“For—for challenging you.”
“And?”
“Teasing you.”
“And…?”
“And what?”
“You forgot to thank me prettily.” Zachary wondered if he had gone too far as he felt the stiffening of Rissa’s spine beneath his restraining hand.
He really had not expected her to hold out for so long, knew by the stinging pain of his palm that his Angel’s bottom cheeks must hurt as badly, if not more so. But once he had started the madness, it became impossible for him to stop.
A part of him had not wanted to stop.
There was something intensely…satisfying about administering this form of punishment to the delicious curves of the bottom defined so intimately by the fitted suede. He would have preferred to bare her bottom completely but had decided against it in the knowledge two of Weston’s men were nearby.
But even so, his cock, usually half-engorged whenever he was in his Angel’s presence, had become fully erect and throbbing within seconds of him starting the chastisement.
Telling him he had perhaps enjoyed spanking Rissa a little too much.
Far too much?
Zachary gave a groan of self-disgust as Rissa turned to look at him with tear-wet eyes, her flushed cheeks showing further evidence of her having been crying for several minutes. “Dear God, what have I done?” He immediately helped her onto her feet, standing up himself to steady her as she swayed. “I am so sorry, Angel.” He held her warmth tightly in his arms, and was instantly made aware of the fact her arms were still tangled up in her jacket. “So very, very sorry.” He released her and pulled the jacket back up over her shoulders, concealing her chemise-covered breasts.
Rissa held his gaze as she immediately pulled the jacket off completely now she was able to do so, before her arms moved about his waist and she placed her forehead against his chest.
Zachary’s heart began to pound at her silence. “Speak to me, Angel!”
At last, she lifted his head. “I have not thanked you prettily yet,” she reminded, her eyes no longer wet with tears but shining with another emotion completely.
“Forget I said that.” Zachary gave a self-disgusted shake of his head. “I have no idea what I was thinking to have behaved in such a brutish manner—”
“I thank you prettily, Zachary.” Rissa’s gaze held his as she moved her arms up to rest her hands on his shoulders, the flush on her cheeks now for quite a different reason as she rose up on tiptoe and brushed the softness of her lips against his. “Very prettily.” She pressed her lips against his a second time.
Zachary’s lips immediately parted, his arms tightening about her possessively as he deepened the kiss.
A kiss Rissa returned with equal passion.
When Zachary first began to spank her, Rissa was aware only of the humiliation she felt and then the stinging pain. But somewhere in the midst of those continued smacks delivered to her bottom, she had begun to feel the aroused warmth of her body. The hard tingling of her nipples. The heat between her thighs, accompanied by a gush of juices from her channel that wet the swollen lips there and caused the tiny nubbin above to throb.
The hard length of Zachary’s cock, now pressed against her abdomen, told her he was equally as aroused.
Rissa rubbed the hardness of her nipples against Zachary’s chest as he continued to kiss her, sending waves of pleasure to her core and intensifying that ache between her thighs. A need to have that ache assuaged by being filled with the hard throb of Zachary’s cock. Taking. Claiming. Possessing her.
Zachary’s lips moved to the arched column of her throat and then lower. “God, Angel, how much I want you!”
Rissa drew in a sharp breath when Zachary sucked one of her erect nipples into the heat of his mouth through the thin material of her chemise. Pleasure coursed through her as his tongue lashed against that sensitive tip, her knees trembling as the palm of one of his hands cupped beneath its twin, his fingers pulling and squeezing her other nipple.
She wanted more. Needed those fingers between her thighs. Caressing and stroking her. Giving her the pleasure Sophia had told her all women were entitled to but were so rarely given by the men in their lives. Rissa already knew that Zachary was not a selfish lover, that he wanted her pleasure as well as his own—
“Well, well, it would seem Weston’s daughter is just as much of a slut as her stepmother!”
Rissa froze at the sound of the insulting words spoken by a mocking male voice she was sure she had never heard before. Zachary was equally as tense as he wrenched his mouth away from her breast to turn and look at the man who was pointing a pistol at the two of them.
