“I want the land,” he said instead of answering her query. “I need that land.”
“How will having the land solve your quarrels with Sutton? Will it keep him from attempting to burn down your gaming hell again?”
“No,” he admitted. If anything, starting a rival waterworks would only heighten the enmity between himself and Jasper Sutton.
So, too, the danger.
“Please do not do this, Dom.”
Her soft plea did strange things to him.
“Duchess,” he began.
“I love you,” she blurted.
And the heart Dom had sworn he no longer possessed swelled inside his chest, until it felt too big for his stupid body.
Floating hell.
He had misheard her. He would have suspected the aftereffects of poison, rendering him delusional, but Devereaux Winter was nowhere in sight.
“I love you,” she repeated, leaving no doubts as to what she had just said. “I want a true marriage with you, and I want my family to accept you. Given time, I believe they will. But there cannot be hatred and distance between us. This cannot be the way we begin things.”
She was asking him to give up his plans for the waterworks.
Impossible.
Or was it?
The beautiful, elegant lady staring at him expectantly from across the conveyance loved him. More honey and lightness filled him, chasing his darkness. Replacing it.
And he found himself offering a concession for the first time in his bloody life. “For you, I will try to find another way, angel.”
Chapter 14
“You are a fucking Bedlamite.”
The proclamation, issued by his brother Demon, was nothing Dom himself had not been thinking.
Devil grunted.
“We ought to slice his throat in his sleep,” Blade offered.
Dom was afraid to ask if Blade was referring to himself or to the man they were about to welcome deep into their territory for the first time. Blade was the assassin amongst them, and he was also the least enthusiastic of all Dom’s siblings concerning his new plan.
“If he dares to make a wrong move, I will beat him to a bloody pulp,” Gavin added, lifting his tremendous fists—merciless weapons in his boxing matches—in warning.
“What I cannot believe is that the lot of you intended to welcome a blackleg like Jasper Sutton to The Devil’s Spawn without me,” Genevieve said. “Especially since you invitedhim.”
ThehimDom’s golden-haired sister referred to was none other than Devereaux Winter. Brother dearest. Spoiled, arrogant sod. And just the help they needed for what they were about to do.
Dom would not lie. Having to approach Winter with his tail betwixt his legs had bloody well stung worse than smuggled Scots whisky poured over an open wound.
“My presence is required,” Winter said mildly. “Like it or not, I am a half brother to you all.”
Devil growled.
Demon sniffed.
