Duke still held my eyes in his gaze, forcing me to see just how haunted he was. “Came back different. Like they all do. Didn’t even try to come home. Knew that shit wouldn’t work for me. Couldn’t act like I was the son or brother they’d had. I made peace with it. My family accepted it because...well, you’ve met them. Because they accept just about anything from people they love. I came home for holidays, for as long as I could handle. Then helped Keltan build Greenstone.” He took another sip of wine. “I came here because I didn’t think I had any other choice. I came here thinking it would be torture. Not because of you, but because every time I’ve set foot in my home since I got back, it’s been like that. But not this time. This time it feels...different.”
I would’ve choked on my last bite of ravioli had it not been frozen on the fork halfway to my mouth.
Duke was saying things from my fantasy. Well, he wasn’t saying it outright, but the fucking meaning was there. Things I thought I wanted to hear.
My fork hit my plate with a clatter. I stood abruptly, gathering my plate and his too.
“I’ll do the dishes,” I said quickly, averting my eyes.
I didn’t give him time to answer, since I escaped to the kitchen. It was a shitty, selfish thing to do, something befitting of Anastasia Edwards. I should’ve been kind in the face of his brutal honesty. He was sharing all those pieces that I’d been craving, and I’d eaten it all, flesh and bones. But I didn’t know how to be kind. Didn’t know how to take the responsibility for this feeling.
I expected Duke to follow me. I wanted him to be pissed off at me—for not showing the emotional intelligence that a woman who deserved him would have.
But he didn’t.
He sat at the table, drinking his wine, and looked out the window at that view he owned, despite what his past was trying to tell him.
I took my time with the dishes, made the process as slow as I possibly could. But there was only so long dishes could take. The second the sink was empty, Duke was there. He’d been sitting at the table, drinking wine, watching me silently.
He wasn’t sitting now.
“It’s time,” he said, advancing toward me. There was purpose in his step, desire in his eyes, and sex in his words.
I retreated, quickly and clumsily.
He didn’t stop, not until he made me back into a wall and he caged me in with his hands on either side of my face.
My lungs struggled to get air with his closeness, with him pressing into increasingly sensitive parts of me.
“Duke,” I warned. It was meant to come out as a warning, at least. But I was thrown, by the change in his demeanor, by the aggression in which he’d backed me into the wall.
I’d known he wanted me. Of course. I’d stopped trying to convince myself it was all part of the act for his family. I was an attractive woman. He was stuck out here for however long. I didn’t doubt he had a healthy sex life before all of this. From what I’d seen, there weren’t any badass and sexy female ranchers in the immediate vicinity. It made sense that he was looking past his dislike of me and taking what he had in front of him.
That’s what all of the other things had been. Him pulling me into his arms in bed. The touches, gentle. The way he had looked at me. He was buttering me up.
“You’re not fighting this, Anastasia,” he growled, lips on my neck.
My knees quivered and threatened to give out on me with just that. The memory of our kiss assaulted me, and I needed his lips on mine like I needed oxygen. But I stayed on course.
“Yes, I am, Duke,” I snapped, hands at his chest trying to push him away.
He stopped kissing my neck, but he didn’t move from the wall.
There was still a butt-load of desire in his gaze, but there was irritation peppered through it. Irritation I could handle. It was familiar. I just needed to tease some more out of him.
“We’re not doing this,” I said.
“We’ve been doing this since the second you told that fuckin’ story to my family after two margaritas,” he growled.
That gave me pause. Since the first night? No, that would mean that this was something more than him being horny. And I couldn’t deal with that.
“Stop,” I said. “Stop with all this shit! You’re trying to mess with me just so you can fuck me.”
He reared back. Not completely, but enough to show just how offended he was by my statement. “Come again?”
I swallowed my unease at seeing the dangerous version of Duke come out so easily, so close to me, caging me in—with no one else around. Not that he would hurt me. I knew what those men looked like. How they spoke. How they touched women. Too gentle when they were trying to woo them and much too rough when they thought they could get away with it.
Duke wasn’t that.
But he was dangerous nonetheless. He was trying to intimidate me, and it might’ve worked if my self-preservation wasn’t as solid as it was. “Don’t gaslight me, Duke. You’re trying to make it seem like you actually give a fuck about me so you can get sex out of the job you’ve made it very clear that you don’t want to do.”
That didn’t help.
Not at all.
Duke leaned in. His eyes captured mine. His fury coated my body. “You’re so fucking full of shit,” he murmured against my lips.
That was not the response I’d been expecting, at all.
I’d been expecting him to be offended, to throw some nasty words, to yell, then to storm out and we’d be safely back in our corners.
But no.
“What?” It was little more than a whisper and I hated myself for how small I sounded.
“You are full of shit,” he repeated, face hovering inches from mine. “You starve yourself in every facet of your life that means something. Sure, you live in a ten-million-dollar mansion, own bags that cost more than people’s first cars. All that shit is in excess, but the stuff that really means anything...you won’t pay the price for.”
His hand moved to brush along the fading bruise on my cheekbone. “I get it, baby. Some of it, because I only know some of your past. And even some of it is enough to understand why you’ve lived how you have, why you’ve fucking starved yourself. I get it, but I’m sure as shit not accepting it. It’s time you feasted and I’m gonna be the one to fucking serve you.”
Serve. Me.
My panties were obviously drenched at this point.
I was only human.
I knew he was smart. I knew he was strong. But I didn’t know he could see that deeply, string such substantial stuff together. Put me on a fricking hook and reel me in.
I was squirming now, desperate to get away to preserve the pathetic life I’d led prior to him.
“I used to do porn,” I blurted.
That got him. His face turned blank. Carefully blank. But he didn’t immediately let me go in revulsion as I’d expected. “Excuse me?”
I swallowed. It was easier now, since I didn’t have a single lie left inside me. Well, maybe one and it was a big one, but it was nothing to do with my past and everything to do with the man in front of me.
“When I first moved out of my foster parents’ house, I was poor—ten dollars to my name kind of poor. I had couches to crash on, but welcomes quickly wore out and I was on my way to becoming homeless.”