“I didn’t say you were cruel.” Her voice caught.
Argyll scoffed. “What did you mean to imply when you insisted your family be allowed to raise the child?”
She drew back. “I meant you’d be carrying on with your life and your…your pursuits.”
“Fucking women?”
If his tongue-tied wife went any redder, she would surely catch fire. “I do not like that word.”
Argyll forced out a sardonic laugh. “That makes two of us, Your Grace, for I have not particularly enjoyed the words issuing from your mouth either.”
He needed to go.
Now.
He didn’t trust he wouldn’t say things that would cut her even deeper.
“Be honest about one bloody thing in all of this, Daria.” His eyes hardened. “This isn’t about me. This isn’t about our unborn children. This is about you protecting your heart—.”
She was shaking her head.
“From me.” He ignored her lie. “I allowed you to persuade us both that you possessed the fortitude for this, and when you discovered, after one damned day—” He took a swift step toward her.
Paling, Daria scrambled to the opposite side of the bed.
Argyll halted.
She thought he would hurt her?
A sick, sullen anger coiled in his chest.
Argyll stared at her. “Tonight, I would have made dreams you didn’t even know you possessed come true, Daria. I would have made your body weep with a pleasure that rendered what passed between us in the carriage this morning a bloody hand kiss.”
He did not trust himself nearer her. Not when he wanted to strip his infuriating wife bare, lay her open beneath him, and drive himself into the only home he wanted in this moment.
His jaw grated, pain lancing up his temple.
He turned for the door.
No—damn it. That was not all. Because, Hell take him, she needed to hear it.
He swung back to his ashen bride. “Do you know the bloody irony of this?” he hissed, stalking back to her. “There was no other woman tonight. Because you are the only one I hungered for.” He caught her by the arms and drew her close; his fingers trembled with the force of his restraint. “I hunger for you, Daria,” he rasped. “I want you as I have never wanted another.”
Her rosebud lips parted, a soft, breathless sound escaping her. “Oh.”
A manic laugh tore from him. “The fact that I want to bury myself to the hilt inside you—and only you—earns me that look?”
He released her abruptly.
“You made a mistake in asking me to marry you, Daria. You were never strong enough—never hard enough—to weather life as my wife.”
His gaze raked over her, unflinching.
“We are both well and truly stuck.”
Chapter 16
The following morning, Argyll strode past the guards stationed outside DuMond’s office and used the emergency key to let himself in.
