“How dare you insult me?” Pent-up emotion made her voice shrill. “You, who abandoned me with no real explanation, no notion of where you’d gone or when you might return?”
“It was a private matter of extreme urgency,” he gritted. “I told you I would return as soon as I was able. My departure from London was necessary. Had I been able to avoid it, I wholeheartedly would have.”
“A private matter. Necessary.” The words left a bad taste in her mouth, and the pressing suspicion that had been her constant companion for the last few months returned. What if he had been engaged in a different form of secrecy than what Georgiana suspected? By-blows were common enough, though hardly proper drawing room conversation. A few oddly phrased missives weren’t enough to prove some sort of vast conspiracy. “Were you with your mistress?”
“No, goddamn it.” Suddenly, his hands gripped her upper arms, large and warm on her bare skin. The contact sent the same fiery need as always licking through her. “I’ve told you before that I don’t have a mistress. I’ve been bloody true to our vows, which is more than I can say for you.”
She wanted to believe him, even as his continued assertion that she had been unfaithful left her cold. “I have not made a cuckold of you.”
He pulled her into him and her hands flew to his broad chest, seeking purchase, her earrings falling forgotten to the floor. Her gaze dropped to his mouth. They were so near that if she rose on tiptoe, their lips would meet. How she missed his kiss. For an instant, it didn’t matter that he’d been gone, that he had returned a cold and bitter stranger. Her body still longed for his.
Ached for him.
She still loved him.
“Would you care to explain what you’ve been doing behind closed doors with the Earl of Bolton?” His tone had become deceptively smooth once more. His eyes traveled over her face, studying. “You’re beautiful as ever, Daisy. Little wonder half the men of London are waiting in line to lift your skirts. How many others have aside from Bolton?”
She’d known that receiving the Earl of Bolton had been a grievous mistake. At the time, her husband’s dislike of the man had served as her primary impetus. “The door was never closed. That was a rumor likely begun by the earl himself.”
That much was the truth. Bolton had been clear with his desire that she become his mistress. Daisy had refused and slapped him for the insult, which was likely why he’d spread such a tale—a balm to his wounded pride. The only man she wanted was the one standing before her, and it was a truth she couldn’t deny. She had made vows to him and him alone. Her heart beat for him. Broke for him.
“Did you scream the way you did for me, sweet?” His hand left her arm to skim over her jaw, then cup her cheek. His thumb pressed into the fullness of her lower lip with a rough pressure that surprised her. But she liked it. The savagery in him made her pulse leap, her entire body come to life. It was odd and troubling, and yet, there it was. “Tell me. Did you enjoy it when he fucked you? Did you pretend he was me, just for a moment? We both know he couldn’t have made you come the way I did.”
She swallowed, the memory of their blistering lovemaking coupled with his lean hardness against her—his masculine scent and strength enveloping her—made heat bloom between her thighs. The flesh he’d brought to life became hungry and wet. Her nipples tightened against her corset. His anger should have disturbed her, should have lessened her desire. Such provocative, ugly things, he’d said. He was being rough and crude, deliberately cruel. The way he touched her—masterful though detached—should have left her cold.
And yet, she couldn’t help the way she felt. The way he made her feel. Hot. Restless. Yearning. Her heart still ached for him, and in spite of everything—logic, reason, hurt, common sense—she couldn’t deny him.
She nipped at his thumb, tasting him—salt and warmth and man—and he removed it, allowing her to speak. “I did nothing with the Earl of Bolton. Nothing with any other man, for that matter.”
“You expect me to believe you?” His tone was frigid. His touch was anything but. It was hot, demanding, seeking. Urgent.
His fingers trailed down her throat, lingering at the diamond necklace she still wore, a weighty reminder of her former life. The caress sent sparks skittering over her skin, need throbbing deep within.
“It’s the truth,” she whispered.
“The truth. How rich.” A bleak smile curved his sensual lips. It was grim, harsh. There was no hint of the dimple she’d once longed to kiss. Not a trace of humor remained within him, it seemed. It was as if a stranger had taken his place. A bitter, broken, angry stranger. Where had he been for the past three months and what had he done? Perhaps, more importantly, what had been done to him?
