I learned a lot about my future bride as the seconds ticked by, and all she did was stare down at me. I learned she was willful. Defiant.
But ultimately yielding.
Because when she moved, it was to the spiral stair that led her down to the stone floor where I stood.
Perhaps not yielding so much as curious, I amended as she drew near, folding her arms over her chest as if she was drawing armor around herself in order to face me.
I took a moment to consider her, this bride I had purchased outright. This girl who was my revenge and my prize, all in one.
She will do, I thought, pleased with myself.
“I suppose,” I said after a moment, in the cool tone I used to reprimand my subordinates, “you cannot help the hair.”
Imogen glowered at me. Her eyes were an unusual shade of brown that looked like old copper coins when they filled with temper, as they did now. It made me wonder how they would look when she was wild with passion instead.
That lust hit me again. Harder this time.
“It is much like being born without a title, I imagine,” she retorted.
It took me a moment to process that. To understand that this messy, unruly girl had thrust such an old knife in so deftly, then twisted it.
I couldn’t think of the last time that had happened. I couldn’t think of the last person who had dared.
“Does it distress you that you must lower yourself to marry a man so far beneath you?” I asked, all silk and threat. “A man who is little more than a mongrel while you have been deliberately bred from blood kept blue enough to burn?”
I could not seem to help but notice that her skin was so fair it was like cream and made me...hungry. And when her eyes glittered, they gleamed copper.
“Does it distress you that I am not my sister?” she asked in return.
I hadn’t expected that.
I felt myself move, only dimly aware that I was squaring my shoulders and changing my stance, as if I found myself engaged in hand-to-hand combat. I supposed I was.
“You cannot imagine that the two of you could be confused,” I murmured, but I was looking at her differently. I was viewing her as less a pawn and more an opponent. First a knife, then a sucker punch.
So far, Imogen Fitzalan was proving to be far more interesting that I had anticipated.
I wasn’t sure I knew where to put that.
“As far as I am aware,” she said coolly, “you are the only one who has ever confused us.”
“I assure you, I am not confused.”
“Perhaps I am. I assume that purchasing my hand in marriage requires at least as much research as the average online dating profile. Did you not see a picture? Were you not made aware that my sister and I share only half our blood?”
“I cannot say I gave the matter of your appearance much thought,” I said, and I expected that to set her back on her heels.
But instead, the odd creature laughed.
“A man like you, not concerned with his own wife’s appearance? How out of character.”
“I cannot imagine what you think you know of my character.”
“I have drawn conclusions about your character based on the way you allow yourself to be photographed.” Her brow lifted. “You are a man who prefers the company of a very particular shape of woman.”
“It is not their shape that concerns me, but whether or not other men covet them.” This was nothing but the truth, and yet something about the words seemed almost...oily. Weighted. As if I should be ashamed of saying such a thing out loud when I had said it many times before.
Though not, I amended, to a woman I intended to make my wife.
“You like a trophy,” she said.
I inclined my head. “I am a collector, Imogen. I like only the finest things.”
She smiled at me, but it struck me as more of a baring of teeth. “You must be disappointed indeed.”
Though she looked as if the notion pleased her.
I moved then, closer to her, enjoying the way she stood fast instead of shrinking away. I could see the way her pulse beat too fast in her neck. I could see the way her copper eyes widened. I reached over and helped myself to one of those red-gold curls, expecting her hair to be coarse. Much as she was.
But the curl was silky against my fingers, sliding over my skin like a caress. And something about that fell through me like a sudden brush fire.
If I was a man who engaged in self-deception, I would have told myself that was not at all what I felt.
But I had built my life and my fortune, step by impossible step in the face of only overwhelming odds, on nothing short of brutal honesty. Toward myself and others, no matter the cost.
I knew I wanted her.
She reached up as if to bat my hand away, but appeared to think better of it, which raised her another notch or two in my estimation. “You have yet to answer the question. You can marry anyone you like. Why on earth would you choose me?”
“Perhaps I am so enamored of the Fitzalan name that I have hungered for nothing but the opportunity to align myself with your father since the day I met your sister. And you should know, Imogen, that I always get what I want.”
She swallowed. I watched the pale column of her neck move when she did. “They say you are a monster.”
I was so busy looking at her mouth and imagining how those plump lips would feel wrapped around the hungriest part of me that I almost missed the way she said that. And more, the look on her face when she did.
As if she was not playing a game, any longer.
As if she was actually afraid of me.
And I had dedicated my life to making certain that as many people as possible were afraid of me, because a healthy fear bred respect and I did not much care if they feared me so long as they respected me.
But somehow, I did not wish this to be true of Imogen Fitzalan. My bride, for her sins.
“Those who say I am a monster are usually poor losers,” I told her, aware that I was too close to her. And yet neither she nor I moved to put more space between us. “It is in their best interests to call me a monster, because who could be expected to prevail against a creature of myth and lore? Their own shortcomings and failures are of no consequence, you understand. Not if I am a monster instead of a man.”
