by Sofia Daniel
I wrapped my arms around his neck and ran my fingers through the curling down at the nape of his neck. “Why don’t you give me a proper kiss?”
“Do you mean that?”
“I want something nice before everything goes to shit.”
Leaning down, he gave me the barest of pecks on the lips. “You think I’m a good kisser, then?”
I huffed out a laugh. “You’re male, you have a pair of lips, and you’re the only other person in the room. That makes you the best kisser around.”
He paused. This was so unlike Maxwell, who wasn’t afraid to take what he wanted, even if that meant executing a long con where he pretended to be his brother. His gray eyes searched my soul, perhaps looking for signs that I really meant what I had said about wanting to kiss him.
I raised my brows. “Are you having trouble performing?”
“Something tells me this is just a stalemate.”
“Meaning?” I threaded my hair in his mahogany locks.
“At some point in the future when I’m least expecting it, you’ll stab me in the back?”
Amusement rippled through my belly, making my lips spread into a grin. “Is that a problem?”
A pained look crossed his features. “If you want to kick me in the balls or something, I’ll take it now without complaint.” He pressed a kiss on my forehead. “But please don’t make amends only to double-cross me later.”
I tilted my head to the side and frowned. This couldn’t be a serious request. “Please don’t be like you were at the end of last term?”
His entire posture slumped. “It’s hypocritical of me to even ask.”
“Then be thankful I’m trapped here with you and wanting a snog before I get arrested.” I ran my hands down the lapels of his blazer before hooking my fingers beneath them and pulling him close.
“Lilah.” His face tightened. “I’m—”
“For fuck’s sake, shut the hell up.” Rocking forward and up onto my tiptoes, I yanked him down for a kiss.
His lips were soft at first. Maybe he’d spent too much time pretending to be a meeker version of himself that he had forgotten how to take control. I drew back and gave him a kitten lick, which made him growl and crash his lips onto mine.
I groaned. He might not have the piercings, the tats, or the slicked-back hair, but this was Maxwell. The sexy bastard I’d toyed with and outsmarted until he had gotten the better of me.
“You’re mine,” he snarled against my lips.
“For now.”
The cheeky git slid his tongue in my mouth and devoured me as though I was his last meal. Pleasure rippled down from our joined lips to my nipples and to my core, which was already slick with want. I squeezed my thighs together and kissed back with equal abandon.
Maxwell’s hands slid down my waist, over my ass and under the hem of my skirt. His fingers settled between my legs and found my pulsing clit.
I could kick him in the balls and leave him crying on the ground. That would even things out a bit, but who wanted to make out with a gibbering wreck? The police would be here soon, and I didn’t want to add assault to a man’s testicles to my list of sins.
Screw that. I grabbed a handful of his hard ass, my core muscles clenching at the memory of those hips, that thick, juicy dick pistoning in and out of me as I held onto those glutes for dear life.
Maxwell groaned into the kiss, the bass in his voice making my sopping wet core vibrate with need. Maybe kissing him was a bad idea. Because all I wanted to do was have him bend me over and pummel me from behind.
My hands slid down from his neck over his broad, muscular shoulders and onto his prominent pecs. Fuck did he feel good. Memories of me struggling to impale myself on his thick cock rushed to the forefront of my mind, bringing with them a new surge of desire.
I moaned into the kiss and pressed my chest against his. Right now, I didn’t care that he had once colluded with Elizabeth to have me arrested. Those lips, that strong, hard body, and the thick erection pressing into my belly erased the last vestiges of my animosity.
“Fuck, Lilah. I think about you all the time.” He pressed kisses against my neck. “Before I go to bed. When I wake. Sometimes I have to go back to my room get you out of my system.”
“Wank, you mean?” I whispered into his ear.
“That, too.”
I ran my palm over his lengthening bulge. “You’re making my mouth water.”
Maxwell groaned. “Suck me.”
“Suck me, first.”
He broke away. “You’re serious?”
