Chapter 13
Eli didn’t recognize the man whose teeth went flying out of his face. Didn’t care to. The motherfucker put his hands on Rosaline.
And in doing so, forfeited his life.
Simple as that.
The bone of his jaw shattered with a thoroughly satisfying crunch, and the tub of guts and gore crumpled to the ground, too unconscious to catch his weight with anything but his ruined face.
Next came his hatchet-faced friend, who’d reached into his jacket to pull a pistol out of the shoulder holster.
Eli beat him to it, wrenching the gun from the man’s grip, spinning it on his itching trigger finger, and whipping him across the temple with the butt of the weapon, hard enough to leave a significant dent in his skull.
Having dropped them both, he spun the weapon back and pointed the barrel at the fat man’s head. “Tell me,” he snarled, his lips barely able to form the words. “They hurt you? I’ll end them.”
He couldn’t look at her. Couldn’t face a telling pain in her eyes without ripping the men’s bones from their sockets with his bare hands.
Eli had always considered his temper to have a medium to long fuse, depending on the situation. Once ignited he blew hot as a smith’s forge.
But this…this cold, hard, eerie demon inside of him was something new. It licked at his bones with a numb sort of calm, locking him down with a fury so intense, it coalesced into a strange implosion of pure, white rage.
The violence running through him wasn’t primal or feral as it had been in the past, as he expected to be when it came to her.
It was a lethal calculation. A precise and fanatic joy at the thought of carving the flesh that’d profaned her away, from the man’s meat and making him watch.
“Nothing happened,” she said shakily. “Not yet…”
“Good.” He cocked the pistol.
“Wait! Stop!” She lunged forward, and Eli instantly released the hammer, respecting the weapon enough not to want it anywhere near his wife. “You’ll bring the entire house if you shoot.”
Frantic little fingers tugged at his sleeve, and permeated the ringing of rage in his ears.
Eli’s head swiveled on a neck stiff with the bristle of a beast about to strike, his eyes finding the woman at his side.
His woman. His wife.
Mine.
Language still eluded him, somewhat, and would probably do so until he had Rosaline alone and could assess her state of well-being for himself.
Seizing her by the elbow, he half led, half dragged her from the room and into the long corridor, leaving those sacks of ripe shit to become someone else’s problem.
To his surprise, his wife trotted meekly beside him, in fact, she clung to his arm as if it were the only solid thing keeping her from dropping off a steep precipice.
The sound of a household in a state of alarm arose with a swift and astonishing ferocity. Running steps pounded above their heads and along the stairs, chaos erupting below them. Panicked calls and barked commands converged from all directions.
With a little eep of shock, Rosaline took the reins like a tugboat pulling a steamship, leaning all her weight into the task until they’d reached a door that she yanked open and shoved them both inside.
Eli stood stock-still, allowing his eyes to adjust to the dimness of some sort of linen closet. He allowed lungs full of honeysuckle to anchor him back into reality.
All night he’d been plagued with this electric prickle of awareness, this low vibration in his body that seemed attuned only to her presence. Several times, he looked for her, and several times he’d called himself nine kinds of idiot.
Until a flash of gold caught his eye, and he whirled to watch a woman—his woman—racing up the main flight of stairs.
She’d been too far to see her face, but Eli knew how Rosaline moved, had studied the shape of her limbs and the effortless grace of her walk for weeks now.
He’d memorized every curve and hollow, and how her skin looked in all shades of light and dark.
Once he’d extracted himself from his conversation and maneuvered to the staircase, she’d disappeared. So, he’d all but torn Northwalk Hall apart searching for her.
And was so damned glad he did.
Because the thought of those brutes pawing at her…of that desperate way she’d gasped his name when he’d gone to investigate the noises behind that door…
Eli felt the evil chill of retribution rising in him again. What if he’d not been there when she needed?
“What the everlasting fuck are you doing here, Rosaline?” he demanded in a voice that he knew damn good and well rendered their hiding place obsolete. “You could have been—”
Her body collided with his only for both of her hands to clamp over his mouth. “They’ll hear you.”
“Then answer my question,” he remonstrated in a throaty whisper muffled behind the pressure of her fingers. He had the strangest urge to suck them into his mouth. To bite and nip them. To throw her over the first thing he could find and fuck away some of this cold dread.
