Chapter 4
“Everything. I want everything.”
That single word, released upon a breathy sigh, had his cock punching through his breeches. Hell, the woman had the voice of a siren, and he was more than eager to plunge into her depths.
And yet, it struck a familiarity in him that made his blood run cold even as it raged with lust in his veins.
Cassian drew back so quickly that the lady barely managed a surprised gasp before stumbling backward.
No, it cannot be…
But it was. There was no mistaking it.
The recognition had come to him faintly at first, like the tendrils of warmth that seeped around him in a bathhouse. And then it was like an unmistakable haze that enveloped him.
“Miss Hawthorne, what the hell are you doing in a place like this?” he demanded.
She had no business gallivanting around, rousing his desire as easily as the most skilled courtesans would an untried youth.
And Cassian was neither untried nor a youth. Not by a long shot.
The cold air from the gardens had already begun its familiar work on his hip, a dull, grinding reminder he had learned to breathe through and ignore. He ignored it now.
The infernal woman even had the temerity to scowl at him, and it took all of his will not to press her against the wall and have his way with her. Oh, there were better ways to put her mouth to use than that lust-inducing scowl.
Ways that did nothing for the growing discomfort in his breeches.
“How do you know my name?” she demanded. “Who are you? Are you one of my brother’s associates?”
“Do not insult me,” he clipped, desire and frustration raging through him. “It is the Duke of Stonevale that stands before you.”
“The Duke of—” Horror clouded her features, and she stumbled away from him. “You-you…”
He smiled coldly at her. “As you were saying, my dear?”
“Scoundrel!” she burst out, her chest heaving. The same chest she had arched so delectably into his hands earlier, when his lips had hovered mere inches from hers, denying her the kiss she had begun to crave. “Is this your twisted revenge on my brother? Seducing his sister?”
Oh, so she was feeling seduced. Cassian could not help but grin at her inadvertent admission.
“That is more your brother’s forte than mine, I am afraid,” he drawled. “In that aspect, I pale in comparison to the much-esteemed Baron Hawthorne.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Exactly what you think I meant by it.”
Arguing with a woman should have cooled his blood by now, not engorged his cock to the point of agony. But Miss Hawthorne, with her slightly parted lips and her flushed and heaving chest, was doing the most ungodly things to his control.
“You had best leave this place right now, my sweet,” he warned her. “I might not be so keen on an involvement with another Hawthorne, but others would not have the same disgust toward the lot of you.”
She reeled back. “Disgust?” she sneered. “I could say the same thing for your most odious self, Your Grace.”
“Odious?” He did not know why that rankled so much more than it should have.
“Yes!” she flung back. “Odious. Insufferable. Despicable. Need I go on?”
Liar, he wanted to taunt her. Just earlier, he had her melting in his arms, begging him to do unspeakable things to her. Things a proper young lady would never dream of asking. Things he would never consider doing to a Hawthorne.
He grinned knowingly at her. “Oh, do carry on, my dear. I believe you were just getting started.”
“Uncouth. Rogue. Bounder!”
My, she certainly did not disappoint, but it was nothing that Cassian had not heard in his prolific career as… well, as all those things she had accused him of.
He was a rake—he had no qualms admitting to that fact—but he was not so low as to force himself upon an unwilling woman. Or one who was the sister of the man he despised the most.
“And what do you know about me, Your Grace?” she continued. “What if I do like coming to such places? What do you know about what I want?”
“Oh?” He took a step toward her. Saw her eyes widen briefly, her pupils expanding as she let out a soft exhale. “Have you forgotten that I had you in my arms just a handful of moments ago? The way you melted into my touch. So soft. So responsive…”
He had her pressed against the wall this time. The faint fragrance of violets twined around him. Unlike him, his cock did not seem to discriminate against her—Hawthorne or not—and rose to greet her with an eagerness that was almost mortifying.
“Only someone so untried could be that sensitive,” he murmured against the softness of her neck. “But perhaps you do want us to carry on where we left off…” He gave a low chuckle. “I must warn you, though, that I will not go easy on you.”
He heard her sharp intake of breath. Sensed the fire leaping to her eyes before he saw it.
“I would never give in to you,” she said, her voice dripping with feminine rage. “Even if you were the last man on earth. I would rather die by the vilest means available!”
As you very well should.
Cassian pressed his lips into a thin line, his carnal appetite cooled, though most unfortunately not sated. There were ways she might be persuaded to surrender to him, but he found them all distasteful at the moment.
His hesitation was all she needed to slip away from his embrace. Her luscious lips were a thinner, angrier line where they had been soft and eager earlier.
“Stay away from me and my brother, Your Grace,” she told him in a low voice. “I shall not warn you again.”
She furiously put her mask back on, picked up her skirts, and left the room, slamming the door behind her in a glorious display of female pique.
Cassian sighed and raked his hand through his hair. He should have found it a blessed relief that she had stormed off. That there would be little to no hope of another encounter with the maddening young miss who set his blood boiling, whether in potent desire or sheer outrage.
