by Bec McMaster
And I will never love you.
It was that last one that challenged her.
Nothing she'd ever learned in her flesh rights lessons had prepared her for this.
Submit, and it won't take very long.
Lie back and count to a hundred, if it helps take your mind off matters.
Even in moments such as these, remember, at all times, that you are a lady. Please your lord. Submit. Be graceful. Never let him see your discomfort.
But submitting to Malloryn's carnal invasion held nothing of propriety in it.
She lost track of time. Of everything but the heated slam of flesh against hers. There was hair in her hands. His hot, ravaging tongue in her mouth. A thumb pressing insistently between them, working over that little spot between her legs that made her want to scream.
Sweat and panting and hard, echoing thrusts that rocked her back against the desk. Adele gave herself over to the feelings inside her. Restlessness strained within her. God, where he was touching her.... Her sex clenched, and she threw her head back, words tumbling from her lips. Words like "please" and "oh, God" and "harder."
And then she was shattering around him, white-hot pleasure obliterating her world.
"Malloryn!"
The animalistic scream that escaped her sounded like it came from someone else. She no longer cared if it wasn't ladylike.
As if he'd been waiting for that moment, Malloryn unleashed himself. Teeth sinking into the corded muscle between her throat and shoulder, he slammed her back into the desk. Again. And again. And again.
Until she was crying out, her body spasming around his as a groan escaped him and a gush of warmth flooded between her thighs.
Malloryn collapsed atop her, his weight pressing her down into the desk.
Gasping for breath, shuddering for a return of her senses, she simply held him as she tried to put herself back together. Her hips ached where they were wedged around his. There was a sticky mess between her thighs.
"God help me, but you drive me crazy," Malloryn whispered, lifting his head from her shoulder.
Adele lay flat upon the desk, panting for breath as she tried to regain her composure. She ached, but it was a pleasant, hazy ache; an aftermath more than pain.
The duke pushed away from her, dragging his trousers back into place as she slid her trembling hands through her hair. Good gods. What had just happened?
She was no longer a virgin.
Malloryn was no longer merely her husband in name only.
And while he'd proven himself master of her body, he'd been completely undone in his own pleasure. Nobody had won. He broke her, and she broke him, though the little flutter in her chest signified a troubling significance.
The little flutter that said, please, touch me again.
A whisper in her soul that yearned to be held.
Did she dare reach for him? Did she dare hope that Malloryn could ever look at her the same way? Did he feel it too? A connection, no matter how tenuous it seemed.
Today had proven he wasn't immune to her.
The only problem was that to breach Malloryn's defenses, she had to risk the utter destruction of her own.
This wasn't over yet.
But could she ever reach the heart of the untouchable duke?
Chapter 12
Somehow Malloryn picked his way through the mess on the study floor, finding the decanter—curiously safe, until he remembered that was the first thing she'd thrown—on the shelf nearby. The glasses had met a less successful fate, taken down by an errant book.
Malloryn turned, plucking the topper from the decanter, as he surveyed the state of affairs.
The study was destroyed. His desk desecrated—he'd never look at it again without thinking of her, and it was becoming difficult enough to focus on his work without thoughts of Adele intruding as it was.
As for his wife....
This had not gone the way he'd planned.
None of this had been expected.
Adele was cool, rational cunning, a woman who deliberately toyed with him every time she rearranged his dinner table. Someone who arched a brow at him as she pushed her metaphorical chess piece across the mental playing board between them, her eyes telling him, "Your move."
Not a book-throwing harridan. Not a woman who raked her nails down his back as he made her scream with pleasure. And he wasn't the type of man to throw a woman down upon his desk and fuck her without a single thought beyond the all-consuming drive to be inside her.
He looked at her then.
Finally.
All torn skirts, tangled hair, and flushed skin. Her ravaged mouth. The bite marks on her throat and shoulder. There was no hiding what had happened here.
Fuck. She was driving him insane. Malloryn tilted the decanter to his lips and swallowed half the brandy before he could rearrange his thoughts well enough to contain them.
When he lowered it, Adele was still blushing.
"I didn't hurt you?" he asked with a rough voice, and that was yet another serious problem. He never lost control like that.
"No," she whispered, and her cheeks grew even pinker. "It was...."
It was.
And he'd liked it. That thought burned behind his ribs. He'd liked every single moment of what had happened between them. Liked shoving his way under her skirts. Liked the gasp she made when he curled his fist in her hair and—
Malloryn rubbed his chest, feeling dangerously unhinged. This wasn't him.
Or not the man he'd made himself into.
The last time he'd felt like this he'd been seventeen, in love, and blind to the world around him. When he'd lost everything and stood in the ashes of what Balfour had made of his life, he'd finally understood what his father, now dead, had been telling him all these years.
Emotions were weaknesses. Love was a ticking time bomb, an Achilles heel. And he could never, ever, allow himself to feel like that again.
Two facts arranged themselves in his head: Adele breached something inside him, left him shambling for control.
Adele was dangerous.