Zachary pushed Rissa protectively behind him the moment he saw the pistol in the other man’s hand. He inwardly cursed himself for having allowed his guard to slip. For having been so caught up in making love to his Angel, he had not been aware of the other man’s approach.
A scowl darkened his brow as he questioned where the devil Weston’s men were that they had allowed this to happen.
“They are taking a well-earned sleep,” Lord Robert Huntley, the Earl of Royston, informed him mockingly, obviously guessing Zachary’s thoughts.
Zachary’s brows rose. “A brief or permanent one?”
“For the moment, it is a brief one,” Royston dismissed. “I see no point rousing Weston’s ire, or your own, any more than it is currently.”
It was hard for Zachary to believe the other man had once been his best friend. A friend who had betrayed him in the worst way possible by allowing Zachary to suffer for ten years for the crime Royston had committed.
The same man now seemed intent on exacting his revenge upon Zachary and anyone else the other man felt was responsible for his incarceration in an asylum.
Chapter 8
“I have no idea what or who the two of you are talking about,” Rissa snapped. “And how dare you talk about my stepmother in that insulting manner.” She verbally attacked Royston as she stepped out from behind Zachary, an angry flush to her cheeks as she glared at the other man with glittering gray eyes.
“Clarissa, no,” Zachary bit out harshly as he bent to scoop her jacket from the leaf-strewn ground and thrust it at her. His hope was that his use of her formal name might alert her to the seriousness of this situation. “This is not the time for one of your indignant tirades,” he warned when he could see by her angrily flushed cheeks she had not heeded the warning.
“Tirades?” That expressive gray gaze was now turned accusingly on him. “It should be you, as the gentleman, who was defending Sophia and me when another man chooses to insult us.”
Zachary held her gaze as he pointedly reminded, “A man who is currently pointing a pistol at the two of us.”
She gave a scathing snort. “He can only shoot one of us, and quite frankly, I very much doubt he intends doing even that.”
Zachary drew in a sharp breath even as he gave his previous best friend a sideways glance. Royston was more than capable of shooting one of them. If that one happened to be Zachary, then he hated to think what might happen to his Angel once he was incapacitated or dead.
Royston’s mouth twisted into a sneer. “It would seem you have found yourself a little hellion, Harrogate.” His gaze swept over Rissa’s partially unclothed body, lingering appreciatively on the fullness of her breasts, the dark rose of one nipple clearly visible against material dampened by Zachary’s mouth.
A nerve pulsed in Zachary’s left cheek as he faced Rissa, at the same time hiding her exposed breasts from Royston. “Put your damned jacket on,” he bit out between clenched teeth. “Now,” he instructed harshly as he could see she was about to argue with him. Again. The spanking he had given her had obviously achieved nothing toward deterring her reckless nature.
Instead, it had aroused both of them to a degree that neither of them had been aware of Royston’s presence until it was too late.
“Do it now, Clarissa,” Zachary rasped.
R
issa was aware this was the second time Zachary had called her by her full name. As a warning she take the other man more seriously than she had so far? “The two of you seem to know each other,” she muttered as she quickly pulled on and refastened her velvet jacket.
The man with the pistol was the one to answer her. “Sharing a bed with the same woman not once but many times is sure to result in a certain intimacy.”
Rissa’s eyes widened in shock. Zachary and this other man had—they had—
“We were aged nineteen at the time, and I believe it only happened twice,” Zachary bleakly answered the other man.
Once, twice, or dozens of times, Rissa was still shocked. And curious. How did two men share a woman at the same time? Rissa knew the rudiments of lovemaking from Sophia’s teachings at the school, knew that a man’s cock could as easily go into a woman’s mouth as her cunny, so perhaps—
“Your little hellion is imagining the event even as we speak,” the other man taunted. “Perhaps she would like the two of us to give her a practical demonstration?”