Her gaze searched my face. “You want to be a monster, then. You enjoy it.”
“You can call me whatever you like. I will marry you all the same.”
“Again. Why me?”
“Why does this upset you?” I didn’t fight the urge that came over me then, to reach over and take her chin in my fingers and hold her face where I wanted it. Simply because I could. And because, though she stilled, she did not jerk away. “I know that you have spent your life preparing for this day. Why should it matter if it is me or anyone else?”
“It matters.”
Her voice was fierce and quiet at once. And emotion gleamed in her lovely eyes, though I couldn’t discern what, exactly, that sheen meant.
“Did you have your heart set on another?” I asked, aware as I did so that something I had never felt before stirred to life within me. “Is that why you dare come to me with all this belligerence?”
It was because she was mine, I told myself. That was why I felt that uncharacteristic surge of possessiveness. I had not felt it for a woman before, it was true. Despite how much I had wanted Celeste back in the day and how infuriated I had been when I had lost her to that aristocratic zombie of a count she called her husband.
I had wanted Celeste, yes.
But that was a different thing entirely than knowing she was meant to be mine.
Imogen was mine. There was no argument. I had paid for the privilege—or that was how her father planned to spin this match.
He and I knew the truth. I was a wealthy man, my power
and might with few equals. I took care of my sisters and my mother because I prided myself on my honor and did my duty—not because they deserved that consideration. And because I did not want them to be weak links others could use to attack me.
But otherwise I had no ties or obligations, and had thus spent my days dedicating myself to the art of money.
The reality was that Dermot Fitzalan needed my wealth. And better still, my ability to make more with seeming ease. He needed these things far more than I needed his daughter’s pedigree.
But I had decided long ago that I would marry a Fitzalan heiress, these daughters of men who had been the power behind every throne in Europe at one point or another. I had determined that I would make my babies on soft, well-bred thighs, fatten them on blue blood, and raise them not just rich, but cultured.
I had been so young when I had seen Celeste that first time. So raw and unformed. The animal they accused me of being in all the ways that mattered.
I had never seen a woman like her before. All clean lines and beauty. I had never imagined that a person could be...flawless.
It had taken me far longer than it should have—far longer than it would today, that was for certain—to see the truth of Celeste Fitzalan, now a countess of petty dreams and an angry old man’s promises because that was what she had wanted far more than she had wanted me.
But my thirst for my legacy had only grown stronger.
“If there was another,” my confounding betrothed said, a mulish set to that fine mouth and a rebellion in her gaze, “I would hardly be likely to tell you, would I?”
“You can tell me anything you like about others,” I told her, all menace and steel. “Today. I would advise you to take advantage of this offer. Come the morning, I will take a far dimmer view of these things.”
“It doesn’t matter what I want,” she threw at me, pulling her chin from my grasp.
I assumed we were both well aware that I allowed it.
“I never said that it did. You are the one who came here. Was it only to call me names? To ask me impertinent questions? Or perhaps you had another goal in mind?”
“I don’t know why I came,” Imogen said, and I could tell by the way her voice scraped into the air between us that she meant that.
But there was a fire in me. A need, dark and demanding, and I was not in the habit of denying myself the things I wanted.
More than this, she was to be my wife in the morning.
“Don’t worry,” I told her with all that heat and intent. “I know exactly why you came.”
I hooked my hand around her neck, enjoying the heat of her skin beneath the cover of those wild curls. I pulled her toward me, watching her eyes go wide and her mouth drop open as if she couldn’t help herself. As if she was that artless, that innocent.
I couldn’t understand the things that worked in me. To take her, to possess her, to bury myself in her body when she looked nothing like the women that I usually amused myself with.
But none of that mattered.
Because I already owned her. All that remained was the claiming, and I wanted it. Desperately.
I dropped my mouth to hers.
CHAPTER THREE
Imogen
HE WAS KISSING ME.
The monster was kissing me.
And I hardly knew what to do.
His mouth was a bruising thing, powerful and hard. It should have hurt, surely. I should have wanted nothing more than to get away from all that intensity. I should have tried. But instead, I found myself pushing up on my toes and leaning toward him...
As if I wanted more.
He cradled the back of my head in one hand and moved his lips over mine.
And I wanted. I wanted...everything.
I had dreamed of kisses half my life. I had longed for a moment like this. A punishing kiss, perhaps. Or something sweet and filled with wonder. Any kind of kiss at all, if I was honest.
But nothing could have prepared me for Javier Dos Santos.
Nothing could have prepared me for this.
I felt his tongue against the seam of my lips, and couldn’t help myself from opening up and giving him entry. And then I thought I would give him anything.
