Claiming the Courtesan

But for once, he found the will to resist temptation.

“It’s too late for John,” she said, still in that soft voice. “He was killed in a tavern brawl in York. He fought over a wench. He hadn’t changed.”

So the bastard burned in hell and was eternally out of his reach. Kylemore tamped down his rage. Then unbelievably, he felt two slender arms encircle his waist and a sweet pressure as she leaned into his back.

Soraya had never touched him in affection, until that last betraying kiss. And Verity never wanted to touch him at all. Yet here she embraced him without coercion. He felt lost, as though he’d been snatched into some alternative world while he’d slept. How had they moved from the bruising, turbulent passions of their last coupling to this strange truce?

“You can’t defend my honor,” she murmured into his left shoulder. Her breath brushed warm upon his skin, a sensual contrast to the cool air of the new day. “Anyway, we both know I’ve had no honor to defend since I was fifteen.”

Perhaps because he meant what he said so intensely, he didn’t look at her. Instead, he fixed his gaze on the shining surface of the loch. “Verity, you have more honor than anyone I know.”

She made a stifled, unhappy sound and tried to pull away, but he caught her hands and drew her around so she faced him. “You gave up everything you believed in for the sake of the people you love. Then you were brave enough to seize the opportunities your new life offered.”

The eyes she lifted to his were bleak with self-hatred. “You haven’t always thought so highly of me.”

“Hell, Verity, I wanted you and you ran away. I was angry. I always admired you. Now I realize your true quality.”

She flinched and tried to withdraw. “Stop it.”

He kept hold of her. “I never despised you—although I tried my damnedest when you left me. You sacrificed yourself to keep your family safe, yet you can’t forgive yourself for what you did.”

This time when she pulled free, he let her go.

Chapter 15

Panting as if she’d just climbed a mountain rather than walked down one floor to the kitchen, Verity leaned both hands on the scarred old table and bent her head. For a long moment, she stood there, hunched and shaking. Her body still ached from the vigorous sex hours before, and she was light-headed with fear, fatigue and too much emotion.

Reliving her past had hurt, but it was Kylemore himself who had cut through her every defense and harrowed her heart.

She muffled a sob. She had to get away from here. She had to get away even if it killed her.

If she didn’t, she was lost.

The handsome nobleman who dispensed rubies as though they were apples was no threat. The seductive rake who drew shuddering pleasure from her body touched her senses but not her heart.

But she couldn’t fight the man who cried out in the night and clung to her as if she was his only hope.

Nor could she fight the revelation that she and the duke weren’t so very different after all. A sneaking empathy for him had always undermined the emotional distance she struggled to maintain. Now to her wrenching sorrow, she knew why.

When faced with an impossible choice, she’d created Soraya. In a similar fashion and for similar reasons, the terrors of the duke’s childhood had forced him to become Cold Kylemore. The hairs rose on the back of her neck when she recalled how his long-dead father revisited his dreams.

Soraya and Cold Kylemore. Both necessary masquerades. Both requiring deception and lies. Both requiring a desperate, silent courage to keep the curious, spiteful world at bay.

His soul was dark and twisted and tormented.

His soul was full of evil and pain and regret.

His soul was twin to hers.

No, she wouldn’t let it be so. She was a common strumpet. He counted among the kingdom’s most powerful men. Nothing linked them other than a past liaison and his endless thirst for revenge.

The light brightened as day advanced. She lifted her head and wildly looked around the empty room. This cursed place made her doubt herself. If ever—please, God, let it be so!—she made it back to Ben, she’d forget this insanity. The isolation made her question what she’d always known was true.

The Duke of Kylemore was a self-centered autocrat. Shallow, cruel, thoughtless.

She was a whore who raised her skirts for any man who paid her. Her heart was ice.

Her han