Nik knew he could snap Angelique in half with the brittleness of a twig, if he so chose.
For now, at least, he was choosing not to do so.
“Turn around,” he instructed softly.
She stiffened but made no move to do as he asked.
“Turn around,” he repeated in the commanding tone she knew better than to disobey.
Her spine straightened before she slowly pivoted on her bare feet.
Nik frowned as Angelique’s lowered and long-lashed lids prevented him from seeing her eyes. They were, after all, the windows of the soul. “Look at me.” He felt a clenching in his chest as those lashes slowly rose to reveal there was no emotion whatsoever in the blankness of Angelique’s gaze. Not fear, not hatred, not acceptance of her fate, nor any other discernable emotion that Nik could see. “Put your hands behind your back,” he rasped.
She obeyed without argument, the movement pushing up the swell of her breasts so that they almost spilled over the top of her tightly laced corset.
Nik studied those creamy mounds for long mouthwatering seconds before stepping forward, the bareness of his chest touching those breasts as he moved his arms about her before his hands linked and then tied her wrists together with the strip of red silk.
Angelique closed her eyes and willed herself not to respond to Nik’s close proximity and what he was doing to her. To not be affected by the sizzling heat of his body pressing against her own. To resist breathing in the spice of his cologne and underlying male musk. Or think of her wrists being bound behind her back.
It was a losing battle as her senses became saturated with that heat and musk, the silk about her wrists a reminder of all the times Nik had dominated and claimed her in the past, to their mutual pleasure. So many days and nights when he had taken her to the heights of ecstasy, time and time again, before taking her there again as he filled her with the heat of his own release.
Her breasts tingled and swelled at those memories, the juices flowing between her thighs, the perfume of her arousal now intertwining with and becoming a part of Nik’s.
Tears stung behind her closed lids at this evidence of her own weakness, as powerless to prevent those tears from escaping and falling hotly down her cheeks as she was in fighting her body’s traitorous response to Nik’s close proximity.
Her husband had never deceived her into believing he loved her, but until today, she had believed Nik felt affection for her, that he enjoyed her and what they did together. This, demanding her complete surrender, held more anger than affection. The same anger that had consumed him when he arrived this morning.
Angelique groaned, her body trembling as she felt the heat of Nik’s lips brush against her bared shoulder at the same time as his hands tightened that silk sash about her wrists. “Are you going to whip me now?”
“Have I ever whipped you in the past?”
“No…”
“Nor do I intend to do so now.”
“But you said—”
“I am well aware of what I said.” The heat of his breath against her skin caused shivers down the length of her spine. “Did the anticipation of that thrashing arouse you, Angelique? Did it make your cunny wet? Your nipples hard and aching?”
Dear God, it had done both those things, Angelique realized.
Nik chuckled as her silence answered for her. “I fully intend to carry out my threat to make you scream before the night is over,” he murmured against her skin. “But the manner in which I choose to do that will depend upon you.”
Her head was spinning from his proximity and breathing in the warm scents of his body. “I do not understand.”
His shoulders moved in a shrug. “I can as easily give you pain…”
Angelique’s knees threatened to give way completely as Nik’s teeth bit into the sensitive flesh of her shoulder, her hands tied behind her back preventing her from reaching out for his support. Instead, she slumped forward against his chest, breathing in yet more of that hot musk as her cheek rested against the dark hair that grew across his nipples and then narrowed to a vee before disappearing inside his evening trousers. The base of his cock, she knew, was surrounded with similar dark curls.
“…as I can pleasure.” He sucked that bruised flesh into his mouth before the moistness of his tongue soothed away the sting, causing heat to course through Angelique’s body before centering at her core.
She gave a choked sob at her body’s betrayal, her arousal deepening, permeating the air about them, her nether lips swelling and now thoroughly wet with her juices.
Nik lifted his head to look at her between narrowed lids. “You seem to enjoy both,” he mocked.
Angelique gazed at him through the blur of her tears. “There is no longer any reason for me to think I might grow to hate you—because I already do!”
“You are not the first to feel that way, nor, I am sure, will you be the last,” he taunted. “But hate is so akin to love, I am sure we shall neither of us notice the difference.”
“You never loved me,” she accused.
Until six months ago, Nik had believed he knew his wife more intimately and thoroughly than anyone else on earth, and with that knowledge had come emotions Nik had not wished to question too deeply. Angelique was his wife, and even the lack of an heir had not succeeded in shaking what he felt toward her.
Desire.
Affection.
Admiration.
Respect.
All of which Nik now knew had been given under false pretenses. Angelique was none of the things he had believed her to be.
A wife he could be proud of.
A willing, eager bedpartner.
A devoted, if somewhat misguided, daughter.
A loyal subject to the Crown.
Instead, Angelique had used her privileged position as the Duchess of Stonewell to spy for the French. An advantageous position Nik was responsible for having given her when he married her. Making him as guilty as she? Perhaps. But his own actions had been because of his desire for his wife and had nothing to do with treason.
