Page 40 of The Feared Duke’s Found Family

He knew the ruin her father had left behind; he knew the bitter, lonely years she had endured on the cold fringes of Mayfair ballrooms.

Fanny froze as if he had struck her across the face. The color drained from her cheeks, leaving her skin ghostly pale in the silver moonlight. Her parted lips pressed together into a trembling line, a flash of pure, devastated disbelief washing through her eyes before giving way to a sudden, scorching fury.

Lysander’s jaw snapped shut. He looked at her face and felt the full, ugly weight of what he’d just said land squarely on his own chest.

“That was beneath me,” he said. He shook his head once, sharply, as if he could physically dislodge the sentence from the air. “I didn’t mean it. Not a word of it.”

Fanny’s chin came up. Her fingers had curled into her dressing gown at the waist, knuckles pale, but her voice when she spoke was steady. “Then why say it?”

“Because you were right,” Lysander said. “And I am not accustomed to that.”

Fanny looked at him for a long moment, her eyes reading his face. She stepped directly into his space, closing the remaining distance between them until the tips of her soft slippers met the toes of his heavy boots.

“If a part of you truly believes I have been so utterly ineffective during my first seven days under your roof, Your Grace,” Fanny whispered, her voice shaking with raw, wounded indignation, “then get rid of me.”

She tilted her chin high, staring straight into his dark eyes without a single tear, offering herself up to his judgment.

“That was your contract, was it not?” she demanded, every syllable a sharp challenge against his chest. “You stood in the maze and promised that if I proved unfit to be a mother to your children, you would not hesitate to cast me aside and replace me! So do it, Lysander! Call your carriage! Send me to your dower house! Replace me with another practical arrangement that will keep your silence intact and your ledgers tidy!”

Lysander stared down at her, his jaw locked, his chest heaving in ragged hitches against his unbuttoned shirt.

He was furious. He was enraged by her defiance, by her unyielding tongue, and by the fact that she had stripped away every lie he had used to guard himself. But beneath the roaring heat of his anger, something far darker and infinitely more dangerous had broken its chains.

She was standing inches from him.

The sweet, maddening scent of lavender, rosewater, and warm skin rose between them, filling his head. Her dark hair tumbled wildly over the emerald velvet of her robe, her chest rising and falling in fast, passionate breaths that brushed against his own. For days, he had forced himself to look away; for days, he had fought the relentless, burning urge to pull her against him and drown the insolence from her mouth.

His control was gone. The iron discipline of the Duke of Hilgrove had dissolved into ash, leaving only the raw, unmanageable hunger of a man who could no longer resist the woman standing in his dark.

The thread snapped.

Lysander’s large hand shot out, his fingers sliding into the thick, silken curls at the back of her head, cupping the base of her skull. Before she could draw another breath, he yanked her forward and brought his mouth down hard on hers.

A soft, startled gasp tore from Fanny’s throat, but the sound was swallowed by his lips.

The kiss was not gentle; it was rough, starving, and born of a week’s worth of unyielding restraint that had finally shattered into absolute ruin. His lips parted hers with fierce, bruising hunger, his tongue sweeping deep, demanding everything she had kept locked behind her sharp retorts.

For a fraction of a second, Fanny went rigid in his grip. Then, with a low, ragged moan that vibrated through his chest, her resistance collapsed.

Her hands flew to his chest, her fingers balling into the coarse linen of his nightshirt, neither pushing him away nor pulling him closer, until there was not a sliver of air left between them. She met his fury with her own searing heat, her mouth opening wider to him, her head tilting back as she leaned into his weight.

A deep, guttural sound rumbled in Lysander’s throat. He wrapped his other arm around the small of her back, lifting her nearly off the floor as he backed her into the heavy, carved post of the bedstead. The wood groaned behind her, but neither of them heard it.

His mouth tore away from her lips to drag hot, wet kisses along the trembling curve of her jaw, down the sensitive arch of her neck, to the hollow of her throat where her pulse fluttered like a trapped bird. Fanny’s head fell back against the carved mahogany, her breath coming in shallow, frantic hitches as her fingers tangled into the dark, thick hair at his nape.

“Lysander…” she whispered, the sound broken and breathless.

The sound of his name on her lips drove the last vestige of reason from his mind.

His hands found the silk sash of her velvet dressing gown and, with a single, ruthless tug, untied the knot. The heavy emerald fabric fell open, revealing the thin, almost translucent white linen of her nightdress beneath.

Lysander’s calloused palms skimmed the soft curves of her waist, the warmth of her skin burning through the sheer linen. He gathered the hem of the nightdress in his fists, dragging it up past her knees and thighs, bunching the fabric at her hips.

When his bare hand settled on the smooth, bare flesh of her upper thigh, Fanny let out a sharp, shuddering gasp, her fingernails biting through his linen shirt into the hard muscle of his shoulders.

“Look at me, Fanny,” Lysander growled against the sensitive skin beneath her ear, his breath searing hot.

Fanny’s eyelids fluttered open, her eyes heavy, dark, and clouded with pure desire under the silver moonlight.