Her Reformed Rake (Wicked Husbands #3)(81)

“Explain yourself,” he commanded.

She swallowed, not knowing what he wanted to hear. What he meant. She was breathless with waiting, with wanting, with a deep, decadent tide of anticipation. “What do you want me to say, Sebastian? That I’ve spent these last months wondering where you’ve been? That I’ve flirted like mad and courted scandal at every opportunity just so that you would come back to me?”

“No.” His nostrils flared.

He was fiercely beautiful, his body leaner against hers, honed to hard, well-muscled angles. Everything about him had become dark and powerful and ruthless. Even his shoulders were more severe and hard beneath her hands as she settled them there to anchor herself.

But she wasn’t finished. Let him think of her what he would. There was only one way to win this battle between them. “Do you want to hear how I did everything in my power to find you, and when all else failed, I decided to bring about your return by causing as much scandal as possible? For that’s the truth.”

“No, goddamn it,” he snapped. “No more of your lies.”

“My lies?” She rubbed her leg against his, because it felt good and because she couldn’t resist the temptation. His proximity did wild things to her senses. But even as she teased him, parried back in this sensual battle between them, she hadn’t forgotten that she had just as much cause as he to be angry. More, even. “What of yours, Sebastian? Where have you been?”

Heavens yes, she had every right to be properly enraged. He had disappeared without explanation. Months of no word had passed. Yet he barged back into her life with the grace of a gunboat, raging and bent on destruction. How dare he brand her a liar, accuse her of debasing their vows, when she still didn’t have any idea where he’d gone, what he’d done, or whom he’d been with during his lengthy absence?

“You want to ask questions, buttercup?” The grin he flashed her was stark and lethal. Not a hint of merriment. Not a drop of sympathy or contrition. His dimple appeared for a fraction of a moment before it was gone. “Very well. But I get to ask first.”

His hands tightened on her waist, her only warning before he lifted her in one fluid motion and tossed her back onto the bed. She hadn’t expected his sudden reaction, and so she made her landing in a rather undignified heap, legs akimbo, flat on her back. Her husband’s expression was dark and unrelenting as a summer thunderstorm. He stalked forward, between her thighs, and bent forward, planting his palms on either side of her as he pinned her to the mattress. His muscled abdomen pressed into hers, robbing her of breath.

Sebastian lowered his head so that their foreheads nearly touched. His eyes sparked into hers, intense and burning with so much wrath she trembled. “Who the hell is Padraig McGuire to you, Daisy?”





he blanched at the name of her former betrothed, all the color leaching from her beautiful face. Bloody, bloody hell. It wasn’t what he wanted to see, even if he’d anticipated it. Even if he’d had the journey between London and Liverpool to reconcile himself to the fact that the woman he’d married—the woman who had forced him to spend the last three months guilt-ridden and torn between his feelings for her and his duty—was a fraud, a liar, and a conniving jade. Possibly even a conspirator and prospective murderess. And then there had been the other part of him, the part that had been desperate to come up with reasons why she could not be, or ways he could save her if she was.

Pathetic of him, really.

His jaw hardened, fingers fisting the bedclothes on either side of her lithe form, a fresh wave of rage bursting through him. Hers was not the reaction of an innocent woman, by God. It was the reaction of a woman who was guilty as sin. A woman who’d just realized the elaborate web of lies and deceit she’d spun had transformed into a trap of her own making.

“Padraig McGuire.” He spat the name out as if it left a bad taste in his mouth.

Of course, it did. The thought of any other man touching Daisy, kissing her, running his hands over her bare curves, sinking home inside her… Jesus, it made him livid enough that he wouldn’t trust himself alone in a chamber with any of them. Whoever they were. Faceless bastards. Christ knew how many. He wanted to tear them all limb from limb.

Padraig McGuire, however, was the one man above any—even above the Earl of Bolton—that infuriated him to the point of irrational, unpredictable bloodlust. McGuire was a Fenian plotter. A maestro of death and destruction. Most importantly and damning of all, he was a man that Daisy had once loved enough that she’d wished to marry him.

A man she had received in private no less than four times.

Damn it all, he was a fool. For even with the blinders removed, he still couldn’t help but want her. His cock was rigid, straining against the placket of his trousers, jutting into the soft warmth of her left thigh. She was even lovelier than he’d recalled during his months away from her. When his eyes had first lit on her tonight as she’d crossed the threshold, he’d been momentarily speechless. Perhaps it had been the trousers, which accentuated her tiny waist and the feminine flare of her hips and trim ankles to perfection. Or perhaps it had simply been her, Daisy.

Goddess. Witch. Siren. Liar.

“I’ll ask you one more time,” he growled, realizing that she had yet to answer him and his body was growing far too accustomed to his position atop her. His body, in fact, wanted to be buried deep inside her. It was a hell of a thing, how his cock and his mind could fight each other so mercilessly, but there it was. “Who the hell is Padraig McGuire to you?”