Page 13 of A Bride for the Devilish Duke
“A better man?” His tone dipped to something dangerous.
“Yes!” she snapped, chin lifting defiantly. “Abetter manwould not behave with such self-importance that he marches up to a lady’s father and announces that he has asked for her hand. Without courtship or basic courtesy!”
Am I angry or aroused? I have never been confronted in such a way!
“You deem it unfit that I pass judgment on you, yet you feel worthy of doing the same.”
“I judge based on the behavior I have seen,” she bit.
“As do I,” Damien smiled.
“And your response is to destroy the lives of people you do not know or care to know?” Emmeline shot back. “It is the response of a petulant child and one who has never been denied anything in his life!”
“You know nothing of my life,” Damien hissed now, “and I fail to see how an offer of marriage to escape the reputational damage of such gossip as you admit to spreading is ruining your life!”
They were closer now. Both were shouting. Both stared at each other with blazing eyes, ruled by their passions. Damien fought for self-control. He was torn between admiration for Emmeline's lioness courage, and ferocity and anger at her casual assumptions about his upbringing. His mind went to the scarson his back—the scars he shared with common criminals who received the lash for their petty crimes.
The sign of my shame. My secret! She is so quick to condemn but does not tell the truth about my brute of a father.
“I will not be found shouting at a woman in my own house,” Damien returned to a cooler tone, trying to rein in different passions that warred within him.
He turned away or tried to. Emmeline put herself before him once again. He turned away a second time, but she refused to let him go.
“You will not run away from me until I have your answers and an apology!”
But as she moved to block his path for the third time, her slipper caught the hem of her gown. She pitched forward with a startled gasp as her arms flailed gracelessly.
Damien caught her without thinking.
His hand snatched her elbow—but too late. The momentum dragged her forward, and she crashed inelegantly into his chest. He staggered backward from the impact, one hand instinctively locking around her waist, the other pressed against the wall now braced behind him.
She went still, her breasts pressed scandalously against the hard plane of his chest. One hand had landed on his shoulder, the other splayed—boldly—over his heart.
Her eyes lifted to his.
Their lips hovered mere inches apart. Damien drank in the gold-flecked depths of her hazel eyes and felt the whisper of her breath brush his skin. Her curves molded to his frame as though fate had arranged the fit. Instinct eclipsed reason.
With a low growl, he dipped his head and claimed her lips.
The kiss was sinful—teasing at first, as if savoring the anticipation. Then his restraint snapped. He deepened the kiss, hot and merciless, his tongue sweeping against hers as he hauled her closer, until there wasn’t a sliver of space between them.
She met him with equal fire—arching into him, her nails digging into his shoulder, before sinking her teeth into his lip with a force that had him flinching.
He drew back and was met with a slap that Emmeline seemed to put her entire body behind. She shoved him hard, stumbling away, chest rising and falling in furious, breathless waves. It was then that Damien heard the sound of approaching footsteps.
“Someone is coming!” Emmeline gasped in alarm, “You have destroyed us both!”
Damien reacted, seizing her hand and setting off down the hallway at close to a run. He reached a door and opened it, ushering her inside and then standing with his back against it, listening.
“I could have sworn she went in this direction,” a muffled sound reached them, and Damien recognized the voice of either Isaac or Jacob. He could never tell them apart.
“Try in there, brother,” came the other—they were never far from each other.
Damien looked down but saw that there was no key in the lock. He seized the doorknob, holding it tightly as he heard footsteps approaching from the door's other side. Then he felt someone trying to open the door. With all his strength, he held on, refusing to let the doorknob turn.
To be discovered now in a compromising position by those two, in particular, would mean his end.The end of his Dukedom!
“It is no use, Jacob,” said the first, “it will not turn. It must be jammed.”
