What a Duke Dares (Sons of Sin 3)

This time, he noted her tone. Slowly he sat back on his knees and she stole the chance to scramble up against the bedhead. She curled one hand over the carved top while the other clumsily struggled to restore her dress.

Lightning revealed Cam’s wary expression. The flash also showed her how she’d devastated his clothing. How mortifying. His shirt hung in tatters over his powerful shoulders and chest. She struggled not to glance at his breeches, after a nervous glance revealed that he was still mightily aroused.

He ran a hand through his hair and his lips twisted in self-castigation. “You told me not to talk.”

“You should have listened.” She blinked back corrosive tears of anger and frustration. And hurt. When would she learn to keep her distance? Venturing closer to Cam always shredded her into bloody gobbets. But never so agonizingly as today when he’d asked her to be his temporary mistress before he married another woman.

“What did you think I offered?” He no longer sounded like her ardent lover, but like the authoritative man who had escorted her through the Alps.

“I didn’t think,” she admitted grudgingly. She still had trouble making her mind work. Anger and pain had doused passion, but her blood still pumped hot and ready.

“What in Hades is this, Pen?” Cam growled low in his throat. “You don’t want to marry me. You made that clear nine years ago. I can’t believe you’ve changed your mind.”

Had she changed her mind? The awkward truth was that if he loved her, she’d swim a mile through the heaving ocean outside to marry him. With one arm tied behind her back.

The even more humiliating truth was that if he loved her, she’d sneak away in the blink of an eye to his love nest. If he loved her, she?

?d give up her last drop of blood to make him happy.

But the sad and unalterable reality was that he didn’t love her. He’d never allow himself to love anybody.

He suffered a bad case of unsatisfied desire, a stronger reaction than she’d expected from phlegmatic Camden Rothermere. But love had never been part of the equation.

She spoke stiffly. “No, I don’t want to marry you.”

Another crash from above, violent enough to shake the deck. It sounded like a herd of elephants thundered up and down playing football.

“If you don’t want an affair, what the hell do you want?” Because of the noise, his voice emerged more aggressively than perhaps he intended.

A fair question. So fair that it made her lash out in disappointment. “I don’t want you to relieve your itch for me in some shabby little hideout before you go straight to Lady Marianne.”

Lightning revealed him looking particularly ducal, all supercilious lowered eyelids and lips curled in aristocratic disdain. “My dear girl, you do me an injustice. There would be nothing shabby about our retreat. My mistresses never complain of my generosity. You won’t surrender your doubtful virtue for a mere shilling.”

She slapped him hard enough for the impact to echo over the wailing wind. Glaring, she rubbed her palm. It stung like the devil. She hoped his cheek felt worse.

Despite the noise, a vibrating silence descended.

When lightning streaked through the sky, she clearly saw the imprint of her hand on his face. He looked ready to murder her.

Good. She felt the same. If she could arrange it, she’d happily push him into the ocean and laugh while he drowned.

She should feel horrified at hitting him. But outrage still writhed in her stomach like a cobra, making her feel sicker than the rolling ship ever could. She’d never imagined him addressing a woman of his own class like a courtesan.

Damn Camden Rothermere to hell.

Another crash from above shattered his paralysis. He rolled off the bed to stand, clinging to the base of the bed. The rage drained from his expression, leaving him tired and unhappy. She told herself she didn’t care.

“I’m sorry, Pen.”

Pen wished he’d go, then realized that he awaited absolution. He could wait until hell turned into green meadows. “There’s no excuse.”

Her uncompromising response flattened his lips. “I haven’t acted as a man of principle.”

“And that irks you,” she snapped.

He looked surprised, although to do him credit he didn’t sidle away from responsibility. “Yes, it does. You know how I’ve struggled to prove that a Rothermere isn’t necessarily a scoundrel.”

She sighed, suddenly deathly sick of it all. “Cam, grow up and accept that you’re not perfect. You made a mistake.”