‘A bastard like me couldn’t possibly resist a witch like you.’
Clio swayed, and he gripped her arm, holding her steady as he sank his teeth into the skin he had just kissed. Her body tightened, and a jolt of electric current bolted through her and into Thomas.
Fucking hell. She will ruin me.
Never before had a woman affected him on such a visceral level. Her power poured into him, enhancing every sensation. He forced himself to step back, refusing to lose control before they had evenstarted. He was as randy as a schoolboy and just as likely to unman himself.
Do not spend before you’ve even gotten her onto the bed!
‘Go and lie down. On your back.’
She hesitated. ‘W-what are you going to do?’
‘Watch you.’
‘Oh.’ She glanced over her shoulder before slowly padding her way to the bed, her bottom swaying like a metronome counting the rhythm of his heart. He saw the flash of strawberry high on her inner thigh as she climbed onto the tall bed.
A birthmark.
He couldn’t wait to trace it with his tongue.
She flipped to face him. Finally, he could look his fill of her, gloriously naked. His gaze caught on glossy pink scars swiping over her abdomen and right arm like slashes from a beast with razor-sharp talons. They were healed, but she must have sustained them within the last year.
Anger raged through him, sweeping away his desire. He strode to the bed, climbed onto the feather mattress, and ran his fingers over her smooth skin.
‘Who did this to you?’
Clio froze. She tried to scoot away from him and cover the marks. He caught her wrist, then the other, pinning her hands over her head. When she bucked her hips, he held her in place with his own.
‘Tell me, Clio. Who did this to you? Give me the name of the blackguard so I can hunt him down and kill him.’
She shook her head, her amber eyes gone wide. ‘You can’t. She’s already dead.’
Realisation dawned, and with it fear. ‘A ghost did this to you?’
‘Such things rarely happen.’ Clio swallowed, drawing his gaze tothe delicate column of her throat. A throat he had seen darken with bruises from a different spectre.
‘What about being choked? Was that also rare?’
Her delectable mouth hardened. ‘I told you, he didn’t mean to hurt me.’
Thomas nodded, his own sense of helplessness transforming fear into cold determination. ‘I don’t want you speaking to any more ghosts.’
Clio’s jagged laughter cut through his tightly reined control. Her wrists grew warmer beneath his fingers as a blast of heat engulfed him. ‘I gave you leave to command me in seduction, but you will not control my actions anywhere else. If you can’t agree to that, this ends now.’
The very idea of some insubstantial spirit leaving such horrible scars on his woman tore at Thomas’ already ravaged soul.
But she isn’t my woman. She has no wish to be my woman. And if she were mine, I still could not control her choices.
A brutal lesson he learned during his doomed marriage and one he couldn’t afford to forget. If he pushed Clio on this, she would make him leave. What would he gain other than aching bollocks and a wall separating him from her? If she was determined to put herself in harm’s way, his best chance of protecting her was to ensure he stood beside her. And to do that, he would need to agree to her demands, even if it countered every instinct in his body.
‘Will you at least promise not to conjure the viscount and his wife unless I’m with you?’
She exhaled through her nose in a delicate expression of frustration. ‘I can’t control when a ghost will appear. But I promise to include you when I go to the nursery to seek them out. Will that suffice?’
Not even close.
But it was the best offer he was likely to get from Clio.
