Page 15 of The Devilish Pleasures of a Duke

Their gazes locked a silent battle of wills until Emma realized how absurd it was to allow him to unnerve her. He had been born with a duke’s arrogance whether, as rumor went, he accepted the responsibility of his title or not. Well, Emma was the eldest daughter of a no-less-arrogant marquess. If she could hold her own with the Boscastles, she would remain steady on her feet before their friend.

One also had to make allowances for his head injury. Perhaps it would help to think of Lord Wolverton as one of her charges, a person of unrealized potential who needed but a rigorous polishing to shine.

“Now,” she said, sternly but not unkindly, “I want you to stay under these covers and have a nice rest. Everything will look better in the morning.”

“No, it won’t.”

She sighed. “Then it won’t.”

“What if I should require your assistance during the night?”

“It seems quite unlikely. There is, however, a bell on the nightstand for you to summon help.”

He reached up and caught her under the elbows. “Now what are you doing?” she asked indignantly.

“Summoning your help.”

He drew her down to lie beside him on the bed, testing the very limits of her patience. For a mortifying interval she found herself too overwhelmed by the unexpected intimacy of his hard, lithe-muscled body against hers to do anything but breathe. “What are you doing?” she asked again.

His mouth pressed against her ear.

“I thought you were going to fall,” he said in an undertone, shifting his steely frame to settle her onto the side of the bed.

“Yes. Right from the pot into the fire.”

His eyes glittered at her in the candlelight. From fever? From pain? Or from something that she’d do best not to identify?

“Lord Wolverton,” she said with a sigh. “You are making this difficult.”

“That man was wrong today,” he said quietly.

Her heart beat in fierce reaction against her ribs. The emotion in his eyes disarmed her. With the exception of her brothers, the men she knew rarely revealed themselves with such candor. “I don’t know what you’re taking about. I don’t think I want to know. That blow on the head—”

“You aren’t cold at all.” His knowing gaze flickered over her. “There are secret fires inside you, Emma.”

She blushed at this foolishness. “Don’t be—”

“—honest?” He leaned forward to capture her face in his hands. “Kiss me once and I shall prove it. Humor me if nothing else.”

Chapter Four

Secret fires, indeed. A kiss to humor him. That horrible insult today. It was more than enough for a day. Yet as his calloused thumbs sculpted her cheekbones, then traced the shape of her jaw, the flames to which he alluded rose steadily inside her. Her body burned. Her nipples contracted, and a pleasing vulnerability pervaded her limbs.

“Warm,” he said, lowering his hard, unsmiling face to hers. “And warmer still. If you turned to ice when he tried to touch you, then the fault is in him, not you.”

How did he know? How could he dare? She dropped her gaze, held her breath, and waited. Aching in shame, in surprise, in hungry anticipation. At any moment this would end. She would tear herself from this beautiful temptation. It surprised her how Sir William’s cutting remark had hurt her. She did not wish to be thought of as cold, and yet she knew it was often how she appeared.

But secret fires—oh, why did women enjoy such flattery? Why did something in her respond to this man?

“You look even more like an angel with your hair let down,” he mused. “I couldn’t take my eyes off you at the wedding.”

She swallowed, her throat aching. “I look…untidy now.”

“You made me—” He hesitated.

“I made you what?” she whispered.

“You made me laugh today,” he said quietly.