by Marina Myles
Fear building inside her, she stood motionless. Draven slipped his hand from her waist, moved to the window, and shut it. Turning back in her direction, he surveyed her from head to toe. His untamed eyes settled on Isabella’s breasts and she realized her garment must be completely transparent. Reminding herself that she meant to seduce him, she made no move to cover herself, though her heart was banging incessantly against her rib cage.
“Th-thank you for helping me,” she stammered through chattering teeth.
He acknowledged her exposure with one arched brow. When he parted his lips, she braced herself for the rich tone of his voice.
“How ironic,” he said. “We meet again in the same wardrobe in which we parted ways.”
Memories of that night flashed before Isabella in rapid succession.
Draven commanding her to join him in bed.
Her self-consciousness in the sheer negligee she wore.
His hot mouth on hers and his hand prying her legs apart.
The hint of remorse in his eyes as he informed her they would never have children.
And his mysterious disappearance.
She lit a candle branch as she groped for something equally clever to say. Drawing a blank, she forced a smile instead. “You’re not wearing a dressing robe. I suppose you were sleeping when I arrived this evening.”
Draven made no reply as he continued to stare beyond the window at the darkness. It seemed like an eternity before his titillating, aristocratic voice poured forth again. “There is no sign of the moon tonight, thank God.”
She frowned for it seemed an odd thing to say.
Taking a wide, defiant stance he turned his stare in her direction. Eyeing Isabella with insolence, he dragged bent fingers through his dripping hair. She watched the muscles of his stomach flex and release at the motion, and when her gaze returned to his hypnotic face, she realized he’d caught her staring at his torso. Her face burned.
“Why have you returned?” His tone was sharp.
“As I said in my letter, my father and I have fallen upon hard times.”
A trace of annoyance surfaced in his tone. “And as I said in my reply, you are not welcome here.”
“What reply? I have received no correspondence from you for a year.”
“Cursed post,” he glowered. “As slow as a snail.”
“In this letter, did you insist I not come back?”
He nodded, his fathomless eyes boring into hers. “Don’t you remember that I deemed our marriage a mistake?”
“Why then, have you made no effort to end it?” she challenged him.
Fury flushed his face. Unable to provide a response, he remained silent.
“Regardless, I am here,” she said, “and I will not flee this place again. Nor will I be sent away under your command.”
He thrust her an icy stare, but this time she did not avert her eyes. Her plan was not proceeding the way she’d envisioned, but she refused to make her disappointment known to Draven.
“What can I do to make you leave?” he said with a simmering anger.
“Nothing,” she said flatly.
His hands curled into fists by his side. Isabella studied his face and she thought she saw a devious light flicker in his eyes.
“If you insist on staying,” he said, “I will accept your return under two conditions.”
Pride straightened her stance. “What is the first condition?”
“That you remain here always. There will be no leaving this manor.”
“But my father—?”
“He may visit for a day or two at a time.”
“Are you saying that I am a prisoner here?” Her body trembled at the thought.
Draven cast her a grave expression.
Tears rose in Isabella’s eyes. “I can see you are no less cruel than you were before.”
“I heard about what happened to your father.” His nostrils flared as he spoke. “There is no helping him if you don’t agree to remain here.”
She twisted her wedding band, her gut clenching as she deliberated. After a moment she nodded solemnly and said, “I assume the second condition is that we never have children. But I was hoping—”
He interrupted her. “The stipulation that we never have children remains part of our arrangement, yes. But now I no longer wish to share your bed at all.”
“W-what do you mean?” He’d just snatched away her remaining hope that she may become accidentally impregnated in the throes of passion. Her head reeled.
“You heard me,” Draven thundered. “During your departure, I’ve undergone an affliction of sorts and I no longer trust myself in your presence.”
An affliction? Was this a confession of his madness? He did look different to her. The shadows circling his eyes and his rumpled appearance signaled a spiral into melancholia. Perhaps he’d fallen completely apart after she left him, just as the fresh gossip about him claimed.
“Are you ill?” Isabella resisted the urge to feel his head for a fever.
“That’s the simple explanation, but a satisfactory one.”
“Have you seen a doctor?”
“I’ve seen many doctors,” he admitted. “Each one gave me the same diagnosis: my affliction is incurable. Therefore we shan’t speak of it again. Nor shall you inquire after what happened to me on our wedding night.”
“You won’t tell me?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“This is terrible!” She turned away, battling to suppress the rejection he’d stabbed her with.
“What did you expect?” he asked. “A shower of rose petals to greet you? Although you abandoning me did not cause my affliction, your actions disgraced me. Now we are to live as strangers. We will meet at mealtimes and nothing more.”
Isabella gave him a hard look. “I disgraced you after you deceived me and terrified me, by God.”
“God had nothing to do with it.” He stepped closer and she could feel his warm breath on her face.
“Despite the fact that we have nothing in common, I agreed to marry you under the assumption that we would have children,” she said.
“And money did not figure into your reasoning?” His tone was relentless.
She looked at her feet.
