She should be frightened. But she was not. Though his language was coarse and his touch lacked the skillful play of slow seduction she’d become accustomed to from him, he would not hurt her. She knew it instinctively.
“How did word reach you?” she asked instead. “Did you get my letters?” One letter in particular. The one in which she revealed the impending birth of their child. The one good that had risen from the ashes of their turbulent union.
“I daresay word has even reached America by now. You made no attempt to hide your lechery.” He sneered. “You couldn’t even bother to wait until you’d provided me an heir before bedding the Earl of Bolton.”
That answered her question, then. He hadn’t read a single one of her letters.
Disappointment bloomed as his fingers traveled lower, stopping at the ribbon-trimmed edge of her décolletage. She swallowed against a fresh wave of need. His cruelty should have diminished her body’s response to him, but it seemed that nothing could. Her nipples longed for his touch, his mouth. The rake of his teeth. He cupped her breast, and it was a possessive clamp of ownership, nothing sweet about it. Through her corset, undergarments, and silk, his fingers bit into her skin with just enough pressure to arch her back.
She wanted more, and her reaction frightened her. She had not known that darkness and anger could form such a powerful web of seduction. Still, he owed her every bit as much as she owed him, if not more. He was the one who had left. She had been right here, waiting for him, all along.
“Tell me where you’ve been,” she challenged impetuously. “Tell me the truth.”
Care for me enough to give me that, if nothing else.
“The truth is that even though you’ve been bedding other lovers, you still want me, don’t you, buttercup?” He stilled, his eyes intense and glittering, sparking with unadulterated sexual fire as they burned into hers. “Your pretty pink lips might lie, but your body doesn’t.”
Damn him. “The truth,” she demanded again. “Where were you? Why did you go?”
“Ah, I see the way of it.” He smiled without mirth, his tone bitter. “You think you can tempt me with your body, and I’ll confess all. But I won’t give you the gratification of fucking you, Daisy. You’d like it too much.”
The wickedness and arrogance of his words should have repulsed her. He was being a beast, but it somehow made her long for him all the more. Her breasts tingled. The flesh between her thighs hungered for him, for his touch, his claiming.At last,her body seemed to say even if her mind couldn’t form the acknowledgment,at last.
Daisy pressed herself closer to him, her breasts crushing into his hand, into his chest. Their lips were a scant inch apart. His breath ghosted over her mouth, hot and promising. Their legs tangled, free of the encumbrance of skirts, and she felt his arousal, rigid and undeniable, cutting into her belly.
He wanted her, no matter what he said. In that moment, she had infinite power over him, and she knew it.
And she liked it.
She rocked forward, gliding her body along his hard length. Her lower lip brushed his once, twice. “Do you know what I think, Sebastian?” She paused, a wicked urge to shock him rising within, to goad him, push him off the precipice to which he clung. “I think you’re lying to me. Lying to yourself. You don’t want to fuck me because you’re afraidyou’dlike it too much.”
There.
One word, raw and vulgar and wrong. His word.Fuck.Used upon him as a weapon. But it had the desired effect, and she didn’t feel a drop of shame as he growled deep in his throat and forced her backward, guiding her with hands on her waist and long strides. Taking her to the big bed where she’d lain awake so many nights wondering where he was and whether or not he would ever return. Where she’d imagined him joining her, taking his time, kissing her and stripping her bare, learning every bit of her flesh before joining them as one.
But this wasn’t going to be anything like her silly fancies, or even like their previous couplings, and she knew it by the harshness in his expression, the wildness of his touch. The backs of her knees bumped into the bed’s softness. He didn’t throw her on it as she thought he might. Instead, he stopped, stared down at her.
“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?”