She was trouble of the highest order, just like her pestilential brother. He would do well to never cross paths with any member of that accursed bloodline again.
He waited a few more moments to collect his thoughts before stalking out of the room. He was certainly not hoping that Juliana had long vacated the premises. Nor was he worried about her. Her business was her own, as she had told him, and he wanted no part in it.
What he did want was the feel of her soft flesh, warm and willing and all too womanly in his hands. Appallingly so.
He shuddered, shaking the unwarranted thoughts from his head, from his very bones—except for a very insistent part of his anatomy, which begged to differ.
He stomped down a hallway, the unmistakably indecent sound of fornication floating even through closed doors. The Arrangement was a little cavern of sinful pleasures, where the aristocracy and the demimonde moved together, without the usual social and material barriers between them.
“I have been more than lenient with you, Hawthorne,” he heard a nasally voice from one of the rooms.
Cassian froze in his tracks. Which Hawthorne were they referring to? Certainly, the young lady should have left the establishment if she knew what was good for her.
“It is you who defaulted on your earlier pledges,” the man continued, his voice pleasant enough but with an unmistakable undercurrent of warning. “When you needed the funds, it was I who willingly gave them to you. Now that the time has come to pay, you hesitate. This will not do.”
“I know.”
Cassian’s eyebrow rose as he pressed his back to the wall, just outside the door. It was Christopher Hawthorne—Kit—he would recognize that loathsome voice anywhere.
“But while I may not be able to produce the cash you require at the moment, there is something… else I might be able to give you,” he pleaded.
A silken pause. One that was meant to instill more unease than a sense of expectation.
“Oh?” the man finally quipped. “I doubt that there is anything in Hawthorne House that would hold any interest for me.”
Cassian snorted indelicately at that. If he were Hawthorne, he would have been humiliated from his foppish hair down to his boots. His creditor was clearly losing patience or any form of respect for him, and the baron must have realized that, too.
“I have a sister!” the baron blurted out.
“Yes, yes, Hawthorne. I am more than aware of your family tree,” his creditor said dismissively.
“She is young, unmarried still.” More pleading from Hawthorne. “You can have her for a price. Even for a night.”
Rage, raw and unfiltered, bloomed in Cassian’s chest. He had thought Christopher Hawthorne a vile miscreant, a derelict defiler, but he had not thought him to go so low as to sell his own sister to his creditors!
He thought of the headstrong woman who had melted in his arms earlier, of how she had fiercely defended her brother against his disparaging remarks. The same brother who now thought nothing of selling her to pay off his debt.
To have another woman pay for his shortcomings.
Hawthorne truly was unmatched in his depravity.
Only this time, Cassian was not going to stand by and allow it to happen.
He had nothing to do with the exasperating woman who had the great misfortune of being born the sister of Baron Hawthorne, but he would be damned if he let her suffer at her brother’s hands!
“I will have her.”
Both men turned toward the door in stunned silence. Cassian stared them both down with all the arrogance his very being could muster.
They were naught but pitiful fools, preying on the weak and the vulnerable. It would be so easy to squash them underneath his boots, but why should he dirty his footwear? His one and only concern in this matter was Juliana Hawthorne.
“Sir, you have no right to… to…” the usurer stammered. Cassian simply cast him a dark glare, and the man hastily shut his flapping mouth, but his eyes burned with avaricious light as he turned toward the baron.
“If you will give your sister to me for the night, then I shall settle your debts.”
Hawthorne was unable to hide his delight. “All of it?”
The man nodded.
“In writing?”
He scowled. “Fine. In writing. Three thousand pounds,” Cassian snapped at Hawthorne.
“Th-three thousand pounds?” the masked creditor wheezed. He turned toward the baron, who had gone suddenly pale.
Hawthorne shook his head and stumbled back. “I… I do not understand—”
“You are selling your sister, am I correct?” Cassian was losing his patience with the imbecile.
Hawthorne turned two shades paler. “There is no need to be so vulgar—”
“Says the man who is selling his sister.” He reached into his breast pocket and drew out a wad of banknotes. He counted a few and thrust them at Hawthorne. “Three thousand pounds. That should be enough to cover your debts and buy your sister a few new gowns.”
The baron flushed, but he clutched the banknotes as if they were his lifeline. Cassian sneered at the sight. The man was no worse than those who languished in opium dens, selling their souls to feed their addictions.
“W-When do you—”
“Oh, do not be so eager, Hawthorne,” he sneered. “I will claim my prize in due time. And if you dare to sell your sister behind my back, I will make sure that your debts will be the least of your problems.”
“U-understood, sir.”
Your Grace, Cassian wanted to correct him. Instead, he merely smiled ominously at the sniveling creature.
He had no intention of revealing himself to any of these buffoons. It was infinitely more satisfying to let them writhe in apprehension, forever wondering just who the hell he was.