What a Duke Dares (Sons of Sin 3)

Outside the closed door, he inhaled deeply and reminded himself that he was a gentleman. He’d hoped that the rigors of travel would stifle this inconvenient yen. He’d hoped that Pen’s unfeminine independence and sharp tongue would shift fascination to dislike. He’d hoped that his managing manner would keep her at a distance.

There at least he’d been successful.

The unwelcome truth was that a prickly Penelope was just as alluring as a polite Penelope. God help him if she moved from politeness to amiability. His goose would be well and truly cooked.

She might choose her lovers where she pleased, but she was still a girl from a good family. If the Duke of Sedgemoor bedded Lord Wilmott’s daughter, he’d pay with a wedding ring. Standing outside her room all hot and bothered, he almost thought that price might be worth it.

On a sudden fit of temper—confound her, she treated him like a beggar—he crashed the door open and barged into the candlelit room.

And stumbled to a standstill as if struck with an ax.

Rising from a small wooden tub like a goddess from a spring, Pen was all gleaming white skin. Naked as the day she was born.

His heart slammed hard and heavy. Lust pounded in his ears.

Her back was to him. Her thick dark hair gathered untidily, revealing her elegant neck. The straight, stubborn shoulders. The graceful spine. The subtle curve of her hips. And God help him, a perfect pear-shaped arse.

His hands curled at his sides, preparing to frame that luscious roundness. He’d never seen anything so beautiful as Penelope Thorne in the bath.

Until she turned.

Perhaps he’d made a sound, although the breath jammed in his throat. Perhaps cold air eddied through the open door.

“Maria, I—” Black eyes huge with horror, she stared at him.

For a second that extended into eternity, they regarded one another. He should leave. He had no right to absorb every glorious, forbidden detail and imprint it on his mind to remember forever. The wet skin shining like a pearl; the high breasts crowned with beaded raspberry nipples; the delicate triangle of dark hair guarding her sex. Cam had never suspected what bounty lurked beneath her dark, plain jackets and narrow skirts.

Outrage replaced her shock. With a dizzying mixture of relief and disappointment, he watched her fumble for the worn towel on the small table beside her.

r /> “Close the door.” Her voice was low and shaking.

Without shifting his attention, he reached behind him to obey. Penelope’s violet soap scented the air. Until now, he hadn’t realized how her perfume had permeated his senses.

“With you on the other side,” she said sharply, hitching the towel.

He could have told her that she wasted her time covering herself. Transparent with dampness, the skimpy towel extended from breasts to thighs. She looked more sexually available in the strip of linen than standing naked.

Her throat moved as she swallowed. She eyed him as if expecting him to pounce.

“I’m sleeping here,” he said gruffly.

“Over my dead body,” she snarled, trembling hands gripping the towel.

Perhaps discretion was the better part of valor. “I’ll come back in ten minutes.”

“I don’t want to see you tonight.”

He shrugged. It felt unreal to argue as they’d argued so often on this journey, while she stood before him like every dream come to vibrant life. “If you’re asleep, you won’t see me.”

She grabbed for the soap dish and raised it in a threatening gesture. He just reached the corridor before pottery shattered behind the hurriedly closed door.

Damn her for a shrew.

A beautiful shrew.

A shrew whose eyes, for one blazing moment, had flared with desire.

Even as Pen lay in bed struggling to sleep, she was still blushing. Despite his threat, Cam hadn’t reappeared. She wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or piqued. And still those incendiary moments played over and over in her mind, making her stomach lurch with horror. And forbidden excitement.