Page 42 of The Devilish Pleasures of a Duke

Her breathing quickened. “Don’t say it.”

“You came apart for me,” he went on, low and relentless. He trailed his fingers down her throat. “There could have been more. Perhaps you need time. It was my fault, I am a fool to have rushed what should have taken months to grow.”

“It doesn’t matter now,” she said brokenly. “We’ll forget it.”

“I’ll wait,” he whispered. “I believe I may need you, although I’ve never needed anyone before, not like this. Have you? It’s not a particularly comforting feeling. I’m not used to being so bloody emotional.”

She took a breath. “I’m not going to answer that question.”

“I think you just did,” he said, smiling at her. “Will you be honest with me?”

She exhaled slowly. “I shall try.”

“What would a man like me have to do to win your affections?”

He was teasing her, Emma thought, and a blush heated her face. His disingenuous banter was so effective that it must have been practiced, perfected, on a dozen other women before her. “I have reached the age, my lord, when discretion overrules desire. When virtue must subjugate Venus.”

He looked deeply into her eyes and then, to her indignation, burst into laughter. “That’s rubbish. You’ve never even tasted life. Don’t deceive me or yourself.”

“How do you know what I’ve tasted?” she asked in irritation.

He smiled ruefully. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insult your vast experiences. However, I doubt that you have seen as much of life as I have.”

“Is…is everything they say about you true?” she asked in hesitation.

He shrugged. “Such as?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Fighting Chinese pirates—”

“They were French pirates, as a matter of fact. Freebooters. The East India Company hired me to put an end to their aggression on what we claim as British territory.”

She regarded him with relief. “It all sounds rather noble like that.”

He paused. It did. But it hadn’t been noble at all. It had been fierce, bloody, and hellish.

“What exactly did you do in the company?” she asked.

He almost answered, anything they bloody paid him for, but he reminded himself that a man had to watch his words around a lady like Emma. It hadn’t mattered much how he spoke around soldiers on the other side of the world.

“I am anything but noble, Emma,” he said with rueful honesty. “But neither am I a liar.”

“Then what are you?” she whispered.

He shook his head, his voice rough. “A man who finds your company irresistible. I don’t know the words to explain what I have never felt before. Please, reassure me, I am not alone in this madness.”

She lowered her gaze.

His knuckles grazed her collarbone. Her breasts tightened, swelled as if awaiting his touch. How she could pretend to be unmoved when his nearness tormented her, she could not say. Her every sense urged her to submit. It was shaming to realize how this one man had made her so aware of her womanly yearnings. A flush worked slowly down her face into her breasts, then below. He breathed sexual desire into her very bones.

“Adrian,” she whispered, closing her eyes.

“You shiver when I touch you.”

She shivered when he entered the room, too. “I forgot my shawl in the garden.”

“I can’t forget what we did, Emma.”

“You haven’t even tried,” she said with a moan of distress. “Adrian, honestly, you aren’t being fair.”