Page 5 of Duke with a Desire

“You cannot,” she began, stammering, a flush creeping over her throat, chasing the golden flecks of her freckles. “I cannot…”

Apollo cleared his throat and began again, taking over when words appeared to fail her. “Unless you don’t want me, that is. In that sad case, I reckon I shall have to return to the drawing room in shame and abject despair.”

When he moved to rise, she halted him with the sudden clasp of her hand on his wrist. “No, don’t go. Not yet.”

He stayed. The Marchioness of Corbett didn’t know it, but Apollo would happily do anything she asked of him. On his knees.

The beautiful, forbidden Ophelia had been his obsession. Always out of reach. A woman of complexities and mystery, of stern hardness and equally compelling feminine softness. She was intelligent and compassionate, witty when she chose to be, with a tongue he’d seen capable of flaying anyone of whom she disapproved. She was fiercely loyal to Ro and her children, and she had a notoriously soft heart when it came to animals. At all times, she kept an assorted menagerie of creatures she was nursing back to health, an eccentricity he found deeply endearing.

He had never dared touch her beyond a smattering of dances at balls over the years, until even those had waned because it had been nothing short of torture to hold her so close, only to release her to another man.

He waited in silence, giving Ophelia the chance to sort through her thoughts, to say what she wished.

“So, you are not dying, then?” she asked at last, her voice low and sweet.

That voice had haunted him in a thousand dreams. He had heard it dulcet and husky and low. Laughing and happy. Moaning his name.

And now it was teasing. Flirting.

With him.

Or, rather, with whomever she had decided he was for the evening.

“I may yet live, if given sufficient incentive,” he teased her boldly, still content to play their game of anonymity.

He hadn’t decided if she knew it was him behind his mask yet. He would have liked to believe she would recognize him as easily as he had instantly spied her across the drawing room amidst the club members who had met clandestinely for the wicked house party. But he also knew she had never given him cause to believe she was interested in him. She had always been above reproach, a loyal wife to a man who hadn’t been worthy of her faithful devotion.

But now, she was hostess of the Wicked Dukes Society.

His Ophelia, who hadn’t a scandalous bone in her beautiful body.

“What manner of incentive did you have in mind?” Ophelia asked.

His cock leapt to attention. Sweet God, he had all manner of incentives in mind, at least half of which she had likely never heard of, and the other half of which were decidedly depraved.

Slowly, he reminded himself.

This isn’t just any lady.

This is Ophelia. My Ophelia.

“A kiss,” he suggested, hoping that incentive would prove sufficiently tame.

But her lips clamped shut. “You’ve already given me one, as I recall.”

“The best kisses are not had on one’s hand, my lady.”

He inhaled as a breeze stirred the flora. But it wasn’t the blooming roses or boxwood he wanted to catch. It was her. Jasmine with a hint of violets—the most erotic perfume he had ever known. No other woman wore the same blend. Or, and he had entertained the possibility more than twice, others did, and yet there was something inherently different about the way it smelled on Ophelia’s skin. Some sort of alchemy took place. All things seemed possible where she was concerned, this goddess capable of laying mere mortals low with nothing more than a hint of her on the wind.

Once, she had unintentionally left a handkerchief behind with Ro, drenched in her scent, and Apollo had quite shamelessly stolen it. The scent had lingered for months before it had finally dissipated. Pathetic, he knew, but it had been the only part of her that had been his to claim, and even that small victory had not been without its guilt. Ro had suspected him, he was certain, but she had never pressed the issue.

“I confess,” Ophelia said, “I’ve never found kisses to be particularly moving, regardless of their placement.”

Shock flared through him, followed by an immediate surge of possessive lust. Dark jealousy was stitched around the edges of the thought of any other man knowing the shape of her lips against his. An egregious sin when Apollo had never known the pleasure himself.

“Then you’ve been going about it all wrong, my lady.” It required all the restraint he possessed to keep the intensity of his emotions from his tone.

“Perhaps,” she agreed softly.