Page 33 of The Heart of an Earl

“You do?”

A rough chuckle escaped his throat. “I have been sleeping next to you for three weeks now, every night, torture going to sleep, torture waking up. Torture every second your body is next to mine.”

He said it out loud.

Said the very thing she’d been tiptoeing around in her mind for weeks.

The air that crackled between them, energy without anywhere to go. The way his mouth would curl into a smile when she said something bizarre—remnants from her life on the pirate ship. The way his hazel eyes would sink into her, searching her soul. The rough cut of his hair, always disheveled and how she had to battle her fingers back from randomly touching it.

He’d said the words out loud and now they hung in the air between them, fine crystals of warm breath in the freezing cold, waiting to be shattered. Or melted.

Hell, she wanted to touch him. Wanted it like she never had with a man before.

She found his eyes. “Your body on mine, behind me, it…it is the same for me.”

He exhaled a deep breath, relief brewing with flaring desire. “Damn, Jules, tell me I can touch you.” His fingers flexed and he stood up, looking down at her. “But if you do not want that—I understand. Nothing changes between us. We go on as before.”

“No.” She had to steal a breath to steady herself, to steady her words. “I do—I want you to touch me.”

“But?” His head gave a slight shake. “I can see the hesitation in your eyes and I’ll not lift a hand to you until it is gone.”

Her bottom lip pulled under her teeth. Hesitation would be the death of her.

His eyes narrowed. “What is it? Did he rape you? You said he didn’t hurt you, but did that bastard Redthorn rape you?”

She clamped her teeth together, silent.

“Tell me, Jules.” His voice dipped, raw. “This is the moment you need to be honest. You need to tell me. Did he rape you?”

Her head flew back and forth. “No. Never that. I told you, he never laid a finger on me. Not one that I didn’t want.”

Des’s brows arched. “One that you didn’t want?”

Her eyes closed, blocking Des from her view. Blocking his face—his reaction from her sight to what she was about to say. But she had to admit this. Admit it because it was who she was now.

The person she could not escape from, no matter how she tried.

Jules heaved a breath. “He was my husband and he was not ugly—handsome, even at times. And he could be charming when he set his mind upon it and that is how he wore me down. That is my sin to not have resisted him.” Her eyes opened to Des, her words dwindling to a whisper. “I liked it. It is that I liked it.”

For a moment his eyebrows drew together, confusion setting deep into his forehead.

In the next breath, understanding set in and his look went wide, his words slow, measured. “You liked sex with Redthorn?”

Her eyes squinted shut and she nodded, heat staining her cheeks. “I did. Being on that ship was my life. I didn’t think there was a way off—I didn’t think I would ever live on land again. And there were things that I wanted to experience before I died. That was one of them and he knew that. I never told him, but he knew it of me. So I succumbed. Freely of my own will. He was a murderous bastard, yes, but he had the softest touch. Gentle. A bastard that managed to take care. And as wrong as it was, I liked it.”

She stopped, drawing a breath, choking it down past the knot in her throat and her eyes opened to him.

The hard line of Des’s jaw had surfaced, the vein along his temple pounding. “You liked it?”

“Yes, I bloody well liked it, Des.” Her voice pitched high. “I liked when he would strip me bare. When his hands would run over my body. When he would make me scream in pleasure.”

“Stop. Just damn well stop, Jules.”

She stepped forward, the tips of her toes hitting his, her neck craning to look up at him, even as he avoided her eyes. “No. You don’t get to do that to me, Des. You don’t get to make me feel more disgusted about it than I already am. I was weak and I was never going to admit any of it to you, but you couldn’t let it rest. You asked—you pushed—you were the one that needed to know.” She gasped a breath, her lips pulling back in a straight line. “And now you do.”

It took Des long seconds to look at her. “I’m not disgusted at you—it’s that I don’t want to imagine any man ever touching you.” His stare shifted, boring into her. “There were never any children?”

“No. I’m barren.”

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