“Shut your filthy mouth, Royston,” Zachary snarled, hands clenched into fists at his sides.
Rissa’s eyes widened.
Royston?
As in the Earl of Royston? The man Zachary had told her was responsible for attacking Sophia eleven years ago and then allowing Zachary to be blamed for the crime?
A man who, having been found guilty a year ago of attacking Sophia, should currently be locked away in an asylum?
But obviously was not…
Instead, that madman was here, pointing a pistol at Rissa and Zachary.
Rissa now completely understood the reason for Zachary’s alarm, and realized she should have given his warnings more respect than she had.
She looked at their assailant with fresh eyes. There was no doubting that with his muscular breadth and height, fashionably styled dark hair and green eyes, the Earl of Royston was a handsome gentleman. In appearance. Because there was also a wild and feverish glitter to those green eyes that spoke of a man who was not quite sane. The man’s previous actions also proved there was something evil behind that handsome exterior.
Rissa took a step closer to Zachary before slipping her hand into the crook of his arm.
“Ah, the little cat finally has enough sense to learn caution,” Royston taunted. “I am not surprised to see the two of you together now. You made such a pretty picture the night of the fire at Catchpole Manor. The damsel in distress being rescued by her white knight,” he scorned.
Rissa drew in a gasped breath. “You were there that night?”
He nodded. “I always like to linger so I can observe the fruits of my labors.”
“You are responsible for causing the fire at Catchpole Manor?” Rissa would never have imagined this man was responsible.
Royston gave Zachary a mocking glance. “It would seem you have been keeping secrets from your little hellcat.” His mouth tightened as he turned back to Rissa. “I have been following the movements of your family with interest these past ten days or so. For instance, I felt sure Sophia, when she took that tumble last week, would have rid herself of your father’s brat currently and grotesquely swelling her belly. I should have killed Weston a year ago when I had the chance,” he added self-disgustedly.
Only the tight grip of Zachary’s hand prevented Rissa from flying across the distance and raking her nails down the other man’s arrogant face.
But nothing could prevent the bile that rose to the back of her throat at the realization this madman was responsible for Sophia’s fall the previous week, which might have killed the precious child Sophia carried.
That this madman had tried to shoot her father a year ago.
The lack of surprise and increase in anger in Zachary’s expression at these revelations implied he was already aware of Royston’s involvement in all those things.
Was Rissa supposed to have perished in the fire at Catchpole Manor?
In view of Royston’s comments, it would seem likely that was the case.
Did her father and Sophia know that too?
Could this be the reason Rissa’s father had voiced no objection when Zachary stated he was coming back to Weston Park with them?
If that was so, what else had the three of them neglected to share with her? Worse, had they done so because they considered her to be a child still?
Zachary hated the expression of betrayal now on his Angel’s face as she glanced at him with pained eyes. He deserved that look of accusation.
The duke and duchess would have told Rissa all of the truth the moment they returned to Weston Park, but Zachary had been the one to insist it was unnecessary to alarm her that way. Rissa’s reaction now to learning the truth told him he should have had more respect for Rissa’s intelligence and maturity. That claiming his intention had been only to protect Rissa was not a good enough reason for keeping Royston’s escape from the asylum from her. Let alone what they believed to be the other man’s vendetta against the Spencer family and Zachary.
He now gave Rissa’s hand an apologetic squeeze. “I shall reveal all later,” he promised.
“That is supposing the two of you have a later,” Royston taunted.
Zachary turned his narrowed gaze on the other man. The two of them had gone to university at the same time, attended Society events together, and yes, even shared a woman or two in their youth. With never a hint during that time of how mentally unbalanced Royston truly was. A madness that seemed to have begun with his childhood fixation on his cousin Sophia, which had later developed into an unnatural sexual desire for her.
Zachary’s mouth twisted with the distaste he felt for the other man. “You are enjoying yourself far too much to want the game to end just yet,” he challenged.
“True,” the other man acknowledged.
