His prosthetic harness pinched at her shoulder as he stood behind her, pressing his chest to her back, holding her almost aloft before a canvas nearly as tall as herself. She barely felt it. Instead her body attuned to the man. To the conflagration of his rage that served only to melt the icy daggers of his pain.
He shook her, not unlike a mechanical toy that refused to work. “Explain yourself.”
“I don’t think that’s necessary, is it?” she replied to the painting in front of her. The Cole who looked at her like he had done in the past, with sensual invitation and gentle acceptance. Not the man of volatile fury he’d become.
He knew who she’d been. Who she was no longer.
“Say. The. Name. Say it!”
Imogen came to understand that the lower his voice became, the more dangerous he was. And still she refused. “You won’t find her here, Cole. Only me.”
He was not merely a man who held her locked in his clutches, but something almost thus. Something both human and inhuman. Much like the Minotaur, a creature with the body of a man, but whose head was ruled by a beast. A dangerous one at that.
With frantic, jerking movements, he yanked up the skirts of her nightgown, and Imogen let him. She knew what he’d find. Why he became so utterly still. There, on her buttocks, was the birthmark. The one he’d kissed and teased her about over three long years ago.
“Ginny.” Though a whisper, the word was neither invocation nor benediction. But a lament. A dirge.
“I’m not her,” Imogen said with strength she’d not realized she possessed. “Not anymore.” Ginny had been a victim. A young and vulnerable ingénue. Untried, ignorant, and ruled by the machinations of selfish and negligent men.
She was that woman no longer.
Imogen stared up at the painting she’d finished in the first few months after she’d been married. When she’d known the broken Duke of Trenwyth was recovering in the hospital. When she had to remember all of the many reasons she couldn’t go to him. Her sister, her dying husband, his faulty memory, her charity and reputation. The fact that she’d truly been nothing more to him than a whore he’d fancied one desperate, grief-stricken night.
That all seemed meaningless now.
His breathing roughened behind her, and the small hook of his prosthetic dug into the flesh of her left hip. It reminded her that they’d both become different people since that night she’d depicted in the crimson room.
She heard a rip. And felt the evening air kiss the small of her back as her nightgown became a casualty of his mounting rage. The atmosphere shifted, the whip of his fury lashing at her with velvet edges. She’d lied to him. For her crimes, a punishment was forthcoming, of that she could be certain.
Imogen knew that O’Mara and Rathbone still patrolled the premises in shifts. She opened her mouth to scream, but only a sob escaped. She squirmed in his unyielding grasp, and wondered why he did nothing but stand there. Holding her hostage.
The fingers of his right hand shook a little, his grip gentling from punishing to merely bruising.
Lord, he was so strong it sent little chills of fear stabbing at her, followed by thrills of heat. The muscles of his chest swelled against her back, and the buckles of a harness bit into her skin, so close were they pressed together. The sinew of his thighs beneath the soft linen of his trousers bunched against her exposed bottom. Nothing met the softness of her curves but an unending length of hard, angry male.
Lifting her arm in a panicked movement, she meant to strike at him, to poke or scratch at his eyes. Anything that would free her from his silent, terrifying grip. To attack someone behind her, she found, was nigh to impossible.
She encountered the lush hair behind his ear, threaded her fingers through it, and gave a desperate tug.
He snarled.
Then they were falling, but she didn’t let him go. Neither did he relinquish his hold on her. In fact, she realized, he controlled their movement to the ground.
The carpet abraded her knees, though the descent had been slow enough not to cause her pain upon impact.
He hit his knees behind her, his left arm stealing around her middle to pull her in, bringing her bare bottom to fit neatly against the front of him. A hot, hard length pressed against the cleft of her ass, impeded only by the thin cloth of his trousers. His grip was iron against her middle; his breath volcanic against the back of her neck.
Then he bit her.
Imogen opened her mouth to cry out, but he’d already begun to lick and lave at the shoulder he’d marked, and her sound of pain escaped as a husky sigh of submission.
It was all he needed to hear.
With another rip, her soft nightgown disappeared. She turned her head to protest, but before any words escaped, he stole her breath by crushing his lips to hers.
Her fingers instantly tightened in his hair, but this time not to pull him away. But closer.
The kiss turned instantly volatile. His tongue seared its way into her mouth. It astonished Imogen that a kiss could convey so much. Unrequited need and a lifetime of desolation. His cultured manners and noble upbringing had done nothing to smother the raw, primal sin that was the soul of this man. He didn’t taste her, he consumed her. Devoured her. Until Imogen wondered if she’d also forget who she’d been to him. Or who she’d become.
Too soon, he broke the kiss and bent her over the trunk, using his superior weight to keep her hostage. His hand stole between them, and after a few jerking movements, his fingers gripped her hips once again.
The heat radiating from his arousal warned her a mere breath before the blunt head of his cock kissed the folds guarding her sex. Desire flushed from her in a wet release, and she whimpered as her intimate muscles swelled in sweet anticipation. Her body was ready to accept his dominance, even though she might not be.
“Wait—” Her voice sounded too thin. Too low. Too husky to be her own.
