“That gown,” he rumbled in a dark, seductive voice,
“is an invitation to sample what you so willingly display.” She stiffened at his absurd statement. “I have no notion what you insinuate is being displayed.” BOUND GALLEY EDITION March 23, 2012
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There was a smile mixed with the edge in his voice.
“Lass, you ken damn well what I mean.” His body shifted, and hers jumped as if being lanced with a lightning bolt as she felt the smooth texture of his nails grazing the mounds of her décolletage. Oh, God, he’s running the back of his hand along me.
“Such a sight, lass, makes a man dangerous,” he murmured, though Elizabeth could hardly hear him for the roar of blood in her ears, and the outrage that made rational thought impossible. “Such a display is just what a man needs before he dies.”
His lips followed the path of his fingers. Those seductive lips of his, which could pleasure and tease, or thin with cruelty, were grazing her chin, working down the column of her throat as he gently inserted his fingers into the cleft between her breasts. “Oh, aye, to die in arms such as this, and to be buried in such soft, lush flesh, is what every man should wish for.”
“You are drunk, sir,” she cried, her fingers fisting in the folds of her silk gown.
“Not too drunk, luv,” he drawled before flicking the tip of his tongue in the hollow of her throat. “No’ so far in my cups not to be able to pleasure ye the way yer asking for by wearing this gown and revealing all this creamy flesh.”
“It was not for your benefit, I assure you,” she retorted, but he only chuckled as he lowered his head and allowed the silken ends of his unbound hair to cascade over her bare shoulder.
“Nevertheless, lass, I’ll take what I can get.” Determination paid off, for she waited, breathless, as Alynwick slowly dragged his mouth across the expanse of her bosom. When she could see him in her mind, she BOUND GALLEY EDITION March 23, 2012
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raised her hand and struck him hard against his cheek, the sound a loud crack in the quiet.
“I am asking for nothing. You, on the other hand, are asking for another sharp slap.” He laughed, reached for her wrists and raised them high above her head, holding her captive. She was stunned by his reaction, shocked that he had not been at least startled by the sound slap she had given him.
“Do it again, Beth,” he rasped, and the name on his lips—the only lips to have ever called her that—made her struggle in his hold.
“Again,” he said, almost panting. “Touch me again.”
“You are a degenerate!” she spat, but he only held her wrists tighter. “You disgust me.” How could he still be aroused? she wondered. And she truly felt ill, thinking that he might have taken some pleasure from that slap, and her present struggle.
“I might meet my end tonight. What can you give me in case my death might come to pass?”
“A good kick in your nether regions if you do not un-hand me this instant. Besides, you will not die tonight, or any other night, for the devil doesn’t want you in his realm, because you are even more evil and wicked than Lucifer himself!”
“Aye, I am, and I’ve come to give you a taste of that wickedness.”
“I have never been tempted by your evil bent.” The air stilled, and she bit her lip—but it was too late.
“Oh, aye, lass, you were once. You were tempted and torn asunder by it. Should I remind you what it was like to sin with me?”
He pressed up against her, his mouth found hers and he claimed her fully—not softly, beckoning, but hard and strong. His mouth twisted over hers, opening, part-BOUND GALLEY EDITION March 23, 2012
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ing her lips. Stealing her breath as he stroked his tongue inside, commanding her with deep sweeps as that insistent, searching tongue mated with hers in a fierce joining.
Oh, that it had been horrendous and grotesque. But it was not. His invasion robbed her not only of her breath, but of her thoughts, and the inner voice that reminded her that she had once followed him down this very same path, and he had abandoned her, left her alone and ashamed on a road that led nowhere but to heartache.
“Beth,” he groaned as he broke away and buried his face in her throat. “I dinna want this night to be like this—dinna want more sins heaped on me before I go to that field.”
“Is that it, then?” she snapped, pushing him away.
“You thought you ought to give me a kiss to make it all better? To placate what is left of your tarnished honour?”
“I didn’t want to die with things left unsaid. With you thinking… Well, with the way things are between us.”
“You are fighting some idiotic duel over some tart you’ve bedded, and you’re afraid you might lose? And before you go to hell you want to be forgiven?”
“No, I want to apologize.”
Lizzy stopped him from saying anything else. “Save your breath, Alynwick, because it’s useless.”
“I’m sorry, Elizabeth. This may be the last time I can tell ye—”
“I don’t give a damn about how sorry you are, or that you have at last come around seeking forgiveness. And furthermore, I will take this moment to relieve you of the misapprehension you are labouring under. I do not care, and have not cared for a very long time, whether you live or die, Lord Alynwick. I only regret that it will be someone else’s bullet that may put you out of your misery, and not mine!”
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He let her go then, and she moved past him just as she heard Lucy’s voice calling to her. He stopped her, wrapped his strong fingers around her upper arm, holding her close to his body so she could feel his chest move with each breath, feel the movement of his mouth against the shell of her ear. “Come the morrow, if I am left alive upon Grantham Field, be assured that I will come for you.
