction from her body.

He was stroking her, but it felt…clinical. As if he was examining her. Are ye worth it? Was he seriously checking her “worth” by stroking her cleft? And was she seriously becoming aroused by how debasing the whole thing was?

Apparently, yes.

“Good girl,” he murmured again, his fingers spreading her. “Hmmm, aye. That’s it.”

His fingers found her clitoris, pulsing within her curls. When he pinched it lightly she jerked against him, her moan muffled by the fact her mouth was pressed desperately against her sleeve, her eyes squeezed shut.

“That’s it, aye.” He pressed briefly against her pearl, then cupped her core with his palm. “Good girl,” he rasped again, and she had to resist the urge to preen at his praise. Did he even know what he was saying?

Good God, she was acting like a bitch in heat.

She was slick with need, and he—this scarred, beastly stranger—was fingering her cunny. Was making her hot.

And then…one of his thick, rough fingers slid into her. She couldn’t stop her groan, and when she pressed against his hand, urging him deeper, he whispered a harsh curse.

Abruptly, he yanked his hand away from her.

Had she not been sprawled across his desk, she would’ve swayed from his abandonment. As it was, she opened her eyes, the words of the contract swimming before her eyes.

I, Lady Georgia Stoughton, agree to be fooked by Demon Hayle, whenever and however he wants it.

His movements brusque, he yanked her bloomers up. “Sign the bloody paper, Lady Georgia,” he demanded.

In a daze, pulse pounding, her attention centered on the ache between her legs, Georgia straightened. Her skirts fell around her legs as she turned an inquiring gaze on him.

He was facing away, staring out the window, hands curled into fists at his side. He appeared to be breathing heavily, but other than that—and the way his voice sounded as if he was being strangled—she had no indication what he was thinking.

“My…my lord?” she ventured, wondering if she should ask if he’d found her worth it.

“Sign the paper,” he repeated. “Sign the fooking thing, then go find Mrs. Kettel. She and Mary will make up a room for ye.”

With shaking fingers, she reached for the pencil. “So I am to stay at Castle Endymion?”

He waited as the pencil scratched across the paper—Georgia Marie Stoughton—then he spoke.

“Indeed. Welcome to hell.”

---