Page 42 of The Scot Beds His Wife
“What if I did?” she queried, defensively. “What concern is it of yours?”
“If it concerns Erradale, it concerns me.”
“Like hell it does,” Samantha snapped, retreating a few strategic steps away so she wouldn’t have to look up at him. “Erradale is and willalwaysremain mine.” Even as she said this, Samantha knew it rang false. Erradale no more belonged to her than it did to him. And yet, she was willing to fight to the death to keep it away from him. Because of the depths he seemed to be willing to sink to take what he thought was her home.
He gave her no quarter, matching her retreat with a relentless advance. “Ye’re wasting yer time. I’ve already told ye, my brother is not my laird. He willna stop me from getting what I want.”
“You said, yourself, that you are not yet emancipated from Ravencroft,” she challenged.
“That’ll have no bearing on the outcome.” He shrugged.
“Won’t it? You didn’t want me to know that the Magistrate’s Bench is comprised of three magistrates, did you? That there’s still a chance you could be in the minority? What, did you not think I’d find out? That I wouldn’t use every means at my disposal to fight you with everything I have?”
He didn’t hide his displeasure quickly enough. The motions were almost imperceptible, but Samantha read them as easily as a child’s primer. A twitch below his eye. A slight tightening at his hairline. A ripple in the extraordinary musculature of his torso. She’d been right. He’d not expected her to figure him out. He’d known of Alison Ross’s enmity for Hamish Mackenzie’s sons, and guessed that it would be intensified for his first-born, Liam.
Enough to keep her away from Ravencroft.
“You’re not getting your way, this time,” she declared. “Not while I draw breath.”
A bit more of his impartial veneer slipped, and what she read in his eyes drove her back a few more steps.
“What is more important, lass? That ye win? Or that I lose?” A leashed aggression threaded into his brogue. A subtle warning, like the shift in the air before the carnage of a decisive battle.
Behind the charm and wit and seductive manipulation shimmering in his eyes’ mercilessly beautiful depths, Samantha read something that sent her hand to rest on her pistol…
There was violence in those eyes.
He marked the subtle motion of her hand, the corners of his lips dipping in a poorly concealed frown. “Ye’ll not need that, lass. I doona hurt women.”
“Yes you do,” she argued.
“Never.”Tension gathered in his shoulders like thunderclouds building upon themselves and she noted that the rise and fall of his breaths hadn’t slowed since their ill-conceived—admittedly unforgettable—kiss. “I’ve not raised my hand to a lass in the entirety of my life,” he said in a voice laced with more sex than rage as he opened his palms to her. “These hands have done nothing but caress wanton flesh. Or produce shivers of pleasure. Women doonafearthese hands, they crave them. They doona cringe from my strength, they beg for it. They drop their fans and handkerchiefs. They run into me on purpose, only to touch my body. They titter and wave and swoon and make themselves ridiculous. I have piles of perfumed letters and unanswered invitations from women I’ve bedded, beseeching me for one more night. One more whispered conversation. One more tender caress. So doona yedaretreat me like I’m a monster. That was my father. Thatismy brother. They are the Lairds of the Mackenzie of Wester Ross, bathed in blood, both male and female. My hands are soiled only by slick desire and sins ye canna evenbeginto imagine in yer most wicked dreams.”
Samantha snorted. “You truly believe that, don’t you?”
It wasn’t the reply he’d expected, she could tell by the tightening of his lips. “I’ve heard the moans and cries of bliss, lass, which I ken are easily fabricated,” he said drolly. “But the wet rush of ecstasy and the pulsing flesh around mine are unmistakable. Belief turns to knowledge with evidence.”
She swallowed around a tongue gone suddenly dry at the pure, vulgar images his words evoked, but stepped forward fueled by principled, righteous indignation.
“Do you actually think your actions don’t hurt women?”
The wicked gleam in his eyes darkened to a villainous one. “Not unless they ask for it.
“What about all those unanswered letters?” she challenged. “Do you suppose that the cold, selfish rejection of your former conquests doesn’t cause intense pain? That it doesn’t leave a deep wound?”
“Doona speak in metaphors, lass, it doesna suit the occasion. One blow from a man like me is like to leave a wound a wee lass would never recover from. Doona think I’m unaware of that. An unanswered letter is nothing like.”
“But so does a broken promise,” she insisted. “Rejection and dismissal are their own form of cruelty.”
“What would ye have me do, offer to marry every woman who contrives her way into my bed?”
“Not at all, I wouldn’t wish marriage toyouon my worst enemy. No one deserves a lifetime of nothing but arduous lessons in disappointed expectations.”
“Och, lass, ye’ll have to admit that I’m not alone in my cruelty. Yer tongue scores through like a bayonet.”
“The truth is rarely kind,” she volleyed back. “And I highly doubt most of the scores of hapless women who find themselves swept into your abbreviated attentions are contrivers. You’re a predator, Gavin St. James.”
“That’s Lord Thorne to ye,” he reminded her with haughty vehemence.
