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Or hear her scream his name in ecstasy. Or clench around him rhythmically as she found her release.

He inserted a finger, then a second one, and hooked them both so that he reached that one pleasure spot inside her. While he kept licking and sucking, and gently nibbling at her clit with his lips, he moved his fingers inside her in a circular motion. When she cried out, he wanted her fingers on him, clutching him, while her inner muscles tightened around his cock as he pounded in and out of her.

He was hard and his trousers were too tight, but he wanted this to be about her. He wanted to give her orgasms because he needed to see her come. To feel her come.

He wanted her to have all the pleasure and for himself to have nothing.

Perhaps Richard was right. By focusing on revenge, he could never be happy. And so he was punishing himself.

She was growing tighter and tighter around him, her entrance becoming wetter and wetter. The whimpers of distress grew louder and faster. He felt her thighs shake and tremble around his face. And with another stroke of his fingers, she cried out, clenching so tight, her walls held his fingers like a tight fist, and then she was coming.

She shook all over as she kept calling his name, clenching and unclenching against his lips, and around his fingers. Ah, that was music to his ears. Music he wanted to hear all day. Every day.

His name had never sounded so good as it did called out by her in the moment of her greatest ecstasy.

And he was a bastard who didn’t deserve this woman.

But he had to try.

He wanted to give her the world.

He brought her to his bed and plunged into her tight, wet, hot depths with a cry, greedily unable to deny himself in the end. Heavens, how good she felt, just perfect for him. She arched her back, panting, moaning as he began slowly easing in and out of her. Without thinking, he whispered, “I do not want there to be anything between us…”

She didn’t say anything at first. It was when they both lay sated and warm and heavy in each other’s arms, and he was drifting to sleep, that she whispered, “It’s impossible, Preston. There will always be something between us. I’ll always be your enemy’s daughter.”

* * *

Penelope woke with a strange sensation. Her chest burst with pain as she heaved, trying to cough the burning smoke out of her lungs.

Dark smoke filled the whole room, red-orange flames consuming the curtains. There was a hole in the floor next to the window and fire burst through it. The air was so hot it scalded her skin.

Fear hit Penelope like a slap. She grabbed her chemise. “Preston!” she cried as she hastily put it on.

“Preston!” She shook him, but he didn’t move. Good God, did he even breathe? “Preston!” she yelled right into his ear and shook his shoulder hard.

But he wouldn’t wake up. She coughed violently, her lungs cooking. “Preston!” She ran over to his side of the bed and grasped him by his arm and pulled. She had to get him out of here. She pulled, but he was so heavy, and he barely moved on the bed. “Preston!”

The door burst open, and Joel ran in in his dressing gown. “Your Grace!” he cried. “Are you all right?”

“Oh, Joel, thank God!” She let out another racking cough. “His Grace isn’t waking up! We must get him out of here!”

“Of course.” Joel ran to the bed and hauled the naked duke onto his shoulders like a sack of wheat. He was much shorter than Preston but strongly built. “Come, Your Grace, you must leave the room!”

She nodded as Joel ran out. She grabbed the blanket to cover poor Preston’s nakedness and ran after Joel. The footmen appeared from the stairs with buckets of water. But none of that would help with such a great fire raging in the old walls.

“Go outside,” said Penelope. “Please, do not try to fight the fire. It’s pointless. And I don’t want you to risk your lives. We’ll call on the fire brigades. Leave!”

A minute or so later, Penelope was outside, breathing the blessed fresh air through her scorched lungs. Her throat felt like it was on fire, and she couldn’t stop coughing. Preston lay on the ground, with his head in her lap, wrapped in the blanket. With one third of the great house enveloped in flames now, she could clearly see his face, so peaceful and so dear. He was breathing, which was good.

“Please, wake up,” she whispered in a rasping voice. “Please, just wake up.”

And as the fire kept raging, she looked at the windows of his study.

Everything inside was gone. Danaë. The books. The documents.

And the red leather folder.

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