Page 41 of The Feared Duke’s Found Family

He didn’t break her gaze as his hand slid higher, the rough pads of his calloused fingers brushing against the soft, sensitive heat between her thighs.

Fanny arched off the bedpost with a sharp, choked cry, her thighs clamping instinctively around his wrist.

“Do not hide from me,” he rasped, his voice thick with raw command as he held her pinned against the timber.

He began to stroke her. It was slow, deliberate, and devastatingly thorough. He found the swollen, delicate bud at her center, circling it with steady, rhythmic pressure that made Fanny’s hips rock involuntarily against his hand. She was slick, burning, and completely undone for him.

“Lysander, please…” Fanny choked out, her knuckles turning bone-white in his shirt as a wild, electric tension coiled tight in the pit of her belly.

“I have you. Just let me give you pleasure,” he murmured, his mouth capturing hers again, swallowing her whimpers as his thumb increased its relentless, intoxicating friction.

He slipped one long finger inside her, testing her tight, soaking heat, while his thumb maintained that punishing, exquisite rhythm against her core. Fanny’s breath shattered into ragged, broken sobs. The coil snapped violently.

A powerful, convulsive wave crashed over her, her inner muscles clamping tightly around his finger in a desperate, pulsing rhythm. Her head thrashed against the wood, her back arching as she cried out into his mouth, trembling uncontrollably from head to toe as the pleasure ripped through her body, carrying her into absolute oblivion.

Lysander held her up through the aftershocks, his mouth buried against the warm curve of her neck, his own chest heaving as though he had run ten miles through the dark. His body was screaming for release, his blood pounding heavy and desperate against his trousers, urging him to strip away the rest of their clothes and bury himself deep inside her.

Then, like a bucket of ice water hurled into a furnace, sanity crashed back into his skull.

He froze.

His hand was buried in her skirts, his fingers slick with her arousal, his wife trembling and utterly defenseless in his arms against the bedpost.

What have I done?

The horrifying question echoed through his mind with deafening clarity. He had promised her an unencumbered arrangement, free from the chaos of desire and the vulnerability of feeling. He was the man who claimed to hold all the control, yet he had just used his strength and her vulnerability to satisfy his own monstrous hunger.

Lysander pulled his hand back as if he had been burned. He stepped away so abruptly that Fanny swayed, her hands clutching the bedpost to keep her balance. She looked up at him, her lips swollen and pink, her eyes wide and dazed, trying to pull herself back from the edge of the storm.

Lysander could not look at her face. His jaw clenched, his chest rising and falling in harsh, ragged hitches as he pulled her nightdress down and, with stiff, hurried fingers, wrapped the emerald robe back over her trembling shoulders.

“I apologize,” Lysander said, every syllable dragged from his throat, flat and devoid of warmth.

Fanny blinked, the fog of pleasure clearing from her gaze, replaced by a sudden, sharp confusion. “Lysander…”

“It was a mistake,” he cut her off, refusing to let her finish. He stepped back two paces, putting a wide, cold chasm of floorboards between them. “A profound, unpardonable breach of our agreement. It will not happen again.”

Without giving her a chance to reply or waiting to see the look of devastation or anger that would inevitably cross her face, Lysander spun on his heel.

He tore the heavy mahogany door open and strode out into the pitch-black corridor, his boots heavy on the runner as he fled toward his own wing before he could lose the last shred of his soul.

Yet, as the cold night air bit into his heated skin and he reached the safety of his dark study, a terrible, suffocating terror settled into the center of his chest.

She will pack her things and run from this house, and I will have driven her out.

Sixteen

Fanny sat on the edge of the mattress, counting the strikes of the corridor clock.

One. Two. Two minutes.

She stared at the grain of the far oak paneling, waiting for her ribs to stop aching with each breath. The hearth fire had burned down to embers, casting long amber shadows across the rug. Her velvet dressing gown hung loose at the collar. Where Lysander’s fingers had tangled in the silk, the fabric was still warm. Where he’d retied the sash in those quick, harsh jerks before striding out the door, the knot sat tight against her hip.

He was retreating again. He had kissed her with a dark, terrifying passion that stole her breath, only to retreat behind his cold, familiar armor the second the spell broke.

She refused to let him hide.

Planting her feet on the floorboards, Fanny jerked her sash tight and went after him.