We have unfinished business between us, and I intend to end what we have started here tonight.”
“You had your chance, my lord,” she retorted. “You didn’t want it then any more than you do now.”
“So little you know,” he said, and she could tell he had whispered that between set teeth. “You couldn’t possibly even begin to know what I want.” Lizzy stilled for a fraction, warred for the briefest instant before saying, “It is of little consequence what you desire, Alynwick, for now I find I no longer want you.” BOUND GALLEY EDITION March 23, 2012
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CHAPTER THREE
I NO LONGER want you.
Was there a more painful phrase in the English-speaking world? Iain didn’t think so. He’d been hurt, his heart smashed open, bleeding, upon hearing those words. Now, hours later, he still bled, the severed vessels opening every time he heard that hated sentiment repeated in his turbulent thoughts. Even closing his eyes, he heard her, and saw her, too—the way she had stood up to him, back straight, regal chin tilted at the perfect angle to relay feminine hauteur. She had not been playing coy when she had told him that. She had been speaking the truth, a truth born deep in her soul. And hours later, the bleeding continued, and the pain of that reality shattered whatever illusion and pitiful hope he had been desperately clinging to.
Most horrible, for him, was the realization that he had not even known he’d been clinging to anything, much less hope. But comprehension had dawned the minute Georgiana had challenged him about regrets. It had been then that he realized he harboured the sentimental emotion.
For the first time in his life
he had not run from the knowledge, from the feeling that made its presence known. He’d accepted it, and by the time he had arrived at the Sumners’ musicale, he had actually claimed it, welcomed it. But with that revelation, so foreign to him, BOUND GALLEY EDITION March 23, 2012
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and yes, terrifying to admit, had come the heartache of knowing that Elizabeth had washed her hands of him.
She didn’t want him. And he had never stopped wanting her.
“Miserable existence,” he muttered as he lifted the bottle to his mouth and drank heartily of the Scotch. He deserved no less, he knew. But somewhere inside him he had always believed that Elizabeth York understood him. Knew deep down the extent of his flaws and the defects of his personality. He had always thought that she accepted that about him, and had forgiven him his trespasses all those years ago, like the angel he not only thought her to be, but knew her to be.
But his angel had teeth—and claws—that had effectively eviscerated him tonight. By God, what had he been about, doing what he had? Demanding such things? He knew better than to let the years of hunger for her get the best of him. And they had.
He’d been in a murderous, incredulous rage when he’d first glimpsed Elizabeth standing beside the earl. A living, breathing darkness had blanketed him, and while he wished he could feign ignorance as to its cause, he knew better. The carpet had been torn from beneath his feet, and landing flat on the ground had winded him. A sort of red mist had gathered and clouded his sight: rage stemming from the shattered hope that one day he might find his way back to her.
It had always been a comfort to him—a perverse comfort, because he was a capricious man who took pleasure in such selfish thoughts as the one he had long clung to.
In his mind, there was still time, still a chance that she might one day be his. Elizabeth did not go out in Society. She did not accept men’s arms and stroll about salons with them. In essence, there was no other man in BOUND GALLEY EDITION March 23, 2012
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her life. No golden male to rival Iain’s black soul. And the knowledge had always comforted him.
Selfishly, he wanted her to stay free of courtships and such. It gave him hope. And tonight, when he had been feeling strangely melancholy and…alone, he had needed Elizabeth. Needed for them to find their way to one another again. And that… Well, that had been all dashed to the farthest regions of hell.
Seeing her with Sheldon—the smile, that was not forced nor feigned—had ignited in Iain something unholy. Some damned monster that gnashed and snarled and struck out with huge, clawed hands.
She had been happy, and he had been more than un-happy to see her that way. Misery, the old saying went, loves company. Iain had believed that Elizabeth and he shared the same misery, the same unrequited longing. A love denied, but that would not die despite the cloying darkness that threatened its light.
But tonight had made clear that she did not share his misery. He’d been confronted with the fact that he was a fool. That he had taken the one thing in the world that had ever meant anything to him and tossed it away like a child’s toy, only to be outraged when another had come by to pluck it from the sand.
Iain had toyed with Elizabeth, cast her aside and left her to find her own way in the world. Sheldon, that bastard, had been the one to find her, to pick her up and marvel at the treasure she presented.
Love unrequited. Love denied—and spurned. Iain felt the stab of pain where his heart should be. Pressing his eyes shut, he sought to banish the sensation from his awareness.
If he were any sort of gentleman, hell, any sort of decent human being, he’d slink away with his tail between BOUND GALLEY EDITION March 23, 2012
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his legs and never look back. But he wasn’t decent. He had the pride of a marquis and a bloody Highlander. Everything inside him screamed to take what he thought rightfully belonged to him, honourable or no.