“Don’t stop me,” he commanded, though a ribbon of desperation threaded through the order.
So she didn’t.
And he didn’t.
He drove inside her with rough power and searing heat. It was like he penetrated her with lightning, striking at her with his hips and injecting an indefinable current that locked every muscle into futile spasms of blistering pleasure.
She threw her head back, a sob or a scream bubbling in her throat, but his hand clamped over her mouth as his cock parted her. Filled her.
He didn’t stop until he was seated deep. Deeper than he’d been before. Through a miracle of discipline and will, he held himself perfectly immobile, the bones of his hips digging into the soft flesh of her ass.
“I somehow forgot what you looked like,” he finally panted against her ear, the moist heat of his breath eliciting little tremors deep within her. Tremors she knew he could feel, because his great muscles shuddered in kind. “But I never forgot how tight you were,” he said from between clenched teeth. “I never forgot how it felt to be inside you.”
Fat tears squeezed from the corners of her eyes, and found a path where his hand sealed over her mouth.
She did not cry because he hurt her. Not because he took her like this. Like an animal. Like a common whore.
But because he’d remembered. Because she’d been empty every night of her life but one, and now he filled her once more. Perhaps she’d have time to be sorry for that later. Perhaps she’d find her pride, or her purpose, and recall all the reasons this was wrong.
But for now, all she could feel was the thrum of his heartbeat through the hot, turgid flesh inside of her. All she could think was that she wanted him to move.
She wriggled her body against his. Pushed and strained against him. Felt the muscles of her sex grip and goad him as she begged him for pleasure with everything but her mouth.
The sound he made was victorious, and a little bit cruel.
But he did as she bade.
He pulled away. Nearly withdrew. Then slammed forward. Again. And again.
He
r body opened for him each time he thrust inside, and clenched with lugubrious pulls each time he withdrew.
Imogen looked up as her body was rhythmically, mercilessly ground against the leather of the trunk. The man in the painting watched her with lascivious copper eyes like a deviant voyeur. He was the only lover she’d ever known, and she dimly compared him to the one fucking her now.
How different they were. The Cole she’d painted had been confident and deferential, a bit inebriated, but selfless in his giving of pleasure.
The man behind her—the man inside of her—was a singular creature. A primal beast. One driven only by primary instinct and emotion. Lust. Hurt. Need. Rage.
But besides a name, a title, and a body, both men shared one other common trait. A desire for her submission. An inexplicable need to be inside of her, for which they had each gone to rather desperate lengths.
One had paid a small fortune. The other had broken into her home.
Truth be told, she’d wanted to make love to them both. To the haughty duke and the hungry wolf.
Past the painting, beyond the glow of the lantern, and even above the darkness, she could hear hoarse, high noises of encouragement. Of joy. And was astounded when she recognized those noises as her own.
A further jolt of surprise took her as he slipped a finger inside of her mouth, then another. Her eyes widened as he used his prosthetic to press against her ass, to spread her for him, to angle deeper. The chill of the metal against her soft, warm flesh caused her to clench her muscles, and she thrilled to the harsh sound he made. Almost a bark, if a man could produce such a thing.
A rogue wave of fire and force tore through her with such frightening speed, she feared she might faint. The ferocity of it so potent, her womb contracted with it. Spasm chased spasm in relentless pulses of bliss, uncoiling with such astounding force she distantly wondered if this was what dying felt like.
She bit down on the fingers in her mouth, not breaking the skin, and the noise he made was the most inhuman sound of pleasure she’d ever heard in her life. The sound mounted to a groan, then a growl, as his cock swelled impossibly larger inside of her before it erupted, bathing her womb in a quicksilver rush of release.
She realized dimly through her own pleasure that he wasn’t, in fact, growling in time to the tremors of his climax, but he was saying her name.
Her name. Not Ginny’s.
Imogen.
Her liquid shivers of gratification faded before his did, and she wilted against the trunk with muscles made of melted wax. She was slick with sweat and … other things. Warm, languid, and thoroughly pleasured.
They were quiet for a long moment after. Their breaths diminishing in perfect synchronization. She could feel the tension leaching from her muscles and his, and she relaxed into the scandalous intimacy of the moment.
Which was why she couldn’t believe he remained inside of her as he bent forward and said in the darkest voice she’d ever heard, “You lied to me.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
It was one thing to be naked and another thing entirely to be exposed. Uncovered. Laid bare.
When Cole pulled away from her—out of her—leaving his accusation stinging in her ear, Imogen thought that perhaps no one had felt as utterly naked as she did in this moment. Her secret had not only been revealed, but literally uncovered in a cloud of dust and discovery.
Rising to her knees, she glanced back in time to see him turn from her and close his trousers. Imogen didn’t at all relish the thought of being on her knees as he stood over her, a tower of wrath and indictment.
So they were going to do this now, she lamented with a weighty sigh, trying to pull her thoughts back from where passion and pleasure had scattered them like shadows before the dawn. Her pristine white nightgown was a cloud of tatters, but she snatched it from the floor with limbs as heavy as the silence between them.
