Thirteen
“There better not be a scratch on her, or heads will roll.”
Apollo did not make a habit of making bodily threats to strangers. But like every other rule he’d observed without issue for most of his life, it went out the window with merely one word from Aurora Montalban.
To his relief, she seemed unharmed, though she was attempting to get between two men who seemed determined to beat the tar out of each other.
“Step to the side, Fiera,” he said as gently as he could, before he bodily lifted her away from two pairs of flying fists. There was a third man, but he was simply watching placidly from the corner he’d wedged himself into, while Aurora tried to help end the confrontation.
She’d dressed up for him, swapped the wool for lovely green silk and lace, and he couldn’t even properly appreciate it or inform her of all the ways in which he’d be peeling it off her as soon as he got her alone, because he’d likely have to turn these three imbeciles into pulp.
“Ramón, Octavio, stop it,” she cried out as Apollo struggled to pull the burlier one away. Her pleas seemed to work on the shorter of the two, and he threw his hands up, backing away.
“Sueltame cabrón,” the one with his head in Apollo’s grip demanded. He was not planning on letting go of anything until he found out what the hell he’d just walked into.
“I think not, pendejo,” he growled as he lifted the larger fighter off the ground and smashed him against the wall of the parlor.
“Be careful,” Aurora cried, while she checked the other one’s bloody lip.
“Thank the lady for the fact that your nose isn’t being smashed against this wall,” he whispered in the man’s ear. But he wasn’t listening, his sole focus was to get out of Apollo’s hold so he could go beat on his adversary. “Hold still or I’ll make good on that promise to break your nose,” he grunted at the imbecile, who continued to fight him. Apollo kept his attention pinned on Aurora, who looked back at him with pained brown eyes. When she’d left him merely an hour earlier, she’d been effervescent, and now she looked haunted. Someone would have to answer for that.
“Are you all right?” he asked, then sent a cursory look at the other two men, who were now in a heated conversation in the corner, their heads bent toward each other.
“I’m fine,” she told him, with a trembling voice.
“Of course she’s fine. We’re her brothers,” the bellicose one in his grip protested in a muffled voice.
So, these were the brothers who cut her off and had her living in a boardinghouse.
“You better watch your mouth when you speak to her,” he threatened quietly as the man fidgeted. “I’m quite talented at breaking bones and I’d love an excuse to smash you against this wall a few times.” The man’s breaths were harsh, as Apollo squeezed him tighter.
“Let him go.”
With one last shove, he cut the man lose.
“Is this your supposed assignation?” Ramón asked Aurora in a nasty tone after he’d hobbled to the farthest point from Apollo he could get to without actually leaving the room. But at that moment Apollo was much more interested in the question the man asked, and the pleading looks Doctora Montalban was sending him.
What exactly was happening here? A question that became even more pertinent a second later when Aurora walked over to Apollo, hooked her arm into his and defiantly kissed him on the cheek.
“This is Doctor Abelardo Bona,” she said without once looking at Apollo. “He’s…” The pause could only mean that Aurora was about to proffer one of her lies. But to his alarm, she chose to tell the truth. “He’s my lover.” As expected, the declaration sent Ramón into a rage, which Apollo interrupted by reminding him that his nose and arms were still very much at risk of suffering a fracture or two.
“Is this why you cut off all contact with the family?” the one who’d fought Ramón asked, but he noticed, not with the same vitriol.
“No, Octavio,” she admitted, pushing herself against Apollo so closely that he could feel the tremors running through her. He wondered how she could speak without her teeth chattering. “I did that because it’s what you all wanted.” She said the words with such resignation, his heart broke for her.
“We never said that.” Ramón’s self-righteousness was beginning to grate.
“In the last thirteen years, I’ve only ever seen you or heard from you to receive reprimands. My financial dependence on our family was the only tie I had left, so now you never need to be bothered by me or my choices again.” She spoke like she was hollow inside, and he wondered how much it took for her to do that. Apollo might have been discarded by his father, but he had his mother’s family.
He wanted to take each of these men out back and make them feel the pain they’d inflicted on this woman who spent her life doing for others. He knew that she’d resent his desire to defend her honor. But he could not stand by and watch her bare her soul for these useless sinvergüenzas.
“Would you like to leave?” he whispered, and received a short nod and a shaky breath in answer. But he would not go until he spoke his piece.
“I’m taking her away from here now,” he told the three men, who reacted as expected with bluster and protests. “But I’d like you to know that your sister lied to you,” he told them, and Aurora instantly froze next to him.
Ramón—who Apollo truly would love to trounce—emitted a triumphant “I knew it.”
“I’m not only her lover but hope she also considers me her friend—a title I would value greatly.”
