Dom severed the contact, but the wild flit of her pulse racing beneath his fingertip haunted him, as did the sensation of her skin, burning like a brand. He rose to his full height, towering over her, gratified when she stiffened. Her dark eyes widened, the sooty fringe of lashes almost too long.
“Return to your protector,” he snapped, irritated with himself for allowing her to prolong this pointless duel.
Irritated with her for wasting her loyalty upon a man like Sundenbury. Then again, perhaps it was not loyalty which motivated her but desire to maintain the roof over her head and the account with hermodiste. Dom had not risen to his position of power by being a buffle-headed shite, and he knew enough about how women of her ilk worked.
The goddess occupying his bed feared him, as she ought. But she was also attracted to him. He had not missed the way her eyes had dropped to his mouth. He knew when a set of petticoats wanted him. And this one did.
“No.” Her chin went up. “I will not go until I have what I came here for.”
Again, she defied him.
Who the hell did she think she was, invading his territory, demanding he see her, pretending to faint, refusing to leave his bed as if it were where she belonged?
“And what is that, woman?” he growled the question. “What is it you came here for? Do you want me to toss up your skirts? I’ve already told you I will not accept a quick fuck in return for the coin that is owed me.”
He meant that. Every damned word.
He did, however, have boundaries. He had not earned his fortune by beating the lordlings who patronized his establishments to death when they could not pay. Savagery was for Suttons. Winters were only bloodthirsty when the situation merited ruthlessness.
She paled, shock evident in her countenance. For a woman who earned her living on her back, she was remarkably quick to flush.
Still, she would not bend. “And I have told you that I will not go until you see reason.”
Her temerity fascinated and repelled him at once. He did not think he had ever met another woman quite like this one. An instinctive urge within him told him to take what she offered. To takeher. To kiss those pink lips which were surely as supple as they looked, to lower his body to hers, to lift the skirts of her gown.
But no.
He would not accept the leavings of a bloody marquess. Unless…
Suddenly, it occurred to Dom that discovering who had been behind her protector’s bloody beating may actually help his cause. The Suttons and their dirty bargains and their infernal manipulations and their violence and greed could finally be overthrown.
No one would relish the prospect of Jasper Sutton getting what he deserved more than Dom. In fact, he would dearly like to serve justice to the arrogant son of a whore himself. And if the woman before him could aid in the quest, then why was he dawdling?
“If you truly want to save your lover,” he said, the words leaving him before he could contemplate the full wisdom of their utterance, “I have a bargain for you.”
The lips he desperately wanted beneath his parted. “Of course I do. That is why I have come. What is it that you want, Mr. Winter?”
Mr. Winter.He liked the sound of his name in her throaty voice. Liked, too, the way she asked him what he wanted. The list was long. And depraved. Yes, he could use her in the way she wished to use him. A lovely woman beneath him, Jasper Sutton in the ground.
Paradise was about to dawn in the East End.
“You said you were willing to give me anything,” he reminded her.
Anything.
Damnation, the mere thought, the lone bloody word, had his prick swelling and stiff once more. He had never bedded a fine lady; his bedmates were always women who, like him, had come from nothing. Women who had earned what they had, one way or another.
Much like the woman before him, except she was in a class all her own. Oh, she was not quality, to be sure, even if her silks looked fine and her beauty was enough to make a man willing to follow her to the fiery flames of perdition. Even if she rubbed feet with a lofty marquess, the mistress of a lord was not a lady, and nor would she ever be.
There he went, excusing what he was about to do. Offering himself forgiveness for his sins before he committed them. As the Winters did. He was his greedy sire’s bastard son, was he not?
Dom’s lip curled as he awaited his unexpected guest’s response.
“Yes,” she said at last, “I will give you anything in exchange for your promise Sundenbury will not suffer further violence. He is an honorable man, a gentleman. He will repay his debts.”
He found himself jealous of her steadfast reassurances on her lover’s behalf. First, the man did not deserve it. If he had been beaten by the Suttons, that meant he also owed them a small fortune, in addition to the tidy sum he owed Dom. Lord Sundenbury was making a fool of everyone around him, in the fashion only true gamblers did.
“I will send Sundenbury two of my men,” he said, deciding upon his course as he spoke the words. More deliberation would have been preferable, but when had anything that had ever befallen him—from the state of his birth until this cursed moment—been preferable? “They will protect him from further attacks on his person.”
