The images swam in Emma’s vision as past and present collided. Lady Osgood tied to the gazebo, her voice filtering through bushes.Are you going to hurt me?Oh Strathaven, please, I beg of you...
“Can you take more of my rod, wench?” the man demanded.
“Yes, master, screw it in deeper. Do whatever you wish to me!” the redhead said.
Realization cut like a knife through Emma’s shock; the truth bled out.
A depraved sexual game—that is what I witnessed.
Lady Osgood was a willing participant, and Strathaven, he’s innocent... so to speak.
The scene suddenly vanished, the panel closing. She was whirled around, her back pressed against the wall. Strathaven’s palms planted on either side of her shoulders, trapping her.
In the flickering dimness, a wild, silver fire lit his eyes. Controlled savagery burned beneath his polished facade. Waves of tension rolled off his powerful frame, and every fiber of her being responded to his potent energy. Her skin was hot, sweaty. Her limbs trembled.
“Now do you understand?” he demanded.
She couldn’t look away from his gaze, the heat and the ice. A magnetic force hummed in the sliver of space between them. Her heart thumped, the tempo reckless and uncontrolled. Wordless longing tumbled through her. She wet her lips.
His eyes honed in on the movement of her tongue. His nostrils flared. A sound left him—a groan or a curse—and his mouth crashed upon hers.
She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. Strathaven’s firm, hot lips roved over hers with masterful intensity. Sensation overrode everything, a tide of pleasure washing over her, so strong that she lost her bearings. Her lips clung desperately to his, and his kiss grew even more potent and seductively demanding. His drugging male flavor weakened her knees, and he caught her, held her against the wall. She shivered when his tongue swept against her bottom lip.
“Open for me,” he whispered. “Let me in.”
Senses spinning, she obeyed, and his tongue plunged boldly inside. Somewhere in the far recesses of her mind, she registered that her first kiss was unlike anything she could have imagined. He tasted her as if heownedher, and his unapologetic possession sent a strange, singing sweetness through her blood. Her awareness of anything but him faded. Instinctively, she followed his lead, letting him in deeper, meeting his tongue with her own.
A sound tore from his chest, and the kiss grew even more torrid. He penetrated her mouth with a stabbing force that made heat bloom at the center of her being. Fire unfurled over her skin, the tips of her breasts pulsing, itching for contact. She pressed herself against his hard strength and moaned at the sublime sensation, needing more...
His hands found her breasts, and she panted into his mouth as he found the aching tips, teasing them, causing them to rise against the layers of fabric. When he gave a sharp tweak, liquid rushed between her legs, a frantic need rising in that same place. As if he were attuned to her every desire, his thigh wedged into her skirts, and she moaned, rubbing herself against the hard trunk of muscle, desperate for the friction, release from the sweet ache—
“Dearies? Time’s up.”
The words sliced through the moment like a guillotine. It took a moment for Emma to recognize Mrs. Roddy’s voice. Before she could gather her senses, she was shoved behind Strathaven. His broad back to her, he faced the approaching bawd.
“Ah, there you are.” A knowing gleam lit the bawd’s eyes. “Enjoy the show?”
“We’re done,” Strathaven said.
Dazed by the sensations still coursing through her, Emma watched as he dropped a small purse in the bawd’s waiting palm, the coins landing with an ignominiousclink.
“Thank you, your grace.” Fluttering her lashes, Mrs. Roddy said, “If there is anything else—”
“That is all,” the duke said imperiously.
The bawd curtsied low.
He turned, and Emma’s lungs constricted as she saw his expression. ’Twas as if a curtain of ice had fallen over him, his face frozen in hard lines, his eyes a glacial jade. She flinched when his large hand closed around her arm like a manacle.
“We’re leaving,” he grated out. “Now.”
Chapter Nine
The next evening, Emma wondered what in mercy’s name she was doing. Given all that had transpired in the past day, thelastplace she should be was here in the foyer of Strathaven’s palatial townhouse. On her last visit here, she’d been distraught over the news of Lady Osgood’s death, her assumption of Strathaven’s culpability; she hadn’t taken note of the surroundings. Now she saw that checkered marble gleamed beneath her half-boots, crystals dripped from the tiered chandelier overhead, and in front of her, the twin wings of the mahogany stairwell seemed to float up toward the paneled ceiling.
Surrounded by the incontrovertible proof of her host’s wealth and power, she couldn’t feel more ill at ease. Yet her honor had demanded that she come. Ambrose and Marianne had taken the rest of the family to a performance at Astley’s tonight, and pleading a headache—plausible, given her return visit to the magistrates earlier that afternoon—Emma had stayed home. Soon after, she’d slipped out of the house and hailed a hackney to the present address.
As much as she hated deceiving her family, she had no choice. She had a debt to settle and the sooner the better. The catastrophic mistake she’d made—the man’s reputation that she’d recklessly ruined—gnawed at her insides.