“You don’t have to do this,” Aurora whispered, but he slid his hand over hers and held it tight.
“And I’m not a doctor,” he informed the men. “I would never have the discipline or the intelligence that requires.” He turned to grin at Aurora, who was staring at him with a shocked expression. “I’m merely a duke, after all.”
“What?” The one she’d called Octavio spluttered, but Apollo was not done yet.
“I have seen your sister work,” he said to them, incensed at their disrespect of this woman. None of them—Apollo included—was fit to kiss her feet. “I have seen the lengths she’ll go to in order to make sure her patients receive what they need. That’s where all the money you cut her from went.” They looked embarrassed, and it only made his desire to throttle them that much more intense. “ You should all be praising and supporting her, but instead you shame and punish her.”
“You have no idea what she’s done,” Ramón declared, in an aggrieved tone, which made Aurora flinch.
“I know enough,” Apollo told the man, infusing his voice with a hint of violence he hoped the Montalban brothers heeded. “But what I do know, and I’d like for you all to bear in mind, is that I’m not a very nice man.” Sebastian paled at the unvarnished threat while the other brothers whipped their heads in unison toward their sister.
“You should know who you are threatening, sir.” Ramón was in dire need of a fist in the mouth and Apollo was very close to obliging.
“Your Grace,” Apollo corrected him, with an arrogance he rarely exercised when discussing his title. But the reminder did its work, all three men backed off instantly. Aurora seemed too stunned to react, and he decided he could flex this particular muscle a bit more. “And in case I was not clear enough earlier, I’d caution you in how you approach Doctora Montalban in the future.” He bared his teeth then, and Octavio was now pressed so tightly to the wall he could’ve been a portrait. “Know that nothing would bring me more pleasure than to abuse a considerable amount of my power in thoroughly humbling the three of you.” Only then did he turn to Aurora, who, as expected, seemed quite unhappy with his speech. “?Nos vamos, Fiera?” he whispered.
“Yes.” He’d never heard her voice sound so small. It made him fucking furious. He escorted her out without sparing another look at the three Montalban brothers. When they stepped out into the foyer, they found her landlady, clearly concerned about the shouting.
“The gentlemen will need a fiacre,” he told the older woman, pulling a few francs from his pocket. “I’m escorting Doctora Montalban to dinner.”
The woman sent a forbidding look to the door of her parlor. “You take care of her,” the woman said, kindly. “I will deal with them, Your Grace,” she assured him, before walking in the direction of the Montalban brothers. Aurora didn’t utter a word as they left the building, or as they took the steps down to the sidewalk. But the moment they reached the carriage, she turned to him with that peevish expression he was now quite familiar with.
“You don’t need to be my champion, Your Grace,” she told him with a petulant little sniff. “I have no desire for a protector.” A month ago, a week ago, he’d have taken offense to this. He’d have turned on his heel, gotten in his carriage and fumed all the way home about Aurora Montalban’s rudeness. But he knew what this was—this was Aurora wounded. Desperate to be alone so she could tend to her emotional injuries. Like she’d probably been left to do all her life, if those miserable excuses for men were anything to go by.
“I’m not leaving you here to be scolded by those pendejos, and if I have to physically put you in my carriage, I will do so.” He had every intention of carrying it out, and she must have either been too tired to fight him or having a spurt of acquiescence, because she only sighed and emitted a mildly cantankerous “Fine.”
“As if they’d dare to even look at me after all those threats.” With a huff, she stepped up to the carriage, glaring at the footman by the door, who wisely moved aside as if telling Apollo “you deal with her.”
“I can climb the damned steps, Annan,” she protested, as he attempted in vain to assist her up. He bit back a laugh, because she was truly the most contrary human being on earth.
“Your legs are very short,” he teased her, which resulted in him being favored with the same glare the footman had received.
“And you’re an oversized cabrón, but you don’t hear me pointing that out,” she retorted, settling herself in the settee while offering a look that would’ve made a lesser man shrivel. But Apollo was becoming more and more adept in defending himself against Aurora Montalban’s arsenal.
“It is truly astounding how sweet natured you are,” he said insincerely, which earned him a rueful smile. Once he was settled next to her, the carriage began moving onto the street.
He frowned, watching her profile as she looked out the window at her current residence with a rueful expression.
Once the ride began, she continued to look out the window. She was deep in her thoughts, while he was close to bursting with questions. He could only imagine what it did to someone as proud as her to have a witness for her family’s treatment of her. Aurora Montalban had never given him the indication she would share any details about her life she didn’t want him to know. But surely by now she had to at least have some degree of confidence that he would not violate her trust.