“Ask me that again after I’ve sat on your face”
His face went slack. “Take off your knickers.”
A key turned in the lock, and the door swung open to reveal Mrs. Campbell. Her gaze jumped from us to the closed window and back to Maxwell, who now stood a few paces away with his arms folded over his crotch.
Her face tightened with annoyance, and a pang of regret pulled at my heartstrings. She would no doubt tell Mr. Burgh that I’d snuck a boy into the sanctuary, adding to his disappointment.
“Mr. Deloraine,” she said in clipped tones. “If expelling you wouldn’t render you homeless, you would be out of here before you could say ‘lewd conduct.’” She turned to me and swallowed. “Lady Liddell wishes to speak with you.”
Chapter 23
The good thing about Lady Liddell’s arrival was that Mrs. Campbell ushered Maxwell out of the sanctuary without much of a fuss. At the doorway, he shot me an apologetic look but I shook my head. Maybe a conversation with Elizabeth’s creator would reveal something about the girl’s character I could use in my plot to bring her down.
The bad thing about Lady Liddell’s arrival was the woman herself. Her heels clicked on the wooden floor as she swept past Mrs. Campbell, not sparing the older woman a second look. Her ivory pants suit clung to a body that looked nipped and tucked and silicone enhanced. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was the one who gave Elizabeth the hangup about her weight.
Up close, Lady Liddell wasn’t that impressive: perfectly coiffed hair, expensive make-up job, and designer clothes, but beneath the blending and shading were rheumy eyes and collagen-enhanced lips that looked like sausages.
I placed my hands on my hips, making sure to sweep my gaze down the ridiculous ensemble. She probably wanted to look like Bianca Jagger on her wedding day, but it was more like an old lady had stolen the white pimp outfit Madonna wore in her Music video.
Wrinkling her delicate nose, she stopped behind the table, keeping it as a barrier. A cautious woman. I expected she planned to throw an umbrella factory’s worth of shade and wanted to avoid a catfight.
“Thank you, Mrs. Cambell.” Lady Liddell turned her head to the side. “That will be all.”
The deputy headmistress pursed her lips and closed the door.
We stared at each other for several moments. Lady Liddell stood a couple of inches taller than me in her designer heels, and I folded my arms across my chest, shuttering my face into an expression of boredom.
“As we speak, my daughter is nursing a black eye and possibly a broken nose,” she said in a posh accent with only the barest trace of Scottish brogue.
I raised my brows, waiting for her to get to the point.
“And you’re possibly facing charges of grievous bodily harm.”
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. Back in Richley, the most I would get for Elizabeth’s nose was assault, which would result in several hours of community service. If the case actually went before a jury and I got a chance to explain that I’d been provoked, they would probably find me innocent.
Lady Liddell pursed her lips, but the action looked strange with all that collagen. “Don’t you have something to say for yourself?”
“You haven’t asked me a question until now.” I drummed my fingertips on my bicep.
She squeezed her eyes shut, looking like a Disney bird with those ridiculously long, black lashes.
I narrowed my eyes, wai
ting for her to open hers. When she did, a breath caught in the back of my throat. I had seen those eyes up close and behind a visor. “You were the policewoman in the raid.”
Lady Liddell blinked. “What are you talking about?”
“Your false eyelashes.” I waved a finger in the vicinity of her face. “At the time, I thought it was strange that a police officer would wear full makeup to a raid, but you couldn’t resist coming along for the ride.”
Lady Liddell didn’t speak.
I leaned forward, locking gazes with the corrupt aristocrat. “Why did you go along with that stupid plan? Elizabeth, I can almost understand. She’s inbred, unhinged, and running an illegal empire of slimming drugs. But why would you support that when you have so much to lose?”
“How dare you—”
“Don’t hide behind false outrage because you got caught. You might have a fancy title, but when word gets out that you went on a police ride-along to harass a seventeen-year-old girl, your reputation will be as dirty as your principles.”
