Page 21 of The Duke Decides

She stepped away, readjusting her cap, which had come askew during that eternity of kissing. Gabe’s lips burned with the taste of her.

“I supposed you would send an agent in your place,” she said.

Why would he? He’d approached her in person before. “Because I am a duke, and presumably dispatch others to attend all my business for me?”

“A duke.” She sounded a bit dazed. She touched the pelerine, ensuring the buttons were fastened, smoothing the lace over her shoulder. “I cannot imagine why you have concerned yourself with our small little charity.”

He owed a debt. Rutland had helped him out of a sticky place, once. Also, there was that society, the one for rogue dukes, who had agreed to admit him. They’d given him a signet, a seal of some sort they used to identify one another. It was in his desk at the moment as he wore the ring with the Declan family crest.

Besides all that, if he performed a service for a woman in distress, he could prove himself worthy of this position to which he’d suddenly been catapulted. He could be accepted at last. If not admired, at least tolerated, which was a step above the usual run of things.

At the very least, Fenton might stop trying to kill him.

She tilted her head to the side and studied his face. “We are not going to make you rich.”

What the devil? She must know he wouldn’t demand payment. He was rich already, or at least, in possession of more wealth than he’d ever had in his life, than he ever knew existed. “I never imagined you would.”

“Even if you do take our land and sell it.” She opened a small drawer in a desk with a yank.

He stared at her, well and truly at sea. “Hell’s doorknobs. You think I want your land?”

“Wasn’t that your demand?”

“I’m here to help, you aggravating woman!”

“You’re here to take everything!” she cried. “Are you not Lord Vérité?” She brandished a vellum letter at him.

“Lord Who?” He snatched the letter and scanned it quickly. The image on the seal was not one he recognized, but then, his brainbox was still fogged from the confusion of that kiss and her sudden animosity. “How banal. I’d be much more inventive in my demands, if I knew your secrets.” He handed the letter back to her. “What do you mean, he wants your land?”

“He.” She narrowed her eyes at him.

“Yes, he. He signs himself Lord Vérité, ergo, he identifies as a masculine sort. A dastard, in point of fact.” The sort of man who preyed upon vulnerable women and children, apparently. Gabe knew all too many of those.

“I do not know the whole of his intentions yet. He approached me at the ball. He said he would send an agent to present me with an offer. Then you appeared, and—” Her expression grew fiery. “You made a demand of your own.”

That she be his lover. A fine idea, that. The most brilliant notion he’d ever originated in his life.

“And you met my terms,” Gabe said smugly. “Most satisfactorily. But I wouldn’t have required it, you know. I’ve never had to manipulate a woman into my—”

He cut off the words when he found a fury flying at him, a flurry of lace and cotton and soft woman battering against his chest. She was hitting him, her lace indoor mittens like puffs of cloud against his waistcoat. A haze of honeysuckle enveloped his brain, and his blood roused instantly at her nearness.

He grasped her wrists, yanked her body against his, and clamped his arms around her. Then, because it seemed the best way to distract her from her anger, he kissed her again.

He fell on her and devoured her. There was no other way to describe it. Some madness descended on him when he was in her presence. Some hunger long denied came roaring to the surface. The wildness in him that he pretended wasn’t there slipped its lash and reared, clawing, raging.

And met an answering wildness in her. He’d never met a woman whose need, whose passion, matched his own.

“A-hem. Just anyone could walk in here, y’know,” the maid said.

Gabriel came to his senses to realize he had backed Louisa against the wall. His hips pressed against hers, and he’d raised both her arms above her head, wrists pinned to the wall with one hand. His other rested on her breasts, pushed high and toward him.

And she’d risen on tiptoe so his cockstand pushed directly into the crevice at the top of her thighs. That was her doing, not his.

He stared into her glowing eyes, unable to pull away. She stared back, her breasts rising and falling with her short pants of breath.

He’d been well on his way to taking her right here in her office, against the wall.

And it appeared she meant to take him right back.