Chapter 14
The hall became too quiet after Lottie’s small footsteps had faded away.
Aurelia and Percival remained where they stood, neither of them moving. His blue gaze didn’t leave hers, and she stared right back at him with her chin jutted.
She looked like a lady who refused to bend, even though her heart thundered hard enough for him to hear.
“Standards without affection,” he repeated, his voice low and rough. “Curiously bold words from a woman who barely knows this house.”
Her lips quirked up, almost in a smile. Except it lacked warmth.
“Bold, yes,” she returned softly. “But not untrue.”
Something hot coiled inside him. His jaw tightened, and he clenched his fists at his sides. Not from anger, but in an attempt to resist the urge to pull her against him. To silence her with his mouth, his hands, his body.
“And what,” he murmured, “do you know about standards or affection? What makes you believe you’re qualified to speak of either?”
She blinked once, slowly, but she did not retreat.
“I know enough to see a child fall silent the moment her father enters the room,” she declared, her voice steady.
“I know enough to see her shrink under the weight of rules she doesn’t understand.
And I know this—” She took a step closer.
“Standards without affection don’t raise children. They break them.”
Her words cut deep.
Percival should have been furious. Instead, he felt burned.
He clenched his fists harder, such that his knuckles cracked. He opened his mouth to retort, but then his gaze drifted, drinking in the golden glow of her skin.
Her neckline dipped low across her chest elegantly and tastefully, drawing attention to the soft swell of her breasts. The fabric didn’t hide enough, and he stared. Just for a second too long.
Aurelia saw it.
Her breath hitched, and her cheeks flushed. But then she lifted her chin further, still challenging him.
Except it came with a provocative edge this time around. The type that made Percival want to curse under his breath, rip that damn gown off her body, and discover whether the flush on her chest reached lower.
But he stood still, staring back at the challenge in her eyes.
Their relationship should be untouched by romance, he reminded himself. He had to control himself. Right now, what he was supposed to do was to make sure she wouldn’t interfere with Lottie’s upbringing.
“You presume much,” he growled.
“And you repress too much,” she shot back. “Even now.”
Her words hit deep.
“You speak of discipline like it’s devotion,” she continued. “But love doesn’t live in rules. It lives in laughter. In softness. In time freely given.”
Those words hit him harder than he cared to admit. For a heartbeat, the mask of the duke faltered, and all that remained was the man who couldn’t bear how right she was.
“You forget yourself,” he warned, though the rasp in his voice betrayed him.
Her lips curved again, faint but sure.
“Do I?” she whispered. “Or do you simply dislike that I have dared to state the truth?” She took one final step closer.
“Children are meant to laugh, Percival. They are meant to climb trees and skin their knees, to fall asleep in the grass with daisies in their hair. Not just sit still in parlors and recite Latin to earn affection.”
The sound of his name on her lips was a sin. A soft, intimate caress that made his fists unclench.
His resolve cracked wide open. He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. She was looking at him as if she saw the man beneath the title.
And he hated it. And he wanted it. Craved it.
Wanted her.
God help him, he wanted her.
The silence that fell between them was deeper and dangerous this time. Aurelia stood before him, soft and elegant. Her eyes searched his face with a particular emotion. It wasn’t innocence. It was more… dark and willing.
“An hour.” Although she did not stray from the topic, her eyes hinted at something more. “Just one. Every day. An hour for Lottie to be a child.”
Her request should have sounded simple and reasonable. But the way she challenged him was ruinously intimate. Her voice trembled with both challenge and need.
Percival needed to step away. His words and decisions were final, after all.
“Her future depends on structure, and that’s it,” he told her with finality, ready to leave before he did something regrettable.
But Aurelia was not done.
“You claim to protect her future, Duke. What about the present, which only looks like silence and stiff collars and a father who doesn’t laugh?”
He gritted his teeth; his patience was wearing thin. So without a word, he turned.
“I have had enough,” he growled, then began to walk away.
Aurelia followed, her steps shrinking the distance he had tried to create. “Why do you run from me?”
Her question unnerved him.
He looked back at her with a frown. “Don’t flatter yourself, Aurelia.”
She lifted her chin higher and smiled. “Walk away, then.”
Everything about her body screamed a dare that irked him, pulling at the competitive side of him that wanted to play her game if only to see her redden in embarrassment when she lost. The smug, casual way she crossed her arms over her chest, pushing up her pert breasts, teased him, but he reluctantly tore his eyes away, looking somewhere safer.
When his gaze fell to her mouth, he knew what she was smiling at. She saw what he was trying to hide, and that made her want to test him.
“Go,” she whispered, taking another step closer to him.
“Don’t you dare,” he growled, and took a step back.
But she stepped closer again almost immediately.