Gaining her feet, she faced him. Lord, but she was tired now, and suspected that she was still perhaps a little inebriated, though whether on champagne or passion, she couldn’t tell.
“I imagine you have a bevy of excuses prepared.” He crossed his arms over his broad chest much like a mother would await an explanation from her unruly child.
Imogen clutched her nightgown to her breasts, letting the lace fall to her knees from the voluminous skirts. She noted the way his eyes flicked copper fire over her bare shoulders, her tousled hair, and what parts of her were left uncovered before he fixed them on some point behind her.
How could one person be both so beautiful and so bitter? It was as though he’d been kissed by some ancient god, blessed with uncommon strength and magnificence, and then cursed with loss and guile.
“Have you nothing to say for yourself?” he demanded. “You must have known I’d eventually find out.”
“In truth, I hoped you wouldn’t.” She knew before she noted the twitch of his jaw it had been the wrong thing to say. “What I mean is, I wanted to tell you but there was never—”
“You had two years.” He stabbed the appropriate fingers into the air, effectively displaying the number while simultaneously making a foul gesture. He probably meant both. “Two fucking—” The fingers curled back into a fist, and Cole’s head swiveled on a neck thick with straining veins, as though the need to destroy something overcame the ability to finish his sentence and he searched the room for a victim.
She took refuge behind the trunk, which only reached her thighs, so she held up a placating hand. “I know you’re angry.”
“You know nothing of what I feel.”
Imogen hesitated, remembering she’d said something very like that to him once. “You don’t understand what happened while you were—”
“I was scouring the fucking globe for you and you were next-bloody-door the entire fucking time!” With a strong sweep of his hand, the trunk that separated them went flying into the wall.
“Don’t, you’ll wake the house,” she begged.
“We can’t have that, can we?” He sneered, his handsome features arranging into a mask of ugly rage. “Can’t have poor Cheever finding out his precious countess was once a two-bit whore.”
All Imogen’s sorrow and guilt evaporated in the heat of her indignation. “Cheever already knows,” she revealed, though she had to quell a flinch as more of the color drained from his face, the lines around his hard mouth positively white. “He knows that I was bought once. One night. That you turned a virgin into a prostitute. That you paid twenty pounds. I may have sold myself to you, Your Grace, but I was never cheap.”
“You cost me more than you know,” he snarled.
“Likewise!”
His one blink too many was the only indication he gave that she’d stunned him. What she didn’t know, was if the word or the vehemence with which she said it was the reason he faltered. Either way, she wasn’t finished.
“You searched for Ginny, you pined for her, because she made you feel something that you’d been missing. Because she fulfilled your needs and became someone you desired. Because maybe for a moment, she made you happy. But did you ever once stop to consider her happiness? Her needs? Her desires?”
“Stop talking about her like she’s dead,” he growled. “You are one and the same.”
“That’s just it, Cole, we’re nothing alike, she and I.” Imogen stepped closer to the lamplight, convincing herself it was not a retreat, but an illumination. She let the lamp spin her hair into gold and shimmer across shoulders and curves so different from what they’d once been. “You remember a starving woman in a black wig with a painted face and a false name. She was pliant and afraid. Helpless and desperate. Don’t you see, Cole, I am not she.” Taking a trembling step forward, Imogen raised her fingers to shape over his rough, clenched jaw, hoping that her touch would soften the hard truths she spoke. “You can’t know how sorry I am that you suffered on my account. But just because you bought Ginny for one night, doesn’t mean that you own me. Doesn’t mean that I owe you anything, lea
st of all an explanation.”
His jaw turned to iron beneath her grip the moment before he seized her wrist and ripped it away from his skin as though it had burned him. “Like hell you didn’t. You owed me the truth, you cruel, selfish—”
“And what would have happened had I come to you? Would you have made me your mistress? Your official whore?” She wrenched her wrist away from his grasp, and to his credit, he allowed it. “You, a high-and-mighty duke, would deign to lower yourself to elevate a common prostitute? Stash her in some frilly rooms to consort with at your leisure until you tired of her, and she’d be cast off as your shameful leavings? Who would dare deny—”
“I would have made you my wife!” The admission seemed to startle even himself.
“Don’t be ridiculous.” A harsh laugh burst from her.
His expression landed somewhere between confounded and murderous.
“Consider how you’ve behaved toward me since you’ve known me as the countess Anstruther.” This time it was she who advanced upon him, and though he nearly doubled her in size, she felt a stab of victory permeate her ire when he took a step back. “Tell me, exactly, when I should have revealed my tender secret to you? When you hurled your teacup at me? Or perhaps when you publicly humiliated me in front of my investors? Or threatened to ruin me in the garden, vowing to thwart my life’s work at every turn. You of all people know what kind of weapon our night together could be in the hands of my enemies. You’re the Duke of bloody Trenwyth,” she cursed. “You’ve treated me as if I were beneath you since the day you woke after I saved. Your. Life. What could possibly make you think I’d give you the fodder to ruin mine as you’d so ardently promised to do?”
He opened his mouth, then closed it, then opened it again, his expression losing some of its heat.
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