Waving the thought away with obvious disinterest, he made for the door. She put a hand on his arm to stop him. She had agreed to the first of his conditions—to remain here forever—but his second requirement changed everything and she would not stand for it.
“Hear me out,” she said in a steely voice. “It is still my dream to be a mother. Now that you have severed all intimacy between us, you have destroyed that very hope. My lord, you leave me no choice but to offer you an ultimatum. You have two days to agree to grant me children or I shall be forced to leave this house and take a lover. It is up to you. You may plant the seed of your own son or daughter or you can help me raise a bastard.”
His face turned as red as blood on white linen. He caught Isabella by the wrist. “You just made a promise to stay here. Furthermore, how dare you make me choose such a thing? You don’t know what you’re asking.”
Isabella yanked her arm away. “Then why don’t you explain it to me?”
Draven’s eyes blazed. “I cannot tell you the reason I shan’t produce an heir, but know this: in two days, under the shadow of a full moon, evil will stalk this entire countryside.”
“Don’t change the subject,” she ordered. “If I don’t get the answer I want in two days, I will return to London.”
“I’m warning you, Isabella.”
“Another warning? I know what you’re trying to do. But scaring me will do no good,” she said. “I have no belief in ghosts or goblins.”
“But do you believe in werewolves?”
The very notion made her heart flutter. Since childhood, the image of a werewolf had frightened her more than any other macabre creature. “There are no native wolves left in England which means werewolves can’t exist here.” She repeated
the words her mother had always reassured her with.
“You’re wrong,” he said. “The wolves are gathering. You see, their alpha appears beneath every full moon, bringing with it an unquenchable thirst for blood. Last month, this beast killed a group of livestock in a violent frenzy. It is the other reason you mustn’t leave this house.”
“You must be joking.”
“I rarely joke.”
“Thank you for your words of caution, but you are talking to a very intelligent woman.”
“Good,” Draven replied, “because intelligent people trust no one.”
He made for the door, brushing her shoulder in the process. Isabella put a hand to the spot he’d touched. Her skin was hot, nearly burned from the contact. She followed Draven to the doorway and watched the shadows envelop his enormous figure. Once he had vanished, she changed into a dry nightshirt and sought the comfort of her bedcovers. Still quaking, she pulled the thick counterpane to meet her chin.
That night, slumber evaded her for when she squeezed her eyes shut, her husband’s brazen stare penetrated the darkness. The image terrified Isabella even more than the idea of a werewolf.
Chapter Seven
Draven left Isabella in a rush of anger and took the stairs that led to his apartments two by two.
Who does that woman think she is? How dare she make me choose between fathering my own child and raising a bastard!
He peeled off his wet shirt and threw it on the floor. He’d meant to scare her away with his punishing stipulations, but, damn it, she had thrust her own outlandish demands upon him instead of falling into his trap.
Thunder exploded dangerously close to the house, yet Draven hardly flinched. He was too busy spewing expletives about how miserably his plan to make Isabella leave had backfired. It had done no bloody good to strip away the possibility of intimacy with her. Or to steal away her freedom. Or to rob her of motherhood—or even frighten her with the idea of a werewolf.
Even his claim that he was plagued by a strange affliction had not fazed her.
He had tried to do the right thing in expelling her from the house, but she had twisted matters into an infuriating knot.
As Draven marched to the top landing, he chided himself. He should have known better than to think his attempt at compassion would work. Selfishness had tainted every inch of it. The reason he’d tried to get Isabella to leave was self-serving: if her scent triggered him to kill her, he wouldn’t be able to tolerate the guilt that came with committing another murder. Killing that Gypsy girl, though her death was accidental, was something that haunted him day and night. And he refused to bear any further remorse.
Now he had another problem. In light of Isabella’s blasted ultimatum, what was he to do?
Draven reached his bedchamber and went in search of a drink. Sloshing brandy into a snifter, his temper continued to percolate. His wife was an enraging woman and her independent spirit maddened him as much as it stirred his libido. The vision of her exposed in her wet nightgown had heated his body. His cock had hardened and he’d been forced to tear his stare from her erect breasts and her alluring triangle of nether hair—which hadn’t been easy feats.
What’s more, the coppery fragrance of Isabella’s blood had stirred his wild side just now. His blood felt like molten lava in his veins and his mouth was watering with a thirst he’d never known before. Could the temptation lead to violence?
No, Draven decided, he couldn’t risk withdrawing his stipulations. If Isabella refused to be scared away, he might be in the same room with her at mealtimes but nothing more. He needed to prevent all physical contact between them—and for her own protection, she was forbidden to leave the grounds of Thorncliff Towers or she might encounter Draven in his canine form.
Without bothering to dry himself off, he sunk into his favorite armchair by the fire. Ignoring the discomfort of his unsatisfied arousal, he downed a mouthful of brandy as Rogers entered the room.
“Are ye ready fer yer medicine, yer lordship?” the valet asked cordially. When he spied the brandy in Draven’s hand, the servant dropped his smile and made a tsking sound. “Sir, ye know it’s unwise to mix lithium and alcohol. Now we can’t give ye yer dosage ’til tomorrow!”
