Page 73 of To Steal a Duchess

“What is the matter?” he asked her. “I told you I was fine, and nothing was wrong, but there is something about how you have been acting since the wedding breakfast.”

“Something is clearly wrong with you, though,” she insisted. “I do not believe this whole nothing answer. You are an honest man, Dorian, and I do not know why you are suddenly not being truthful.”

“I am more concerned about what is affecting you.”

Eloise gritted her teeth. “Heavens, you can be infuriating. You have changed once again with me! You have been quiet all week, as though something is on your mind. You have been sharper again, and then warmer, and then distant once more. On top of that, I see Lady Olivia flirting with you at the wedding breakfast, and I appreciate you did not return the action, but it was humiliating that you did not fully walk away. We have both read the scandal sheets. We know that people question what made you choose me, and how I must be disappointing you, and the haste of our marriage.”

“Eloise.” His voice was firm but not sharp. “It is drivel. I barely ever read those sheets unless they involve a person I am investigating and the story might have some truth.”

“So why does ours interest you? Are you disappointed in me?”

Dorian pushed up off his desk. “You are a duchess, and I chose you to be my duchess. Is that not enough for you?”

“You did not look surprised at me mentioning Lady Olivia’s name,” Eloise said, ignoring his statement and question. “You did not walk away from her. Who is she?”

“She was a part of my past, nothing more.”

Eloise did not know how many blows her chest could take in humiliation and hurt on one day, but she endured it to ask, “And do you plan to make her part of your present? You did not choose me out of a crowd, Dorian. You chose me for a job because I pleaded with you, and then you dutifully saved me. What of the choices you may have made had I never written to you?”

“They do not matter,” Dorian snapped, coming closer to her. “No other choice matters, Eloise, do you not see that? They do not because I have all my rules in place to stop thinking of what hurts. To keep moving, to act instead of wonder when the next bad thing will happen. You oppose all of that! There was never any other choice because you are the one that has undone me when nobody else has before.”

“Dorian,” she murmured, her eyes wide at his outburst.

This, she realized, was what he had been holding back. This was why he had pushed her away: because he had realized it in himself and had been trying to protect either one of them from something.

Perhaps both of them.

“I will not be pushed away because you need control,” she said at last.

“Control,” he spat. “It is what I need, but that flew out of the window the first damned time we kissed. There is no other woman for me, Eloise, because all I can think about is being between your legs and hoping that when my time on this Earth comes, it is where I will still be. Because all I can think about is winding my fingers in your loose hair and seeing how you react to me tugging on it. Because I see you in a thin nightgown, almost exposed, and I could scarcely control myself. So, yes, Eloise, I have needed to cling to whatever control I have because you take it away from me and I think⁠—”

“What?” she whispered.

“I think I would let you a thousand times.”

And then he was gripping her face with more passion than she had ever let herself think a man might hold her, and his mouth crashed against hers, pushing her back against one of his bedposts.

She made a hard noise as his fingers pinned her hips to the lower end of the bed frame, and she did not care that the wood bit into her back.

All she cared about was that Dorian’s mouth was on hers, and it was demanding, and she was wanted, and she made him snap so hard, and she finally felt free.

She kissed him back with urgency, snagging her fingers through his short, rough beard, allowing him entry into her mouth with her tongue for a moment.

But it was only a moment, for she pulled back, her breaths coming heavily.

“I do not understand,” she breathed. “If you have wanted me all this time, why have you never told me?”

Dorian’s lids were heavy as he thumbed over her lower lip, and as his other hand slid down her hips and over her backside. Eloise froze, pleasure humming through her at the touch.

“Not now, Duchess,” he said roughly against her lips. He kissed her thoroughly once more. “No questions. I do not want to talk. I only want to hear what sounds you make when I do this.”

Without breaking eye contact, he began to go to his knees.

“I think you will sound pretty,” he told her. “Intoxicating. For this is something you have not experienced before, yes?”

“You—know—” She gasped as he pushed up her skirts. “You know I have not.”

“Then I am honored to be the first,” he said into the skin of her upper thigh, but his eyes lifted to hers, dark and dangerous. “And the only one.”