Page 56 of A Bride for the Duke of Sin

He felt the slight quake in her thighs, as if her body still remembered the pleasure he wrought upon it and responded accordingly.

“No,” she replied breathlessly. “Have you changedyours?” She licked her lips, and he longed to taste them, too. “You cannot come and go as you please, and still claim to belong to me, husband.”

“Wrong, Duchess.” He trailed his finger delicately over her inner thigh, reveling in the barely audible sharp intake of breath that resulted from it. “You belong tome.”

From now on, her body would respond to him only. He had made sure of that.

“The claim goes both ways,husband,” she replied, rising on her elbows and looking at him indignantly.

Her glare might have had a greater effect if he was not currently sitting between her thighs, her sweet flesh mere inches from his mouth.

Perhaps she would like another demonstration of his claim on her?

But Phoebe herself was like a drug. She was like a ball of string that had innocuously wrapped around him, and now it was he who could hardly break free from her.

Not unless he chose to break her.

He sighed and pressed a kiss to her thigh. “You are going to be the death of me, Duchess.”

“Why?”

The single word had him looking up.

“Why not, Ethan? Why can you not at least try?”

The sadness in her voice nearly broke him.

“Am I really not good enough for you?” Her voice broke. “I know that I am not the type of wife you would have chosen?—”

He silenced her the only way he knew—with his mouth on hers. He kissed her deeply, twining his tongue with hers until they were both breathless and yet unwilling to stop.

“You are the only wife I would take,” he murmured hoarsely, leaning his forehead against hers.

In this world or the next, he promised silently.

“And yet not the only one you would want,” she told him sadly, her eyes glistening with unshed tears.

He sighed and staggered back. He needed to put as much distance between them. He needed tothink, to make her see reason.

But when she looked at him like that, everything else in the world fell away and he knew he would do anything—absolutely anything—to make her smile again.

Tears did not belong in Phoebe’s beautiful eyes unless they were of joy.

“You would not want me to be loyal to you, sweetheart,” he told her huskily.

She was so innocent. He had only shown her the pleasures that might be had in their union. How could he make her see the darker, more twisted side of that same passion they shared?

When a man focused only on one woman, he became dangerous, possessive. Obsession was a cruel affliction that eroded a man’s rationality.

It was not right. It was notsafe.

“What my father did to my mother and I, thinking heownedus…” he trailed off, shuddering at the thought of Phoebe in his mother’s place.

Of how her eyes would dim and eventually lose the sparkle of life in them. How she would be reduced to a mere husk of her former vibrant self.

She would no longer be his Phoebe, but his obsession would never let her go. He would kill her and still not be able to.

“Ethan.”

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