Goddamn but his blood was up. He needed to calm the hell down, and being locked in a small space with the lithe body he’d missed with a visceral misery was doing exactly nothing to help.
“I was looking for the husband who’d been missing for days.” Her whisper was enunciated with an angry fervency that matched his own. “I knew you were due to arrive today, and when you didn’t come home, I went to find you.”
He brushed her hands aside, wishing his lips didn’t taste like her skin. That the slight flavor she’d left there didn’t produce a roaring hunger in his gut, and lower. “Who told you I’d— Oh. Right. Fucking Morley.”
“Don’t blame Morley,” she hissed in a voice more acidic than he’d ever heard from her. “He wrongly assumed I’d accompany you to such events as your wife. I came to make amends, so you can imagine my surprise when I found you’d trotted a continental trollop out as your show pony.”
“Trotted…a what?” He paused, staring down at what he could make out of her shadow, trying to figure out what the hell nonsense she was spewing.
“Hold on here, woman, the only one who has cause to be angry is me. You don’t get to show up here uninvited, ruin my plans, and get yourself locked in a room with those fuckwits who might have—”
“I didn’t ‘get myself’ anywhere. They grabbed me from the hall and forced me into that parlor.”
The picture that invoked in his head brought him to the very breaking point of his sanity. “What the hell were you doing up there alone in the first place? Were you casing the place for something to take?”
Apparently, she had better eyesight in the dark because her slap landed exactly where it ought to on his cheek. “You can go to hell.” Her voice cracked on a perilous note.
“Always assumed I would,” he bit back, the hot sting of her slap sending a shower of sparks surging all the way down to his cock.
“And take your mistress with you, you…you perfidious, supercilious cur!”
Eli rocked back a little, stymied by her adorable stab at insults. If he ever found out what she called him, he’d surely be offended. But for now, he couldn’t help the little tug of amusement at the corner of his lip. “You’re jealous?”
“I’m livid!” She pushed at his chest, practically bouncing off of it. He wished he could see the sparks in her eyes, could watch her snap and snarl like a little lap dog finding the rage of his wolfish ancestors.
Probably she was the prettiest angry thing in the wide world.
No.
This time he stopped short of slapping his own self.
No. Now wasn’t the time to go soft. He was angry with her. Betrayed by her. She was the embodiment of what he detested most in this world. A thief. A liar. Someone he couldn’t trust as far as he could—well, maybe that analogy wouldn’t work… He could probably throw her pretty far.
“You think I’m taking up with the Duchesse? There’s nothing between her and me but friendly business.”
“I heard you two in the gallery,” she spat.
“Cooing at each other like two mated doves. You paraded her around this grand house in front of all these important people like a peacock, while I sat at home alone, waiting for you to walk in the door so I could prostrate myself before your mercy, and beg you on my knees for forgiveness.” The fury in her voice wobbled, filling with the tight threat of tears that tugged at a heart not ready to forget who she was. What she was.
What she’d done.
His blood surged once again, but he was too hot to identify the emotion. Rage? Pain? Lust? Some startling amalgamation of all three?
“Then do it,” he said, a dark intent threading through his veins.
She stilled. “What?”
“Get on your knees, little wife.” His cock flexed and jerked at the images those words provoked. “Beg my forgiveness.”
“No,” came the steely reply. “You’ve your French whore for that. I changed my mind the moment I saw your heads together.”
Infuriated. Inflamed. He seized her shoulders and hauled her against him, crushing his lips to hers.
Sweet fuck, he’d missed this.
Missed her. Three nights without her had turned him into something like a pathetic hound, both hating and adoring the mistress that’d beaten him.
He hated her and burned for her. Tossed around knotted sheets like a restless addict denied his opiate, wishing he’d forget her like he had so many other women.
That she hadn’t burrowed into his heart like a tick…
all the while intending to suck him dry.
In his weakest moments, he’d even convinced himself it wouldn’t be so bad. He’d all the wealth in the world, and had intended to share it with her from the beginning. If that were the case, had she really stolen from him at all?
Then he remembered how it felt to pull his brother from the rubble. To look the man he’d trusted the most in the eye, and see all the deviant emotions he’d missed before. The greed and the resentment. The victory in his pain. The torment of a seed planted he’d never be able to confirm or deny.
Never again, he’d vowed. Never would he allow himself to trust.
And the woman in his arms had proven that very pledge a smart one.