Wicked in Your Arms (Forgotten Princesses #1)(55)

She’d ended it. Their affair.

Them.

He burrowed deeper within his jacket, realizing he should have grabbed his long coat but not about to go back for it. He was in no mood for people. He was especially in no mood to face her again.

His jaw clenched so hard his teeth ached. She’d walked away from him when they were only just starting to enjoy each other. They were just . . . beginning. What, precisely, he couldn’t say, but something more than an illicit, sordid affair. For the first time in his life, he’d felt himself with another person. Himself. Sevastian. Not the crown prince, or war hero. He’d felt like he could be his true self with her.

And with a word, she’d killed that.

His hands opened and shut at his sides at the memory of her silken skin. He hadn’t done half the things he wished to do to her yet. He hadn’t heard half the things he wanted to hear from her lips yet . . .

This last thought jarred him. Since when did he long to hear a woman talk . . . to spill her soul to him?

His hands unclenched. They weren’t finished. He’d had affairs aplenty before and walked away with no regrets, with no painful knotting in his stomach. But this—Grier. They weren’t done. She was sorely mistaken if she thought she’d seen the last of him.

At that moment a man emerged from the stables tugging on his gloves and adjusting his hat upon his head. A groom led a horse before him.

A low growl rose from the back of his throat as he recognized the man from Grier’s past. The man she thought to compare him to. They were nothing alike. Sev would never be fool enough to let her go. Not if he truly wanted her. And he did.

She said she didn’t love the man, but Sev wondered if that was true. Was that why his arrival today hurt her so much? Was that why she ended their affair?

Had seeing Powell reminded her that she cared for him? More than whatever feelings she harbored for Sev?

She turned down his proposal, a voice reminded in the back of his mind. She couldn’t still want him.

At the thought of that proposal, that this man hoped to claim Grier for his wife, Sev’s vision clouded with a rage he’d never felt before. Not even in the heat of battle, when his blood pumped so hard all thought fled and he only acted.

He strode quick, hard strides across the yard. Without a word, he grabbed Trevis Powell’s shoulder and whirled him around.

Powell didn’t have time to speak before Sev planted his fist in his face with a satisfying crunch.

The man staggered, but didn’t fall. He glared at Sev over the hand he held to his afflicted cheek. “What the bloody hell was that for?”

“For thinking you could come back here and claim her after you threw her away.”

The bewilderment gradually cleared from his eyes. “Ah, got to you, too, did she? There’s certainly something about her, isn’t there? She has a way about her. I should know. I tried for years to get beneath her skirts. I think it’s that lovely mouth. Makes a man imagine the places he’d like her to put it.”

Sev growled and took a menacing step toward him.

Powell held up a hand to ward him off while his other hand fingered his tender cheek. “No need for violence, chap. She’s just a bit of common trash.”

“Bastard!” With a roar, Sev charged him like a bull and knocked him to the ground. They rolled, throwing punches and striking each other wherever their fists could connect. He felt nothing, registered no pain. Each crack of bone on bone fueled his fury, egging him further.

Sev gained the advantage and pinned Powell to the cold ground, striking him again and again.

“Sev! Sev! Stop!”

Malcolm was there, pulling on him with two grooms, grunting as they tried to haul him off the bloodied man.

Sev blinked and looked around. A crowd had gathered. The dowager’s houseguests gawked at him with sagging mouths, their breaths smoky puffs on the cold night air. He cared for none of them. His gaze sought only one.

He found her, standing just inside the threshold, for once looking pale as milk. Her face was leached of all color beneath her sun-browned skin. He freckles stood out in stark relief, and something almost painful knifed near his heart.

She looked from him to Powell writhing on the ground. When her gaze found him again, her eyes gleamed bright with disapproval.

He didn’t flinch, didn’t show the slightest sign of regret for his actions. He’d beat the bastard to a pulp again for speaking of her so crudely . . . for hurting her.

She hugged herself but he somehow doubted it was the cold that made her embrace herself so tightly. Her sister stood beside her, gripping her arm in a gesture of support. As if he’d done something wrong.

He stared at Grier, wiping the blood from his lip with the back of his hand, indifferent to who watched him and what they thought of the Crown Prince of Maldania tussling in the dirt outside an inn like a common peasant.

Malcolm growled close to his ear, “Have you gone mad? People are watching!”

“Let them watch.” He took a step, intent on reaching her, when she turned with a sudden jerk and went back inside, dismissing him.

And then he recalled with bitter clarity that she wanted nothing more to do with him. He stopped and glanced around at the crowd of avid spectators and took a bracing breath. For now. He’d let her go for now. He’d let her think they were finished. He wouldn’t risk her reputation by chasing after her—as every fiber of his being urged him to do.