Wicked Intentions (Maiden Lane #1)(89)

He looked at her a moment, as a horrible realization began to form at the back of his mind. Abruptly he stood and went to his desk to find a penknife.

“How long had you known your lover?” he asked as he cut through the binds at her ankles.

“What?” She knit her brow in confusion. “Not long. It was the first time I’d been with him. What does it matter?”

He laughed shortly, but the sound was not amused. “It matters only in the irony, I suppose. The first time you sinned, you were punished overhard, I think.”

He cut her wrists free.

She stared at him. “Don’t you understand? This isn’t a simple wrong. It isn’t eating too many sweets or desiring another woman’s bonnet. I slept with a man not my husband. I committed adultery.”

He sighed, suddenly weary. “And you expect vilification from me for such a human failing.”

“It wasn’t a failing.” She sat up and wrapped herself in his coverlet. She was beautiful—he could see that in a dispassionate way—the most beautiful woman he’d ever known. “I betrayed my husband.”

“And yourself,” he said quietly.

She blinked. “Yes, and myself.”

“Sexual congress was your downfall,” he said. “Sexual congress with a man not your husband was the worst thing you’d ever done in your life.”

“Yes,” she whispered.

He closed his eyes for a moment, wishing irrationally that he hadn’t pressed her. “You’ll never forgive yourself, will you?”

“I…” She seemed taken aback by his unemotional articulation of her dilemma.

“Sexual congress is the most unpardonable sin to you,” he said. “And when you decided you needed to punish yourself, you used your worst sin.”

He opened his eyes and looked at her, so beautiful, so strong. Everything, he suddenly realized, that he would wish for in a woman, had he ever thought to wish, and he finally identified the emotion in his heart. Hurt. She’d hurt him as thoroughly as if she’d shoved an arrow through his chest.

“You’ve used me to punish yourself, haven’t you?”

He watched dawning realization spread over her face, a confirmation more positive than anything she could ever say, and that arrow twisted deep in his chest. Yet still he had to ask the last question.

“Am I anything to you but a punishment?”

Chapter Seventeen

Meg looked at the most powerful man in the kingdom. “Your Majesty, may I ask why you wish to know what love is?”

The king frowned. “I know what it is to face death in battle. I know about ruling a vast kingdom, about meting out justice and showing mercy, but despite all this, I do not know what love is. Can you tell me?”

Meg thought about his question as she ate. How was she to explain love to a king? At last she looked up and saw the king feeding a date to the little blue bird.

“Open the cage door,” she said….

—from King Lockedheart

“Punishment?” Temperance stared at Caire.

He was dressed while she was entirely nude. He’d not even removed his coat to make love to her. She felt at a terrible disadvantage. She’d just told him of her greatest shame—a thing she’d told no other person, not even Silence—and he’d accused her of… what?

She shook her head, confused. “I don’t think of you as punishment.”

“Don’t you?” He was quieter than she’d ever seen him, withdrawn from her somehow. “Then explain your sudden request for me to bind you.”

She pulled the coverlet up to shield her bare shoulders from his gaze. “I… I simply thought it was something you liked. Something I was curious about. I don’t know why I asked tonight.”

“I do.” He’d turned his back to her, his hands clasped behind him. “It was degrading for you, wasn’t it?”

“No!” she exclaimed without even having to think.

But he wasn’t listening.

“You wanted—needed—sex, but it’s a sin for you, isn’t it? The very worst of sins. The only way you could approach the act was by making it something foul.”

“No!” She struggled from the covers, unmindful now of her nudity. How could he possibly imagine—

“Something degrading.” He turned and looked at her, and she froze, half-risen from the covers. “Because otherwise, well, it would be nothing but pleasure, wouldn’t it? And that you couldn’t allow yourself.”

She sat back slowly, not even defending herself anymore. Was this true? Had she really used him in such a despicable way?

“It shouldn’t matter to me,” he said dispassionately. “What you feel. After all, I never considered the emotions of my partners before. Quite frankly, their feelings were of no account to me in our transactions. But oddly, what you feel does somehow matter to me.”

He paused, looking down at his hands for a moment and then back up at her, his face exposed now, sad and hurt and resigned.

The sight made something twist in her chest—made her want to say something—but still she could not bring herself to speak.

“You matter to me,” he said. “And although I am a disgusting creature in many ways, although I have needs not of the ordinary, perhaps even evil needs, I believe that I do not deserve to be used in this way. I may be a man without conscience, but you, my dear martyr, are better than this act.”