The Mad, Bad Duke (Nvengaria #2)(42)

A cry escaped her mouth, one she tried to suppress.

“Yes, my Meagan,” Alexander said against her curls. “Feel it.”

“Alexander, what have you done to me?”

“Pleasured you,” Alexander said, and then, heartbreakingly, he pressed a last, long kiss to her opening and rose to his feet.

Meagan’s heart pounded, her body streaked with shivering delight. She was marrying him, happy thought. They could do this again and again throughout the long nights of their life.

Alexander straightened her skirts with a gentle hand, but his eyes were anything but gentle. They were filled with fierce possession and wicked joy, just as they’d been at the betrothal ceremony when he’d pressed their blood-streaked hands together.

“You are a bad man, Alexander,” Meagan managed to say.

Alexander nodded, feral smile in place. “Dangerous, I thought we agreed.” He loosened the cloth that bound her hands and draped the fichu about her shoulders again.

“Dangerous to my sanity,” Meagan answered shakily. “I am falling for you.”

“It is the love spell.” He gave her another nod. “Love spells make one obsessed.”

“Are you obsessed?”

Alexander cupped her face in his hands, his rings cool on her skin. “I am obsessed with you. I find I will do anything to be near you.”

“You have stayed away from me for nearly two weeks,” Meagan pointed out. Her body felt tight and flushed, hovering between satiation and craving more of him.

“And those two weeks have been hell.” His voice was savage. “I want to be with you every minute I am awake. I want to hold you when I sleep and make love to you upon waking. I want nothing else but you. That is why we must break the spell. It distracts me from everything but you.”

Meagan loved his touch. “I would agree it is inconvenient.”

Alexander gave a hollow laugh. “I spend every day with the damned king or his ministers, making their treaties favor Nvengaria. I am so good at it that I remain in London, talking and cajoling and keeping the English king under my thumb, instead of returning to Nvengaria, where I long to be. Nvengaria is an astonishing place. I want to show it to you—because if I could, that would mean I was home.”

The ache in his eyes stung Meagan’s heart. She did not experience homesickness very often herself, always having her father nearby and the knowledge that they’d never stray too far from Oxfordshire. But sometimes, in the gray bustle of London, she thought of the green hills of home and the quiet peace of the woods and walks along with river with longing.

Alexander was thousands of miles from Nvengaria, in a strange and alien place to him. According to Penelope’s letters, Alexander had rarely left Nvengaria before this. He must miss it dreadfully.

Meagan reached up and ran her fingers through his sun-warmed hair. She realized there were two Alexanders, the one who had people scrambling to do what he wanted at the snap of his fingers, and the passionate Alexander who loved his home with all his heart.

“I am certain Damien will let you return if you tell him how much you yearn to.”

Alexander barked another laugh. “You are far too innocent, my Meagan. For too innocent to be bound to a man like me.”

“Well, you cannot call off the wedding now,” Meagan said. “My reputation would be in tatters.”

Alexander growled and pulled her tightly against him, no longer the controlled, suave man who’d calmly walked her away from the crowd. He snaked his hand through her hair and dragged her head back for another deep kiss.

His eyes were open, glittering and intensely blue. Alexander eased away from her mouth, as though he could not keep still, and kissed her face and lips and eyes. He muttered in Nvengarian, a question in his voice.

“What are you saying?” she begged him. “Teach me, so I may understand you.”

Alexander closed his eyes, tightening his body, his muscles hardening under her fingers. He seemed to retreat in on himself, his eyes taut, mouth a hard line.

Meagan touched his face, alarmed to find it unnaturally hot. “Alexander, what is the matter? You are frightening me.”

He pried his eyes open, pupils so wide they nearly drowned out the blue. “You should be frightened of me.” The words were English, but harshly accented, as though Alexander struggled to remember the language. “You should not be with me, not now. But I want this marriage. I need it.”

Alexander lifted her hand and pressed a kiss to her palm, his lips burning like a brand. He said nothing, but Meagan felt it, this strong, strong man wanting to hold on to her and wishing he didn’t.

Meagan determined, as he drew his tongue across her fingers, that she would find out absolutely everything about him. She would discover all there was to discover about Grand Duke Alexander, beginning with why Black Annie had decided that she should create a love spell to bind Meagan to him forever.



* * *



When Alexander came to himself in the middle of the night, he was standing in the center of his bedroom with his clothes in shreds. Myn stood by the window, watching calmly, arms folded over his chest.

“Hell,” Alexander snarled in Nvengarian.

Myn said nothing.

Alexander pulled off the tattered remains of his shirt. Nikolai had been undressing him after Alexander had returned from another tedious ball where the Duchess of Gower had tried to pump him for information of what he and Meagan had done in the gardens that afternoon.