“Why not?” Her voice was too low. “Prove to me that you aren’t running away like I said.”
She gasped when his hand shot up and seized her chin. The act was commanding, firm, and almost cruel.
He tilted her face up, forcing her to stare into his blazing blue eyes. “Be careful, Aurelia.” His voice rumbled in his chest, every syllable vibrating against her skin.
Aurelia stared right back at him. Not with submission, but with hunger and defiance. With the same madness that consumed him.
Percival was stubborn. He didn’t want to listen to what she was saying, and neither did he want to succumb to the pull of her body. But she was ready to make him lose one way or the other.
Though her pulse thundered, she whispered with trembling lips, “Perhaps it is you who should be careful, Duke.” She tilted her head defiantly. “You deny too much, even now. You—”
“You are utterly maddening,” he cut her off, desperation evident in his tone. “Every word from you.” His thumb stroked along the line of her jaw with traitorous tenderness. “Every tilt of your chin, every breath… God, Aurelia, you drive me to distraction.”
His confession made her face flush. She trembled visibly, caught between triumph and something far more dangerous.
Her lips parted to reply, but her voice failed her.
What exactly could she say under those blue eyes that titillated her senses? Her body betrayed her, hot with need.
Still, her eyes dared him, and with every ounce of courage she had left, she breathed, “Then allow yourself to get distracted.”
That did it. He snapped.
Without warning, he slanted his mouth over hers, kissing her with ardent passion. It was rough, hungry, filled with all the frustration and the longing of nights he had denied himself.
His lips crushed hers in a firm kiss that made her swallow her gasp.
She had dared him, and he intended to show her he was not a man to be trifled with.
He kept his caressing of her lips firm, alternating with his teeth with the intention to sting but not bruise.
She clung to him, her fingers twisting into his coat, desperate to keep her balance as the world began to spin.
And Percival? He was lost. He pulled her against him, and her gasp turned into a moan. He wanted to take her on the stairs. Against the wall. On the damn marble floor. He wanted her anywhere he could unravel her.
His hands slid down and gripped her hips, pressing her against his thick length. She arched into him, helpless and hungry, her breasts squished against his chest, her thighs trembling.
It made her dizzy. Her lips parted beneath his, welcoming his tongue, which thrust deep enough to drive her wild. He deepened the kiss, tasting her as if he might die at any moment.
“Percival…” she moaned, her trembling hands sliding down his arms.
He groaned at the sound of his name on her lips; it felt like torture. A sweet, delicious torture.
When his hand slid down to her thigh and pulled up her silk skirt, she didn’t stop him. Didn’t even try to. Instead, she pressed into him, her body trembling.
He was about to lift her into his arms. Damn the house. Damn the walls. Damn the world. But then he stopped, and the moment shattered like glass.
He ripped his mouth from hers so abruptly, his chest heaving with ragged breaths, his jaw clenched so hard that it might crack.
His blue eyes locked on her. “You are…” he murmured hoarsely. “Impossible. Maddening. Dangerous.”
Aurelia stared back at him, her breath shaky. Her body still burned, her thighs pressed together in a failed attempt to ease the ache.
She had so much to say to him. She wanted to ask him why he had devoured her just to shatter the moment like it hurt him.
But before she could say anything, he stepped back, as though distance could save him. His footsteps echoed down the hallway, his hand gripping the banister like a man crawling back from hell.
Until he disappeared and a door closed behind him.
Aurelia remained where he had left her, kissed, shaken, and burning from the inside out. Her breathing had turned shallow, and her lips tingled from the taste of him.
She felt dizzy, as if his kiss had knocked her senses off kilter. Perhaps it had. Because something had broken loose inside her, something wild and shameless. Something she could no longer pretend to control.
A part of her had waited breathlessly for him to finally touch her the way he had looked at her for days now. And when he finally had, his kiss had tasted like ruin.
Aurelia pressed her palm flat against her chest, feeling her heart slam against her ribs. Every inch of her still pulsed from his touch, especially her lips. Her nether lips…
She squeezed her thighs together again, helpless against the way her body ached for more. Her core throbbed, hot and wet with want.
And she hated it.
Percival seemed resolved not to touch her again. Not to fall again. Yet the way his tongue had plunged into her mouth with no hesitation proved that he would come back.
And God helped her; she wanted it. She wanted all of it. No matter how dangerous he was. No matter how much he wanted to push her.
The door he had walked through remained closed. She stared at it.
How far had he gone? Was he pacing some corridor now with clenched fists? Or was he alone in a dark room, cursing her name as he remembered how she had melted against him?
She had asked only for an hour per day for Lottie. She had just wanted him to see things from her perspective.
But tonight had led to something far more dangerous. Something that made her realize it wasn’t going to end just like that.
It was inevitable, and she was ready for it all.