The Virgin's Choice

Cursing, Lars shoved her into the old cabin before he slammed the door behind them. Rose backed away, still glaring at him, rubbing her half-frozen wrists that he’d bruised with his sinewy grip.

They’d walked for three hours in the frozen rain, up the snowy, rutted dirt road on foot after Lars’s Ferrari had slid on a patch of ice and blown a tire. Her black dress and thin black coat couldn’t hold up against these wintry conditions. Her black leather pumps were soaked through, her feet like ice, and she’d almost forgotten what it was like to be warm. She didn’t know if she would ever feel warm again.

But still, when Rose had seen the cabin in the clearing, she’d tried to run away. She’d turned blindly back toward the woods to take her chances in the frozen mountains. But Lars had had other ideas. Now, he blocked the door, locking it behind him.

“What is this place?” she choked out, huddling near the cold fireplace.

“Laetitia’s great-grandfather built it.” He looked around with a twist of scorn on his lip. “I left my wife here with an incompetent nurse right after her accident. I hoped I would return from San Francisco and find she’d joined her mother in the afterlife. No such luck. My wife—” he spat out the word “—still lived.”

Lars picked up a piece of the wood stacked neatly by the fireplace. “This is who their family really is,” he said. “Jumped-up nobodies. Peasants who earned money with their hands. Like Novros.”

Rose sucked in her breath. Xerxes’s name hit her like a blow. If only…

“He came here last year, hot on my heels,” he said coldly. “He very nearly found Laetitia. I barely had time to pull her into the woods with the nurse to hide. After he left, I s

tarted leaving false trails around the world, hiring look-alikes to distract him.”

She thought of all the anguished energy that Xerxes had spent trying to find his sister. “How could you be so cruel?” she demanded.

He shrugged. “It was easier to keep him on a hopeless wild-goose chase than risk moving Laetitia away from here.” He added in a sullen voice, “I thought the car accident was fate finally rewarding me as I deserved. I never thought she would live for a whole year.”

Rose stared at him, her eyes wide, her hand covering her mouth as she whispered, “You’re truly a monster. You tried to kill your own wife!”

“No,” he bit out. “No one can say I tried to kill her. All I did was help fate. She should have died. I deserve her money more than she ever did. She married me. I earned it. I deserve it.” He looked at her. “Just as I deserve you.”

With an intake of breath at the hard hunger in his eyes, Rose took a step back.

Lars must have seen the fear in her expression, because he turned back to the fireplace in a posture of confidence. Leaning forward to open the flue, he placed a single log inside and lit a match. He pressed the flame up against the wood.

Without any tinder, the log wouldn’t light. All Lars succeeded in doing was burning his fingers as the flame burned down. As Rose watched, he lit four matches all to the same result, and with every failure his anger grew.

Finally, with a curse, he blew out the fifth match and tossed it to the floor. He glared at Rose, who was hiding her incredulous expression with her hands.

His scowl changed to a sensual, threatening smile.

“I’ll start the fire later,” he purred. “In the meantime—I’ll just warm myself with you.”

He lunged toward her. With a yelp, she tried to run away, but he was too fast for her. Grabbing her, he pushed her against the kitchen table.

She fought him with a scream. When she bit the hand he placed over her mouth, he roughly turned her over on her belly.

“This will only hurt at first,” he said, panting. “Then you will realize you love it.”

“No!” she screamed, thrashing.

“Stop fighting!” he yelled. Brutally, he grabbed her by her hair then banged her head against the hard wooden table. She went limp, dazed as she saw stars.

“Once you’re pregnant with my child,” he panted, “you will accept me as your husband.” Unzipping his fly, he started to lift up her dress. “You will—”

His voice ended with a choke as he dropped her.

Weakly, Rose turned around against the table and she saw a miracle: Xerxes had him by the throat.

“You like to hurt women you claim to love,” Xerxes said in cold, deadly fury. “You deserve to die.”

“No, please,” Lars cried. “No—”

Mercilessly, Xerxes punched him in the face, knocking him to the rough wooden floor. Lars dropped like a stone.