“I could not hear you.” His tongue swirled over her areola. “When you are settled, I want you to be as loud as you bloody please. I won’t stop until you’re screaming the roof off the damned place.”
When you are settled.
The words lanced the haze of lust fogging her mind. Conscience and guilt returned to her, and in a moment of blinding clarity, she felt nothing but disgust for herself. How had she allowed the Duke of Whitley, a man she did not like, a man she was meant to condemn, to remove half her gown and undergarments, to bare her breasts to his gaze, to use his tongue upon her flesh?
“No,” she said with as much vehemence as she could muster. She gripped her bodice and assorted layers and hauled them back into place. He thought to make her his mistress, and the shame of her actions, of the assumptions he had made about her, stung. He thought she could be bought. That her honor and her body could be claimed with a house and some pretty baubles.
He straightened, a thunderous frown forming between his brows. “I beg your pardon?”
She supposed the almighty Duke of Whitley was not accustomed to being denied. Jacinda raised her chin. “I will not be your mistress.”
He sneered. “I do not recall asking, Miss Governess.”
His cruelty should not surprise her, but it stung all the same. The heat fled from her, leaving her only cold and shocked at her lack of care for her honor, her loyalty to Father and James, her own body. How had she even countenanced the duke’s touch? How could she have betrayed the memory of the beautiful love she had shared with her husband by engaging in such despicable lechery?
She felt ill.
Would she have lain with him?
Allowed him to couple with her upon his desk?
What had she been thinking? This man was her enemy. He had never even exhibited a capacity for kindness or compassion. He was depraved. He drowned himself in drink, brought women of loose morals to his very home. He had betrayed his best friend.
Jacinda shoved at the great wall of Whitley’s chest. “Your words suggested an assumption. An assumption I cannot allow.”
His lip curled even more, his features hardening. “Your actions suggested otherwise.”
Her cheeks flamed. She leapt from his desk, reached behind her to tug the parted sides of her bodice upward so she could reach the buttons he had undone. “You coerced me. I was held in your thrall for a brief moment, but it is over now and the mistake shan’t be repeated.”
The duke clenched his jaw, raking her form with a dismissive gaze. “Yes, a mistake. I see that now. I suppose this is how I am repaid for attempting to show a dowdy spinster in shapeless sacks that there is more to life than being a pinch-lipped harpy.”
A dowdy spinster? A pinch-lipped harpy?
Her mouth fell open. She struggled with her buttons, not caring what a ridiculous sight she must make. She would not ask for his assistance. “How dare you?”
“Oh, I dare quite a bit, Miss Governess.” He took a step forward, crowding her with his big, powerful form once more. “Unlike some who are afraid to dare anything.”
If only he knew how much she dared.
But if he did, he would likely wrap his hands around her throat and choke the life from her.
She tipped up her chin in a show of defiance she little felt. “That is where you are wrong about me, Your Grace, for I can assure you, I fear nothing.”
Having nothing left to lose tended to render one foolishly brave, and Jacinda was no exception. Still, how she wished she could remove herself from his employ and his household. No one in her life had ever been so disrupting. So upsetting. So enraging. So bitterly tempting.
Blast. She would not dwell upon the last, disconcerting fact. Not whilst the grim Duke of Whitley scowled at her as she attempted to hook her buttons. And after he had dismissed her with such calculating viciousness. It was true, she dressed to be ignored. But she was neither a spinster nor a harpy.
She was…
The truth walloped her as she stood there in ignominy in the Duke of Whitley’s study. She didn’t know who she was any longer. She didn’t even recognize herself. Once, she had been a wife with an open heart and a future. Now, she was a bitter, broken-hearted widow consigned to a quiet life with her father.
This wicked interlude had been an aberration. One that would not be repeated. One she could not dare to repeat. She struggled with the last of her buttons, mortified she could not sink them within their moorings. Perhaps it was his intense regard that flustered her. Perhaps it was the unwanted thoughts unraveling in her mind.
Either way, she needed his aid.
He moved nearer still, bringing with him his heat and the muscled distraction of his masculine form, the scent of him.Good God, she would never again be able to look upon him without recalling the sensation of his tongue upon her breast.
“Turn about,” he directed in clipped tones still redolent with his combined disapproval and dismissal.
