Sleep well?
Like hell.
Flutters of awareness flit through her belly.
She gathered her skirts, and walked calmly from the room, leaving a hot and bothered duke standing beside the ruined portrait of the woman who still owned his heart.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
When the clock chimed half-past two o’clock, Logan cursed and threw the clammy sheet from his body. The fire he’d stoked before going to bed had long turned to glowing embers. He sat up, swung his legs over the side of the bed, and ran his fingers through his hair.
Why did thoughts of Haven persist when all he wanted to do was sleep?
Restlessness could only lead to recklessness, and that would be disastrous, especially whenever she was near.
How could he sleep when all he could think about was a jade-eyed woman staring at him with lust in her eyes?
Dear God, it had taken every ounce of his strength to not devour her with his kiss.
Incapable of sitting still any longer, he stood and paced in the dark.
He was glad he slept naked because he was overheated by his imagination. Every inch of him dripped in sweat, and every nerve tingled with sensation.
His mind replayed the evening, from the moment she stepped to the staircase landing to when she sauntered from hisstudy. He’d accused her of a crime she couldn’t have committed, and still reeled from her reaction. Her expression. Her words.
“I didn’t ask to turn to jelly whenever you look at me....”
A mutual affliction.
He groaned.
He couldn’t focus or control his mind and body with her near. He groaned again when his cock responded to the echo of her words inside his head. How could he help her find a way back to 2025 if he couldn’t keep his dick from growing hard every time he thought of her?
He slowed his pace to accommodate his aching balls, and tried to make sense of the mess he’d made in the study.
“I didn’t ask you to grind me under your boot like an insignificant bug....”
His heart stuttered. Was that true?
“I didn’t ask for your anger, your suspicions, or your looks of pity when I say or do something wrong…”
Could he do nothing right? Had he lost all sense of morality, of chivalry, of common human decency?
“...and most of all I didn’t ask for you to hate me.”
He’d caused that anguish in her voice.
“What have I done?” he choked out, his own voice heavy with the weight of guilt and self-disgust.
He found and donned his trousers in record time.
He didn’t understand the urgency, but he had to tell her he didn’t hate her.
An unfathomable desperation clawed at him, and he couldn’t stop to wonder why.
“Damn it.”
Haven punched her pillow for the fiftieth time, and clinched her teeth around the urge to scream into it.
