Page 36 of The Duke and the Temporary Bride

“Give that back!” she cried.

He stormed across the room and toward the doorway. There, he looked at her a final time, holding the flute up to show what he meant to do with it.

“Do not even think about it,” she warned him.

He not only thought about it, but he also did it. Still looking at her, Benedict flung the flute through the doorway and down the hall. The sound of it crashing against the wooden floor echoed through the room.

“Are you insane!”

“I am what you made me.” He stormed back to where she was standing as if he meant to take her next and do the same—that being, flinging her down the hall.

If Selina was smart, she would have said nothing. She would have left him and thanked God that she made it out of the room in one piece. But the sight of her husband’s short temper lit a fire inside her the likes of which she had never known. There was no logic to it. No explanation that she understood. Just raw, unabated lust.

“You enjoy testing me,” he snarled, still looking at his feet.

“Better than dying of boredom,” she snapped.

“You enjoy angering me.”

“It is not a hard thing to do.”

“You best be careful…” He took a deep breath and stopped in front of her. “If you push me too far, there is no telling what I might do.”

She opened her mouth to tease him further. To push him that little bit harder. It would be so easy. He wanted it as did she. About to say the words, her body now trembling as much as her husband’s, Selina realized that they were through playing games.

Her husband truly was a beast. From his size to his fury to his hideously scarred face. He was a beast, she was his prey, and unlike most prey, she wanted nothing more than for him to devour her. As was his right.

“Show me,” she said instead, her words a throaty whisper.

He stiffened. Slowly, he raised his head, and she gasped upon seeing the look in his eyes. She had never seen such hunger. Even his teeth seemed to have turned into fangs. His lips twitched. His fists unclenched and clenched again. A step forward, to which she did not back down. And then another.

“Show me now.”

Benedict let out a roar as he grabbed her around the waist, lifted her into the air, and pulled her to his shaking body. Her legs wrapped his waist, his nails dug into her back, her hands took hold of his head, and the two kissed like beasts in the throes of heat.

This wasn’t like the other times. There would be no stopping them. No resisting. No chance that they might snap out of this trance that they had both found themselves in and regret their actions.

Selina had never felt more wanted. And she had never wanted anyone more. This had not been her intention. This had not been why she’d decided to annoy him with her flute practice. That was done out of frustration, an act of rebellion because she had been at her wits’ end.

Although she supposed that if she thought about it, perhaps this was the goal? She and Benedict could not be friendly, and ignoring one another was never going to work. So, if not those two options, that left just one more at their disposal.

It was an option that had been building between them for nearly two weeks now, and thus when it came about, it did so with the burning intensity of a forest fire left unchecked, whose only goal was to consume and burn and destroy everything in its path.

Their lips met in a clash. Benedict’s tongue plunged into her mouth. It explored her. It licked and wrestled with her tongue. It darted in and out of her mouth, over her lips, back into her mouth. And Selina accepted all of it, nibbling on his lips, moaning her pleasure at his taste, gripping him harder with her legs and hands to show that she did not want him to stop.

Holding her as he was, Benedict stumbled forward, still kissing her until he found a table. There, he sat her down and then pulled back so that he could use his hands to rip open the front of her dress. She gasped at the action. He growled and narrowed his eyes at her in warning. And she looked daringly back at him.

Her breasts were out, heaving in his face, and the way he stared at them made her tremble. He wrapped his hands around them, brought her erect nipples to his lips, and began to suck on them.

“Oh…” She yelped as he sucked on her nipples harder. “Benedict… oh!”

“Quiet,” he ordered as he continued to suck, biting down gently, which made her yelp again from the pain. “You wanted this, remember that.”

She laughed as she leaned back, giving herself to him fully. “Show me.”

Selina had never felt such passion before. Even in her dreams, when she had pictured them together, it had paled in comparison to the raw energy that engulfed them both. Two bodies turned into one, merging as their impulses spoke through their actions and transformed them into wild animals.

Benedict dropped to his knees suddenly.

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