The Duke is Wicked (League of Lords #3) - Tracy Sumner Page 0,76

much appeared between his brows. He honestly hadn’t imagined being denied.

Who the hell got everything they wanted in life?

An English duke, that’s who.

“Your title, society, mean nothing to me, Sebastian. I’m here despite it. But I can see the wheels turning as you try to use it, this power you have, your name, what I’ll call the duchess angle, against me.”

“Angle?” Knowing it drove her crazy, he tunneled his fingers through his magnificent hair, sending a spiral of need through her. He fought unfairly all the time. “It’s a bloody honor.”

She laughed, finding this argument amusing when he hated being a duke. “Do you think it’s an honor? And would you agree to marry if this were the way you were asked?”

He opened his mouth, then closed it, perplexed. “So I asked poorly? Is that it? I hadn’t planned it. Finding out about your brother and Honoria Hazelton, I just reacted—”

“Oh, bother!” Tossing a pillow at him, Delaney crawled from the bed, sure he was going to make this worse. Until they were shouting—and not in pleasure. Yanking the sheet from beneath him, she wrapped it around her body because his eyes, at seeing her vexed and naked, had gone hot. “Don’t think to seduce me into this, either,” she warned, though she couldn’t keep her gaze from doing a fast circuit down the long, lean length of him sprawled across the bed.

“Don’t dare me, Temple.” He stabbed his finger in her direction. “Because you know I can.”

Two can play this game, she decided. Letting the sheet drop, she watched his gaze widen, his pupils, even from this distance, bleed black into amber. His breath caught in a choked groan she’d bet he wished he’d kept to himself. “Honoria made sense, Sebastian. I don’t. We don’t. I’m not from your world, except the supernatural one, which I’ve said I’ll join.” She passed her hand over her breast, between her legs. “If you want to ruin this with your blasted honor, go to it.”

“You push me too far, Temple,” he snarled and hauled her back on the bed. With a delightful move, he rolled her to her stomach and flowed over her. Impressively, and oh, was he impressive, hard and ready. Then he contradicted the rough treatment in the kindest of ways. “Yes?” A ragged pant, his teeth nipping the nape of her neck and sending a shiver down her spine. In the end, even when furious, the Duke of Ashcroft was always a gentleman.

And, blast, did she love him for it.

“Yes,” she breathed into the pillow, gasping when he surged inside her in one smooth thrust. For now. A hushed statement when, for a stark moment, his gaze had looked bleak.

Because they both knew this wasn’t going to last forever.

Chapter 15

Somehow, Sebastian had agreed to terms with which he did not agree.

In full realization of this twist of fate, he plucked a string on his violin as Delaney thumbed through the chronology, a tome he’d never known Julian to relinquish, scribbling notes in the margin and humming in time to her mind’s precipitous pace. She sat in a chair he’d had brought to the dungeon, a mammoth leather beast that swallowed her but that she liked. Her legs were tucked beneath her, toes a pink, wiggling flash he was having trouble keeping his gaze off. She enjoyed being barefoot, as she called it. And like most things about her, he enjoyed it, too.

Trying to shift his thoughts from bare skin and bliss, he drew a breath redolent of vanilla and jasmine, a new fragrance Delaney had purchased on a trip to the village with Piper and Victoria. The whole castle reeked, quite agreeably, of the scent—as if he needed anything else to make his mind turn her way.

Over the past two weeks, it had become their habit to sneak to the dungeon on the nights Sebastian woke with fires raging around him. Not literal ones, thank God, just those in his mind. He’d awakened more than once to find her hands cradling his face, soothing him from a nightmare. Since he’d met her, he had yet to burn anything down, which was progress.

But still, he dreamed.

They sequestered themselves in the dungeon, their favorite room—working, talking, laughing, making love. He couldn’t keep his hands off of her, nor could she keep hers off him. The only topic unexamined: the future. A verboten topic. As long as Sebastian played by her rules, time held steady, not a ripple on the pond of