Page 41 of Her Beast

Then Kemp removed that final barrier to Julia’s modesty and Malcolm’s breath fogged the glass.

“Bloody hell,” he whispered.

Julia Harlow was so perfect she didn’t even look real.

She was paler even than the silk bedding, the blue veins pulsing beneath her skin like warm, living marble.

Her breasts were full and tipped with surprisingly large nipples that were a dark rose.

The whores Malcolm used were always shaved, or at least trimmed, so it had been ages since he’d seen a full bush. Unlike the corn silk hair on her head, the tangle of curls at the apex of her thighs was the color of ripe wheat, pale enough that he could see the shadow of her cleft.

Blood thundered to his cock as he gorged on her beauty. He was so damned hard that he could probably ejaculate without even touching himself.

But he denied himself that pleasure, instead reveling in his erotic suffering.

Kemp lifted the fine Irish bedding and silk blankets and covered Julia to her chin.

As per Malcolm’s instructions, the lights concealed in the cornicing—the most advanced gaslighting of its sort—were left on, casting a soft, but not obtrusive, glow over the room. There were no windows out onto the world, so Malcolm controlled whatever light the inhabitant would have.

Kemp shut the door behind her and Malcolm was alone with his sleeping angel.

He knew he should be ashamed that he’d taken her, but he’d not felt so excited and invigorated since Sukey had been alive.

That feeling alone was worth the bother of abducting her.

He extinguished all the lights in his bedroom and lowered himself into the chair Norris had thoughtfully placed facing Miss Harlow’s room.

And then he watched and waited.

Chapter 8

Malcolm didn’t wake up until almost nine thirty the following morning, later than he’d slept in years.

Amazingly, he’d fallen asleep in the chair.

When he pushed himself to his feet his body reminded him that he’d abused it for almost three hours in his gymnasium the day before.

“Uhhgh,” he groaned, gingerly stretching the kinks from his arms and legs, taking care not to overextend the limbs on his damaged left side.

He didn’t usually exercise so strenuously, but it was the only activity that had calmed him after reading the information Smith had given him a week earlier.

And so every day he’d spent two and even three hours trying to work off his rage.

It was always a temptation to exercise only his healthy limbs, but the last thing he wanted was to end up with a mass of muscle on the right side of his body and nothing on the other—like a human fiddler crab—so he was consistent, even though there was always pain when he used his left side.

“Good morning, sir. Did you sleep well?” Norris asked, emerging from Malcolm’s dressing room.

He grunted.

“Will you be exercising as usual, sir?”

Malcolm stared at the sleeping beauty in the next room and considered Norris’s question.

He’d woken with his usual erection and was still hard. If he skipped his morning exercise, he could watch his angel wake up and enjoy a leisurely frig.

His cock twitched happily at the notion.

Malcolm snorted softly. He would have thought that last night’s session with Smith—the first time he’d laid bare hands on another human being in years—would have sated him for a while, but instead it appeared that he’d opened the lid on a dangerous box because today he was hungrier than ever for more sex, more touch, more … well, justmore.

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