He felt his own temper flare in response to her caustic words. He didn’t understand why she seemed to think that he wanted to hurt her. Hadn’t he tried to give her what she wanted? Wasn’t he still trying?
Or maybe asking her to bear his presence even in this small way was too much. Maybe she wanted him gone immediately, the way his parents had. Maybe she would never forgive him for trapping her, for not being strong enough to send her away when he ought to have. He could have pressed harder for her to leave his bedchamber that night, couldn’t he? He could have avoided her from the start. Maybe that first bit of gossip would have died down, and now she wouldn’t have been trapped with a husband she’d never wanted, a scarred, limping brute with uncivilized manners and a rough aspect.
It scraped against an old wound inside him, one he had assumed was long since healed.
“Fine,” he said. “If that is how you wish to see it, fine.” He stood abruptly enough that it shot a twinge of pain through his leg, which preferred him to move more gradually. He ignored it. He’d been dealing with pain like that all his life, after all. “What’s done is done. We shall just … tolerate one another as long as necessary. Will that satisfy you?”
Clio was on her feet now, too, and some hungry and furious thing inside him thrilled to see her fighting back. Her rage was much better than her apathy.
“Will that satisfyme?” she demanded. “What in the hell about this do you think satisfiesme?”
“For the love of—” He cut himself off with a growl of irritation. “You really are a princess, aren’t you?”
What else could he give her to satisfy her, after all? He’d protected her, and he was cutting himself to pieces trying to give her the freedom she craved. And yet she considered it insufficient? What would be enough for her?
She turned her head so he could only see her in profile.
“You only think I’m a princess because you are determined to never act the gentleman,” she accused. He could see a sliver of her teeth where they bit into her lip. “You have made it perfectly clear that you havenothingin common with the people of theton—with people like me.”
Hearing her list it so plainly, these things that were the greatest flaws to the fussy Society folk, burned him viciously.
“And you’re such a lady?” he snapped back, knowing that he was reacting like a wounded animal. “You, with that mouth of yours? Who courts scandal at every turn?”
She smacked away his pointing finger, and he realized that they’d come close to one another. At least she was looking at him now, though, even if she was looking at him like she hated him.
“Oh, right,” she said. “I courted scandal. Me, alone. Because it’s only the woman who is ruined, right? Because you could have walked away at any point without any injury done to you?”
“What in God’s name makes you think I can walk away?” He all but roared it, and she flinched at his volume, but she didn’tback down, didn’t pull away from him. Instead, she leaned even closer, a ferocious look on her face, a gleam in her starburst hazel eyes.
And then he grabbed at her, or she lunged at him, or both—or, hell, maybe some magic intervened, catching them right up in the hand of fate—and then their mouths fused together.
And, despite the fury still thrumming in his blood, it was the most right that Hector had felt in days.
CHAPTER 17
It was a mistake to be kissing her husband. Clioknewthat it had to be a mistake—it was the kind of thing that was no doubt going to end with her feeling crushed and abandoned—but she couldn’t seem to stop herself.
But that didn’t mean that she intended to go down without a fight.
“You make me so angry,” she informed Hector, even as she fisted his hair, holding him in place against her.
He growled, and she felt the rumble in his chest against her front, and she felt her nipples grow hard inside her gown. It was so unfair how he affected her.
Except, apparently, she wasn’t alone in this, because Hector’s growl turned into something resembling a moan.
“Princess, if you only knew what you stir up in me,” he groaned into her kiss. He hoisted an arm under her behind and used it to lift her up. She was gasping at the utter bloodyaudacityof his just—justtossingher around like a sack of flour when he used his other arm to sweep aside his neglected place setting and put her on the dining room table.
One of the plates crashed to the floor and shattered. Clio feared that she was destined for the same end—not physically; no matter how angry she got, she knew that Hector would never drop her—but somewhere deeper, somewhere that mattered more.
But she pushed aside any fears that her heart might be compromised far more brutally than her reputation. She let herself have this, this consuming moment, with her husband’s powerful body between her legs, his arms wrapped around her as he guided her to lie on her back, and his mouth on hers.
“You have wormed your way under my skin, princess,” he told her as his hands hungrily caressed her jaw, her neck, her collarbones. “You found me as I stumbled into this city, and you drew me in, and now here I am. Here I am.”
He sounded as though he was wondering how such a thing could have happened, and Clio suppressed the sting that she suffered every time he made it clear how much he hated every part of the world that had produced her. It reminded her that, yes, she might be his wife, but he would always do what everyone had always done: he would see her as a member of her family first, and as a person second.
Hector might not want to ingratiate himself with the Lightholders the way so many others had done, but it turned out that his utter rejection of everyone she loved hurt just as much as knowing she was being used to access them.
It was easier to feel angry than to feel hurt, so she grabbed him by the hair again and jerked his face back to hers. She wasn’t gentle, but there was something feral and hungry in his expression as she pressed her mouth to his again.