Angelique’s actions had been the cause of hundreds of deaths, both English and French, before the battle at Waterloo had once again put an end to the Corsican tyrant’s reign.
She was also responsible for arranging the murder of one of Nik’s dearest friends and an innocent young lady when the Sinners’ investigation into the identity of the English traitor came too close to discovering Angelique’s secret. Jeremiah Worthington had often been a guest at their dinner table, the other man had admired Angelique, and his reward for that admiration was to be murdered by one of Angelique’s associates on her orders.
One of those things would mean she no longer deserved Nik’s desire, his affection, admiration, or his respect, but being guilty of all of them laid Nik’s emotions bare, leaving him feeling raw and exposed.
“I now know you for exactly what you are, Angelique,” he said coldly in answer to her question.
She met his gaze unflinchingly. “And what is that?”
“Deceitful and vicious,” he rasped.
She gasped. “I believe you have me confused with someone else.”
Unfortunately not. There simply were no other options left now that the other seven ladies under suspicion had been proven innocent, in one way or another. Besides which, one of Angelique’s own French associates had named the Duchess of Stonewell as being the spy.
Nik tightened and tied the silk sash about her wrists before stepping back. “Kneel beside my bed and arrange yourself exactly as you did this morning.”
Angelique’s breath caught in her throat at the remembered humiliation of how she had responded so shamefully to Nik earlier today. “While you punish me for the releases you deliberately gave me?”
Her husband shrugged wide shoulders. “No doubt I shall give you even more of them before the night is over.”
“You—” Arrogant bastard, Angelique finished inwardly, knowing to do so outwardly would only result in more o
f Stonewell’s retribution. Her mouth set stubbornly. “You shall not.”
His brows rose. “Are you challenging me?”
Her cheeks heated. “Take it in whatever way you choose. I am sure you will do so anyway,” she added disgustedly.
He laughed without humor. “As usual, you are correct, madam.”
Madam? As if she were no more than a stranger to him, one of those more obliging women he spoke of, rather than his wife and duchess.
Angelique had been too surprised by Nik’s coldness toward her when he arrived this morning, even more shocked by his behavior here in his bedchamber, to think of refusing him. She had been too numbed and exhausted afterward, and since, to be able to fathom what he was punishing her for.
But this continued injustice in taunting her for some imagined crime when Nik was the one who had distanced himself from her these past months was going too far.
“Do your worst.” Her chin was tilted at a rebellious angle as she marched over to the bed before dropping down onto her knees.
She was determined not to allow Nik to arouse her again today.
Although some of that resolve was shaken when she turned to watch as Nik approached her on stealthy feet and she saw the small knife he held in one of his hands.
Chapter 5
Her gaze remained riveted on that knife. “What do you intend doing with that?”
“You are wearing far too many clothes still,” Nik murmured as he knelt behind her.
Angelique gave a gasp as she realized, from the sudden loosening of her corset and the way her breasts tumbled free of their confinement, that Nik had used the blade to slice through the laced fastening at the back of the garment. A dismissive flick of his wrist dispensed with the corset altogether, leaving Angelique completely bare from the waist up.
She gave a self-conscious groan as a glance downward revealed the heaviness of her breasts were tipped with red and engorged nipples. Nipples that ached for the touch of Nik’s hands and mouth, as he had no doubt intended—
No!
She had to remain strong, could not allow herself to be seduced—
Nik’s hands had cupped beneath her breasts and his fingers and thumbs began to pull on and roll those ultrasensitive nipples, causing Angelique’s channel to swell and flood with hot juices and her back to arch instinctively.
His breath was a warm caress against the side of her neck. “Watch as I pleasure you,” he encouraged huskily.
She shook her head from side to side in protest.
Nik chuckled softly. “I know the responses of your body too well, Angelique.” He drew a cry of anguish from her as he flicked a finger against each nipple. “Every.” Another groan as he gave a squeeze of that sensitive flesh. “Inch.” A gasp as those sensitive nubs received another flick of his fingers. “Of it.” A sob as he gave those swollen berries another squeeze. “And exactly how to— Stay exactly as you are!” One of his arms moved to encircles Angelique’s waist from behind as she attempted to wriggle away from his torment.
Their pose, with Angelique’s back against Nik’s chest, was deliberate on his part, as it had been this morning. This way, he avoided seeing the reproach in Angelique’s gaze and the temptation of kissing the fullness of her lips.
Bringing her to reluctant release was one thing, but looking into her eyes, kissing those delectable lips, seemed too…intimate in the circumstances. Somehow more so than stroking and caressing her body to climax.
He used his other hand to pick up the knife from where he had placed it on the floor beside him, holding himself slightly away from her to pull the material of her drawers away from her skin before slicing the knife down the seam, from her waist to her thighs. Rather than removing the garment completely, Nik allowed the cut material to fall down to her knees as he once again dispensed with the knife.
