All I Want for Christmas Is a Duke by Delilah Marvelle, Máire Claremont Page A

He stared.
    “Well…you…you are…” She couldn’t say it.
    “I am what?”
    A breath escaped her. “You’re Martin. You’ll always be that seventeen-year-old boy in my mind.”
    He slowly leaned forward in his chair, edging toward her. Methodically propping both forearms on his knees, he held her gaze. “You and I have a problem. Because I’m not seventeen anymore.”
    “I know.”
    “Do you? Because how are we to wed and have children, Jane, if you aren’t even comfortable with the idea of my being a man?”
    “I will get used to it.”
    “Used to it?” His eyes darkened. “Excuse me while I try not to get annoyed hearing you say that. I don’t want you to—” He rose and stalked around the desk. “Used to it,” he muttered, taking off his evening coat and tossing it onto the chair. The coat missed and slipped to the floor. Grabbing it up, he whipped it onto the chair to ensure it stayed and swung toward her. “Have you no passion for me?” he demanded, hitting his chest with a thud. “None? Is that what you are telling me? Because I need to know. I’m not marrying a woman who doesn’t feel the same way I do.”
    It was the most animated she had ever seen him be. Mister X had officially stepped into the room. And despite that closed and riled expression, she sensed his vulnerability. One that she herself was feeling. She swallowed and eventually managed, “It isn’t that I don’t have any passion for you, Martin. I do. Half the time, my pulse can’t even control itself around you. Even when we were younger, I felt that way around you. I always have. I simply pushed it aside. I had to.”
    “Then what is it?” he pressed. “What is making you push me aside now?”
    “I simply…I get nervous in allowing myself to submit to you in that way.”
    “Why?”
    And here it was. The truth she had been avoiding all these years. The truth as to why she hadn’t involved herself with any man since Philip. She clasped her hands in an effort not to feel awkward. “The only man I have ever been intimate with—meaning…Philip—was…well, he was overly passionate. In the two weeks I was married to him, it was incredibly daunting.”
    He shifted his jaw. “Daunting? How so?”
    “I don’t know what he was expecting. You men seem to think that because I can stand on a stage and sing opera, I’m capable of anything. Especially in matters of an amorous nature. But I’m not. Stepping onstage to give a performance is one thing and taking off clothes to give another sort of performance is quite the other. When he and I married, barely the second night alone, he was forcing me to do things I wasn’t comfortable doing.”
    He swiped his face. “I don’t want to listen to any more.”
    They stared at each other.
    He eventually blurted, “Tell me.”
    “He would want me to walk around naked for him whilst he pleasured himself. I don’t even like walking around naked for myself. I don’t even like to sleep naked or look at myself naked in the mirror. But he wouldn’t leave me alone until I did it. He nagged and nagged me for a whole week. And we hadn’t even been married for two!”
    He swiped his face again. “I don’t want you comparing me to a man who obviously had no understanding outside of his own needs. It’s insulting.”
    “I’m sorry. I’m merely trying to explain why I’m so nervous about us stepping beyond our friendship. I don’t want you to be disappointed into thinking that I’m more than I am. Because I’m not about to walk around naked for you. It’s not who I am.”
    He glared. “Do you honestly think that I would judge you based upon your inability to walk around naked for me? What sort of man do you take me for? Hell, I doubt I’ll ever be able to walk around naked for you! Do you have any idea how long it took me to even kiss a woman, yet alone bed one? I was two and twenty, Jane. Two and twenty! Whilst Christopher kissed his first girl when he was six.”
    She