But she held firm. Stoic. “Yes, the truth. I would never betray our vows, Sebastian.”
“You don’t think I believe a word that slips past your pretty lips, do you, sweet? Not when you’ve been carrying on as you have. Wild fêtes, a string of lovers, wearing trousers, for Christ’s sake. Were you so foolish to believe that word would not reach me? That I wouldn’t learn of your antics and your debauchery?”
She should be frightened. But she was not. Though his language was coarse and his touch lacked the skillful play of slow seduction she’d become accustomed to from him, he would not hurt her. She knew it instinctively.
“How did word reach you?” she asked instead. “Did you get my letters?” One letter in particular. The one in which she revealed the impending birth of their child. The one good that had risen from the ashes of their turbulent union.
“I daresay word has even reached America by now. You made no attempt to hide your lechery.” He sneered. “You couldn’t even bother to wait until you’d provided me an heir before bedding the Earl of Bolton.”
That answered her question, then. He hadn’t read a single one of her letters.
Disappointment bloomed as his fingers traveled lower, stopping at the ribbon-trimmed edge of her décolletage. She swallowed against a fresh wave of need. His cruelty should have diminished her body’s response to him, but it seemed that nothing could. Her nipples longed for his touch, his mouth. The rake of his teeth. He cupped her breast, and it was a possessive clamp of ownership, nothing sweet about it. Through her corset, undergarments, and silk, his fingers bit into her skin with just enough pressure to arch her back.
She wanted more, and her reaction frightened her. She had not known that darkness and anger could form such a powerful web of seduction. Still, he owed her every bit as much as she owed him, if not more. He was the one who had left. She had been right here, waiting for him, all along.
“Tell me where you’ve been,” she challenged impetuously. “Tell me the truth.”
Care for me enough to give me that, if nothing else.
“The truth is that even though you’ve been bedding other lovers, you still want me, don’t you, buttercup?” He stilled, his eyes intense and glittering, sparking with unadulterated sexual fire as they burned into hers. “Your pretty pink lips might lie, but your body doesn’t.”
Damn him. “The truth,” she demanded again. “Where were you? Why did you go?”
“Ah, I see the way of it.” He smiled without mirth, his tone bitter. “You think you can tempt me with your body, and I’ll confess all. But I won’t give you the gratification of fucking you, Daisy. You’d like it too much.”
The wickedness and arrogance of his words should have repulsed her. He was being a beast, but it somehow made her long for him all the more. Her breasts tingled. The flesh between her thighs hungered for him, for his touch, his claiming. At last, her body seemed to say even if her mind couldn’t form the acknowledgment, at last.
Daisy pressed herself closer to him, her breasts crushing into his hand, into his chest. Their lips were a scant inch apart. His breath ghosted over her mouth, hot and promising. Their legs tangled, free of the encumbrance of skirts, and she felt his arousal, rigid and undeniable, cutting into her belly.
He wan
ted her, no matter what he said. In that moment, she had infinite power over him, and she knew it.
And she liked it.
She rocked forward, gliding her body along his hard length. Her lower lip brushed his once, twice. “Do you know what I think, Sebastian?” She paused, a wicked urge to shock him rising within, to goad him, push him off the precipice to which he clung. “I think you’re lying to me. Lying to yourself. You don’t want to fuck me because you’re afraid you’d like it too much.”
There.
One word, raw and vulgar and wrong. His word. Fuck. Used upon him as a weapon. But it had the desired effect, and she didn’t feel a drop of shame as he growled deep in his throat and forced her backward, guiding her with hands on her waist and long strides. Taking her to the big bed where she’d lain awake so many nights wondering where he was and whether or not he would ever return. Where she’d imagined him joining her, taking his time, kissing her and stripping her bare, learning every bit of her flesh before joining them as one.
