Page 94 of The Duke's Auctioned Virgin
“No more running. No more chairs. No more closed doors. No more kissing my palm and walking away.”
“No more running,” he agreed.
“Swear it.”
“I swear it.”
“On what?”
He thought about it. “On the beetle in my pocket.”
She laughed.
God, her laugh. The sound of it in this empty house, filling the rooms, bouncing off the bare walls, seeping into the faded wallpaper and the creaking floorboards and the cracked mirror in the hallway.
Edward would fill this house with that sound. He would tear down walls and build new ones, plant roses and fix the garden path, learn to cook something other than camp rations, and do whatever it took to hear that laugh every day for the rest of his life.
She kissed him. Her hands on his face. Her mouth on his. And this time, neither of them pulled away.
He carried her up the stairs.
The bedroom was simple. A bed with white sheets. A window that overlooked the garden. The late afternoon sun filtered through the glass and painted everything gold.
He set her down on the edge of the bed and knelt in front of her.
He is kneeling. He is kneeling. The most dangerous man in England is on his knees in front of me, and his eyes are full of something that looks like reverence. If I do not touch him in the next three seconds, I will lose my mind.
“Tell me what ye want.” His voice was low and raspy. The voice he used in the dark, in the firelight, in the moments between them that belonged to no one else.
“You,” she replied. “All of you. No walls. No distance. Just you.”
He reached for the laces of her dress with steady fingers. He had undressed her before, in the drawing room, in his bedroom on the eve of their wedding. But those times had been urgent, half-frantic, driven by the desperation of almost.
This was different. This was slow. This was deliberate. This was a man unwrapping something precious, taking his time, learning the shape of it with his hands.
The dress fell. The chemise beneath it was thin white cotton, and the sunlight turned it transparent. She heard his breath catch. A sound she would never tire of. The sharp intake of breath of a man undone by the sight of her.
“Valeria.” Her name in his mouth sounded like a prayer.
She pulled her chemise over her head, baring herself to him. No corset. No layers. No armor. She sat on the edge of the bed in the golden light, with her hair falling over her shoulders and her skin warm and her heart hammering, and she let him look.
He did. His eyes trailed over her. Not assessing, but worshipping. The hollow at the base of her throat. The slope of her collarbone. The swell of her breasts. The soft curve of her belly. The curve of her hip.
He looked at her the way he looked at everything, with focus and attention and the devastating thoroughness of a man who missed nothing.
But this was different from the way he read rooms and counted exits. This was the way a man looked at something beautiful that he had been given and did not quite believe he deserved.
“Ye’re shaking,” he said softly.
“I’m not afraid.”
“I know ye’re not. Ye’ve never been afraid of me. Not once.”
“Then stop looking at me like I might break.”
“I’m not looking at ye like ye might break.” He stood and pulled his shirt over his head.
She saw the scars. She had seen them before, glimpses in the gazebo, in the firelight. Now, she saw them all. A web of white lines across his chest and shoulders. A long, curved scar across his ribs. A jagged mark on his left shoulder that looked like a poorly healed knife wound.
