Heat flooded her face. “Did someone kick you there?” Her voice came out thin and weak.
“Once or twice.” His voice sounded gritty. Not weak like hers, but certainly strained. The grip on her skirt tightened.
Licking her lips, she steeled herself for what was to come next. “Lift your arm.” She used the cloth to clean away some more of the grime from his body. “You are filthy,” she murmured in a bid to distract herself from the way his stomach muscles tensed as she slid the cloth down them.
Duke cleared his throat, and she peered down and realized she was absently stroking his firm stomach with the cloth.
“Oh.” Abandoning the cloth, she reached for the salve and bent to rub it over the marks on his ribs. He tensed and she moved more tenderly. Despite the temperature of the house, his skin was warm. The little lines of muscle intrigued her, and she couldn’t help but trace them as she smoothed in the salve. “I hope nothing is broken.”
“Again.”
“Again,” she repeated.
“It’s just bruised. I’d know if it was.”
“Where did you go, Duke? I was so worried for you, I—”
“I tried to find answers,” he replied more quickly than she’d expected. “I found none.”
“And you were beaten for it.”
“Again.” He gave a tight smile. “This is not doing my masculinity any good.”
“There is nothing wrong with your masculinity from where I am standing.” The words were meant to be funny, soft-toned perhaps. They hung in the air instead, forcing her to meet his gaze.
His grip on her skirt tightened. Was it for the same reason she struggled to breathe? He wanted to kiss her, maybe even touch her. She felt it in her bones, in her blood. As elemental as the air in her lungs. Violet feared if she did not have that kiss, she might well waste away, starved of his touch.
She couldn’t do this. Not again. But, dear Lord, the fight was harder than she’d ever anticipated.
∞∞∞
There was a reason to fight this. Duke just could not remember what it was. Some vow not to kiss Violet.
But why? He crawled through the fog in his brain for some semblance of the rationality that usually guided him as a lawyer and came up empty.
A sharp intake of breath echoed through the room and pounded through his skull. It was her taking the deep gulp of air, he realized. Duke wasn’t even sure he remembered how to breathe.
Violet’s lashes fluttered as her gaze dropped to his lips. Every part of him remained tense but for the life of him, he could not stop the temptation building. He wanted to forget the night, forget that he was no closer to finding his father. She moved. Just a fraction. But it was enough.
When she shifted closer, he looped his hands around her waist and drew her into the cradle of his thighs. She cupped his face and brought her mouth down to his. He whispered her name against her mouth and the honeyed taste of her made him forget his pain as his mind fell into a deep haze of lust, and he bundled her closer to him, her fragrance engulfing him.
The tiniest semblance of sanity rattled briefly through his mind before vanishing. He gratefully tasted the lusciousness of her inviting lips. The anger, the frustration, it all fizzled away when she spread her hands across his chest with a gentle moan, their featherlike touch scorching a fiery path over his skin.
Violet’s body softened into his and he inhaled sharply, moving his hands up to cup her face and pull her tight to him.
He moved his mouth against hers, more slowly than when they had kissed before, as Duke tasted and savored her. She parted her lips and when he brushed his tongue against hers, she gripped his neck and curled her fingers into his hair.
Duke groaned and intensified the kiss and felt her legs tremble.
“You are cold,” he murmured, moving his hands to clasp her cool cheeks. The bloody fool had been sitting around in nothing more than a dressing gown in unheated rooms worrying about him.
Violet shook her head.
“We need to go to bed,” he told her. But he didn’t move, just continued to hold her close.
She nodded and sank onto his lap. They fit together as if made for each other, her softness molding into him. He moved his hands around her and she rested her head on his chest with a sigh as he pressed his lips to her hair.
“We should not have done that, Vi.”