AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Braid away the brazen.
Batten up the bold.
It would never work. The true fire of her nature would always flare to life.
He wanted to kiss her more than he’d ever wanted anything in his entire blighted existence.
You can have this, a seductive voice whispered in his mind.
All of this sweetness and exploration. This sensual awakening.
Give the lady her very first kiss. Kiss her so well she’ll spend the rest of her life dreaming of you.
Lose yourself in her eyes. No need to think of past guilt, past pain. Live for today. Live through her eyes.
He cupped her cheek with his palm, brushing his thumb over the slender bones of her jaw. “You’re not intimidated by me.”
She dropped back onto her heels. Her hand stayed on his chest, a slight pressure, a small patch of warmth.
“Should I be?” she asked.
She was the one who intimidated him. She breached his walls. Pitted out handholds in his defenses.
And it was terrifying. She’d accused him of tyranny. Making servants dance to his whims. Everything he’d vowed never to do.
This must end, and never be repeated. He must keep his hands off her.
And hers off him...
Gently, reluctantly, he removed her hands from his chest and stepped away, putting distance between them.
“I’m not your typical duke, Miss Perkins. I left London for seven years and lived in disguise as a commoner, working in a foundry. It was because of what happened with the children’s mother. I didn’t tell you the whole story,” he said. “Of Sophie.”
She backed away. “Sophie.”
Nothing like introducing the topic of an ex-lover to dampen a fire. “Sophie seduced me.”
“Sheseducedyou?”
“When I was only seventeen and she was nearing thirty.”
Her eyes widened. “I see.”
“She’d had a very brief affair with my father years ago, but he never kept one mistress very long. She seduced me to have her revenge on my father. Flaunted it in his face. She was only using me.”
“That must have stung.”
“She strung me along on a leash for three years before cutting me loose. She left without warning, without a word of good-bye.” Such a heartbreaking, shameful story.
He really should stop talking now, but something compelled him to keep going. It wasn’t in his nature to leave something unfinished. “Sophie wrote a letter that she sent with the twins. I only received it after her death. After she returned to London and... took her own life. She swore they were mine, and no one else’s. The timing was right. They resemble me.”
“They do, indeed.”
“The whole experience taught me a valuable lesson, Miss Perkins. Love, especially the love experienced in youth, is illusory, elusive, and fleeting at best. A cruel joke at worst.”
There. He could see that she had received the message.
Don’t long for me to kiss you. Don’t fall in love with me.
