What a Duke Dares (Sons of Sin 3)

I want you. I want you. I want you.

He rocked against her stomach, setting her blood shifting like the tides. She edged closer to an exquisite pinnacle. The musky smell of aroused male overwhelmed her. The torrid intimacy astonished her, even if in her imagination, her body had thrilled to his hands and lips and voice ten thousand times.

Oh, what wicked things he did to her. Arching, she bit him on the shoulder, wanting him to know a fraction of this painful joy. He jolted under the rough caress and bit her nipple hard enough to make her shake like the dice in a gambler’s cup.

Like his kisses on the Windhover, this mating held little tenderness. She didn’t want tenderness. Tenderness would cut too close to her lonely soul.

He raised his head and gazed at her blindly. His pupils were so enlarged, his eyes were as black as her own. The skin across his face looked too tight to contain the hard, exquisite bones: so male, so strong, so noble.

Fleetingly her aroused trance receded and she stared lost into his face, knowing she’d remember this moment as long as she lived. The burning gaze. The powerful arms straining beneath her clutching hands. The weight against her belly. The vulnerability betrayed in the line of his mouth. A vulnerability that she knew he’d deny.

She saw something else too. Something that pierced her like a sword. For all Cam’s excitement, there was a distance behind those brilliant eyes. He might want her to yield unconditionally, but if he felt anything beyond physical urgency, it remained forever locked inside him.

As he tightened his hips and plunged into her, she released a broken sob of anguish.

Pen’s harsh cry pierced the air, but it was too late. As he seated himself full length, Cam felt the delicate membrane tear.

Appalled realization crashed down and he went utterly still. Beneath him, Pen lay stiff as a board. All the lithe looseness had vanished the moment he took her.

Incredulity and shame battled inside him.

Incredulity. Shame. And unforgivable pleasure.

Because lying here, the strongest sensation was pleasure.

“Pen?” he asked shakily. He loathed that he loved being inside her. He loathed that his deepest physical nature wanted him to stay. With clumsy tenderness, he brushed back the hair clinging to her damp face.

“Pen, I’m sorry.” His apology was thick with regret and raging arousal.

“Finish,” she forced out in a guttural voice that he didn’t recognize. “For God’s sake, finish.”

Every muscle in her body hardened against him as if her very skin rejected him. The hands that circled his arms were tight as manacles. She breathed in broken little gasps.

Damn, damn, damn.

“I’ll hurt you,” he said, frantic with remorse.

“You’re hurting me now,” she snarled, nails digging deep enough to draw blood. The sting was the least he deserved.

He’d been so tragically, fatally, criminally wrong. Why the devil had he listened to the vicious lies? Hell, if anyone knew not to credit spiteful tattle, he should.

Like a coward, he buried his head in the warm nook between her neck and shoulder. What he’d done was reprehensible. The result of arrogance, prejudice, stupidity, and selfish lust. Not to mention lacerating jealousy of her imaginary lovers.

But he’d wanted her so badly that he’d been blind to the signs of inexperience. Her skittishness on the journey. Her volatile reaction when he’d suggested an affair. Most of all, tonight’s crippling nervousness.

All this knowledge came too late, too late.

He’d been so convinced about the string of lovers. Whereas everything he knew of Pen declared her fastidiousness. Sod it all, at nineteen, she’d been too fastidious to marry him.

The compulsion to finish beat in his blood. His heart crashed against his ribs. Every hot clench of her body awakened shudders of delight.

His mind insisted that her body tightened to expel the invader. His mind insisted that he must withdraw, beg forgiveness, leave her alone. His mind insisted that he’d never make recompense for his actions tonight.

Even so, he lingered. Drew the scent of hot, aroused Pen into his lungs like incense. She smelled like the woman he’d kissed, but different. As though lilies suddenly blossomed on a favorite rosebush. As though he’d worked some deep change in her, beyond the mere matter of two bodies colliding in pain and pleasure.

The crackle of the fire played soft counterpoint to her panting distress. Somewhere outside a night bird called, a high, melancholy sound that echoed her cry as he’d entered her.

Gradually she gave him what he waited for. Her shocked rigidity softened. So infinitesimally that unless he’d tuned his attention to her so closely, he’d miss it.