Blood Secret. Sharon Page

completely.

      Instinctively she put a hand to cover the juncture of her thighs and used her other arm to shield her breasts. The maid gave a shy giggle and turned away. She scooped up Lucy’s clothes and laid them over a chair, keeping her back to Lucy. Then the girl hastened out, closing the door behind her.

      Lucy let out her breath with a whoosh. Even alone, she covered her body with her hands. She had never stood anywhere utterly naked. Not even in her bedroom. The mirror threw her image at her. Her hair loose and falling to her hips, her curvy nude hips. Her breasts squashed by the pressure of her forearm into round and jiggly spheres. Her full thighs, her calves, her bare feet. She looked like some sort of wild creature. In her mind, she looked more like a wild thing now than she did when she changed to dragon form. She turned away, flushing more vigorously.

      You have to let the duke, this man, this stranger, see you like this.

      Goodness, she couldn’t even look at her body in the mirror, much less show it to that ... to him.

      She hurried to her clothes. Her hands were on her shift before she got control of her thundering heart and spoke sense to herself. “You cannot run, Lucy. If you go, your family will be ruined. If you go, you know Helena will marry the Odious Earl to save the family.”

      The Odious Earl. She shuddered. He was a dragon-shifter, a distant relative in the Drago family tree, but he was also a fifty-year-old, grossly fat earl. And he wanted to marry Helena. The Odious Earl was certain he was going to be given Helena, because he knew how desperate they were due to her brother’s debts.

      Lucy had almost wed a horrible, terrible man. After the Earl of Montley, she had determined she would only marry another dragon. And she had been fooled by a handsome face. For her fiancé had been the worst beast imaginable.

      She couldn’t let Helena be forced into a horrible marriage. Her sister was nineteen. Lovely and innocent. Helena deserved to marry for love. The earl was a lecherous old debaucher. If Lucy erased a thirty-thousand-pound debt with a fortnight of sex, the Odious Earl could be booted out of the house on his backside.

      She heard a soft sound. A footstep? Was the door going to open and the duke walk in, wearing just his trousers?

      She stared at the doorknob so hard, she was surprised she did not set it on fire with the ferocity of her glare. A soft, sliding sound came behind her and a man’s voice said, “You have a delicious derriere.”

      She almost jumped out of her skin. Jerking around, Lucy realized her breasts had moved a few moments before her arm caught up to cover them. No doubt he had seen her curves, even her dark brown nipples, which looked so scandalously ... hypnotic when they were unclothed. Even she could barely tear her gaze from her bare nipples when she caught a glimpse of them.

      But the Duke of Greystone was watching her face. He calmly sauntered through the secret opening, one that had been covered by a sliding wall panel. He strolled into the bedroom the way some men strolled through the park on a pleasant afternoon.

      Except he was completely naked. And he was obviously, rigidly, shockingly aroused.

      2

      Stripped Bare

      Lucy spread her fingers to cover her private place again and clamped her arm over her breasts. She desperately tried to look everywhere but at this naked man who stood before her. But her eyes betrayed her, and her gaze slid to him. She caught glimpses of broad, straight shoulders. Glimpses of his pectorals, with the dark circles of his nipples, and the long, hard muscles of his thighs.

      And once or twice her gaze strayed back to that part that revealed how much he anticipated having her.

      “Lady Lucy,” the duke said coolly. “You offered me the free use of your lovely body. Please move your hands. I wish to enjoy the view.”

      “I—” She couldn’t. She simply could not stand in front of him so boldly. Already she was blushing like fire because he could see so much of her, just as she could see every inch of him. If she wanted. If she looked.

      He could see her generous thighs, her hips, and her stomach. He had already seen her naked bottom, even if it was only for moments. She felt so ... embarrassed, ashamed, humiliated. Her body was too lush, too curvaceous. Her body had always been a curse. When she’d been just thirteen, she had begun to shift into dragon shape. That had been bad enough, for it had taken her years to learn how to control it, to learn how to live with the pain of the shift. Then her body changed from slender and boyish to this rounded, embarrassingly wanton-looking shape.

      Lucy glanced at the duke through her lashes, but he had turned his back to her. He strode to a cupboard. At least he wasn’t ogling her, but she was surprised he wasn’t. As he opened the door, he said, “Lady Lucy, just because you are paying with your innocence, does not mean the surrender has to be unpleasant.”

      Unpleasant? It was mortifying. She’d had no idea she would feel this awkward and embarrassed. She’d thought she could do this, but all she wanted to do was run for the door. She kept her gaze fixed on her arm, ensuring it shielded her breasts. And ensuring she did not look at his muscled back. Or his naked buttocks. “Could we not just ... just go to the bed and put out the lights?” she asked desperately. “I did not think you would want to stand in front of each other without any clothes.”

      A flash of red flew at her and she jerked back. A robe, she realized, as it billowed and floated to the floor. His Grace kept his back to her as she pulled it on. She firmly fastened the belt and knotted it.

      She had to get this over with. Keeping her eyes downcast, she moved to the bed. She would lift the covers and get in. Surely, he would then join her. She was shaking at the thought of what would happen once he got into bed with her. His naked body would rest over hers. She would open her legs. And he would go inside her. She knew that much of this business. She would close her eyes and not think of what was happening to her. She’d overheard the maids in her home whisper about sex. They said for some men, the act did not last long. Only minutes. Hopefully the duke would be such a man.

      Before she reached the bed, he turned. Lucy sensed it out of the corner of her eye and she looked at him. She saw the firm, taut plane of his stomach, the bulge of his chest muscles, the taut indents of his haunches. His hair was gold and spilled to his shoulders, the way men had worn their hair decades before. Her gaze went down, where it should not go, and fixed on the wobble of his erection as he moved toward her.

      Really the dark would have been much better. She could have faced this if they were beneath covers in a shadowy room. Tears burned at the corners of her eyes—tears of frustration over her predicament, of anger over her brother’s stupidity.

      The duke prowled across the bedroom and this time she couldn’t look away.

      His erection was so ... astonishing. It was long, thick, topped with a acorn-shaped head. It was flushed as much as she was sure her cheeks were. Pronounced veins twined along it. Golden hair curled above it and his large testicles dangled below. It was a primitive-looking thing. It looked so ... odd on the smooth, sculpted planes of his body. Yet it was intriguing, and a strange ache shot from her belly to the place between her legs. She clutched the belt of the robe.

      Fear. Anger. Nerves. And illicit, forbidden, wrong physical desire. How could she feel so many different things at once?

      Lucy had been supposed to marry four years ago, just after she had turned eighteen. Her father had brought him to the house as a suitor from the Drako family. Allan Ferrars. He had been handsome, charming. Dragons had to marry dragons, her father had said.

      But Mr. Ferrars had hidden his true person behind a gentleman’s gloss. He was rough. Cruel. She had caught him attacking one of the maids. She had rescued the girl by shifting to dragon-shape. Forgetting Mr. Ferrars could change, too. He had thrown her across the room, had swiped her stomach with his brutal claws. As she’d struggled to her feet to attack him in return, she had realized Allan Ferrars didn’t love her at all. Then Jack had caught them... . Jack, her brother, had shifted shape and had fought Mr. Ferrars. They had been forced to destroy Ferrars