His cock throbbed at how debauched Angelique looked with her destroyed drawers about her knees. Her back was long and slender, with two enticing dimples above the globes of her ass. A deliciously plump and tempting ass that was still slightly red from the spanking she had received this morning.
Her challenge regarding his ability to take her to climax made Nik now wish to punish that ass in quite a different way.
“Part your legs for me,” he ordered.
“No,” she choked.
Nik could not help but feel a grudging admiration for Angelique’s stubbornness. Even if it was ill-founded and destined to fail. Much as it might pain him to do this, he needed her confession.
His mouth thinned into a grim line. “Do you want another spanking?”
She gave a choking noise. “I believe we have already established that what I want is of no relevance to you!”
“No,” he acknowledged heavily as his arm once again encircled her waist to hold her in place. “But you will remember tonight, Angelique. You will remember this.” She gasped as his other hand squeezed one of the globes of her bottom. “And this.” He ran a finger down the clenched seam between those two plump orbs. “This!” He pushed two finger inside her wet channel before he began to thrust and stroke them against that sensitive bundle of nerves inside her. “Most especially, you will remember that it is me giving you the pleasure you said you would not allow.”
“Who else could it be?”
That was another question Nik wanted an answer to.
The very idea of Angelique possibly having a lover filled him with such rage, he could barely think straight. But it was another possible reason for her having committed treason that he could not simply dismiss.
Angelique wished she could continue to protest, but she could feel her body betraying her once again as the climax built inside her as that unrelenting onslaught to her senses continued. Higher and higher, until she was mindless with desire, at the same time as she sobbed and pleaded against giving in to that release.
She would not, could not, give Nik the satisfaction of her response.
This wasn’t making love. It was pure anger.
Nik’s anger.
Toward her. For some unknown crime he believed she had committed.
With that realization, Angelique was overcome with a tide of numbness. A feeling of chilled calm that went bone-deep. All emotion ceased as she stopped fighting him and simply knelt in acquiescence within the restraint of his arm.
Nik’s indifference these past months had been painful. His coldness toward her since his arrival this morning even more so. But to realize that indifference and coldness had merely been a thin veneer over this burning anger was too much to bear.
“Angelique?”
She heard her name as if from a distance, but was too exhausted, too removed from her surroundings and Nik, to feel able to respond before blackness enveloped and then claimed her completely.
Nik paced his bedchamber with the restlessness of a predator seeking escape from its confinement. Except this confinement was inside himself and of his own making.
To say he had been surprised when Angelique suddenly went limp in his arms would be an understatement.
At first, he had thought she might be feigning that faint as a way of stopping his torment and possibly garnering his sympathy and concern. It was not, after all, the response of a woman who, for so long, had walked the dangerous edge of knowingly committing treason.
But Angelique had not roused prettily from that faint seconds later and attempted to seduce him into believing her claims of innocence, as he had fully expected she might.
A glance toward the bed showed his wife still lay unconscious beneath the covers, even though it was fully ten minutes or more since Nik had untied her and lifted her in his arms before placing her there. Nor could there be any pretense in how deathly white her face now was, the vibrant red of her hair adding to that pallor.
Angelique appeared very small beneath the bedcovers. Fragile. Almost shrunken. As if her skin was stretched too tautly over the fragility of her bones, revealing the passage and flow of blood in the veins beneath.
No matter how many times Nik told himself Angelique had earned his anger, he still felt like a complete bastard for having reduced her to this weakened state.
It had been his intention, once in Kent, to extract a confession from the devious bitch he now believed himself married to. By any means necessary.
Looking at how young and vulnerable Angelique now appeared, Nik found it difficult to believe she was guilty of anything more than possibly naiveté in perhaps having put her trust in the wrong people.
As she had once trusted him but no longer did?
His actions these past twelve hours had been fueled by anger at the thought his own wife could be the traitor he and the other Sinners had been seeking for so many months.
Once his wife had been named as one of the eight women under investigation, Nik had gone painstakingly over every detail of the report that had led to that conclusion. He had questioned dozens of people, confirmed dates and times when information had been relayed to the French. He knew that Romney had done the same, in order to prove the innocence of the woman he had fallen in love with. Both those reports led to the same conclusion.
There was no one else but Angelique left.
And she had been named, damn it, by a prisoner who had nothing to gain by lying when he was already destined for the gallows.
Nik could not weaken now. Dare not weaken. Angelique was guilty, and it was his duty to see that she confessed and duly paid for her crimes.
Angelique woke in complete darkness, not even a candle alight to show where she was or what the time was.
She was lying in a bed, she could tell that much by the mattress beneath her and the feel of the bedcovers against her bare breasts and thighs.
Was she in her own bedchamber or her husband’s still?
And if it was the latter, where was Nik now?
Was he in the shadows of the room somewhere, quiet as a cat about to pounce on a mouse?
Angelique smiled tearfully at the realization she had become the mouse to Nik’s cat. He would be one of the bigger species of feline. A lion or tiger, perhaps. Or possibly a sleek black panther.
Wicked Sinner (Regency Sinners 7) Page 4
