This Duchess of Mine by Eloisa James Read Free Book Online

with a dark promise of pleasure.
    He forced himself to sound light rather than desperate, laughing rather than lustful. “How could I not? You owe me a last game. I seem to remember that there were a few rules attached to that game.”
    â€œWe’re to play blindfolded,” she said. He could hear the faintest tremor of desire in her voice, just the promise of huskiness. But he meant to make her cry aloud with pleasure, grip his shoulders, beg for more.
    â€œBlindfolded and in bed,” he said slowly, tracing a pattern on her knee. He felt as if his fingers burned through her skirts, as if he caressed the pale perfection of her thigh instead of just rumpling her gown. “An unusual style of wooing, Jemma. But I like it.”
    â€œI believe you’ll enjoy my wooing,” she said, her voice as smug as a little girl with a pocket full of boiled sweets. “Perhaps I’ll let you steal my pawns.”
    He was too hungry to consider her teasing, even to care about it. The carriage was finally, finally, coming to a halt. He curbed himself, drawing on years of self-control practiced in front of the House of Parliament. Of course he wouldn’t throw his wife on a bed and leap on her like a wild dog.
    Jemma left the carriage before him, bending downto avoid striking her head on the door. Her bottom swayed for a tantalizing moment in the doorway of the carriage. Even given the absurd panniers she wore, the rounding of silk at her rump made him reckless, drunk with the need to touch her. He was in the grip of a raging passion that threatened to turn him into a man that he didn’t recognize.
    He didn’t recognize her either.
    In the flick of an eyelash she lost that edge of sensuality and hunger he saw in the carriage. She greeted Fowle at the top of the steps, looking regal, as if she hadn’t just been rescued from a yacht at the very moment of disaster. As if she was as cool and uncaring as any other duchess out for tea.
    Elijah took the steps two at a time. Jemma glanced over her shoulder at him as she handed her gloves to a footman. “I was just telling Fowle that Mr. Twiddy will be arriving tomorrow to—”
    Since he’d lost his mind, he backed straight into the drawing room, grabbing her wrist and swirling her with him, slamming the door in his butler’s face.
    â€œElijah!” Jemma said, sounding amused. “I assure you that—”
    He swooped on her. Took her mouth with all the desperate wish he had to claim her, to make her his . In every sense of the word. He possessed her mouth, kissed her savagely, with all the fear he felt when he saw her on the Peregrine , standing there unprotected, without him. Anything could have happened to her. Anything.
    â€œYou’re mine.” His voice had nothing in common with a statesman’s even tenor. It was deep, savage, knowing.
    â€œI—”
    He took her mouth again, stealing her words, telling her silently that she had no choice, that he would be the one to pleasure her, that the danger they had just gone through was only a shadow of what would happen if she ever tried to push him away.
    â€œI let you go, years ago,” he said.
    â€œYes,” she gasped. Her voice had a breathy catch in it, an echo of desire that reverberated deep in his body.
    â€œI will never let you go again.” His voice grated with the truth of it.
    She looked shocked. He didn’t give a damn. Then she started smiling, and something deep inside his heart relaxed. That was a wicked smile. There was anticipation there…
    â€œYou can woo me tomorrow,” he said, voice guttural, unrecognizable. “Tonight is another kind of event altogether.”
    She had been shocked but was recovering herself now. “So no chess?” Her pout said that she knew precisely what her deep bottom lip did to him.
    â€œJemma.” He said it low and soft. His heart was dancing a wayward rhythm, and urgency gave his