The air is still charged with the kind of energy that makes my head throb.
I have to speak up again. Have to do something, or I’ll shrivel at his feet.
My train of thought stops cold when he moves his hand, gesturing toward my chest.
“What?”
What he wants becomes abundantly clear a second later, when his fingertips ghost one of the lapels of my dress.
I recoil as if I’ve been bitten.
“No.” My arms hug me tighter. “No. We’re going to talk first.”
I don’t miss the implication as soon as I say it.
We’ll talk first. I’ll take the dress off later.
The heat pooling between my thighs is the nail in my proverbial coffin. The humiliating dampness gathers where it shouldn’t, probably because I can just feel this man is Duncan.
Refusing to lose it completely, I take a deep breath, repeating my “no.”
“Strip,” he growls, voice ripping through the dark. Through me.
It eviscerates the last of my doubts at once.
The Restorer is Duncan.
Shock so intense barrels into me, and I’m choked. Frozen.
“I said, strip.”
His words hardly register when the pain of betrayal is worse than ever before.
He’s known who I was all along.
Meaning, he’s wounding and humiliating me on purpose.
All because of our kiss?
I don’t understand any of it.
Tears roll down my cheeks, rivers of them.
My heart is being shredded. Torn. Stomped on.
“I said?—”
“Stop it.” I tip my chin up to stare him dead in the eye.
“Excuse me?”
“Stop it,” I demand, louder and more sure of myself. “Duncan, whatever it is you’re doing, stop it. Just stop.”
9
DUNCAN
Elowyn recognized my voice.
