Page 36 of Purchased

He doesn’t understand that I find this side of him very appealing, and not frightening at all. The moment before he saw me watching, the man he was in that instant—I felt our mate bond more keenly than I have at any other time. Even when he was inside me.

Duplante, thankfully, is stupid, and decides to make an appeal to the men he thinks are his friends. This is clearly the act of a man who has never been forced to read any room, and who does not understand that the people he thinks like him would happily see him dead.

“Insubordinate little bitch, and me here on my knees being forced into animal submission on her account. Are you really all going to stand around and watch him fall for her cunt this hard? The pack hasn’t deteriorated enough for your likings? Waiting until we are all entirely destitute?”

Armand’s eyes flash upon hearing that disrespect. He holds up a finger to me.

“One moment, my darling, I have to deal with a little matter of pack discipline.”

He turns, and with a whip of his wrist, he sweeps the blade through Duplante’s neck. The man’s head topples as if it were only ever attached with butter, blood spurting in thick arterial gusts across the carpets and lower legs of the men.

I stare, entranced, feeling my wolf self surging at the sight. This dress is on the verge of being torn to shreds by the animal inside me who wishes to be free to roll in that blood and howl in triumph.

Armand hands the sword to one of his off-siders and comes to me without so much as looking back at the carnage he has just enacted.

He ushers me away from the bloody sight. I would resist, but I know better than to defy an alpha who just killed someone. Submission to him feels rather exciting now. Besides, there will not be much to look at for long.

I have the sense that the entirety of the scene will be clean in a matter of minutes, a small cadre of servants are already on their way with mops and cloths.

“You killed him.”

“I did. He disrespected you, and in doing so, disrespected me. Besides, there is some evidence he was defrauding the pack through the assets he managed. I had to deal with him one way or another. He chose the means in the end.”

This is the most attractive Armand has ever been.

“Are you afraid of me now?”

I shake my head no. I am not afraid of him. Quite the opposite. I like him more, trust him more, feel a greater kinship with him now than ever before.

He swings me about and looks down at me with an intensity born of his fear that I might not understand him, that I might mistake him for a feral, unpredictable beast.

“I would never hurt you, Beatrix. You alone are singular in this world. You, I will protect at the cost of all things, including my life. I want you to know that.”

“I know.”

“You do?”

“Of course.”

He smiles a little and shakes his head. “Why is this so easy, when every other conversation we have is so hard? Why will you tell me nothing of your past, of your life before me, but seeing me slay a man in cold blood seems to bring you only peace?”

I give a little shrug. “I’m complicated, I suppose. Isn’t that what they say about women?”

“Complex, yes, but I intend to unravel those tangles in you.”

“Best of luck with that,” I laugh. I have no intention of divulging my secrets. I might have seen something dark in him, but what he just did was practical, if a little flamboyant. Duplante was clearly a problem that needed to be taken care of. I am an entirely different kind of dilemma.

“I’m taking you to bed,” he says. “My appetite has not been entirely sated yet, has yours?”

He’s not talking about food; even I in my relatively pure state know that. The desire between us has been sparking since I found him standing over his unfortunate victim sword in hand, and is only getting more intense by the moment.

He takes me to the bedroom and together we stand in the glow of moonlight now shining through the old windows.

“I love you,” he says. “I am devoted to you, and I will never, ever allow anybody to so much as disparage you, let alone hurt you.”

There’s stray blood on his suit and his shirt and on his neck. I rise to my tiptoes and delicately lap it from his skin, the tip of my tongue cleaning away those few drops of Lord Duplante.

I feel a shiver run through him as he understands what it is I just did, how I did not recoil from the sanguine aftermath of his murder, instead took it inside me.

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