She undid everything he'd made of himself and stripped him raw. He couldn't think when she'd grabbed him by the shirt and kissed him, and that was terrifying, especially right now, when Balfour was out there again, trying to destroy him.
He'd survived the last time Balfour came against him.
Barely.
He couldn't afford to give in to weakness now. Any kind of weakness.
"Here." He helped her to her feet, locking instantly on the brief wince that narrowed her brows. "You are hurt."
"No." Adele collapsed against his chest, looking up at him with pleasure-dazed eyes. "Just a little weak-kneed and—"
Her face suddenly blanched.
Fetching his cravat, he offered the rumpled linen to her. "For the mess."
Face flaming, she turned around and tidied herself as best she could, whilst he pretended to fix his shirt in the reflection in the window.
It wasn't often he forgot himself.
He hadn't been so careless since he was a lad, unwilling to bear the consequences of a child.
Did it matter though?
She was his wife.
And yet, he found himself thinking of that other child. The one who'd never been given a chance to draw breath. The one Balfour had murdered in the womb. Two lives stolen with the cost of a single bullet.
Yes, it damned well mattered.
It wouldn't happen again—and he would just have to hope nothing came of this... altercation.
"Turn around," he said, taking Adele by the hips and maneuvering her.
Tendrils of blonde hair escaped her neat chignon. She'd lost a button somewhere, and several others were undone.
He had no idea what to say to her, except.... "This wasn't what I planned when I came up here."
Adele burst into laughter, and damn him to hell, but he couldn't resist a smile. The bloody woman would be the end of him.
"I don't thi
nk this was what I planned either."
"You kissed me," he pointed out as he fixed her buttons.
"You had me pinned to a bookcase," she protested. "I didn't know what else to do."
"It was... effective."
"So I noticed." Her cheeks were still that pretty pink he couldn't quite reconcile with Adele. "It never occurred to me I could end an argument with you in such a way."
His lashes obscured his eyes. This couldn't happen again. "I wouldn't recommend it."
"No? I enjoyed myself. You seemed to have no complaints." Adele reached out and smoothed her hands down his bare chest. "I owe you a shirt."
Malloryn captured her wrists.
Adele's flirtatious smile slipped from her pillow-shaped lips, as if she recognized the silent rebuke.
Malloryn stepped away from her, buttoning the only two buttons that were still affixed, and trying to recompose himself.
"Brandy?" he offered, as she sank into the stuffed armchair and fixed her skirts.
Green eyes locked upon him. "Did you know, if I couldn't feel the ache of your hands and teeth imprinted on my body right now, I'd begin to think you an automaton. And yes, I would love a brandy."
He handed her the glass and hesitated. "I'm not a machine, Adele."
"Oh, I realized that." She sipped her drink and gave him a long, slow, heated look. "Sometime between the bookcase and the desk. I think I like you best when you let yourself off the leash."
Time to perform some damage control. "This can't happen again."
"I see. I cannot say I didn't expect you to begin putting up walls the second you got your breeches buttoned." Her voice softened. "You can't pretend it didn't happen."
"It's got nothing to do with you and me."
She paused with the glass to her lips, and there was the flash of intelligence in her eyes that so provoked him. "And here I thought we'd be stepping quite neatly around the topic that brought us to this situation."
"As you've made clear, you're too intelligent to be left in the dark. It would be dangerous if you started asking questions of the wrong people, and I daresay, knowing you as I do, that you wouldn't be content to let matters lie."
"You assume correctly," she replied, with a challenging tilt of her head.
"I have enemies, Adele." Malloryn leaned forward, resting his forearms on his thighs. "One in particular who would like to see my head removed from my shoulders. He's made no qualms about the fact he will remove any obstacles between us. Nor is he squeamish when it comes to striking down those close to me."
Her lashes obscured her thoughts. "Like the baroness."
The name was a whiplash of guilt across his seared nerves.
"Yes," he managed to say, though he was momentarily blinded by the sight of Isabella's vacant eyes staring sightlessly at the roof as she lay in a bloodied tangle on the carpets of the Ivory Tower. "She's not the first woman I've cared for that he's struck down. But she will be the last."
He'd promised himself that as he took one last look at Isabella in her coffin before he gently closed the lid.
Balfour would only hurt those close to Malloryn. Keeping his friends and those he cared for at arm's length was the only way to protect them.
"Our estranged relationship is your best protection," he said. "Everybody knows we don't care for each other."
Adele took a long, slow swallow of her brandy before responding, "Who is it?"
And here came the crux of the problem. The less Adele knew, the less she could repeat. Though he'd clearly made a mistake in regards to her loyalties, he wasn't entirely certain if he trusted her.
But he walked a fine line of leaving her unaware of the danger around her, if he didn't at least warn her.
"Lord Balfour."
"Balfour?" She nearly dropped the brandy. "He died in the revolution. You cut his throat and buried him—"
"Not deeply enough, it seems." Malloryn sat back in his chair as he considered her. "You've seen my maps, my photographs. He's behind everything, though he's content to hide in the shadows as we speak. He wants revenge upon all those who destroyed his power during the revolution. The queen. The Duchess of Casavian and her consort. Me."