She pointed a manicured finger at me from across the table. “Now, you look here—”
“You look here,” I shouted. “If you wanted to confront me about your daughter’s face, you should have waited for my guardian.”
Lady Liddell bared teeth that looked too white and even to be anything but veneers. “I wouldn’t allow Duncan Burgh to take care of a stray cat, much less a teenaged girl.”
“Oh, yeah?” I placed my hands on my hips. “Then why is he the headmaster of such a prestigious academy?”
She swung her tote bag. “Your precious grandfather has secrets of his own.”
“Not interested.” I shook my head and walked to the window, trying to ignore the doubt seeping through my gut. “As far as I’m concerned, this conversation is over.”
“Rude little guttersnipe,” she snapped. “Just like your mother.”
I turned around.
Lady Liddell smirked. “I taught Abigail Burgh Home Economics. Back then, she was an entitled little shit, thinking herself untouchable because her father was the Religious Studies teacher.”
“Like Elizabeth, then?”
The older woman didn’t even flinch. “The precocious little minx used to flirt with anything in trousers, and if things didn’t go her way, she wasn’t afraid to cry rape.”
A boulder of dread landed in my gut as the words in Father Neapolitan’s letter pushed their way to the front of my mind. Lady Liddell was bluffing. If she had taught Mother, then she might also have discovered the accusations. It didn’t matter. This was Elizabeth’s mother and a participant of that farce of a police raid. She’d say anything to score a point.
I made a deliberate show of rolling my eyes but tightened my stomach in anticipation of a damning revelation. Whatever Lady Liddell said next would be a lie based on enough truth to sound convincing.
“To protect the innocent, I won’t list the boys Abigail Burgh seduced and subsequently accused.”
“Because they don’t exist,” I snarled.
Wagging her finger, Lady Liddell rocked back on her stiletto heels. “All that promiscuous activity was to hide one terrible fact.”
“Let me guess, her Home Economics teacher was as gropey as her daughter?”
Lady Liddell’s face hardened. Perhaps she already knew about Elizabeth’s proclivity for assaulting other girls. Maybe all those girls the knights had gotten expelled for lewd conduct were prior victims of Elizabeth’s sexual entitlement.
“I wasn’t going to share this with you.” The older woman slid a Dior tote off her shoulder and pulled out a yellowed envelope.
Anticipation thrummed in my heart. Whatever it was, I didn’t want to know. My gaze darted to the door. “Get out. I’m not interested in your lies.”
“Not until you hear what I have to say,” she snapped. “You’ve forced my hand with your violence and belligerence.”
My lips curled into a snarl. That didn’t even make sense.
Lady Liddell’s lips turned down in a mockery of a pitying look. I wanted to slap those red sausages off her potato face and make her false eyelashes skitter away into the corner of the room. The old cow reached into the envelope and pulled out a crackly piece of paper.
“Your mother was already sexually active by the time she joined Templar Academy. Her rapist was your precious grandfather.”
Rage exploded through my veins and heated my face. “You filthy, desperate liar—”
“Read this.” She unfolded the paper and slid it across the table. “A doctor in the prison infirmary kindly took a swab shortly after you were born, and we compared that to the dried saliva from the pipe Duncan Burgh used to smoke.”
Without meaning to, I scanned the letterhead:
Forensic Laboratories
Abigail Burgh
C/o Yolande Inglis
Springfield Cottage
Templar Academy
Scotland
April 3 2002
Paternity Test
DNA mouth swab samples from the following individuals were examined:
Alleged father: Duncan Burgh
Child: Delilah Burgh
Two columns one with my name and the other with Mr. Burgh’s. I didn’t understand what the numbers meant. DNA markers, perhaps? But my gaze skipped down to the bottom where it said:
Probability of paternity 100%.
A palpitation reverberated across my chest, pumping bile to the back of my throat. I wanted to ball up my saliva and spit it in Lady Liddell’s smug face. Instead, I stilled my features and said, “I could have made this document on Microsoft Word and placed it in a sun bed until the edges turned brown.”
