Page 38 of Brutal Serpent

I stalked over, Catherine clinging to me in a manner that make my cock harder than ever in my breeches.

My light swept up.

“I’ll be damned,” I said. “Itisa corpse.”

Catherine screamed again, but I turned with one hand and gripped her mouth to force her to stop. “Must have been from your grandfather’s time,” I said. “It stinks of Wendover. Lazy, half-ass, too arrogant to even cover up their own murders.”

“Why should I believe it isn’t yours?” she wailed.

I glared down at her. “You should know by now, Viscountess,” I said, “that I dispose of my bodies like a gentleman.”

Then I was grabbing her roughly by the collar and dragging her so quickly down the hallway again that her feet barely touched the ground.

I could have fucking made it if she hadn’t made a little sigh of relief, if I hadn’t been able to feel the goosebumps prickling on the back of her neck.

At the last cell in the row I turned and pressed her up against the bars, barely even able to control myself to lift her skirts before sinking my cock deep into her wetness.

The groan I let out was unbound, uncanny.

What had happened to me?

I could not physically stay away from my wife.

I could not stop taking her.

I could not sleep without her.

I could not live without her.

CHAPTER 21

Catherine

The next morning, I could still feel mice crawling all over me, and St. Erth was not around, so I ordered Mrs. Jeremiah to draw me up a hot bath, which I enjoyed defiantly.

I looked down at my body as I bathed. I had never gotten much attention in my season. Gentlemen usually found my shyness and occasional stammer off-putting, and my unfashionably colored hair, and diminutive stature (not to mention my embarrassing lack of a dowry) had not been tempting.

But my whole body showed the marks of St. Erth’s obsessive need to possess me and take me—the hair he obsessively played with and pulled, the skin he continually marked up and bit, the space between my legs that he fucked and filled, surely more times than was necessary to breed me.

I couldn’t understand it.

There was a letter with the Wendover family seal on it beside my plate at the breakfast table and I pounced on it eagerly.

I glanced both ways to make sure my husband wasn’t in the room, then opened it, hungry for news from home.

Maybe it was the explanation for what had really happened with his mother!

My dear daughter,it began.

Do everything you can to prevent yourself from expecting an interesting event.

St. Erth must not have an heir!

It will mean the utter ruin of the Wendover family.

I read the letter again.SurelyI must have missed the comforting words, the expressions of love. But no! Not even a hastily-written postscript about missing me.

Oh hell!

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