Page 20 of The Devilish Pleasures of a Duke

She had never known desire like this.

“Give yourself this one pleasure,” he whispered darkly. “Come alive for me.”

And she did. Her body clenched. She was powerless to stop it. He held her as she peaked, as her ability to breathe stopped, as instinct stormed her senses. She fell under his spell. She sobbed, years of subdued desire unchained. Who was he, this man? What devil’s power did he possess to do this to her?

“Emma.” His deep voice penetrated her bewilderment.

She shuddered. She refused to look at him, awash in pleasured shame and wonder.

“Emma,” he said again, his face pressed to hers. “Are you all right?”

She felt herself slowly return to sanity. Her body pulsed in the aftermath. To her surprise she found herself stroking his hair, the hard planes of his face. Offering him comfort. Who was this man? Who was she? After this day, she did not know.

“When I first saw you at the wedding,” he said, “I—”

She pressed her finger to his lips. “I am a widow, Lord Wolverton. Despite what just happened, that part of my life is over.”

“You didn’t die with your husband,” he said after a long pause.

She lay unmoving for several moments. His eyes were closed. His face rested against hers. “I thought I’d died once,” he said. “God knows I did everything in my power to destroy myself, but I didn’t.”

She felt tears sting her eyes.

It was evident that his head injury had not affected his more basic functions. Her limbs shivered involuntarily as she finally attempted to disengage her body from his.

Feelings familiar and yet not.

She had married before the middle of her first season, her husband a cultured Scottish viscount and modest landholder. She’d thought that his reserved nature would suit her. They had been good companions, more friends than lovers. In fact, the sum of her sexual experience with her quiet-mannered husband had consisted only of stolen touches and hurried couplings under the covers. Indeed, Emma had emerged from their rushed matings more dissatisfied than not. To this day she blushed remembering how Stuart had announced on their wedding night that it was time to put his little sausage in the oven.

She could not think of a man as well-constructed as Lord Wolverton possessing anything as inconsequential as a sausage. Her limited contact with his heavy male appendage had been proof enough. To think of taking an organ of such proportion inside her own body made her breath quicken. Adrian and her late husband could not have been less alike, in physical form and character.

She slid out of his arms, a poorly planned strategical move if ever she’d made one. Every part of her body came into electrifying contact with his. Her dressing gown dropped back down to her bare ankles. She felt his hot, hard gaze travel over her naked trembling body.

She found her footing and with it the remnants of her control. She wasn’t going to cry. “I’m leaving you now.” Her voice sounded steady. Her emotions were not. “You must stay in that bed until the physician gives you permission to leave it.”

He studied her in smoldering silence. “I have no excuse for my behavior.”

She retreated to the door. “Nor I.”

He sat up, his hard face hidden in shadows. “I swear to you I will never tell anyone what just happened. On what little honor I have.”

She turned away.

“I swear to you, Emma.”

“Good night, Lord Wolverton.”

She opened the door. His deep voice followed her into the darkened hallway. Her heart pounded in her throat. “You have my word.”

The word of a mercenary.

He sank back onto the bed as the door closed with a sharp reverberation that sent a thunderclap of agony through his head. He laughed out loud, defying the pain. Reveling in it, in fact.

He felt incredibly foolish, elated. Yes, his head hurt. But—he was blessedly lucid enough to recognize his infatuation with the tidy Emma Boscastle, a proper lady who’d thought to put him in his place and had almost done it, too.

He knew she didn’t trust him. Why should she? But from the instant he sensed her watching him at the wedding today, he had felt his first spark of hope since returning to England. Perhaps there was a purpose to it, after all. Blow to his skull be damned, he had met a woman he wanted to impress.

He’d just made a hell of an impression, too, demanding intimacy on their brief acquaintance. Did she already despise him? Of course she must. What he’d liked most about her was her mettle, her way of noticing every misstep made by others, as if she were silently lamenting the entire world and trying to put it all right.