He reached for her at the confession, his hand stopping short of touching her, as though he did not know how to proceed. “Mara,” he said softly, as though he might scare her away. “I don’t want you to ever think that I take pleasure from—”
Her fingers moved to his lips, stopping the flow of words. “No,” she said, tears coming to her eyes. “You don’t understand. I ache for you when you’re not with me.” His eyes went black with desire, and her breath caught at the vision of him. At his promise. “I am in your thrall,” she said. “Of your touch and your kiss and your beautiful eyes. Quite desperately.”
And it will make everything more difficult.
She did not say the last. Instead she said, “You control me.”
He stared at her for a long moment, and she wished he would touch her. Instead, he left the bed, and she thought she might have ruined everything. But he was back within minutes, his shirt and boots gone, clad only in black wool trousers and the black bands of ink at his arms and the stark white of the bandage on his shoulder.
She drank him in, every inch bathed in golden candlelight, and she wondered at him. How had this glorious god of a man, built like a Greek statue or a Michelangelo, come from one of the finest aristocratic lines in all of England? There was nothing mincing or foppish about him. He was the most masculine thing she’d ever seen, all power and grace and strength.
Her gaze rested on his good hand, clutching the cravat he’d tossed away earlier, the long stretch of cloth at once promise and threat.
“You worry about control,” he said.
Her heart began to pound. “Yes.”
He extended the cravat toward her. After a long moment, she took it, and he lay down on the bed, extending his arms up until his hands met the slats of the headboard.
Her mouth went dry at the look of him, spread out before her, broad and beautiful. And he was beautiful. He was perfect in every way.
And then he said, “Take it. Be in control,” and desire coursed through her, hot and heavy and far too powerful to resist.
She ran the cravat through her fingers, eyes wide, and said, “Are you certain?”
He nodded once, his grip tightening on the headboard. “Trust me, Mara.”
She inched up the bed, naked but for those silken stockings, watching his gaze on her, loving it. Kneeling beside him, she said, “You wish me to tie you to it?”
He smiled. “I wish you to do whatever you like to me.”
He was turning himself over to her. To her pleasure. And all she could think was that her pleasure was somehow inexorably tied to his. The thought gave her courage, strength to do the unthinkable, to straddle his torso, the heat of her pressed against his naked skin. He groaned and closed his eyes, lifting his hips from the bed, pressing up against her, his body making promises she hoped desperately that it would keep. His eyes flashed. “But if you plan to blindfold me, love, do it now. Before you torture me with this view any longer.”
Blindfold him. Good Lord. Did people do such things?
She wanted to. Desperately.
She couldn’t help the smile that spread at the words, and she loved the way he laughed when it appeared. “You minx. You enjoy it.”
“You want me.”
“Want does not begin to describe the way I feel about you,” his low voice promised. “Want is nothing compared with the level of desire I have. With the desperation I feel. With the way I long for you.”
She leaned over, unable to resist pressing her lips to his, taking his mouth in a deep, thorough kiss that she’d learned from him—in long, lush strokes that left them both breathless.
When she lifted her head, it was to find her courage. She slid the cravat over his eyes, and when he lifted his head from the pillows, she reached behind him and tied it tightly, loving the way his body tensed beneath her, loving the sound of his exhale, low and harsh and perfect.
She leaned forward, pressing her breasts to his chest, being careful of his wound as she whispered in his ear, “You are mine.”
He growled at the words. “Always.”
Not always, though.
She couldn’t have him always. It wasn’t the life he deserved—married to a scandal, to a woman no one would ever accept, to a woman London would never forget. As long as she was with him, he would be the Killer Duke.
And he deserved to be so much more.
But tonight, she could pretend.
She pressed long kisses to his warm skin, across one shoulder and up his good arm, where his tattooed muscles strained against his grip. She couldn’t resist running her tongue along the edge of that inked spot, worrying the dips and curves until he growled his pleasure and she moved on, lower, along the outside of his chest and then across it, paying special attention to the scars dotting his chest and stomach. Kissing them. Tracing their raised surfaces with her tongue.
He hissed at the sensation, and she lifted her head. “Do they hurt?”