Even the simple touch of his fingers trailing along her sides sent shivers down her spine. Every second stretched, charged,burning with a delicious tension neither wanted to break… until the clatter of the milk glass brought them back to the world, flushed and breathless.
He pulled away from her, breathing hard. “It is late,” he said, his voice husky. “You should get some rest.”
He left her without another word.
Selina remained on the table, her chest rising and falling, her lips still tingling from his kiss. Heat burned through her body, leaving her restless and unsatisfied. She pressed a hand against her racing heart, torn between mortification and a secret, aching thrill.
For the first time since their marriage, she had felt the true power of her husband’s desire… and it terrified her how much she wanted him.
The general laughter and chatter of the gentlemen’s club felt muted to Dominic as he sipped his drink. The clinking of glasses and the occasional bark of a voice carried on around him, but it was as if all the sounds had been filtered through a thick fog, dulled and distant.
Austin had given up trying to engage him in conversation, leaning back in his chair with a wry look and nursing his own whiskey, seemingly resigned to Dominic’s silence.
He could still feel the imprint of Selina’s lips on his own, the soft, deliberate press that had left a trail of fire across his mouth and down into his chest. Every time he thought about it, a shiver ran along his spine, subtle at first but growing more insistent, more demanding.
He took another sip of his drink, letting the warmth of the whiskey spread through him, hoping the heat would dull the sensation, at least a little. But it did nothing. If anything, it made the memory sharper.
“I kissed my wife,” he finally said.
Austin’s head tilted, an eyebrow arched in sardonic amusement. “I shall immediately alert the scandal sheets,” he said dryly. His lips twitched in a smirk, and a slow smile spread across his own face. “Does this mean your marriage is shaping up to be a happy one?”
Dominic shook his head, a rueful expression tugging at his features. “It was a mistake,” he said, voice low and taut. “One I shall not be repeating.”
Austin chuckled, though it was more of a skeptical hum. “If she is an inexperienced kisser, then surely she can learn. There is no need to swear to celibacy over a bad kiss.”
Dominic allowed himself the briefest of chuckles at that, but it did little to lighten the weight in his chest. “No, it was not a bad kiss,” he admitted reluctantly, the words tasting like both guilt and longing. She had tasted so sweet, a delicate hint ofsomething: sugar, perhaps, or her own faint, floral perfume, that lingered on his tongue and in his senses.
“But it was a mistake all the same,” he added, the words bitter in his own ears. “She is meant for Percy.”
Austin shrugged, leaning back with a calm confidence that almost made Dominic envious. “She can be for both of you.”
“No,” Dominic whispered, voice heavy with the weight of his own restraint. “If I succumb to my desires, only to unintentionally drive her away, then I will never be able to forgive myself. Especially if she ends up resenting Percy because of it.”
Austin’s eyes softened with an almost imperceptible pity. “I do not know who you should give more credit to—yourself or her,” he said.
“I barely know the new Duchess of Greystone, but I know she is too kind to resent a child, no matter her opinion of the father. I also do not think it is inevitable that you will ruin things with her. Perhaps she will even welcome a romantic relationship with you. She kissed you back, did she not?”
“She did,” Dominic admitted, though shame coursed through him like ice water at the admission. He had kissed her when she had just confided in him, when she had bared a piece of her soul and admitted the difficulty of adjusting to her new position as his duchess.
Every inch of him had screamed that it was wrong; imprudent, selfish, dangerous. But he had done it anyway. His lips had sought hers with a hunger he could not restrain, a hunger that felt both natural and forbidden.
“But that means nothing,” he added quickly, as if trying to convince himself more than Austin. “She has gone through a great many changes recently, a half-decade of hardship compressed into a few months. Of course, she accepted a moment of affection. That does not mean she wants me. It does not mean she will ever want me.”
Austin gave him a pitying look, a flicker of disbelief in the set of his jaw. “I believe you know even less about women than I initially thought,” he said, though his tone lacked cruelty. It was the kind of gentle exasperation reserved for those who were hopelessly stubborn, or hopelessly self—sabotaging.
Dominic leaned back in his chair, staring into his drink again, the amber liquid swirling lazily as if mocking him with its calmness.It hardly matters,he thought bitterly.I do not deserve her love or affection, not after what happened to Eugenia and Percy.
The memory of Eugenia’s accusatory eyes, Percy’s silent suffering, the cascading guilt of his own failures… it all pressed down on him, suffocating in its weight. He had been reckless, thoughtless in so many ways, and now every beat of his heart reminded him that he could not claim what he most desired without a shadow of blame.
A part of him longed to throw caution aside, to claim her fully, to explore the heat they had barely tasted, to let every moment stretch into a night of unrestrained passion. He could imagine the soft sighs she would make, the shiver of her body beneath his hands, the way she would melt into him as he kissed her again.
But another part of him, perhaps the larger, more practical part, reminded him of the cost. Of Percy. Of Eugenia. Of the tenuous thread of propriety and duty that bound him, however reluctantly, to a moral path.
He pressed a hand to his face, jaw tightening as he tried to suppress the sudden, all-consuming need that threatened to overwhelm him.She is meant for Percy,he repeated silently, like a mantra, a lifeline to tether him to reason. But his heart argued back, vehemently, cruelly, whispering that reason had no place in matters of the flesh, that his body did not care for duty or propriety.
Austin’s voice broke through the spiraling thoughts. “Perhaps she is more aware of her own heart than you give her credit for. Desire is not a sin, Dominic. And she is not a child; she is a woman who has chosen to be with you in name, if not yet in heart. Perhaps you overthink the consequences.”
Dominic exhaled slowly, “Perhaps I do not.”