It’s only fair, you bastard, a taunting voice inside him jeered. You’re getting a taste of your own medicine.
And it was a damn bitter pill to swallow. One best diluted with a good single-malt Scotch.
“God save us, you’re foxed!”
Iain held up the crystal decanter as he studied Black entering his carriage. He didn’t have the patience for the earl, not tonight. Friends or no, he couldn’t stomach the earl’s happiness, which seemed to radiate from his every pore. “Good and drunk,” he replied in a slurred voice.
“Thought I’d give that fat, pompous Larabie a bit of an edge tonight. Lord knows he’ll need one.”
“You cannot meet him like this. I doubt you can even walk.”
“I can, too,” he drawled, before taking another sip.
Black snatched the decanter, spilling some of the amber liquid over Iain’s greatcoat, which was open, revealing his kilt and sporran. Black’s dark brows rose in question, and Iain gave a foul hand gesture that should have made him feel better, but only made him realize he was verging on pathetic.
Christ, he hoped he’d die tonight and save himself the mortification of living another day to lock eyes with Elizabeth York, the haughty spinster of Sussex. The angel of your very sinful dreams…
The Sussex Angel, she had been called then, the year of her come-out. She had been, too. From the first moment he’d laid eyes on her, he’d wanted her. Part of him wished to bask in her goodness, her innocence. The other BOUND GALLEY EDITION March 23, 2012
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part had wanted to corrupt her, to drag her from the light and immerse her in sin.
She was still a damned angel, even approaching thirty.
How could she still possess those beautiful, artless grey eyes and that pure, pale flesh? She was fair and perfect. He was black and corrupted. And damn him, every thought in his head kept coming back to her tonight, and the realization that he had finally allowed himself to admit to something that she spurned. That she no longer desired. That would not fucking die!
“What the devil are you doing here, besides irritating me?” he demanded in a churlish tone. “Thought you’d be ensconced in your chambers, enjoying the virtue of your marriage bed with your lovely wife.”
“Don’t,” Black growled, “mock what I have with my wife. You will never understand the sanctity to be found in bed with a woman who is the other half of your soul.” He wanted another drink, and to tell the pompous Black to go to hell, but he sneered instead. “No, in fact, I will not. I don’t have a soul, ergo there is no other half wandering about, waiting for me to get into bed. No arms waiting to hold me when I arrive home.”
“And whose fault is that?” his friend demanded.
“I’m done with this conversation. Why are you here, and not Sussex?”
Folding his arms across his chest, Black watched him through the dim shadows of the carriage’s interior. “Sussex sent a missive around. It was terse and to the point.
He stated he couldn’t make it, and requested that I come to be your second.”
With Lucy Ashton. That’s where His Grace was tonight. Trying to get a hand up the beauty’s skirt. Thrown over for a woman and a toss, Iain thought, and grunted in amusement. Although he couldn’t reasonably think such BOUND GALLEY EDITION March 23, 2012
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a thing. Sussex wanted the lovely Lucy Ashton with a blind, consuming need. It left a bad taste in Iain’s mouth, knowing the determined duke would one day have her, and he himself would be forced
to sit amongst those two couples and watch them, their sickening love cloying the air with an unfashionable and most disagreeable completeness. Especially when he knew he’d still be tupping whores, and longing for Elizabeth in the darkest, loneli-est hours of the night.
“As your second,” Black continued, allowing his gaze to rove across Iain’s drunken form, “I must make it clear that you are in no shape whatsoever to meet Lord Larabie on the field of honour.”
“Honour?” he snorted, aware how disgust dripped like venom in his voice. “There is no honour in this match.
I slept with his wife in the attempt to find out information about our enemy. There is no honour in bedding another man’s wife.”
“And yet you do it with alarming frequency.”
“I never pursue them,” Iain growled, focusing his gaze outside the window. “They come to me.”
“And that makes it all right?”
He shrugged. “I don’t expect you to understand.” Leaning back, Black settled himself on the bench, stretching his long legs out before him. “I know why you do it.”
That caught Iain’s attention, as did the conviction he heard. “Like hell,” he growled, but Black only shrugged, then met his gaze through the moonlit shadows.
“You want to punish them. The wives, for pursuing you, for so readily forsaking their vows. And you want to hurt the cuckolded husbands by showing them how poor their choice in wife was. In a way, it’s a sense of honour for you, an absolution, if you will. Those that participate BOUND GALLEY EDITION March 23, 2012
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with you in the carnal act, in your opinion, deserve what they get, because they have been so dishonourable as to break their marriage vows in the first place. In your own way, you have a code of honour, and while you would never admit to it, you hold the vows of marriage as something sacred. I am correct, aren’t I?”
“You just said I would never admit it, so why bother to ask?” he grunted.
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