Page 62 of Crying Wolfe
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.
Missedher. 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.
Breaking the kiss, he looked down at her, catching a faint gleam off the whites of her eyes. “I couldn’t fuck the Duchesse if I wanted to,” he said, his grip tightening when he felt her tense, unwilling to allow her any distance. “But I don’t, goddammit. There are a lot of beautiful women in the world, Rosaline, and I could buy most of them regardless of how I look. But what sticks in my craw the most, is that I can’t look at a single fucking one of them without thinking of how she isn’t you.”
She put her hands against his chest but didn’t push him away.
“I don’t think it matters how angry I ever get with you, woman, I’ll come crawling when you crook your finger. Because no one else makes me this hard. No one else could have me so spitting mad, so close to getting my hands on the one thing I came to this frigid country to obtain, and here I am in a fucking closet for some reason, ready to sacrifice everything for one more chance to be inside you.”
She met his next kiss with an explosive, confident response he’d not expected.
Her lips were full pillows of pleasure, her mouth smooth and hot, slippery and succulent. Her tongue sparred with his, matching him thrust for wet, velvet thrust. Each stroke sent dizzying, delirious sensations spiraling through him, whipping him into such a frenzy, he was certain he’d lost his mind.
And was in danger of losing even more to this confounding woman.
If only he could make himself cold enough. Hard enough. Craft a heart of steel and stone to keep her out. To lock it in a glacier at the top of the world. Somewhere her inviting warmth couldn’t tempt him away from himself.
Because she did. That icy wrath that’d overcome him earlier had miraculously melted before the inferno he found in the slick heat of her mouth. He was flooded with liquid fire. Boiled in days of lonely yearning. Lost to a tempestuous firestorm of possession and anger and fear and…and something he couldn’t allow himself to define.
In her arms, he forgot. Forgot the load of his loss and the cut of betrayal.
Even hers.
Eli’s hands roamed her, gripped at her arms, her hips, her ass, letting her feel the true strength of his hands for the first time.
