What was about to happen carried no deceiving gloss of courtesy or civilization. This man wanted to brand her as his in the most primitive way. She felt the mattress sag as he knelt on the bed, then the heat of his body, shocking in spite of the familiarity, when he straddled her.
“You keep up the pretense of reluctance,” he said drily.
“It’s no pretense.” She still refused to look at him. If she couldn’t see him, perhaps she could hide from what he did.
“Yes, it is,” he insisted.
The sudden shift of air should have warned her. With one powerful tug, he ripped the nightdress from neck to hem, leaving her exposed to his gaze as she’d been exposed so many times before. She fought the urge to cover herself with the tattered shreds of the gown, with her hands, with the sheet.
His face was strained and determined in the candlelight. She’d never seen him like this. He’d always approached her with eager anticipation, but there was no joy in him now. The odd thought crossed her mind that he fought his own deepest nature when he came to her in anger.
Then she looked down at his sex, hard and avid and seeking, and she dismissed her naïveté with the scorn it deserved. His nature was clear. It was to conquer and subdue. That was all there was in him.
“Anything you take, you take as a thief,” she said bitterly.
Her insult angered him, she saw, as the blue eyes narrowed. But it was too late to reconsider the wisdom of taunting a man who held her at such a disadvantage.
“I’m no thief, madam,” he said harshly. Then fleeting, turbulent emotion darkened his intent gaze and his tone softened into velvety enticement. “Verity, think what you do. It doesn’t have to be like this. The pleasure we shared was a miracle.”
Pleasure. The word slashed at her like a sword, while deep within, a tangled knot loosened as the inevitable, unwelcome memory awoke of his body moving in hers with delight. So many familiar elements here conspired to vanquish her. His clean scent, his alluring heat, his cursed, lost beauty.
“That implies something freely bestowed,” she said through taut lips. “You know that was never true.”
“I know that was always true.” The danger in his soft voice sent a shiver, not entirely of revulsion, through her. Oh, how she wished her response was as simple as revulsion.
“Never.” God help her, she lied.
His brows contracted, and fool that she was, she read sorrow rather than fury in his face. “Well, if I must take you as a thief, then I shall be a thief.”
He pushed her legs apart, moved between them and thrust inside her.
There had been no preliminaries. Verity tensed, but her betraying body had already prepared for his possession.
He rammed into her hard and gave a groan that echoed the defeat in her heart. For a long, dark moment, she lay pinioned under him. The world had shrunk to the man above her. It felt of him. It smelled of him. His weight held her motionless.
He withdrew and plunged back into her once, twice. Then he jerked convulsively as his control broke and his essence spurted into her. He seemed to shudder over her forever before he groaned once more, then rolled away.
It was over. He’d taken her quickly, carelessly, irrevocably. She was once again the Duke of Kylemore’s lover and she wished she were dead.
She took her first full breath for what felt like an eternity. The air still smelled like Kylemore. Like Kylemore and sex. She needed to wash. Slowly, as if she were an old woman, she got out of the bed.
Her movement roused him enough to reach over and grab her arm. “Where are you going?” He lifted himself up on one elbow to look at her. “If you run away from the glen, you’ll die in the mountains. It’s hard country out there, and people unfamiliar with it don’t survive.”
She thought now that he’d taken her, he’d sound victorious, gloating. After all, he’d gone to a world of trouble to get her on her back in this bed. But his voice was flat and devoid of emotion.
“I’m not running away,” she said dully, despite herself clutching the remnants of her nightdress around her as if she’d been a violated virgin.
A laughable notion, she thought sourly. But she didn’t feel like laughing. She felt like crying, as she’d cried when she’d first sold herself.
She lit a candle with shaking hands and left the room. Only later did she think how strange it was that he didn’t try to stop her.
Chapter 10
On unsteady legs, Verity found her way downstairs to the kitchen. The banked range shed enough light for her to fill a kettle and heat some water. Her ruined nightgown provided little protection against the night air, but she was so numb that she hardly noticed the cold. Between her legs, she was sticky and wet with Kylemore’s seed.
The sensation was unusual. The duke had never spent himself inside her. In London, they’d used sheaths, or she’d satisfied him some other way. An old courtesan she’d known in Paris had taught her the tricks of a whore’s trade. Verity had learned, even while her heart had despaired, because she’d had to.
But tonight Kylemore hadn’t cared about planting a bastard in her womb. Perhaps he meant that to be part of her punishment. He wanted to give her a permanent reminder of him. She could have told him that was one revenge he’d never have.