Morgan needed to distract her, to distract himself. The picnic had been his idea, a means to enjoy the fresh country air and the beautiful day, to take sustenance, and for Leonie to experience Westmore Manor all at once. But he had never intended to find himself so besieged by troubling feelings for his wife.
He plucked a strawberry from one of the dessert plates arranged upon the spread coverlet—small mountains of sugar biscuits, macaroons, bonbons, and fruits—then held it to her lips. “Berry, my dear?”
She pursed her lips, watching him with close regard, the stare that made him feel as if she could see within him to all the ugliness and deceit and bitterness he hid. Those feelings continued to make him experience a crushing combination of guilt and shame.
And here was another acknowledgment he did not like…
Her.She was the reason why he was feeling so torn, why the notion of gaining his revenge upon the Earl of Rayne no longer seemed the panacea it once had.
Regarding him solemnly, she nodded. “Yes, please.”
He held out the berry like a flag of surrender. She parted her lips to accept his offering, and then her teeth nipped a bite from the end. The berry was warm beneath his bare fingers, kissed by the sun, freshly ripened and picked that morning from one of the teeming plants in the Westmore Manor conservatory for their consumption. The strawberry itself, while vibrantly red and large, was nothing special. Furthermore, he had previously been in the presence of many females who had dined, and he had never once succumbed to lust.
Watching his wife take a bite of the succulent fruit should not have an effect upon him. It ought not to make his cock go rigid in his breeches, so hard he had to shift the manner in which he sat upon the cursed blanket. It most certainly should not make him think far more sinful thoughts, such as guiding the berry between her legs and…
Damnation.
His cock twitched, and he barely suppressed a moan. Leonie ate the rest of the strawberry, nipping the large fruit cleanly at the base where Cook had removed the stem, her lips brushing the pads of his fingers as she did so, sending a fresh surge of need to his groin.
The fruit was the conclusion of their picnic luncheon. Already, they had shared wine and consumed cold meats, cheese, and bread. One appetite had been sated, but another had been roused.
His gaze never straying from hers, Morgan popped the base of the strawberry into his mouth, chewing slowly. Thoughtfully. He swallowed. “Delicious.”
And he was not talking about the bloody berry. He was referring to his wife, specifically. She looked so proper, her bonnet in place, her gloves neatly folded at her side, her skirts fussed into place so that nary a hint of her ankle was visible to him.
And yet, she also looked lush. Delectable. Riper than the sweet fruit he had just consumed. Roses bloomed in her cheeks. A gentle wind blew, freeing a tendril of white-blonde hair from her careful coiffure and sending it curling over her face.
She was perfection. The most beautiful being he had ever seen. She was everything he wanted, nothing he should have. Before him, sat a rare creature, someone who cared for everyone else around her far more than she cared for herself. Leonie was so giving, so sweet. She was his lamb more than his lioness. His sweet, darling lamb.
And one day soon, she would be his willing sacrifice. He would be the lion who took her into his maws and shook her until those sweet and innocent and caring parts of her were dead. He was the predator, and she was the prey. Destruction was the inevitable, unenviable end to their story.
The man who would pay for it all with his life would be her soulless brother.
But Morgan did not like to think of any of those things. His mind balked. So, too, another part of him he preferred not to acknowledge, until he could not bear it any longer. Distraction was what he required. The ability to silence his conscience, which had somehow grown in size from nonexistent to a small seed.
“Tell me something,” he told her, desperate to fill the silence with something other than the feverish workings of his mind.
She was being so quiet, after all, and quite unlike herself. His past at war had taught him he ought to fear silence, for great upheaval tended to follow it. Specifically, violence. But he could not fathom his wife, so diminutive of stature and kind of heart, would wish to abuse him.
If she did, Christ knew he would allow it on principle, for no one deserved her wrath more than he did.
Leonie smiled at him, one of her rarer smiles, the sort that brought out the dimple in her right cheek and hit him in his chest like a blow. “I confess, I was hopingyoumight tellmesomething. After all, this is your ancestral home. You must have memories of this place. I wish to know them. Indeed, I wish to knowyou.”
Here, again, this woman stole his breath. She cared so much. Cared when she ought not to care. Cared because she could, because it was in her nature. Because she wasLeonie, part angel, part goddess, and all his.
His burden, his pleasure, his pain, his guilt, hiswife.
He wanted her so much, so desperately, not just to take her, but to assure himself of her allegiance to him forever. As he sat here with her, basking in her presence, knowing he would destroy her when he killed Rayne, he wanted nothing more than to find a way to avoid hurting her. And perhaps it was not so inevitable after all, nor so hopeless. He wanted their end to be different than what he had foreseen before he had married her.
That was how much she had come to mean to him. That was how much he needed her.
It struck him like a lightning bolt. Like a blow to the chin.
He did not just desire the woman he had married. Leonie had ceased being a duty from the moment he had first danced with her, and from then on, she had only ever been a pleasure. Hefeltsomething for her, far more for her than he should.
Good. Sweet. Christ in heaven.
Morgan could not afford to feel emotions for this woman. If he allowed himself to care for her too much, he would never be capable of using her to torment Rayne. He knew that, just as surely as he knew he could not banish these thoroughly unwanted feelings which had broken free within him.
