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“Where do you want it?” he asked, knowing exactly where but enjoying the game.

She bit her plump lower lip, and he practically growled. “There,” she said as she took his left hand, surprising him, and guiding it down her stomach and right in between her thighs.

He could feel her through the fabric of her chemise, hot…drenched… This little minx was aroused, eager for him…for his touch.

If God had wanted to punish him, he was successful.

“Is it all right I want you to relieve this tension?” she asked. “It was wonderful last time.”

Good Lord, if he had to suffer, she didn’t need to. She was innocent. In some ways, it was his duty to make her happy…to bring her relief…and to abstain from it himself, no matter how much his cock was hurting wanting her and never being able to have her.

“It is all right,” he murmured as his hand glided down her leg and hooked under her chemise and up her bare skin. “I will relieve it for you, sweet girl.”

He must have been completely under her spell because he was not thinking at all. Had he been thinking, he’d stop. This was against everything he wanted this marriage to be. No sex. No intimacy. Pure coexistence to help her and her family.

To find redemption.

Instead, his hand had already found the wet, hot folds between her legs. She gasped at his touch, arching towards him. He played with her, completely lost in the face of her bliss. As he teased her folds, finding the already familiar hard nub, his own desire had his hips doing slight thrusts against her.

In this torture, he was lost. Watching her moan and hitch her breath, and cling to him, as he kept rubbing, circling, pulling at her clitoris, her wet arousal completely drenching his hand.

God, how he ached to plunge his cock into her, as she thrust her hips to meet his hand, to satisfy her desire. But, alas, that was one thing he would never do.

He wouldn’t allow himself the gratification of her.

He could sense the exact moment she fell apart in his hands. He’d never forget these sweet cries of pleased distress, her fingers digging into his biceps, her breath on his neck.

As she cuddled into his embrace, face right against his heart, her breath and hair tickling his skin, he was still restless, aching, practically exploding with desire for her.

She was right in his arms.

But forever unreachable.

And so, indeed, she was his punishment.

Because he’d never stop wanting to bring her pleasure. Never stop wanting his own wife.

And yet, he could never truly have her.

Because once she knew the truth of what he had done, she’d never want to be in the same room with him again.

15

“Your garden has so much potential,” Patience chirped as the carriage rattled. “Did you have a good gardener before?”

Dorian, looking incredibly dashing in his black tailored coat and his crimson waistcoat bearing the lions of Rath, turned his gaze from the small village passing by on their way to London to look at her. A tempest began brewing in the depths of his eyes, his stark face illuminated by the sunset from the window, the white patch of his hair ablaze with fiery sunlight.

He was breathtaking.

For the past three blissful days, she had been doing her botanical work! She’d found an excellent spot, removed the old, dried-up rosebushes, and transplanted her own roses into those locations. In the two weeks they’d stood like orphans in the mews of Rath Hall, next to the laundry building, she’d gone to check on them and at least water them.

They were suffering from the shock of being uprooted, transported, and transplanted into a new environment.

Just like her.

And the only one who had given her back her sleep and a feeling of home was him. The man with secrets. The man who had spanked her and then given her the most incredible experience of her life.

The man she ached to know, truly, soul to soul.