Chapter 15 #2
“Just because you don’t believe in love doesn’t mean it’s not real, Jeremy.” She looked at him with so much hurt. “Do you truly find it hard to believe Culross could love me?”
At the mention of that bastard loving her, his mind balked.
Quarreling with the chit was the last way to break down her defenses and get her to fall in love with him.
He made himself take several steadying breaths in through his nose. “What I believe,” he said when he was more in control of himself, “is the match between you and Culross would surely be advantageous to both your families, and that is all the earl cares about.”
“That’s what I said to him.”
Clever girl.
“What did he say?”
“He said both could be true.”
“Ah.” He smirked. “The question remains, are they?”
Linnie winced.
They’d landed at an impasse: He fumed. And Linnie? Linnie refused to allow Tremaine the fight he craved more than the life-sustaining breath he brought into his lungs.
Linnie brought her long, slender arms up and folded them at her chest.
A glutton for self-torture, he stared at her as she hugged herself. His eyes glazed over, and in his mind’s eye, he saw those same graceful limbs stretched and twined about another man’s neck as she clung to him and moaned and gave herself to him as she’d given herself to Tremaine.
His fingers retracted, turning clawlike and completing Tremaine’s transformation into a hulking beast.
“Did you enjoy it?” he asked on a seething whisper.
Linnie stared at her hands as she spoke. “I don’t . . . ?”
“You don’t know what I’m asking?” he snarled.
The hell she didn’t. Christ, she’d make him say it.
Tremaine brought a fist down on the iron tabletop; the metal clanged like a damning cry amidst the quiet. “Did you enjoy his embrace?”
“Jeremy,” she entreated, “it was just a kiss.”
Just a kiss . . . Aye, a kiss shared with the Earl of Culross, when it’d been Tremaine who’d marked her mouth for his own and secretly declared Linnie as his future wife.
Now another man, a better man, that master and commander who was not a scarred beast inside and out like Tremaine was, knew the taste and feel of her.
Why did he need her to state for him that she’d absolutely not wanted Culross’s embrace, and certainly that she hadn’t loved it?
“It occurs to me you did not answer my question,” he jeered.
He wanted to lash out at her, demand she fight him in return. She did not. And God help Tremaine’s rotten soul, he had his answer.
“Weren’t you the one who said you’d be all too happy to service me or fetch some other fellow to take care of the job?”
Tremaine focused on breathing.
This was not the first time he’d had words spoken to Linnie that night thrown in his face.
This was, however, the first time they’d hit as knifelike barbs.
Why was he losing control over this particular woman?
It is as you told your brother and first mate. The moment Tremaine declared Linnie Smith his own, she’d become his in every way. This animalistic possessiveness flowed in his veins as it did primal beasts that stalked the earth.
Boiling with rage, the hard-hearted bastard that lived within him set out to taunt a stoic Linnie, to torture her. “And was that what you were doing?” he whispered starkly. “Having another man do the job?”
A tear fell. “I wanted to see whether you were right and I could desire him as I do you.”
Tremaine was the one responsible for this torture? He wanted to shout a cynical laugh to the lead ceiling.
“And?” He flashed a cold smile. “Have you come to find you yearn for Culross? That he’s just as good for you?”
Linnie smiled sadly at him. “That would certainly be easier.”
Smug male satisfaction filled him.
She’d given him her answer.
Linnie wrapped her arms around her middle. “Have you only come here to berate me?”
He swept his lashes low, shielding his eyes. “Is that what you think?”
“I don’t know what to think.”
That made two of them.
He’d come to slip further past her defenses, woo her, and then wed her. The fucking hilarity of it all.
As enraged with her as he was with himself, Tremaine continued to press her. “Why do you think I’m here, Linnie?”
“I . . . don’t know. To see me?” she ventured with such hopefulness, it dulled—but did not kill—this ghastly, insupportable swell of jealousy.
Tremaine chuckled. “Well, it most certainly was not to see your bloody cousin or you with Culross.” It was the wrong thing to say.
Flaring his nostrils, he wrenched his gaze anywhere but at her.
“Oh, Jeremy.” She spoke in an aching, heartbreaking, regret-filled way.
Each of the lady’s emotions served Tremaine, and they served him well. His momentary madness withered. From the seeds scattered in those ashes bloomed the conqueror’s hunger to triumph over his enemies.
It freed Tremaine of his fury.
He sauntered closer. Tremaine curled his hand proprietorially about her nape.
The cadence of their breathing changed.
He tightened his hold. “Mine,” he commanded.
Linnie nodded. “Yours,” she whispered.
His and only his.
Tremaine didn’t hold back. He didn’t give her soft and gentle. Hot and hungry, he devoured her.
