She hesitates.
“I don’t know. She spent my whole life bitter. She’d barely agree to let us see him. I don’t know if she really knows how to forgive.” She looks up at me, her eyelashes wet. “I’ll bring it to her soon, though. I have to.” She heaves a breath. “But Ethan needs to see this stuff first and read the journal. It’s only fair.”
Ethan, her brother, who had his own demons, if I understand the family history right.
“It’s so stupid—and so complicated.” She leans back into me. I wrap an arm around her shoulders. “Once he sees it, I think he’ll help me bring this to Mom. I just don’t know how she’ll take it. They were estranged for over twenty years, until the day he died.”
“Yeah, but she didn’t know how much he hurt. She didn’t know how sorry he was and that he knew how much of a mistake he made with your dad, your whole family.”
Her dad.Not Ethan’s.
It’s a dire, fucked up family situation for sure, but I’m not here to judge.
Hell, I’m just getting back on track myself.
“I’ll be there too, if you want me to be,” I promise. “For you, I always will be.”
Her face smooths and she leans up to kiss my jaw.
The journal settles on the blankets as she shifts so she’s on top of me, holding my face in her hands as she kisses me, all soft lips and searing tongue.
I’m hard enough to split rocks.
“I love you,” she tells me fiercely. “I love you so much, Kane.”
“So fucking much,” I agree, and I find the silk bottoms of her pajama shorts. I slide my fingers under them, and she shudders against me. “Is that what has you this wet? Love?”
“I like it when you tell me you love me,” she says shyly, smothering her moan as I rub her pussy.
“I love you.”
“Oh!” Her teeth scrape my neck, just enough to make me throb. “I love you, Kane. Always.”
“Always,” I growl, pushing my fingers deeper inside her.
She clenches around me, and my greed is overwhelming.
No matter how many days it happens like this, I still want to reclaim her.
I want her ruined.
I want her marked, inside and out, with red marks on her throat and my seed leaking between her legs.
Mine, dammit.
Mine and forever.
My growl doesn’t even have to form the word.
My sweet, needy duchess already knows.
And she takes my hand and moves it to her breast, shifting so she’s got my cock at her entrance.
“Kane, holy shit. Don’t make me beg.”
I curse under my breath, and she laughs, seriously considering it.
Her clothes are gone in a whirlwind.
