“This again, woman?” he asked, and saw how thin and delicate her wrist appeared in his hand. “If I had wanted you to grovel, you would be back on your knees like you were earlier. Instead, I asked you to rise and wait for the maid to come. I told you that had I not married you, you would have ended in some sleazy lord’s bed.”
She turned fiery red at that, anger clearly blazing from within her. “You cannot pretend to be a doting husband or a savior with a mission. You did it for revenge.”
Juliana yanked her wrist away from him, stumbling backward but remaining on her feet, stubborn and strong.
“Do not lie to yourself, dear wife,” he murmured, his voice dropping into a dangerous register. “You tell yourself you hate my countenance, but whenever you look at me, your chest heaves. I can almost see the pulse in your throat. Oh, do not look at me like that. You feel it better than I do, but I know.”
“I… I am agitated by your presence, which is normal for a bride subjected to a forced marriage,” she breathed out, though her eyes flickered down to his body.
Cassian could see the juxtaposition of her fire and her icy blue eyes. They were so close, he could feel her warmth against his wet skin. He could not help but rake his gaze down to her lips. Soft, plush lips. He almost groaned.
“Agitated?” he echoed. He released her, then, but in turn traced her jaw with his thumb.
So soft. Her skin was like silk. It was a shame that the same woman was related to Hawthorne by blood. They might be siblings, but they were nothing alike.
“Is that what we are calling it now?” he continued, lowering his mouth to whisper in her ear. His warm breath was so close that he felt her shiver. It was not a vague shrug but a violent tremor she could not deny. Her silence spoke volumes. Her shallow breathing screamed a desire that matched his.
“I…”
“Prepare yourself, Juliana.” His breath was still hot against her skin, torturing her—or perhaps, torturing himself. “I have been patient with you all these days, but you are my wife, and you have certain duties to fulfil.”
“W-what?” she asked, dazed.
He pulled her flush against the rigid planes of his body, sending her a message through the evidence of his desire for her. Her breath hitched.
“Sooner or later, I am coming for you. That is a promise. And when I do, we shall discover whether it is hatred you feel… orsomething else.”
He released her before his control fractured entirely.
Her eyes were dark, her composure splintered, fury and desire warring openly now. The sight lodged itself somewhere dangerous in his chest.
He turned away before he did something neither of them could undo.
Pain lanced through his leg as the adrenaline ebbed, a brutal reminder of the limits his body imposed even when his will did not.
He steadied himself without allowing the weakness to show, crossed the room, and tugged the bell pull with more force than necessary.
Chapter 12
Juliana had been very certain, just a few hours ago, that sleep would claim her easily.
She had been wrong.
The silk sheets, which she had initially regarded as one of the finer compensations of her new situation, had since twisted themselves into a strangling tangle around her legs. The room was warm enough. The pillow was perfectly adequate. And yet sleep refused her, because her wretched, traitorous mind had taken it upon itself to replay, with agonizing clarity, every moment in the sunroom.
The water beading down the planes of his chest. The lazy, devastating certainty in his voice.
‘Sooner or later, I am coming for you.’
She rolled onto her side. Then her back. Then her side again.
It was mortifying, truly, that a man she did not evenlikecould reduce her to this: a restless, overheated creature tangled in her own bedclothes, staring at the ceiling as if it might offer somecounsel on the matter of unwanted desire. She pressed the back of her hand to her cheek and found it warm. The pulse at her throat beat with a kind of urgency she could not account for, and lower… She pressed her thighs together and refused to finish the thought.
He bought you,she reminded herself sternly.He is Kit’s enemy. You know nothing about him.
She knew the precise width of his shoulders. She knew, against her will, exactly how they looked as he rose from a tub, water sheeting down the carved planes of his chest. She knew how his voice dropped when he wanted to unsettle her. She knew the weight of his hand around her wrist. She knew what it meant to be pressed against a wall by him and to understand, with every nerve she possessed, that he was holding himself back.
She despised herself for it, for the way her body had simply decided— without consulting her better judgment—that Cassian Cavendish was something it wanted. It was involuntary, she told herself. A purely physical response to a man who was extraordinarily well-made. It meant nothing.