And even though I understood, on some distant level, what he was doing to me—that his tongue was testing mine, dancing here, then retreating—all I could feel was the heat. The heat. Something greedy and wild and impossibly hot, thrilling to life inside me. What I had called dread had melted into something else entirely, something molten. It wound around and around inside my chest, knotted up in my belly, and dripped like honey even lower.
And still he kissed me.
His arms were a marvel. Heavy and hard, they wrapped around me, making me feel things I could hardly understand. Small, yet safe. Entirely surrounded, yet sweet, somehow.
Still Javier’s mouth moved on mine. He bent me backward, over one strong arm. His heavy chest, all steel planes and granite, pressed hard against mine, until I felt my breasts seem to swell in response.
It was like a fever.
The ache was everywhere, prickling and hot, but I knew—somehow I knew—I wasn’t ill.
He bent me back even farther and there was a glory in it. I felt weightless, too caught up in all that fire and honey to worry whether or not my feet still touched the ground.
And then I felt his fingers as they found their way beneath the hem of my dress, a scandalous caress that made my heart stutter. Yet he didn’t stop. He tracked that same sweet flame along the length of my thigh, climbing ever higher.
My brain shorted out. The world went white-hot, then red-hot, then it became nothing at all but need.
His hand was a wonder. Not soft and manicured, like the hands of the very few men whose hands I’d shaken at some point or other, but hard and calloused. Big, and brutally masculine.
He traced some kind of pattern into my skin, and then laughed against my mouth when I shuddered in response.
His taste was like wine. It washed through me in the same way, leaving me flushed, giddy.
And then his fingers toyed with the edge of my panties, until I was sure I stopped breathing.
Not that I cared when he angled his head, taking the kiss deeper. Hotter.
While at the same time, his fingers moved with bold certainty to find my soft heat.
And then, to my wonder and shame, he began to stroke me, there below.
His tongue was in my mouth. His fingers were deep between my legs, and I couldn’t remember why I had ever thought this man was a monster. Or maybe I thought he was a far greater monster than I’d ever imagined.
Either way, I surrendered. And my surrender felt like strength.
It was like some kind of dance. Parry, then retreat. His mouth and his hand, one and then the other, or both at once.
Before I knew it, that fever in me was spreading. I shook, everywhere. I could feel my own body grow stiff in his arms and I felt myself edging ever closer to crisis.
I would have pushed him away if I could. If I could make my hands do anything but grip the front of his shirt as I shook and stiffened and spun further and further off into that blazing need.
I lost myself somewhere between Javier’s hot, hard mouth and his pitiless hand between my legs. I lost myself, and I followed that shaking, and I hardly understood why I was making those greedy, shameful noises in the back of my throat—
“Come apart for me, Imogen,” he growled against my mouth, as if he owned even this. “Now.”
And there was nothing in me but heat and surrender.
I exploded on cue.
And I was only dimly aware of it when Javier set me away from him. He settled me on the lip of the table behind us, ran his hands down my arms as if he was reminding me of the limits of my own body, and even smoothed the skirt of my dress back into plac
e.
I was tempted to find it all sweet, however strange a word that seemed when applied to a man so widely regarded as a monster. A man I still thought of in those terms. But there was a tumult inside of me.
My head spun and everything inside me followed suit. I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t make sense of what had happened.
And when my breathing finally slowed enough that I could think beyond it, Javier was waiting there. He stood in the same position he’d been standing before, his hands thrust into the pockets of the trousers I knew at a glance had been crafted by hand in an atelier in a place like Milan or Paris.
His might seemed more overwhelming now. I had a vague memory of the stable boy’s dreamy blue eyes, but they seemed so insubstantial next to Javier’s relentless masculinity. I felt it like a storm. It buffeted me, battering my skin, until I felt the electricity of it—of him—as if he had left some part of himself inside me.
I told myself I hated him for it.
“You look upset, mi reina,” Javier murmured. I understood the words he used—Spanish for my queen—but stiffened at the dark current of mockery in it. “Surely not. I am certain someone must have prepared you for what goes on between a man and a woman no matter how hard your father has worked to keep you locked up in a tower.”
I was not one of the sacrificial maidens ransomed out of this place in centuries past, despite appearances. I might have lived a sheltered life, but that life came with abundant internet access.
Still, I followed an urge inside of me, a dark insistence I didn’t have it in me to resist.
“I prepared in the usual way,” I told him. “Locked towers might work in fairy tales. They are harder to manage in real life, I think.”
And when his dark gaze turned to fire and burned where it touched me, I only held it. And practiced that half smile I had seen on my sister’s face earlier.
“I will assume you mean that your preparation for marriage took place under the careful tutelage of disinterested nuns as they discussed biology.”
I channeled Celeste. “Assume what you like.”
Right there, before my eyes, Javier...changed. I had thought he was stone before, but he became something harder. Flint and granite, straight through.
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