But this wasn’t going to be anything like her silly fancies, or even like their previous couplings, and she knew it by the harshness in his expression, the wildness of his touch. The backs of her knees bumped into the bed’s softness. He didn’t throw her on it as she thought he might. Instead, he stopped, stared down at her.
“Explain yourself,” he commanded.
She swallowed, not knowing what he wanted to hear. What he meant. She was breathless with waiting, with wanting, with a deep, decadent tide of anticipation. “What do you want me to say, Sebastian? That I’ve spent these last months wondering where you’ve been? That I’ve flirted like mad and courted scandal at every opportunity just so that you would come back to me?”
“No.” His nostrils flared.
He was fiercely beautiful, his body leaner against hers, honed to hard, well-muscled angles. Everything about him had become dark and powerful and ruthless. Even his shoulders were more severe and hard beneath her hands as she settled them there to anchor herself.
But she wasn’t finished. Let him think of her what he would. There was only one way to win this battle between them. “Do you want to hear how I did everything in my power to find you, and when all else failed, I decided to bring about your return by causing as much scandal as possible? For that’s the truth.”
“No, goddamn it,” he snapped. “No more of your lies.”
“My lies?” She rubbed her leg against his, because it felt good and because she couldn’t resist the temptation. His proximity did wild things to her senses. But even as she teased him, parried back in this sensual battle between them, she hadn’t forgotten that she had just as much cause as he to be angry. More, even. “What of yours, Sebastian? Where have you been?”
Heavens yes, she had every right to be properly enraged. He had disappeared without explanation. Months of no word had passed. Yet he barged back into her life with the grace of a gunboat, raging and bent on destruction. How dare he brand her a liar, accuse her of debasing their vows, when she still didn’t have any idea where he’d gone, what he’d done, or whom he’d been with during his lengthy absence?
“You want to ask questions, buttercup?” The grin he flashed her was stark and lethal. Not a hint of merriment. Not a drop of sympathy or contrition. His dimple appeared for a fraction of a moment before it was gone. “Very well. But I get to ask first.”
His hands tightened on her waist, her only warning before he lifted her in one fluid motion and tossed her back onto the bed. She hadn’t expected his sudden reaction, and so she made her landing in a rather undignified heap, legs akimbo, flat on her back. Her husband’s expression was dark and unrelenting as a summer thunderstorm. He stalked forward, between her thighs, and bent forward, planting his palms on either side of her as he pinned her to the mattress. His muscled abdomen pressed into hers, robbing her of breath.
Sebastian lowered his head so that their foreheads nearly touched. His eyes sparked into hers, intense and burning with so much wrath she trembled. “Who the hell is Padraig McGuire to you, Daisy?”
he blanched at the name of her former betrothed, all the color leaching from her beautiful face. Bloody, bloody hell. It wasn’t what he wanted to see, even if he’d anticipated it. Even if he’d had the journey between London and Liverpool to reconcile himself to the fact that the woman he’d married—the woman who had forced him to spend the last three months guilt-ridden and torn between his feelings for her and his duty—was a fraud, a liar, and a conniving jade. Possibly even a conspirator and prospective murderess. And then there had been the other part of him, the part that had been desperate to come up with reasons why she could not be, or ways he could save her if she was.
Pathetic of him, really.
His jaw hardened, fingers fisting the bedclothes on either side of her lithe form, a fresh wave of rage bursting through him. Hers was not the reaction of an innocent woman, by God. It was the reaction of a woman who was guilty as sin. A woman who’d just realized the elaborate web of lies and deceit she’d spun had transformed into a trap of her own making.
“Padraig McGuire.” He spat the name out as if it left a bad taste in his mouth.
Of course, it did. The thought of any other man touching Daisy, kissing her, running his hands over her bare curves, sinking home inside her… Jesus, it made him livid enough that he wouldn’t trust himself alone in a chamber with any of them. Whoever they were. Faceless bastards. Christ knew how many. He wanted to tear them all limb from limb.
