His hand moved between her thighs. His fingers found her — slick and swollen — and he drew his palm back and delivered a precise slap directly against her cunt.

Pain replacing pleasure. Shocking her system, resetting it, pulling her back from the edge by force.

Livia yelped.

"Now," he said pleasantly, settling back between her thighs, "from the top." He smiled. "My pretty cherub." He pushed inside her again.

All of it. All at once. He set a pace immediately — fast, driving, no preamble — and the shock of it after the deliberate withdrawal pulled a sharp cry from her lips. Her hands flew to his back, fingers spreading across the muscle of him, holding on as he moved.

His muscles were visibly tensed — arms braced either side of her head, jaw set, a fine strain running through every line of him that she recognised now as restraint. He was holding himself back. Keeping himself at the edge of the edge through sheer force of will. His eyes dropped between them.

Watching where their bodies joined — where he disappeared into her and returned, again and again.

"Richard— please..."

"I’ve got you. I won’t stop." His hips snapped forward and she gasped. He’d found a specific angle that turned her vision briefly white at the edges. He stayed there. Kept returning to exactly that spot, driving into her with a rhythm that was fast and relentless and devastatingly precise.

Livia’s legs tightened around him. "Richard — God — Richard—"

"Say it again. My name. Keep saying it."

"Richard—" She was barely forming words now, just sounds built around his name, her fingers clawing at his back. "Richard—"

"Fuck—" His arms were shaking slightly from the effort of holding back what his body was screaming at him to surrender to. His eyes were still fixed downward, watching them. "You feel—" He stopped.

Whatever he’d been about to say collapsed into a groan as she rolled her hips to meet him, matching his rhythm, giving it back to him, and his whole body shuddered.

"Diana."

She felt her orgasm building once more. Her thighs were shaking. "Richard — I’m going to—"

"Come on...Come on." He drove into her without pause.

Livia shattered. It broke over her in waves — enormous, consuming, pulling sound from her throat that she had no control over whatsoever. Her back arched clean off the bed, fingers twisted in the sheets, his name leaving her lips in fragments as her entire body convulsed around him.

Richard lasted approximately four more seconds. The restraint he’d been white-knuckling for the past ten minutes gave way all at once — a dam breaking, inevitable, total — and he followed her. His hips drove forward one last time as he buried himself deep and shook apart, every muscle in his body surrendering simultaneously.

He collapsed over her, then rolled away without letting go. He pulled her with him, turning just enough so they lay facing each other, his arm still around her waist, his fingers resting against her skin. His eyes searched hers. He was watching her for regret, holding his breath, waiting for the shame to come. Waiting for her to push him away. Waiting for her to remember Henry, and decide that this had been a terrible mistake.

But regret did not come. Shock, yes. She should have been panicking. She should have been calculating every possible way this could ruin the life she had only just begun to build. Instead, she was lying there with Richard’s arm around her, feeling oddly... safe.

She blinked, gathered whatever dignity she still had left, and said the first thing that came to mind. "We should go out for dinner."

"I can ask the kitchen to bring our meals here."

"No!" Livia’s eyes widened so fast Richard smiled. "You cannot be here." She pushed herself up slightly, pulling the sheet higher around her chest with one hand. "They cannot see us like this."

Richard propped himself up on one elbow, watching her with a wicked light returning slowly to his face. "Diana..." His smile widened. "The hiding ship sailed the moment I spilled my seed inside you." 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

"Oh my goodness." Her eyes grew even bigger.

He laughed then, and reached up to brush a loose strand of hair from her face. "Your innocence is adorable." He leaned closer, still smiling, still impossible, but suddenly far too serious. "Marry me."

"What the fuck!!!" Livia yelled.

He chuckled. "Wow. Impressive."

"Are you mad?!"

"Yes."

She stared at him. He looked entirely serious. Livia dragged the sheet higher around herself and sat up properly. Her hair was loose, her cheeks flushed, her eyes wide with panic and disbelief.

Marriage.

Marriage?

Livia sighed heavily. How did one even speak with a jester? A naked jester, no less. A duke with too little shame, and apparently no understanding that marriage was not something to toss into bed.

"You really didn’t think I was just going to fuck you and let you go, did you?" Richard asked.

Her heart stumbled. "You do not mean that, Your Grace."

"I absolutely do."

"You cannot marry me."

"I can. It is one of the many benefits of being disgustingly titled. I want you, Diana." Richard pushed himself up. "I know desire is not enough. If that were all this was, I would have said nothing."

Livia tried to shuffle away from the bed, but the sheet trapped around her legs, making her movement far less dignified than intended. Richard’s hand came out and stopped her.

"Give me one reason why we shouldn’t get married," he said. "People with less chemistry and fewer words have married."

"One reason?" Livia asked, her voice rising with disbelief. "How about we start with you are a duke? And I am just a girl from Beaumont’s."

"You are Diana Bellamy," he said as sure of it as law. "And you would make a fine duchess."

For one wild, fragile moment, her heart reached for it.

Duchess.

The title belonged to women raised in manor houses, women with fathers who negotiated dowries. Women with family portraits, embroidered initials,.

(Moving forward, I want us all to keep the title of the book in mind, emphasis on ’scandalous queen’)