Page 80 of An Inconvenient Duke

“No. I’m here to negotiate terms of surrender.”

“But you said you’d never surrender.”

“Not me.” Each word tickled sweetly over his lips. “You.”

He gave a short laugh. “I’ve never surrendered in my life.”

“Then it’s time you learned how.”

When she pushed against his shoulder again, he reluctantly stepped back. The strips of cloth still dangled half-undone from his palms and wrists as he crossed his arms over his chest and fixed a look on her that had terrified new recruits but barely gave her pause before she mimicked his posture, crossed her own arms, and stared boldly back.

“I will marry you if you agree to meet certain conditions,” she announced.

He would have laughed at her impudence if the subject weren’t so very important. “And what would those be?”

“That once Hartsham is arrested, you agree to support me in the next war.”

He didn’t like these terms, not wanting Danielle putting herself into the fray at all. But he was willing to hear her out. “What war?”

“The one that Nightingale will wage in Parliament and in the courts against all those who abuse women. We’ll do it openly, too, right out in the streets, for all to see and hear.”

His pulse stuttered. She was changing the focus of the network, just as he’d asked. But both of them would pay a price for this. He in Parliament and she in her heart at giving up directly helping women in need. Yet he took hope in her concession and tossed out his own condition. “No more vanishings.”

“One more.”

“Nomore.” A position on which he would never budge.

“One more,” she repeated pointedly, clearly brooking no argument on this. “And then they will stop.”

Her bright intensity had seeped into him, burning low in his gut, and he stalked toward her, steering her backward and into the shadows falling along the edge of the room where the afternoon sunlight didn’t reach. “Who?”

“The woman you’ve arranged for Hartsham to deliver to you.”

He stopped in midstep at that and scoured her with a look to judge if she was serious. Her spine remained ramrod straight, but she couldn’t stop the flush in her cheeks from spreading down her neck to her breasts from the heat of his stare or how her breath now came in small pants.

“Once she cooperates and tells you what she knows about Hartsham and the brothel, her life will be in danger. She won’t have anyone to protect her from Hartsham if he’s somehow exonerated in the Lords. Or if anyone else from the brothel decides to take revenge against her and make an example of what happens to prostitutes who turn against the house manager. Including Scepter, if it turns out that they’re involved.”

The same way they did with John Porter, cutting out his tongue and pinning it to the wall as a reminder of what happens to those who talk about them.

“She won’t be safe as long as she remains in England,” Danielle continued. “I want to use Nightingale’s network to take her out of the country to America and change her identity, to give her a fresh start somewhere she’ll be safe. It’s the least we can do for her.”

He closed the remaining distance between them with a single step. “But she might be just as guilty in all this as Hartsham. She might be willingly giving him information for her own gain.”

“Then consider it exile.” Resilience and strength shone in her eyes. “After that, the vanishings will stop, and Nightingale’s network closes down.”

He cupped her face between his hands, even as the ends of the half-removed cloth strips still dangled around his forearms and tickled at the top swells of her breasts. “And our future together begins.”

Her lips parted, trembling slightly at the enormity of what she was agreeing to. “Yes.”

His mouth came down possessively against hers, sealing their negotiations with a blistering kiss.

For a single beat, she stood frozen within his embrace, her lips unmoving beneath his and her hand still against his shoulder. Then her mouth eagerly responded to his, and the hand on his shoulder that had been pushing him away now pulled him close in an aching need. She pressed herself against him, and the inarticulate noises that came from her throat weren’t moans of pleasure or soft mewlings—they were fierce, frustrated sounds of need and desire, swelling up from deep inside her and matching his own yearning.

Her hands lost their purchase on his sweat-slickened shoulders, so her fingertips sank into the hard muscles of his back to maintain her fierce hold on him. When she thrust her hips forward against his, a throbbing ache consumed him. He pushed her backward and pinned her between his body and the wall.

With both hands planted against the bricks on either side of her, his hips pressing into hers to hold her in place, he kissed her relentlessly, hot and openmouthed, until she had to tear her lips away to pant for air. Even then he didn’t lift his mouth from her, lowering his head to lick and suck at her throat while her pulse pounded deliciously against his lips. With a groan, he sank his teeth into her neck.

She cried out at the sensation of pleasure-pain that shot through her. Her hand at his shoulder slipped up to grab his hair and yanked his head back, curving his neck toward her as her mouth darted to bite at his throat the same way he’d done to hers. The bite shot all the way down to the tip of his cock, and he sucked in a mouthful of air through clenched teeth.