Padraig McGuire, however, was the one man above any—even above the Earl of Bolton—that infuriated him to the point of irrational, unpredictable bloodlust. McGuire was a Fenian plotter. A maestro of death and destruction. Most importantly and damning of all, he was a man that Daisy had once loved enough that she’d wished to marry him.
A man she had received in private no less than four times.
Damn it all, he was a fool. For even with the blinders removed, he still couldn’t help but want her. His cock was rigid, straining against the placket of his trousers, jutting into the soft warmth of her left thigh. She was even lovelier than he’d recalled during his months away from her. When his eyes had first lit on her tonight as she’d crossed the threshold, he’d been momentarily speechless. Perhaps it had been the trousers, which accentuated her tiny waist and the feminine flare of her hips and trim ankles to perfection. Or perhaps it had simply been her, Daisy.
Goddess. Witch. Siren. Liar.
“I’ll ask you one more time,” he growled, realizing that she had yet to answer him and his body was growing far too accustomed to his position atop her. His body, in fact, wanted to be buried deep inside her. It was a hell of a thing, how his cock and his mind could fight each other so mercilessly, but there it was. “Who the hell is Padraig McGuire to you?”
She flinched, then swallowed. The thick fringe of her lashes swept down over her eyes. “How do you know that name? He didn’t use it when he called here.”
Hearing her confirm what he’d already known, that the bastard had called upon her—at his goddamn home—as though it had been an innocent social visit, sent another onslaught of fury ricocheting through him. Slowly, the full implications of what she’d said descended.
He’d unwittingly revealed too much to her. To this woman, with her tits straining against her bodice, legs spread wide in satin trousers, with her wide eyes and full, beckoning mouth, who was a deceptive, traitorous bitch.
To this woman, who knew too much, and had always known more than she’d let on. His wife, the woman he had lusted over for three long, interminable months. The same woman who had taken lovers the moment he’d been gone from her sight. The woman he loved.
Bloody hell. The heart was nothing but a weakness. A fool incapable of knowing reason. For there was no reason on this earth—not a goddamn one—that he should still feel this heaviness in his chest, this conflagration inside him by being in her presence.
“You don’t have the right to ask anything of me
,” he snapped at her, feeling an icy cold sink straight into the marrow of his bones. “I pose the questions. You answer them, or tonight won’t go well for you. Do you understand?”
She stiffened as she gauged the depth of his rage, bringing her palms between them to shove ineffectually at his chest. The fear in her expression would have made him feel shame on any other day. Regardless of what he’d been ordered to do, and regardless of the depth of her treachery, he would never physically hurt her.
But today was different. Today, he wanted her to drown in dread of what he would do to her. Today, he wanted to make her pay and in so doing, slake some of his own pain. He had believed her. And she had lied. He rose on his knees and caught her wrists in a manacle grip, lowering each to her side and pinning them to the bed. She was helpless. He rocked his body against hers, partly for the simple pleasure and partly to let her know that he was the dominant force. That she answered to him.
“Who is Padraig McGuire?” he posed the question once more, this time with his cock grinding against the part of her he wanted most.
He decided that regardless of how much he would despise himself by morning light, he was not going to stop until he took his fill of Daisy tonight. He would possess her, enjoying the sound of her shameless trousers being torn from her body. He’d rip the bodice to shreds, cut her corset off with the knife in his boot. Then, he’d sink so deep inside her, pound so hard, until she couldn’t help but cry out with wild need. Suck her nipples, sink his fingers into the soft bounty of her hair. Yes, by God, he would take her, punish her. And he would enjoy every debauched second of it.
Perhaps he would even bind her wrists. The thought made his cock jerk, and he rolled his hips against hers in instinct, half horrified at himself for being so consumed with lust at the thought of fucking a conscienceless traitor.
But she was still and ashen-faced beneath him, her lips compressed. Not compliant. Not willing as he wanted her to be. The hunger burning within him cooled. He took no pleasure in forcing a woman, regardless of how far she drove him to the edge of sanity. “Who. Is. He?” he pressed.
Her Reformed Rake (Wicked Husbands Book 3) Page 25
