Daring and the Duke (The Bareknuckle Bastards #3)(37)

“This,” she whispered. “I need this.” A delicious growl vibrated through her. “This,” she repeated. “I need—”

You.

Miraculously, she didn’t say it.

And still, it seemed he might have heard it.

He growled, his tongue stroking hard, in circles, firmer and tighter until he was working the place where she was desperate for him, and she was on her toes and she was shaking with pleasure.

She flew apart, hands in his hair, whispered words as wild as the sounds he made, pure sin at her core. He stayed there, on his knees, against her, gentle and firm, until she released the long breath she’d held at the end, her grip relaxing from his hair.

He caught her as she lost herself, coming to his feet and fitting himself between her legs, holding one knee in a strong hand as he stroked over her cheek with the other, pulling her to him for a slow, deep kiss. He rocked against her pulsing core, the hard ridge of him a delicious pressure, one she could not resist meeting with writhing movement.

He released her mouth, pulling back from the kiss, setting his forehead to hers, the silk of her mask between them as he panted, “Tell me your name.”

Grace.

She bit back the word. The revelation. Shook her head.

He rocked against her again, sending another jolt of pleasure through her—almost too much. “Tell me,” he growled in her ear.

Too much.

She opened her eyes, finding him a hairsbreadth away. And there, in his gaze, she saw it.

Longing.

It was gone almost before it appeared, but she saw it. Recognized it.

“Please,” he said, reaching out to push a loose curl from her cheek. And with that touch—with his hands on her disguise, the fantasy was over.

Did he know? The thought sent a shot of fear through her, and she stiffened, pushing him away.

He stepped back, instantly. “Wait.”

She did not respond, coming off the wall and shaking out her skirts and wrapping the silken wrap over the tear in her bodice. Straightening. Stiffening.

Returning to reality.

He saw the change in her. He cursed his frustration in the darkness.

She lifted her eyes to his, loving and hating the way he stared at her—as though there was nothing in the world he’d rather look at.

“Let me see you again.” There was frenzy in the words. Something held tight that threatened to come unmoored.

Never. If they saw each other again, if he touched her again—she risked everything. She could never come here again. This was the end.

Grace took a deep breath, and Dahlia replied.

“No.”





Chapter Eleven



Burghsey Estate

Twenty Years Earlier



“What have you done?”

Grace’s words came like gunshot from the other side of the room, shock and betrayal in her eyes, as she crouched over his brother, curled in a ball on the floor, his arms wrapped around his midsection.

Ewan had broken a rib. More than one. He’d felt the bones crack beneath his knuckles. Of course he had. He was inches taller than Whit, and a better fighter by far than the other boy, the runt of the litter, according to their father.

Their father, the monster.

Size didn’t make him better than Whit, though. It had been Whit who had stepped up to fight Ewan, knowing before everyone else what the monster had planned. Knowing, before everyone else, that Ewan would be the duke’s weapon in the end.

And Ewan had proven him right, putting him to the ground—leaving him broken and bleeding, tears on his face. Tears on his face, and on hers, too, but Ewan couldn’t look at hers, knowing that when he did, he would feel all the things he could not afford to feel.

Every moment the girl lives, you’re one whisper from the gallows.

His father’s words, spoken moments earlier, in the hallway beyond, as he’d pressed the knife into Ewan’s palm, a perverted knighthood. Not Ewan any longer. Now Robert. Robert Matthew Carrick, Earl Sumner, heir to the Dukedom of Marwick.

But it wasn’t his name. It was hers.

She’s nothing. She held your place. Now, you must take it.

He should have expected this—his last test—a heartbeat from the future he’d been promised when his father had picked through the muck to the brothel on Tavistock Row where he’d lived with his mother and a dozen other women like her, and made Ewan an offer that no child would refuse. Money, safety, a new chance for his mother, and a life beyond the stink and sweat and brutality of the streets. A title—a dukedom—so impossible a future that it somehow felt like it was in reach.

And then it was in reach, and he’d been such a fool, thinking that he could take everything his sire offered and still keep the rest. Still keep his mother. His brothers.

Love.

He should have known the duke would see everything. Would plan for it. Would make it impossible. Evil rarely came with stupidity.

She cannot live, his father had said, no feeling in his voice. None of them can.

Ewan had balked, immediately planning to run. To save them all.

But the duke was ahead of him. And the die had been cast.

Now.

And when he had protested, the older man had said the only thing that could have moved him to action. You do it, boy. You do it, or I do—and she will suffer the most.