“What could be the matter? It is an evening gown, sir. Or have I had the misfortune to leave the house without my dress? Is that it? Am I naked?”
“You might as well be for what little it covers up.”
His voice had changed. It still held anger, though she could not fathom why, but there was something else there, and she reached up, smoothed her hand along her throat, to discover for herself what atrocity Alynwick saw displayed before him.
“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.”
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 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 unhand 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, parting 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!”
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.”
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