Page 67 of Misadventures with a Duke

Another pair of perfect spanks. Harder and louder than before.

And I think I’m in heaven.

While whips and chains have never been my full saucer of milk, I’ve indulged some kinky fantasies by way of a few favorite porn sites. But never have I been brave enough to actually ask for stuff from a lover. Never has one been able to see right through me and deliver it. Not until now. The only now I want to think or care about. The only man I want to spend it with.

“You shall get fucked when I say it is time,” he grits out. “But for now, my sweet Magiq—”

He freezes before my eyes. Remorse drenches his face and clouds his gaze. He gulps hard, clearly trying to summon the proper regrets in the proper ways.

I abhor every second of it. Further, as I communicate with a frantic shake of my head, I don’t agree with it. Not at all.

“No. Look at me. Just no, Bastien. Stop thinking it. Stop feeling it. It wasn’t on purpose. I understand. I look like her…”

He grunts viciously. “That is no goddamned excuse.”

“It is every excuse. You love her—”

“Loved her.”

“And you can’t be expected to just turn your feelings off!”

No matter how completely you’ve helped switch mine back on. So many of them. In so many wonderful ways…

But he doesn’t get to hear all that. He can’t ever know it. If I go there, it’ll also be to express the preciousness of the gift he’s given me. The gift of me. Yet I won’t stop there. I’ll have to also let him know how my soul feels changed. How indelibly he’s stamped me. Undoubtedly, that insignia is shaped like a fleur-de-lys. The symbol of his land…of him. An emblem of unity, strength, power, and light, patterned on one of the world’s most beautiful flowers. Fleur de lys…

De Lys…

De Lys…

The echo continues across my mind, layered like church bells across the city on New Year’s Eve. Except in my mind, they aren’t American bells at all. They’re somewhere else…

Just like I’m suddenly somewhere else.

But am I? Because Bastien is still here with me…

Except that here isn’t exactly here.

And I’m not exactly me anymore. Not completely. But somehow, that’s all right.

It’s…better than all right. It’s strange but astounding. Unreal but extraordinary.

De Lys. Magique De Lys.

I feel her.

Everything she knows right now, staring up at this incredible man. How he grins when she sings because she’s crappy at it. How he tells her every story from his patrols, and she knows all the places in which he embellishes for drama, but she lets him. How he has taught her to read stories for herself, written in words across pages, and opened up new worlds for her because of it.

I feel her.

And I want so badly to tell him that but don’t dare. There are other things she needs to tell him. Things that can’t be put off, especially if he decides I’m really crazy this time and bolts out again.

Dear God, no.

This time, I can’t guarantee finding him before Logan or his friends do. And while Bastien is still more on the right side of the law, Agents Lautrec and Degas definitely aren’t. He needs to be right here with me, not Logan’s bargaining chip in some holding cell.

I feel her.

And God help me, I yearn to feel so much more.