Page 75 of The Duke in Question

A wicked smile graced her features as she tightened her thighs, but kept up the tiny pulsing motions that were driving him to madness. “I like this pliant version of you.”

“You are a ruthless mistress.”

“I had an excellent tutor,” she shot back before bending forward to kiss him, nipping at his lower lip hard enough to make him gasp. She soothed the sting with her tongue. “Don’t pretend you don’t like it. You love me running roughshod over you.”

Her channel gripped him like a glove as she straightened. His muscles strained as he struggled to keep himself from thrusting his pelvis, seeking the release that was nearly upon him from the soft pulsations. What was it about her that turned him into a fumbling novice? But then he couldn’t think because she took pity on him and started to move, lifting her hips off of him and hurtling back down in a motion that made them both groan in pleasure when she was seated again. Eyes rounding, she quickened her movements, mouth parting as she chased the bliss that hovered just out of her reach.

“Valentine,” she wheezed. “Please.”

He couldn’t even open his mouth to tease that the tables had so quickly turned, that she was the one begging him. It wasn’t a competition. The only thing that mattered was her. “I’ve got you, love.”

He lifted a hand to palm her breasts and squeeze her nipple. The answering whimper was reward enough, but it was when he slid his thumb down to the damp, needy apex between her thighs that her motions became more frantic. A sob broke from her as she rode a hell-for-leather pace, his own release looming on the heels of hers. Valentine circled with his thumb and he could feel her walls clamp down on him. He watched in indescribable wonder as her entire frame seized, her beautiful body caught up in the first throes of pleasure.

“Oh God.”

Bloody hell, he’d never seen anything more stunning in his life!

“Time to rise and spread those wings, my beauty,” he whispered, giving the swollen bead of flesh under his fingertips a decadent pinch. She screamed, eyes flying open, and pure euphoria crested over her features, mouth going slack as her body quivered over his. The undulations made his ballocks tighten, lightning driving through him as he bucked up into her before yanking himself free and spending onto his belly.

Bronwyn rode out the last few pulses, eyes unfocused with bliss. “That was different for us,” she whispered after a beat, staring down at the mess he’d made on his belly with an odd look over her face that she sought to hide when she saw him looking. It was almost…regretful. He blinked—she was so adamantly opposed to marriage and a future with him, and yet, she seemed almost sad. “I’m glad one of us was thinking.”

Valentine dragged a corner of the bedclothes and wiped his seed off his stomach. He gathered her into his arms and tucked her in to his chest. His heart was beating much too fast, but there was only one thought in his head.

“Marry me, Bronwyn,” he said.

He could feel her stiffen before her muffled answer came, “I can’t.”

“Why?”

Her shoulders lifted with her short breaths as if she was struggling to find the right words to soften the blow he knew was coming. “This is sex, Valentine. You know that. We both know it. I can’t let my heart get involved because I’ll only set myself up for heartbreak.” Her voice went soft. “You don’t believe in love, and I…do. Someday, I want that for myself. Maybe that will be with Herbert, maybe not.”

Valentine blinked, glad that she could not see his face…see the utter chaos that the soft words had caused and the sudden sensation in his chest as though something inside was cracking into pieces. She wasn’t wrong about him. He was a pragmatist, a man ruled by wit and will, and not by his passions, and yet he’d never felt more like a stranger to himself than he did in this moment.

He’d never resented himself more.

Twenty-two

Bronwyn had lied to Valentine. Her heart was well and truly involved, and heartbreak wasdefinitelyin her future. Hell, it was already here. Though she had no one to blame but herself that she had fallen stupidly and irreversibly in love with the duke.

Why couldn’t she have fancied a sweet, uncomplicated man like Lord Herbert? If Thornbury was a roiling, stormy ocean, the charming young lord would be a placid, glassy lake. No, perhaps a pond with no depth whatsoever. Even the Marquis de Tremblay, dancing so gaily with her aunt, would have made a better option of a husband. Not that hewould, considering how infatuated he was with her aunt and she with him, though they both tiptoed around it as if that would make it disappear.

Love didn’t care about age.

Her mother had seen through Tremblay in half of a second, staring him down as if he were an insect that needed to be squashed when he’d offered to escort her to the ball. Be her foil, as they’d planned. But even he, with his perpetually pleasant mien, had withered like a flower facing the cruelest frost at the force of the marchioness’s glare. Later on, Bronwyn heard him whisper to Aunt Esther, “I am sorry,chérie, but I always thought you were exaggerating about your sister.”

“No, which is why we have to save Bronwyn.”

Bronwyn eased out a breath. There was no saving her now. Her future was a foregone conclusion, even with her heart pledged firmly elsewhere. She had known exactly what she was getting into by offering her body to Valentine Medford. This was her own fault. He hadn’t wooed her and then lied, like other men in the aristocracy, or pretended to be someone he wasn’t to impress her. In fact, he’d loathed her on cue, and she could have easily kept him at arm’s length. And even after they’d run for their lives and given in to their mutual lust, she could have made different choices.

Could she have? Could she have resisted him? Resisted her own need?

Would it have made any difference?

No, not likely. Bronwyn did not regret her choices. She’d lain with him and she’d caught an inconvenient fistful of feelings, not that they hadn’t been there before, simmering under the surface. She had been foolish, however, to believe she could keep her heart separate from her body. Truth was, she’d been half in love with the Duke of Thornbury ever since she’d met him at Courtland’s home. It’d had started out as distant hero worship, and then evolved into something more. In her head, he was the perfect choice.

In real life, he’d been theonlychoice.

Even if his participation had been driven by lust or the barest measure of fondness, Bronwyn had let herself believe it could be enough. Regrettably, she’d only succeeded in letting herself fall deeper and deeper into his quicksand.

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