Page 64 of A Scandalous Kind of Duke

“I know what you’re doing, Leopold Halton,” she said.

He froze. Beyond her blatant desire lurked something darker, fiercer. Before he could name it, she raked her hands over his scalp, the scrape of her nails sending pleasure shivering through him.

“But you like that,” he stammered. His brain wasn’t working very well; his rational faculties were absorbed in restraining himself from plundering her like a pirate. “I know you do.”

“Oh, I do.” A flintiness, almost like a warning, hardened her voice. She squeezed his bicep as if she wished to throttle him.

“Then let me give you more,” he said.

“That’s what I want from you. More.”

“More what?”

She sat up. Confused, he reared upward, and she shoved his shoulder, hard. He rolled onto his back. She pounced on him, her curls flying, and pushed his shoulders into the mattress, her eyes as wild as her hair.

“More you,” she said, in a voice like a growl.

He caught her hips. “Are you angry with me?”

She leaned over him, so her breasts brushed his chest, her mons smothered his cock. His last shreds of sanity began to flit away like a dandelion puff in the wind. That new ferocity seemed to shadow her eyes and tugged at his very soul.

No, he thought,not like this. This tryst was meant to be light and lusty, full of laughter and play. He had planned to tease her and tup her, and then escape, untouched, unscathed, untrammeled, untied.

But her expression was hungry and demanding, and it swept through them both like a hot desert wind. Gone was the merry maker, the woman who laughed off trouble with bawdy jokes. The woman looming over him was ruthless and fierce.

This was the woman who drew that siren, that possessive, passionate mermaid who dragged the sailor down into the dangerous depths. He recalled the sailor: besotted, enchanted, happy to go to his death, so long as he went with her.

Oh hell,Leo thought.I’m doomed.

“You think I don’t know what you’re doing,” she said.

“Am I not doing it right?”

“You’re doing it right. Too right. You want me to see stars.”

“Yes,” he confessed.

“You want me helpless with wanting you.”

“Yes.”

“You want to be inside me.”

“Oh hell, I want to be inside you,” he groaned. “But we must be careful. There are many other things—”

“But we want to. I want you inside me. I want all of you, Leopold Halton, every last inch.”

She lifted his hands off her hips and pressed them up over his head. His knuckles brushed the hard wood of the headboard. With one hand, she pinned both his wrists to the pillow. He let her, though they both knew she could not hold him if he did not wish to be held.

His heart pounded; his every muscle burned with sensation. Her gaze dismantled him as she reached between them and positioned his cock at her entrance, her hot, wet promise teasing the sensitive tip.

Leo hissed in breath through his teeth. “Juno, what do you want?”

“You. How many times must I tell you that what I want is you?”

“I want to give you pleasure,” he rasped out.

“And I want you to give me a piece of you, to take with me when you’re gone.”

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