“Is your accomplice close by?” Zachary scowled. “Possibly aiming a second pistol at us?”
Royston’s nostrils flared. “Unfortunately, Lady Hampton’s sleep is necessarily of a more permanent nature than the two men guarding you.”
Rissa gasped. “What does my Aunt Susan have to do with any of this?”
Royston eyed her pityingly. “Lady Hampton was instrumental in my escape from the asylum I was wrongly sent to a year ago.” His voice accused over what he obviously considered an injustice. “Unfortunately, she believed that gave her…license to comment on my actions since that escape. She was in complete agreement with my plans for Sophia, but not as happy with the knowledge I wished to make you and your father pay too.” His expression hardened. “I will suffer no such interference from anyone.”
Rissa’s throat moved as she swallowed. “My Aunt Susan is dead?”
“Regrettably,” Royston confirmed without so much as a shred of that emotion in his voice or countenance. “No doubt her body will wash up on the bank of the Thames at some point,” he dismissed. “At first, I believed I just wanted to see you all dead alongside her, but watching as you all scurried about this past week in a state of confusion has proved most satisfying.”
“You are a sick bastard,” Zachary grated.
Anger flared in the other man’s eyes. “Careful, Harrogate,” he warned softly. “Or I might feel the need to shoot your little hellion in front of your eyes.”
Rissa lifted her chin. “Do it. At least I will die in the knowledge that my father or Zachary will tear you apart limb from limb once I am gone and your pistol is empty.”
“For God’s sake, Angel!” Zachary once again pushed her behind him and kept a hand on her arm to hold her there before returning his attention to the other man. “Shoot me if you must shoot someone, but Clarissa is innocent of any wrongdoing.”
“You call her Angel?” Royston mused. “I sincerely doubt that name applies to your little firebrand. But perhaps to your lover?” he continued speculatively. “The two of you certainly seemed…intimate enough together when I arrived.”
Zachary could feel Rissa’s hands trembling
as she grasped the back of his jacket, but he was unsure whether it was from shock at the knowledge her aunt was dead or distress at the thought of Royston having obviously observed the two of them together for several minutes before announcing his presence.
Zachary felt ill at the thought of this man watching as he spanked Rissa before the two of them made love together. “Do your worst, Royston,” he rasped. “Then be on your way.”
The other man smiled. “This really was only a brief visit to let you know I am in the neighborhood and aware all of you are also. But you will be the ones wishing to hear from me again, I guarantee it.” He gave a nod of satisfaction, keeping the pistol leveled on the two of them as he strolled over to where he had tethered his horse a short distance from their own.
“Never,” Zachary assured scathingly.
“Oh, you will.” The other man nodded confidently. “In the meantime, do please say hello to Sophia for me,” he added in a hard voice before putting one booted foot in the stirrup and pulling himself up easily into the saddle. “Tell the duke and duchess I look forward to seeing both of them again very soon.” His heels dug into the horse’s sides as he took off at a gallop, bent low over the horse’s mane as he disappeared into the surrounding woodland.
Zachary thought briefly of following him, sure that Zeus could easily catch up to Royston’s inferior mount. But if he lost the other man amongst the trees and Royston decided to double back, then Rissa would be left here alone and vulnerable to whatever vengeance Royston decided to bring down upon her. Something which, with the memory of Royston’s appreciative gaze on Rissa’s voluptuous breasts still vivid in Zachary’s mind, did not bear thinking about.
Besides, Rissa’s accusing gaze told him that he, and the duke and duchess, had some explaining to do. Explanations Rissa’s determined expression told him she had no intention of waiting for a moment longer than it took them to ride back to Weston Park.
“Do not touch me,” Rissa warned as Zachary would have assisted her to mount Starlight. Instead, she led her horse over to stand on the tree stump where Zachary had minutes ago sat to spank her. She looked at him coldly once she was comfortably seated in the saddle. “If you intend to accompany me back to the house, I suggest you collect your hat and gloves and do so.”
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