Pride & Passion by Charlotte Featherstone

plan to do such a thing, your grace?”
    Angling her face up to his, they were now eye to eye, mouth to mouth. She could feel the warmth of his breath—scented, not with tea, but the spicy hint of brandy, brandy he must have imbibed when he went to his study. It had a curious effect on her, making her stomach flutter, and her pulse speed up.
    His gaze roved over her face, and when he began to talk, the deep, rich timbre of his voice and the feel of his strong hands wound deeply into her, causing the strangest sensation in her—a feeling of acute need, of recklessness. He was robbing her of thought, of breath, of the very dislike and disdain she had always believed she held for him. He was changing the rules of their little battle, this cat and mouse game they had somehow found themselves playing, and she didn’t like it, couldn’t take the control back to where it needed to be—in her hands.
    “How will I accomplish such a thing?” he said, and her lashes fluttered closed as his bottom lip scraped gently up the curve of her chin. “I’ll be everywhere you are. Your very shadow.”
    His voice was a whisper now, deeply masculine and erotic. His mouth… Good God, he was making her fall apart, with just a brush of his bottom lip and the warmth of his breath caressing her skin. Behind her closed lids, she could see him, dark hair in disarray, lush mouth parted as his lips covered her skin.
    “Everywhere you are, I will be. Everywhere you go, I will go. I will follow you into your dreams, stay while you sleep, watch while you eat.”
    That sinful bottom lip touched hers, then played with it, brushing it, tugging on it, parting her mouth as if he had all the time in the world to play and coax. “I will be the very air you breathe.”
    Slowly she opened her lids, only to see the duke staring deeply into her eyes.
    “You threaten with that which you cannot possibly carry out, your grace.”
    His mouth brushed hers in a whisper of a kiss, barely a brush, the faintest touch, like the tips of a hummingbird brush the leaves of a honeysuckle bush.
    “No. I promise. I vow. I pledge and commit myself to the task.”
    “I won’t allow you to do this. To destroy my hopes. My dreams.”
    “I only want to be part of them, Lucy.”
    That telling sentence was far more intimate than his mouth against hers, his breath on her face, his palms on her skin. And she tried to fight it—his hold, on both her person and deeper inside, to the place where she had always felt cold and removed. A place where she had allowed no one, not even Thomas, to see or touch. But Sussex wanted more, he saw more, and he would ask for something she did not know if she could give—if she even possessed. She had buried her softer emotions, those girlish fantasies of love everlasting, and the white knight come to rescue her from the villains for so long she had forgotten she had ever believed in love.
    She had indulged that dream once, until her father had cruelly destroyed it, taking it away from her. That was when she had learned that the pain that hit one’sheart was far more powerful and painful than the stroke of a leather strap.
    It was then, after the tears had been shed and dried, that Lucy had somehow allowed her fanciful dreams of love to die, only to be resurrected as something harder, and less painful. It became a pursuit not of love, but of passion. Passion was a physical thing, separated from the heart, mind and spirit. When passion ran its course it was over, leaving only pleasant memories. Love, on the other hand, when it deserted you, it left your soul shattered, your spirit unrecognizable.
    As she looked up into Sussex’s eyes, she was fleetingly thrown back to that moment, when she had believed in the fairy tale, that love lasted forever, that it endured all things, only to find its way back to her. And then it dissolved, leaving her with the sensation of a broken heart, and shattered dreams.
    “Lucy,” he whispered, his mouth so close.