Her Reformed Rake (Wicked Husbands #3)(82)

She flinched, then swallowed. The thick fringe of her lashes swept down over her eyes. “How do you know that name? He didn’t use it when he called here.”

Hearing her confirm what he’d already known, that the bastard had called upon her—at his goddamn home—as though it had been an innocent social visit, sent another onslaught of fury ricocheting through him. Slowly, the full implications of what she’d said descended.

He’d unwittingly revealed too much to her. To this woman, with her tits straining against her bodice, legs spread wide in satin trousers, with her wide eyes and full, beckoning mouth, who was a deceptive, traitorous bitch.

To this woman, who knew too much, and had always known more than she’d let on. His wife, the woman he had lusted over for three long, interminable months. The same woman who had taken lovers the moment he’d been gone from her sight. The woman he loved.

Bloody hell. The heart was nothing but a weakness. A fool incapable of knowing reason. For there was no reason on this earth—not a goddamn one—that he should still feel this heaviness in his chest, this conflagration inside him by being in her presence.

“You don’t have the right to ask anything of me,” he snapped at her, feeling an icy cold sink straight into the marrow of his bones. “I pose the questions. You answer them, or tonight won’t go well for you. Do you understand?”

She stiffened as she gauged the depth of his rage, bringing her palms between them to shove ineffectually at his chest. The fear in her expression would have made him feel shame on any other day. Regardless of what he’d been ordered to do, and regardless of the depth of her treachery, he would never physically hurt her.

But today was different. Today, he wanted her to drown in dread of what he would do to her. Today, he wanted to make her pay and in so doing, slake some of his own pain. He had believed her. And she had lied. He rose on his knees and caught her wrists in a manacle grip, lowering each to her side and pinning them to the bed. She was helpless. He rocked his body against hers, partly for the simple pleasure and partly to let her know that he was the dominant force. That she answered to him.

“Who is Padraig McGuire?” he posed the question once more, this time with his cock grinding against the part of her he wanted most.

He decided that regardless of how much he would despise himself by morning light, he was not going to stop until he took his fill of Daisy tonight. He would possess her, enjoying the sound of her shameless trousers being torn from her body. He’d rip the bodice to shreds, cut her corset off with the knife in his boot. Then, he’d sink so deep inside her, pound so hard, until she couldn’t help but cry out with wild need. Suck her nipples, sink his fingers into the soft bounty of her hair. Yes, by God, he would take her, punish her. And he would enjoy every debauched second of it.

Perhaps he would even bind her wrists. The thought made his cock jerk, and he rolled his hips against hers in instinct, half horrified at himself for being so consumed with lust at the thought of fucking a conscienceless traitor.

But she was still and ashen-faced beneath him, her lips compressed. Not compliant. Not willing as he wanted her to be. The hunger burning within him cooled. He took no pleasure in forcing a woman, regardless of how far she drove him to the edge of sanity. “Who. Is. He?” he pressed.

“Please, Sebastian.” She paused, breathless, wetting her lips. “It is not what you must think.”

That was a goddamn lie, and he knew it. The report had been forever committed to his memory. Padraig McGuire called upon Her Grace and was received upon four separate occasions. She had been alone with McGuire. In Sebastian’s own bloody house. Half an hour on the third visit. A scant fifteen minutes on the last, but he wouldn’t trouble himself with that now. Perhaps by that time, McGuire had enjoyed his fill and needed only a rushed coupling to satisfy his lust.

The thought of Padraig McGuire atop Daisy much the same as he was now sent more ice through his veins. “The truth,” he commanded her, unable to resist pressing his body deeper into hers until her breasts thrust against his chest and his abdomen crushed into the rigid girding of her corset.

Had she forgotten the way it was between them so easily? Or had her introduction to desire only made her hungry for more with the man she almost married? Had nothing they shared been real? Was her body’s reaction to him, even now, feigned?

Damn it, not even his disgust for her hampered his raging lust. His cock ground into her in a crude imitation of what he wanted to do, despite the fact that she had allowed the same privilege to others in his absence.

Never mind that she had never been meant to be his wife in truth. As far as she knew, she was his duchess forever. And even if he’d been called away on an urgent matter, she’d sworn to be faithful and obey. How quickly she’d broken her vows. Not to even mention the feelings she’d claimed to have for him. Her protestations of love returned to him now, the remembrance of her sweet, husky voice raining the words down upon him: I love you. I love you. I love you.

And he had believed her, fool that he was. Like a starving man hungering for a scrap to put into his empty belly, he had been desperate. Desperate to believe in her and her innocence. How wrong he’d been. His instincts were worthless to him now. And she had done that. She alone had slipped past his defenses, making him fall in love with her, making him want to build a true marriage with her after his mission’s completion. Making him want to give up his life’s work just to be with her.