Her Reformed Rake (Wicked Husbands #3)(40)

This was how he should have seen her last night. How he wanted to see her every night for the rest of his life. The thought struck him before he could tamp it down.

One word echoed in his mind. Triumphant. Blistering. Wrong.

Mine.

Horribly wrong, and yet somehow also right. She was his. Maybe not forever, but right now, in this moment, she was his wife. He was her husband. His body wanted hers, and her body… her body sang for him. It was as if she was made for his touch. He’d never before shared desire of this magnitude with another woman.

But there was a reason she was his, a reason he had married her, and duty wouldn’t allow him to forget, regardless of how badly he needed her. He’d been ordered to use her for information. Glean any bits of knowledge about her father from her. Unravel what, if anything, she knew about Fenians, plots, and bombs. Possibly see her sent to gaol, and the mere notion was enough to make him feel the sting of shame to his bones. How could he know the truth, deceive her, yet want her so?

“Good evening,” he forced himself to say, playing the part of gentleman when all he longed to do was tear her dressing gown away, take her in his arms, and pin her to the bed where he could leisurely kiss, lick, bite, and fuck every part of her all night long.

He stopped with a safe distance between them. And the distance felt somehow unimpeachable and cavernous all at once.

Daisy appeared nervous. Her fingers caught the knot of her belt, plucking at it as if she sought to learn every tactile sensation from it she could. “Good evening, Sebastian,” she returned, a shy smile curling her generous lips.

She had used his name without his prompting, and he took it as a good sign. He stepped even closer, which proved a mistake the moment that her scent hit him like a punch to the jaw.

He swallowed, tamping down his arousal with an inner, iron fist. “I’m sorry for yesterday,” he apologized again, and he didn’t know why. The words left his tongue before he could recall them. He should leave. Buss her on the cheek and go back to his chamber where he belonged.

“Yesterday is already forgiven.” The smile on her full lips deepened, blossoming across her face in a way that struck him directly in the groin.

“Generous of you,” he gritted, irritated with himself for the way she affected him. How was it that the simple act of being in her chamber, within her charmed sphere, could reduce him to an untried youth about to drown in his own lust?

Daisy raised a brow. “Hardly. I count myself equally in need of forgiveness.”

Her confession stirred a dormant part of him. The spy came to life. In his experience, there was always a grain of truth to be found in everything. Was there some sin for which she needed forgiveness? Did a heavy conscience hide behind her beautiful, goddess-like fa?ade? He could not dismiss her tangential associations with McGuire and Fenians no matter how much he longed to. Though sadly, not even suspicion diminished his rampant arousal.

He kept his tone smooth. “Forgiveness, buttercup?”

A becoming flush of pink tinged her cheekbones. Her gaze never wavered from his. “For my part in forcing this marriage upon you. I know you claim to have wanted me for yourself, but you’ve no notion of how much guilt I feel. I was so selfish, so desperate to escape what my father had planned for me, and I took your freedom of choice from you.”

Ah. The spy within him was suitably mollified. She still—na?f that she was—imagined she had been responsible for their hasty vows. If what she claimed was true, how appallingly little she knew of the world in which she lived. He could have swept their little scandal beneath the rug and moved on with his life. In such matters, a man didn’t shoulder the blame. But for a woman, ruination was thorough and forever. He had owed her—a beautiful and brazen American heiress with an already diminished reputation—nothing. No one could have forced him to make her his duchess save the Crown.

And, put to it, the Crown had done just that, albeit for none of the reasons Daisy would have supposed.

“Your guilt is misplaced,” he told her solemnly, his gaze traveling over every curve and hollow of her face. If he was searching for a flaw, he found none. “I’ve already told you that the fault lies with me alone.”

Another lie, but he had already told her so many. Even in this unguarded moment in her chamber, where they should be nothing more than man and woman, he was manipulating her. Forced by circumstance, his duty, and his mission to keep her in the dark.

Still, though he had his orders, they didn’t require him to seduce her. To use her. To slake his needs in her receptive, gorgeous body. His presence in her chamber was a sin that he alone could own. He’d thought himself a man of honor until Daisy had swept into his life. She brought him to the periphery of his limits.

Beyond them now, for the motivations driving him in this moment sure as hell weren’t borne of honor or duty or good. No, his impetus was base and deep, dark and damning. Lust. Need. Hunger. The physical ache to claim her, to possess her. Christ, he felt it all the way to his bloody bones.

“I think you are too generous,” she said then.

He squelched the bark of bitter laughter that threatened to emerge. Generous. Ha. He was nothing of the sort. He was greedy. Selfish. Sinful. His sometime conscience re-emerged, reminding him that there was a mission at hand. A mission of far greater importance than sinking his aching cock inside the cunny of the ethereal beauty before him.