The Duke is Wicked (League of Lords #3) - Tracy Sumner Page 0,83

he whispered against her lips. “More than anyone I’ve ever known. More than anyone I will ever love, except this baby. Make no mistake, you’ll marry me. Become my duchess. This child will have my name. Tomorrow, in the village chapel, if I can secure a special license with such haste. I can surely bribe a solicitor, and this bloody title should move the needle. And then…” His breath rushed forth in a belabored exhalation, and he dropped his brow to her shoulder.

Awareness hit her, his disquiet breaking through the sensual fog. “You’re thinking to leave me...”

He sighed, a warm caress against her cheek. “We’ll see each other. I can’t stay away.” His throat clicked as he swallowed. “I could never stay away. But we can’t live together. Not when I’m a danger to you. And to our child.”

Delaney shoved him hard enough to dislodge him from her body. It was only the second time he’d remained with her until completion, an act she’d dreamed about—and now she’d been forced to end it in anger. “I’ll never forgive you if you do this, Sebastian. You propose a society marriage. To me. You must be mad.”

“It’s because I love you and this baby that I suggest this. I would’ve crafted an elegant proposal, the most magnificent known to the ton, to a woman I did not love. Jewelry offered on bent knee with liveried footman serving champagne and tossing rose petals at our feet. My mind, my body, is not fully mine when I’m with you, forgive me.” He clenched his fingers into a fist and punched it against the settee cushion. “Do you think I want to be apart when you’ve owned my heart, my soul, since the moment I met you with the dust of Rotten Row swirling around us?”

She scrambled from beneath him, kicking out and making contact with his shin, the Soul Catcher bouncing off the floor and coming to a glittering rest against a wooden bucket. “You coward. The duke of cowards!”

Grimacing, he rubbed his shin, half-turning from her to put his clothing to rights. “Fine, I’m a coward. I could cling to you, to this, to what we have, hoping love will change me, take the heat from my fingertips, the fires from my dreams. Keep you safe. Our baby safe. When I know in the heart so full of you, the worst realization for a man like me, that I can’t protect you.” His voice lowered to a whisper. “Because I’m the dangerous element.” His gaze found hers, his face drawn in lines of stark despair. “You’re not helping my control. My adoration has made me more unpredictable, like when I was a boy. I practically burned the estate down around us the moment I grasped you were pregnant.”

Hurt bubbled from her chest and spread through her body, a thousand tiny slices from his words. “Like Piper helps Julian. And Victoria, Finn.”

His look was bleak, his denial nonexistent.

“I’m like opium for you—intoxicating but deadly.” Stumbling to her feet, Delaney jerked her nightgown past her knees, ripping the hem. “Let’s face facts. I’m a commoner. A filthy American. You’ve gotten yourself in trouble, ruined someone beneath you in class, and now this is your only—”

He pulled her into his arms before she could finish the statement, curling her against his long body and holding her there. His heartbeat tapped a frantic rhythm beneath her ear. “I love you more for your uniqueness. More for everything. Your lilting speech. Your fantastic mind, your razor-sharp wit, your boundless courage. Your beauty. I’ve never known a woman like you. I couldn’t care less about your lack of a blue-blooded birthright.”

“I’m to remain in Oxfordshire while you gallivant around London without me? Leaving you available to another opera singer, another actress.” She struggled to wrench from his hold. “I won’t do it. I won’t share you.”

“There isn’t, nor will there ever be, anyone else for me, Delaney. But that doesn’t alleviate the danger. Or the hard choice I must make to keep you and the babe safe.” He brought her closer without effort, his strength on potent display. Pressing a kiss to the crown of her head, he asked in a soft voice, “Aren’t you going to tell me...that you love me, too? Can you at least give me that?”

She sniffled and shook her head, damning the tears that this pregnancy brought so easily. “Not until you realize that love is healing. Until you do, the words are like