Marcus Wilding: Duke of Pleasure Read Online Free PDF Page B

yourself there,’ he stated evenly. ‘How else can you fully appreciate the unique scent of your own arousal unless you bathe your fingers in it?’
    ‘I—is that really necessary?’
    ‘Unless you would prefer that I be the one to touch you?’ Marcus questioned boldly.
    Even the suggestion of that caused Julianna’s alarm to deepen, as she once again acknowledged the hornet’s nest of emotions and embarrassment she appeared to have opened up for herself by blackmailing Marcus into tutoring her.
    Unless he was just deliberately punishing her for having blackmailed him in the first place?
    ‘And will you also leave off your own undergarments and touch yourself, Marcus?’ she challenged.
    A nerve pulsed in his tightly clenched jaw. ‘Yes.’
    So much for Julianna’s childish attempt to beat this man at his own game; she should have known better! ‘Very well.’ She nodded, that nod turning to a curtsey as Marcus’s butler opened the door beside her. ‘Until tomorrow, Your Grace,’ she drawled before following the butler out into the cavernous hallway of Worthing House.
    Marcus waited only long enough for Wilkins to close the door behind himself and Julianna before standing up and punching his first through the Japanese screen beside the window.

Chapter Six
    ‘W hat have you done to your hand, Marcus?’
    Exactly what Christian had asked him when the two men met at Jackson’s Boxing Salon yesterday afternoon, when Marcus had also refused any suggestion that the bandage upon his hand prevented him from participating in the sport. Indeed, his turmoil of emotions had still been such that he had felt no pain at all from his bruised hand as he’d bested Christian over the agreed three rounds.
    Marcus had removed the bandage earlier for his morning meeting with Julianna, but there was still a certain amount of obvious bruising to his knuckles from his dispute yesterday with the Japanese screen. ‘I assure you, my opponent looks much worse than I do,’ he dismissed unconcernedly, the broken screen having been removed from his study and replaced by a rich, red velvet chaise, which Marcus had yesterday instructed servants to bring in here from his own private parlour.
    ‘I dined with my brother yesterday evening,’ Julianna came back accusingly. ‘By which time his bruised eye had gone several shades of purple!’
    ‘Oh?’ Christian had not reacted yesterday to Marcus’s discreet questioning in regard to Julianna’s marriage, but could that only have been for Marcus’s benefit? Had Christian saved his own questions for his sister for later that evening?
    ‘We always dine together on Tuesday evenings,’ Julianna immediately answered the unspoken question dismissively as she moved farther into his study. Her gown was emerald green today, and perfectly complimented her ivory skin and red-gold curls.
    ‘Did you do as I instructed and leave off your drawers?’ he asked harshly.
    The aching hardness of his arousal, which seemed to have been with Marcus constantly for these past two days and nights, and which now surged up thick and heavy beneath his pantaloons without the benefit of his own restricting drawers, gave an increasingly familiar throb of appreciation for even the idea of Julianna being almost naked beneath her gown.
    ‘I did. And you?’
    ‘Yes.’
    Julianna felt that now-familiar heat course through her body just thinking of what lay beneath the fine material of his pantaloons. Marcus’s gaze was just as intent upon her, as if he might see through her gown to her nakedness beneath.
    A nakedness Julianna had been completely aware of since dressing earlier, her lack of drawers resulting in a sensitivity between her thighs, and a total awareness of the silky abrasion of her chemise against that bared flesh.
    A sensitivity that had deepened the moment she’d entered the study and looked at Marcus, and seen that today he had dispensed with his waistcoat as well as his jacket and cravat, enabling her