Daring and the Duke (The Bareknuckle Bastards, #3)

by Sarah MacLean

The one for whom he’d spent half a lifetime searching. A litany that would never heal. A benediction that would never save, because he would never find her.

“I’ve brought London to its knees searching for you,” he replied. “You think a door would keep me away?” Her brows rose. “And yet here you are, on your knees, so it seems something has kept you from me after all.” He lifted his chin. “I’m looking at you, love, so I don’t feel kept from you at all.”

“I felt you,” he said, low enough that only she would hear. “I know you touched me.” Impossible. He’d been dosed with laudanum. Still, she couldn’t stop herself from saying, “Not me.” “It was. It was you,” he said, softly, advancing on her with slow, predatory grace. “You think I would forget your touch? You think I wouldn’t know it in the darkness? I would know it in battle. I would walk through fire for it. I would know it on the road to hell. I would know it in hell, which is where I’ve been, aching for it, every day since you left.”

He presumed she was trying for disguise, as though he’d ever not sense her. Not feel her. As though there would ever come a time when she walked into a room and his whole body did not draw tight like a spring. But disguise required something more than Grace would ever have—an ability to be unnoticed. And Grace would always be the first thing he noticed in any room, ever.

“You are a queen,” he whispered.

“Tonight, I am your throne.”

They were planets, drawn to each other. No. He was a planet. She was the sun.

“To say I have missed you—it’s not enough. The word . . . it implies a natural occurrence. It suggests that if only I’d been home the day you called . . . if only you’d been on St. James’s the last time I bought cravats . . . then I’d have had a chance not to miss you. But what do we call the aching emptiness that I feel for you? All the time? Every day?”

“What do we call the loneliness, as though my other half has gone, never to return?” he asked. “What do we call that?” Love.

“You told me that my mark made me his forever.” She went soft at the words, as though she wished to take them back. “No.” He didn’t want her regret. There was enough of it between them for both their lifetimes. He shook his head. “If that is true,” he said, “does your mark make you mine?” She slid her hands into his hair then, pulling him down to her. And in the heartbeat before she set her lips to his, she whispered, “Yes.”

“I want to be everything you desire.”

“You, finally, where you belong.”