Lady Liddell sighed. “It’s hard to accept being a product of incest.”
She reached for the DNA results, but I lurched forward and snatched the paper off the table. Stepping back toward the window, I tore it in half, then into quarters, eighths, and sixteenths, and kept going until the pieces resembled cheap confetti.
“Do you believe that’s our only copy?” She shook her head, a smirk dancing on those cylindrical lips. “We had several made and stored in multiple locations precisely for this eventuality.”
“You know why this is bullshit?” I threw the pieces at her face, but they landed harmlessly on the floor. “Not even you would let a pedophile work for your academy.”
She flashed her teeth again. “Leave, or I’ll release the report to the police.”
I shook my head. “If word got out that you held onto that information for seventeen years, every parent who sent their kids to Templar academy would string you up by your scrawny neck.”
Her cold, blue eyes bore into mine. “Abigail Burgh made a report to the police of sexual abuse, but they didn’t follow it up because of a lack of evidence.”
My heart pounded. Mr. Burgh had told me something similar. After I was born, Mother had made him withdraw his demand for custody after threatening to tell the police that he had abused her.
Triumph flashed in Lady Liddell’s eyes. “Did I strike a nerve?”
“Only the one operating my gag reflex,” I snarled. “Is this how far you’d stoop to protect your stupid daughter’s drug-dealing?”
“It’s the truth,” she said. “Haven’t you ever wondered why your mother never returned to Templar? The memories of the abuse she suffered are too much to bear. Nobody believed her and she was doomed to return to her rapist father who eventually got her pregnant.”
I shook my head. “Mr. Burgh would never do that.”
“Maybe not to you.” She brushed an imaginary piece of lint off her shoulder. “A sexually-experienced seventeen-year-old from the gutter likely wouldn’t be coerced into sex with her own grandfather. But poor Abigail was an innocent child when he commenced his abuse.”
“This is a bigger farce than the drug raid.” I couldn’t keep the tremble out of my voice. Not because I believed her, but accusations had a way of sticking, and I wasn’t sure that the old man woul
d be able to cope.
Lady Liddell stood to the door and paused to cast me one last glance. “Did you ever wonder why he didn’t introduce himself as your grandfather the moment you met?”
“Mother already explained.”
“That cocaine-addicted alcoholic who clung to her abuser for a steady supply of drugs?” she injected enough pity and condescension in her voice to make me ball my fists.
“With a bitch like you as a teacher, I’d need more than booze and blow to blot you out,” I snarled.
She tapped the side of her nose and gave me a knowing wink. “Mr. Burgh didn’t want your familial connection known so he could seduce you. My Elizabeth saved you from that predator when she exposed your familial connection.”
Nausea overtook my senses, and I shook my head, feeling like I should have a better response. Ninety-nine point nine-nine-nine percent of me knew this was a pack of lies made up to protect Elizabeth. But Lady Liddell had injected enough facts to make me worry for Mr. Burgh’s reputation when she exposed the lies.
“Don’t you think that’s scraping the bottom of the barrel?” I asked. “No one will believe something so far-fetched.”
“And you’re desperately clinging onto transparent lies because the truth is too much to bear.” Her face hardened. “Leave this academy, or I will leak this information to the press along with the address of every property your father-grandfather owns. I don’t know what they do to known sex offenders in Richley, but in Scotland, we burn them in their beds.”
I clenched my teeth. “Before you leave, you might want to ask your daughter why she steals the church collection money. Is it to gamble on horses or to fund her empire of illegal diet pills?”
Her back stiffened, and her shoulders rose to her ears but she didn’t turn around to deny the truth.
By the time Lady Liddell stepped out of the door, a volcano of frustration welled in my chest and angry tears gathered in my eyes. There was nothing remotely perverted about Mr. Burgh. But Lady Liddell was prepared to ruin the old man just to protect her daughter’s misdeeds.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone. It was time to demand the truth from the only person who knew what had really happened.