He captured Linnie’s lips over and over.
And he moved his hands over her.
Tremaine cupped her breasts. “Mine,” he growled, and squeezed them to confirm the place of his latest ownership.
“Mmm,” she rasped against his mouth. “Yours!”
Satisfied, his blood on fire, Tremaine ran questing hands down to the curve of his innocent lover’s hips.
He drilled his fingertips into her flesh, squeezing a hungry gasp from Linnie. “Mine,” he proclaimed, set to possess all of her.
Tremaine left no swath of Linnie’s body untouched. Gripped with a newfound covetousness for this woman alone, he kissed and touched each part of her, ordaining this night that she belonged to him.
So that never again would any man dare touch what was his and his alone.
Were a rash fool to do so, that’d be the last thing the bastard would do.
Tremaine would end him.
To reward her for her surrender, Tremaine lifted her up and set her on the edge of the table. While he stroked his tongue against her, he slipped a knee between Linnie’s legs and drew her to rest atop his thigh.
“My girl said she loves to ride me,” he coaxed. “I am yours to ride.”
Tenderly taking her hips in hand, he taught her the rhythm until Linnie bucked upon him.
He switched between kissing Linnie in various places and edging back to enjoy the sight of her riding his thigh.
Tremaine’s breathing grew ragged. His pleasure had always come first. Linnie McQuoid Smith, his beautiful siren, had ensorcelled him. His sole reason for existing was to worship at the altar of her desire.
Tremaine intertwined his fingers with hers and raised them for her to view. “You are mine.”
Moaning, Linnie let her head fall back. She ground herself against him.
His breath came as harsh as her own, and from nothing more than bringing her pleasure.
When Linnie was not quick enough to declare she belonged to him, Tremaine held her hips hard and forced her to stop, denying Linnie what she craved.
“Are you not?” He’d have those words from her lips.
“Jeremy,” she pleaded thickly, “of course I am yours.” She lifted glazed, passion-filled eyes to his. “If you . . . want that?” Her question emerged haltingly and, worse, hopeful.
His gaze locked with hers.
Linnie blinked her long, silky lashes, batting them with an innocence that pulled him from a state of blind, merciless lust.
Tremaine froze.
A sudden, premonitory chill traversed his hot skin, leaving him cold.
If he wanted what? Her? This mad possessiveness defied every principle by which he’d lived his thirty years and flew in the face of everything he knew to be true about himself and his capability of needing no one.
“Jeremy?” Linnie’s voice faltered.
He forced those thoughts aside. “You are a good girl,” he purred.
Freeing her hips, Tremaine gave her leave to ride.
Linnie poured herself fully into alleviating her ache.
“Yes, take what you need, love.”
Tremaine took care to amend for his past, grievous error. “But you’ll find your pleasure from me and only me.” His avaricious greed for this woman left his tone harsh.
She bit her lower lip.
Tremaine sucked on that swollen flesh and stole that pleasure for his own.
All of her belonged to him. He’d have all of her.
Linnie’s movements took on a jerkiness, and then just as her body tensed, he pulled his leg—and her release—back.
“J-Jeremy,” she sobbed.
Reveling in her newfound pure and heartfelt lust, he fell to his knees.
“Wh-what . . . ?”
Tremaine shoved her skirts higher up around her waist, baring her lower limbs. “Shh.” He placed a lingering kiss on her inner thigh. “I’m going to take care of you,” he promised, casting a glance up at her.
Her eyes, a savage blend of misery and fiery spirit, glared at him. “Y-you are hurting me in the worst w-way, Jeremy.”
God, how her frankness in sex—and in everything she did—set him ablaze.
With a feral grin, he filled his hands again with the taut globes of her buttocks. This time, he drew her against his mouth.
“J-Jeremy?” she said, her tremulous voice pitched up.
He buried his nose in her curls and inhaled deep of the fragrant, musky scent of her desire. “Do you want to know what I’m going to do to you, love?”
Linnie whimpered. She’d already begun to arch and writhe in a natural anticipation of what he promised.
“It is far better if I show you.” And to prove as much, he flicked his tongue out to fleetingly caress her nub.
A hiss burst from her lips.
Tremaine continued his torment on her senses. “Would you like that, sweet Linnie?” He licked her this time.
Whimpering, she jerked her hips up.
Sweat beaded at his brow. Never had he been more thrilled to get a woman off as he was with Linnie; with her, his surcease came second to hers. “Would you like me to—?”
“Yes!” She pushed herself up onto her elbows and peered imploringly at him. “Please, Jeremy!”
That plea together with the passionate haze filling her eyes drove him wild.