It was quite unnerving to see her take such facts and quietly compute them. "Are you certain it's truly him?"
"Considering he had me kidnapped and taken all the way to Russia the other month, yes, I'm certain."
"Kidnapped?" Adele frowned. "You sent me a letter saying you were in Norway."
"Gemma forged my handwriting and signature."
Again, she glanced away. "I should have guessed. It seemed overly familiar."
Bloody Gemma. Meddling in his personal life.
"So where is Balfour now?"
"I don't know." He shrugged. "That's what I'm trying to discover."
Adele drummed her fingernails on her empty glass, staring into the distance. "You think Devoncourt has something to do with him. You said he worked for him."
There was that dangerous intellect again.
An odd surge of curiosity rose within him. He'd underestimated her several times and couldn't afford to do so again. Despite the frills and taffeta, Adele could be a dangerous adversary if she so chose.
He didn't like walking this knife's edge with her.
But he couldn't deny it intrigued him.
"The man you know as Devoncourt is not truly an aristocrat. According to my sources, he's a former Falcon of Balfour's masquerading as the long-lost earl. He was on the edges of the SOG movement before we killed and arrested the ringleaders—" She looked momentarily baffled, so he quickly explained the SOG to her. "We think he's using his false status to gather those former SOG members who faded back into the populace once Ulbricht died. I wouldn't be surprised if he was one of the ringleaders who referred to themselves as the Rising Sons. I'm fairly certain he knows where Balfour is."
"He's been charming me for months." Heat filled her voice. "That bloody bastard. He kissed me."
"I'm aware."
The curt tone of his voice drew her attention.
"Well, you certainly weren't interested in kissing me." Adele's lips thinned. "And now I'm not even certain if he was. I hate being made a fool of." Pushing to her feet, she paced the room, looking thoroughly vexed. "But what did he want with me? Was I merely a plaything? A means to draw blood from you without a direct confrontation? A jibe?"
"He could have been after information."
"Because I know so much," she said, a little bitterly.
Malloryn didn't respond. He'd said it only to be polite.
"So what now?" Adele demanded, turning on him in a rush.
He'd have to remember that: She might be furious, but she thought swiftly on her feet.
Rather like the night she'd trapped him into marriage.
"Now? I put you in a carriage and send you home. Life goes on as if this.... None of this happened. Stay away from Devoncourt, but continue your life as usual. I would encourage you to make a disparaging remark or two about me in public. Laugh and dance. Flirt. Spend half my fortune—"
"In short, be a good little duchess and bat my eyelashes at people."
He paused, warned by her tone.
"Damn it, Malloryn! I could help," she cried, her eyes flashing with determination. Despite everything, he couldn't help rousing again at the sight of her like this. All fierce and determined, a warrior in silk. "From the sounds of it, you have no idea who might be an SOG sympathizer or a Rising Son. You're rarely seen in society. Too high and mighty to hobnob with the rest of the elite, according to most sources. But I know the Echelon like the back of my hand.
"And if Lord Devoncourt belongs to Balfour, then why not let me get him right where you need him? He thinks he's charming me—"
"You are not getting involved," he said sharply, pushing to his feet. "This isn't a game, Adele. This is dangerous. The last thing you want to do is make yourself a target."
"My entire goddamned life since I entered the Echelon
has been dangerous. Do you think this is the first time I've faced a man who could kill me? Why do you think I got involved in trading hemlock rings in the first place? It was the only means I had of striking back—"
"While I won't pretend I don't know what you're speaking of, this is a little different than dealing with privileged lordlings who think they can take whatever they want." He forced his tone to harden. "You were there when the baroness shot herself. Balfour put a mind-altering device in her head. He made her kill herself and she knew it. She knew there was no hope of saving herself even as she pulled the trigger. I will not add your name to my list. No. My final answer is no—"
"But—"
"And if you continue arguing, then I will simply ensure you have not the means to put yourself in danger."
"What are you going to do? Lock me away?"
"If. Necessary."
Adele's teeth gnashed together. "Argh. You're just like my father. I am not some insipid little debutante with fluff in her head—"
He moved toward her. A swift yank and he drew her back against his chest, locking one arm across hers as he captured her chin and tilted her head up."If I had a knife to your throat, right now, what would you do?"
Adele's chest heaved. "I would hemlock you."
"Alas, I'm fairly certain you would have tried that the moment I walked through the study door. You have no hemlock. You're human. You're not strong enough to fight me off, and if I wanted to kill you right now, I could." He let his grip on her chin soften, his fingers stroking down her throat. "I know you're intelligent. It doesn't mean a damned thing when Balfour or one of his agents has a pistol to your head."
He released her.
Adele staggered out of his arms, and touched her throat gently, her lips pressing together.
But her expression looked troubled.
"I won't have your death on my conscience," he warned. "And while you might know the Echelon's waters better than I, I have an entire network of information-gatherers who are out there right now, working to locate Balfour. Go home, Adele. And forget everything that happened here."
"Including what occurred between the pair of us?" she challenged.
