The Duke is Wicked (League of Lords #3) - Tracy Sumner Page 0,62
it out. We’re getting closer to solving the puzzle.”
Shaking his head, he laughed, startling her. “I’m troubled because you remember what we talked about that day. I told you things I’ve never told anyone, Temple. Most people with a head injury remember little after.” He kicked a bucket by his feet and sent it tumbling. “But not you. Not with that incredible brain of yours.”
“Maybe I forgot those parts,” she lied, recalling every word he’d spoken. His voice soft, his eyes bright. His touch tender. She’d absorbed his kindness like parched soil does rain. Making it worse, she’d recalled his confessions a hundred times since he’d uttered them, the knowledge of being the only one he’d told his secrets trapping her in a jail of his making. A jail she didn’t want to escape.
His gaze snagged hers, imploring. “Did you forget?”
She couldn’t look away, and honesty finally won out. “No.”
Wordless, he slipped the note into his trouser pocket.
Unsure what to do, she folded one foot over the other and wiggled her toes. “Your coat,” she murmured and went to slide it from her arms.
He took a fast step forward, a single citrus tree standing as a chaperone between them. “No, for God’s sake, keep it on.”
She flinched at his harsh tone, her temper sparking. “Why are you so angry with me, Your Grace? May I ask?”
“Because, Miss Temple, I want you more than I’ve ever wanted a woman. In my life. And I’m finding it goddamned inconvenient, the timing.”
“And me,” she whispered, “you’re finding me inconvenient.”
Her heart splintered when he made no effort, not one breath, not one blink, to deny the statement. If she were an earl’s daughter, a viscount’s sister, a baron’s bleeding cousin, he wouldn’t find her inconvenient. He would take her and not think twice.
Turning away in fury, she was passing the last orange tree when he caught her.
Sebastian grasped her wrist and pulled her against his chest. His fingertips were starting to sting, his vision to blur. “I could make you mine in seconds. Do you know how tempted I am to do that? To wreck every plan I’m putting in place for another taste of you? To wreck your life, to ruin your life.” He gave her a gentle shake, sending her hair tumbling into her face. “This tension between us isn’t common. It isn’t customary. It’s explosive and destructive. And I’m frightened of it, frankly, when I haven’t been frightened of anything since my father submerged my hands in that damned fountain.”
Instead of fighting, Delaney softened, reaching to sweep his hair from his eyes, her fond touch exposing a hidden nook he’d imagined long gone. “Don’t,” he whispered, her show of affection destroying his resistance. Destroying everything. “You don’t know how desire can trap you.”
“Has it trapped you before?” She took a strand of his hair, wrapped it around her finger and tugged. His scalp tingled, sending a dizzying rush of blood to his cock.
Christ, he thought, was he going to tell her everything?
“I don’t compare what I feel for you to what I’ve felt before. That was child’s play, Temple. Silly conquests, foolish infatuations. It…those women meant nothing. The entrapment I speak of, what I experience with you, is what it was like to be drugged. When I was lost to opium.” Exhaling softly, he went to take a step back. “I’ll be lost if I allow this to happen. Do you want to become my addiction?”
“Maybe addiction isn’t the appropriate word. Maybe you’re thinking of me, of us, in the wrong context.” Then, instead of trying to change his mind with a blatant act of seduction, she brushed her toes shyly against his. A courageous offer, a tender request. One that reverberated in tender pulses through his body. The unsophisticated gesture should’ve rendered a disingenuous response. But her naïve yearning, and frankness in facing it, sent heartbreak through him.
A much tougher fight than the one he waged with his body.
“I have no more secrets to barter, Your Grace, if that’s your aim. I’ve told you everything.”
Sebastian’s fingers clenched around her wrist, his thumb caressing her thumping pulse. “I’m equally insolvent because I have no more kisses to give.”
She glanced between their bodies, her gaze going to his hardening length, a condition he couldn’t possibly hide. Trailing her finger along his jaw, she looked up at him with a smile. “Do it without a kiss then.”
He freed her so abruptly they both stumbled. When the temptation to say yes to anything she