“Are the three of them always such unrepentant comemierdas?” he asked and was glad to see a hint of a smile tip up her mouth. He’d only become someone’s brother in the past year. But even with his cousins, who were much younger and quite spoiled, he’d never behaved like those three pendejos.
She pressed the back of her head to the plush headrest and turned those tired brown eyes in his direction.
“Ramón is the one who usually acts like an ass.” She pursed her mouth, then closed her eyes as if the mere thought of her brothers robbed her of every ounce of energy. “Octavio’s kinder and Sebastian does whatever keeps his allowance coming on a monthly basis and our father covering his gambling debts.”
He made a sound of disgust and had to force himself to keep quiet.
“Did they force you to move here?” It was not so dark inside the conveyance he couldn’t see the defiant look she was sending him.
“Why are you so interested in my life, Apollo? Is being a duke so boring?” She twisted her body so that she was facing him. This was bluster, she was embarrassed and hurt—with reason—and he was the only one here. She probably wanted him to respond in kind, get angry at her. He knew those tricks. He’d used them quite effectively for most of his life. You made everyone around you furious and they never noticed you were hollow inside. You pretended to sneer at everyone, and they missed the howl of that discarded creature inside you.
“I thought friends shared details about their lives with each other.”
“Friends,” she huffed, like the word itself was absurd. “Men have only ever wanted to know about my life so they could control it.”
“Well, even if you don’t consider me a friend, I think of you as one of mine.” It was true that he’d never concerned himself with what his friends chose to do with their evenings or when they ate. He’d certainly never threatened any of his friends’ relatives with bodily harm, but that was neither here nor there.
“I don’t want to talk about my brothers.” She was fuming, her nose turned up at him, and he wanted to take her mouth until she melted into his arms. He wanted to breathe in all that righteous fury until he was on fire from the inside too. Incandescent with conviction like the woman sitting in the carriage with him.
“What would you like to talk about?”
“Let’s not talk about anything at all,” she retorted with enough vitriol to strip the paint off the carriage. “I’m tired of talking to men, Apollo. Tired of telling them what I want, what I think, what I believe, and being ignored.”
“I’m not like them, Aurora,” he said, and the words sounded useless, even to him. “I respect you.” The pitying look she gave him was far worse than anger. This woman’s eyes seemed to hold an entire lifetime of dismissals and slights, and for all his power, his title, there was nothing he could do to make it better. Even for dukes, sometimes all there was to do was say, “I’m sorry.” “I wish I could make it better,” he whispered into the space between them. They were so close he could see the flutter in her jaw at his words.
She was still not looking at him, but he heard a long shuddering breath escape her.
“How much did you hear?”
She held herself tightly as she asked the question, which told him he hadn’t heard nearly as much as she thought he had. “By the time I got to the door, your brothers were shouting at each other.”
“Hmm.” He couldn’t tell if it was acknowledgment, relief or surprise in that sound. But it was all he obtained from her for a long stretch, then finally she turned back to look at him. “They’re only my half brothers.” She seemed much younger than her brothers and physically there was not much resemblance. But that wasn’t uncommon in the part of the world he was from. In the Caribbean, five siblings could have five different skin tones, and she’d said her mother was from Hispaniola.
“Did your father remarry?” he asked cautiously. A fortune like the one her family had could generate a lot of animosity between the children of the first wife and those of the second.
“No,” she said with a shake of her head. He thought that would be the end of it, but then she spoke again. Her spine was like a ramrod as she stared straight ahead, still avoiding his gaze. “I’m the by-blow, you see.” She informed him of this with such grace, such dignity, in that moment he could almost see himself entering a ballroom with her as his duchess. If the mere suggestion of such a thing wouldn’t send her running, he would’ve said it. “I’m the dirty secret my father forced his wife to endure.”
The man had fathered a child and had her living under his roof. His wife, in turn, punished the innocent child for the man’s betrayal. Aurora’s father needed horsewhipping.
“I assume it was not your father who paid for that transgression,” he said, helpless to conceal the anger in his voice.
She seemed surprised at his comment and once again closed her eyes. They were expressive, those chocolate brown eyes, and said too much. No wonder she hid them from him when she needed to gather herself.
There was an emotional isolation that came from being unwanted. The desolation of knowing the person who gave you life simply did not care much about your existence. Apollo’s anger at his father’s abandonment, at his treachery, had fueled his thirst for revenge. Only to discover, after he’d gotten it, that the hole inside him was not made any smaller. Not his position, the power, the title. The family he’d gained in Scotland. His sisters and nieces and nephews, a brother who had stood by him, even when it meant losing a dukedom. None of it quite made up for the fact that his father’s greatest wish had been for Apollo never to survive infancy.
