Page 107 of A Bride for the Duke of Sin

“You are incorrigible,” she complained softly, her cheeks hot with embarrassment and passion.

He merely smiled at her, the promise clear in his eyes.

He was not joking.

“You better go before I do something else, sweetheart.”

Heat flared up in her cheeks. She knew without a doubt he would do it, too, the rogue. He would pin her up against the wall and have his way with her, and she would spread her legs for him because shelovedeverything that he did to her.

Even the most scandalous things she never dreamed of.

As she wobbled her way back to the ballroom, Phoebe could only briefly wonder if his roguish ways had corrupted her as well.

Strangely enough, she had no complaints on that matter.

Indeed, I have become as insatiable as him…

He did not want to let her go.

No, what Ethan wanted at that moment was to push her up against the wall once more and do just as he promised and sink himself into her hot sheath.

The feel of her channel clamping down on his finger as she came apart was enough to drive him into a crazed lust.

He wanted her, and he could hardly wait for this damned ball to end and he could take her back home and do exactlythat.

But this was a ball thrown by his closest friends, and he could not be disrespectful and leave early. A quick glance at the clock on the mantelpiece told him that he had at least three more hours before it was considered polite to leave.

He smiled to himself at that. It was another manifestation of Phoebe’s influence on him. Had it been him in the past, he would have no qualms about absconding from a party much earlier than etiquette allowed. His friends, more than any of the guests, would understand him, too.

But he could not subject Phoebe to the same.

She was his Duchess, his wife, and deserving of every bit of his respect as she did his desire.

He sighed as he breathed in the scent of her still clinging to his fingers, before turning to clean himself up.

Later, he told himself, even as the thought of her walking around the ballroom with her thighs still slick with her climax filled him with immense pride and pleasure.

Later, after this damned ball, he would take his pleasure. For now, he would have to wait.

He turned around to head off into the washroom when he heard the slight patter of slippers on the thick carpet. Moments later, a hushed voice called, “Your Grace!”

He turned around, the breath leaving his lungs when he saw the young woman standing before him.

It was Miss Marianne Delaney.

CHAPTER 31

Of all the people he could have come across that night, the woman he had almost married was the last one he expected—or wanted—to see.

But Miss Delaney was standing before him. She had lost some weight, it would seem, for her face was more gaunt than when he had last seen her. Her eyes seemed to have hardened, her smile carrying a bit of sorrow.

And most of all, her condition was very, very plain to anyone who had eyes. Even the slightly loose dress could hardly hide the roundness of her belly.

When his gaze dropped to where her child was cradled in her body, her hands automatically went up to her abdomen self-consciously.

“I was not expecting to see you tonight,” he told her stiffly. “I was under the impression that you had retired to the countryside with the rest of your family.”

Those were his instructions to the Baron Latimer, and he had hoped that the man would have better sense than to subject his daughter to the harsh judgment of Society. However, against his better judgment, the foolish Baron had indeed returned to London without his wife and his daughter in a fruitless effort to salvage the family’s fortunes.

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