Claiming the Courtesan
She shrugged and did as he bid. “I suppose if I don’t, you’ll order your thug of a driver to shoot me.”
He tightened the knots. “I could gag you as well, you know.” Negligently, he flipped her skirts up to her knees. “I find myself less than beguiled by your wardrobe, madam.”
With displeasure, he surveyed her thick cotton stockings and sturdy halfboots. Practical, but far from alluring. The Soraya he knew had worn only silk next to her skin.
Silk. Or him.
“I wasn’t out to beguile,” she snapped as he tied her ankles together.
He pulled down her skirts and returned to his seat with an urgency he hoped she didn’t note. This woman was in many ways a stranger, but she still exercised the same heady tug on his desires, damn her. But he had some control, Devil take it. He wouldn’t throw her on her back and tup her the minute he had her in his power, no matter how his starving senses screamed for him to do just that.
A silence fell as he fought and won against his unruly passions. He resented this effortless hold she had over him. He always had. But nothing in six years had broken him of his addiction to this one exquisite woman. He craved her the way his father had craved opium. Would his particular obsession prove just as fatal as his sire’s?
Broodingly, he stared across at her, taking in her shuttered expression and the way she gracefully braced herself against the lurching motion, even constrained as she was. She clearly meant to deny him tears, protests, tantrums. Perhaps she saved them for a more telling moment.
But when, a long while later, she did speak, she used the same unruffled voice as before. “Just what do you want of me, Kylemore?”
He settled back against the squabs with a faint smile. “Nothing too onerous for a woman of your talents.” He let his smile broaden as intoxicating satisfaction flooded through him, headier than the strongest liquor. “You’ve given me three months of misery and trouble, madam. Now it’s only fair you recompense my efforts with sensual pleasure.”
Chapter 4
“Kidnapping is a capital offense,” Verity said steadily. Never let him see you’re frightened, her mind chanted in time with the creaking carriage. Never let him know you’re weak.
Kylemore remained unconcerned, damn him. “No magistrate will lift a finger to save a common whore from supplying what her patron has paid for. Especially if her patron is one of the greatest men in the kingdom.”
His insulting description of her shouldn’t rankle. She had sold her favors for money. All the same, his dismissive words hurt. Daunting to realize quite how much they hurt.
She fought to conceal her unwelcome reaction. The ruthless autocrat sitting opposite wanted her to play the hysterical female, weeping and begging for mercy, but she’d promised herself the day she’d left London that she’d never be this man’s—any man’s—puppet again. The Duke of Kylemore didn’t yet realize that compliant Soraya, with her silken sensuality, was gone forever. Instead, she’d become a creature of iron and ice who would submit to no man’s demands.
She’d cried, alone and afraid and grieving, when her parents had died. She’d raged and wept when necessity had compelled her to become an old man’s mistress. Tears hadn’t helped on those occasions. They wouldn’t help now. Instead, she must be cunning and observant. She must think and plan and wait. In this alone she was like Kylemore: Control was her refuge and her weapon.
Circumstances had forced her to learn to interpret men. This particular specimen might be more opaque than most, but she could tell the duke was stubbornly set on this reckless course, even though heaven knew no good could come of it.
She moistened a dry throat. “My brother will have the law on you.”
“The same brother who pimped for you in London?”
She’d defend Ben even if she’d never stoop to defend herself. “That’s not true. He protected me.”
The monster had the nerve to smile at her again. The curve of that beautifully shaped mouth conveyed a mixture of condescension and disdain. “You hardly need protecting from the man who has been your acknowledged lover for the past year. No, my dear Soraya, you deceive yourself to expect rescue from that quarter.”
“Don’t call me that!” In their hated bonds, her hands curled into fists. She took a deep breath to quell her stormy reaction. Never let him see. Never let him see, she repeated silently. She spoke more calmly. “My name is Verity Ashton.”
“As you wish,” he said without any great interest. “But don’t imagine anything else has changed, because it hasn’t.”
The smile developed a tinge of smugness. Because of course, he had seen. He was an astute man with an uncanny ability to read her. From the start, he’d known that beneath her composure, she was scared and bewildered and furious.
None of which meant she must admit defeat. She straightened her spine, sent him a glare of virulent, but unfortunately impotent, hatred and turned her head away.
They covered several miles in increasingly oppressive silence. She tried to concentrate on her physical woes. But while the cords constraining her were tight, the silk didn’t chafe anything except her pride. It was more uncomfortable trying to balance against the vehicle’s motion, but even that eventually became automatic.
The duke studied her with unwavering intensity. She endured his inspection as the coach swayed along the road, stealing her away from Whitby and her shattered dreams of contentment. With every second, the tension between them wound tighter and tighter. A tension heavy with her fear and his unrelenting purpose. And something else she didn’t want to acknowledge. The sexual awareness that always quivered between them was almost tangible in the dimly lit carriage.
Verity had no illusions about her ultimate punishment.
He wanted her. He’d take her. He was angry enough to hurt her. Nor had she missed the significance of those few moments when he’d knelt at her feet. The catch in his breath. The swiftly hidden tremor in those elegant hands as he’d bound her.
He was still in thrall to his lust. Of course he was. Why launch himself on this lunatic path otherwise?