“Just as well.” Draven scowled. “That medicine can go to hell. It hardly does anything for my mood swings. What do those doctors know?”
Rogers’s brows furrowed. “More than we do, sir.”
The valet dragged over a footstool and propped Draven’s heels on top of it. Draven accepted the towel and dry shirt the manservant had folded over his arm.
“Have ye had a chance to greet ’er ladyship?” Rogers asked.
“Yes. And our reunion was disastrous. Isabella came back to help her father, but she is being excessively demanding about it.”
“‘Demandin”?” echoed the valet.
“You know as well as I that I cannot risk fathering a child under my curse.”
“She doesn’t know that, sir.”
“I’m aware that she doesn’t know, damn it! Regardless, she had the gall to suggest that she’s willing to take a lover because I am denying her.”
Shock passed over Rogers’s face. “ ’er ladyship can’t mean it, sir.”
“She doesn’t mean it,” Draven said with certainty. In fact, he possessed knowledge that confirmed his wife’s innocence.
A man of wealth and power, he had hired someone to watch over Isabella during their estrangement. By covertly trailing her, he had discovered that infidelity wasn’t her style. Isabella did nothing inappropriate with a man named Joseph Gossington—an insolent character Draven wanted to strangle with his bare hands. He had kept Gossington at bay by arranging for the would-be suitor to be incapacitated for a very long while.
Of course the planned attack hadn’t been the proper thing to do, but “proper” was a formality Draven had thrown out the window long ago.
Still, if Isabella learned of his distrust, she would be infuriated.
Rogers cleared his throat. “If ye don’t mind me sayin’, sir, be gentle with ’er ladyship. For if she leaves this house again, ye may lose ’er forever.”
By God, that was something Draven hadn’t thought of. His relationship with Isabella had dwindled to the weakest thread, but he was determined to preserve it. That meant he must stall Isabella’s ultimatum without revealing his darkest secret.
No one but Rogers knew of Draven’s harrowing past and the loyal valet didn’t intend to expose the fact that he was under a hex. Not only would revealing the background of his curse put his title in jeopardy, it would give Isabella ammunition to prove that his blue blood was tainted. She would surely have grounds to divorce him in that case.
Of course the more immediate question was: would Draven as the hunter, become the hunted?
He suspected that Isabella’s arrival tonight had set the wheels of her Egyptian prophecy into motion. She was certainly exuding a newfound strength and courage. And considering Draven’s own experience with black magic, he wondered if her transformation was the first step toward his destruction.
While Draven couldn’t be certain of that, there was one thing he was sure of. If he hoped to change the course of his curse, he must gain back the upper hand with Isabella while he tried to keep her prophecy from playing itself out.
Bombarded by his thoughts, he slouched in the chair, shoulders wide, knees shot outward. After Rogers departed, he raised the crystal snifter to eye level. The titian hue of the brandy reminded him of Isabella’s curls on display through her wet pantalets. A stirring burned his loins and his cock rose again. He’d been faithful to his wife during their time apart and now his body ached for pleasures of the flesh. Inhaling Isabella’s sweet, warm scent and caressing her skin, even if it had been through her nightgown, had mounted Draven’s hunger.
Visions of her crested breasts and curved hips rose in his mind again. Deciding there was no harm in desiring his wife from the privacy of his room, he closed his eyes and reac
hed deep inside his breeches with his free hand.
Chapter Eight
Isabella willed her eyes to open in the gray light of dawn. Befuddlement seized her but it only took the sound of rain at her window to remind her that she was in a god-forsaken prison.
She rolled over and stuffed the goose-down pillow beneath her cheek. Her reunion with her sour-mannered husband had gone poorly, to say the least. Not only did it prove that she and Draven were still at odds, it also gave credence to his rumored insanity.
How dare he insist I stay at this house without the possibility of intimacy!
Frowning, Isabella touched her toes to the cold floor. She padded to the window and threw back the heavy, brocade curtains. Dreary daylight glared back at her. She watched as three seagulls soared through the depressing weather. As they floated away from the steep cliffs in a graceful glide, their lonely caws filled the silence.
She peered farther down the coastline. There were no signs of civilization anywhere near the manor, making the estate an ideal place to hide away from the world.
Did Draven really expect her to stay at Thorncliff Towers forever?
He had seemed serious when he spat out the words last night—words that stung like a whip. And when he snatched away any chance of physical contact between them, it shook her to the core. Did he not desire her in the way a husband should desire his wife? She had little experience with men, but the lust in his eyes and the way he kissed her on their wedding night told her otherwise.
Isabella fingered her amulet as she turned away from the window. She knew that giving Draven an ultimatum was an enormous risk, but it wasn’t as though she had planned to present it. He had provoked her and in the midst of her anger, the words had rushed out in a raging stream.
What will his reaction to it be?
She could only hope that pride would prevent Draven from allowing her to seek a lover.
Moving to the basin, Isabella studied her reflection in the mirror. Her dense hair fell about her shoulders in gentle waves and her complexion appeared dewy from the moist, coastal air. With her decent bone structure and a pair of nicely bowed lips—her mother’s lips—her looks drew numerous compliments.