Learning that Aurora had lived with a similar wound was like a physical blow. Perhaps that was what drew them to each other.
“My mother, Gloria, was his wife’s younger sister.” When she opened her eyes, her gaze was distant. As if she’d retreated into a place where she could say these things and not ache from them. “She lived with us, and I never knew.” Apollo cursed under his breath and reached for her hand, which to his astonishment, she let him take.
“Was she good to you, your real mother?” he asked, suddenly very much in need of knowing if at least one person in her childhood had made her feel wanted.
She was quiet for so long he didn’t think she’d answer, and then she let out a shaky breath. “My mother loved me in her own way, but I think she loved the idea of being the one my father couldn’t give up even more. He tolerated me if he got to keep her.”
“What happened to her?”
She inhaled sharply at the question and once again looked away. “She went back to Hispaniola, she passed away while I was here studying medicine. I wasn’t told until much later.” He didn’t think he could get angrier tonight, but the rage surged in him like a cresting wave.
“We both deserved better fathers,” he bit out into the quiet of the carriage.
“And our mothers deserved better too.”
“They did.” He was debating how likely she was to attack if he attempted to bring her closer, when the universe conspired in his favor and jolted the carriage, sending her right into his arms.
He pulled her to him and sat her across his lap. She made a little gurgling sound of surprise, which spurred another one of those waves of tenderness and lust in him.
“What are you doing?” she grumbled as he adjusted her lush bottom on his hardening cock. Not even the emotional distress of the past fifteen minutes was enough to douse his hunger for her.
“I’m holding you, Fiera.” He wrapped his arms around her and pressed a kiss to her cheek. “Let me.” He expected her to fight him, but instead, the most astonishing thing happened. She stayed and laid her head on his shoulder. Apollo knew this was likely more exhaustion and weariness than any kind of interest in being comforted by him, but he was not going to question it. All he wanted was to get back the playful, lusty Aurora from that afternoon.
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” she told him, pressing her nose to his neck. He made a sound of agreement and ghosted his lips over her temple. “I thought you’d be trying to ravish me by now.” He wanted to. There was nothing he’d love more than to slide both hands up her thighs and tear through whatever linen impediments she’d donned under her pretty skirt.
He’d have her just like that with that luscious rump bouncing on his cock while they drove through the streets of Paris.
He needed to stop. This was not the time.
“I don’t want anyone else with us in the room when I finally have you.”
When she looked at him with furrowed brows, he decided to risk another confession. “That night you came to me was to prove something to yourself, or to someone, and I’d like our next time to be different, to be only ours.” When she fidgeted, he held her tight and made the soothing sounds he remembered his tia making when his cousins were babies.
“Why does that matter?” She didn’t deny it and he wondered if perhaps he was breaking through some of those carefully constructed walls of hers.
“Because you walked out of that encounter with your brothers with a wound, and I wanted to tend to that first.” He didn’t want her to let him touch her out of need for a distraction or spite. He wanted her lusty and wanton, he wanted the promise he’d seen in her eyes at the club.
“If you don’t want me anymore,” she began, attempting to slide off his lap, but he held her there. She protested, but in the end she stayed.
“I assure you, my dear, a thorough ravishment is very much in the cards the moment I have you behind closed doors.” He wrapped his fingers at the base of her neck and slid them down the lovely pearl buttons on her bodice. “Was this for me?” he asked, grazing his teeth on that spot on her neck that made her breathe faster. She scoffed, then seared him with those blazing chocolate eyes, and just like that, the ember that always seemed to glow when he was with her sparked into a flame.
“I dress for myself,” she informed him. “And I do not find your arrogance charming.” She said it with such a mischievous glint in her eye he could not resist testing that theory. He pressed up just enough for her to feel the effect she had on him. He was rewarded with the most delectable little moan.
“My charm is not exactly one of the attributes I’m interested in putting forward at the moment.”
That provoked a lusty sound and wiggle of that decadent derriere, which had him gasping in seconds. Just when he was reconsidering his stance on carriage ravishments, the damned thing came to a stop.
“We’re here,” he groaned, keeping his hands firmly on her hips for one more second before she bolted off his lap.
“Will I receive my other lesson this evening, or have I worn you out, Your Grace?” The question seemed to come from a place he had not been allowed to witness before. Her eyes crinkled and she shook her head like she scarcely believed her own nerve, and he sunk an inch deeper into the murky waters of Aurora Montalban.
“Not only am I still up to the task, Fiera,” he told her, right before the footman opened the carriage door. “But I intend to put that deliciously compact body of yours through its paces until neither of us can stand.”