Page 37 of Wedded to the Beastly Duke
How long had she been screaming for?
Adam spoke with someone at the door. A servant, perhaps, before coming to kneel before her. When he was like this, she thought perhaps he wasn’t so bad. His eyes were not as cold as she remembered them being, and he was almost unbearably handsome. There was the barest hint of stubble on his jaw, and she reached out without thinking, the rasp against her fingertips a new and interesting sensation.
His eyes flashed, and he caught her hand. “I—” he began, but a knock at the door interrupted him, and he stood up, speaking in a low voice before coming back with a bowl of steaming water and a few white rags. “Let me see to your cut,” he said with a quiet insistence she wasn’t entirely sure how to deny.
“What happened?” she asked.
“That portion of the castle is rigged with traps. It harks back to the Civil War.” He dipped one of the rags into the water and dabbed at the dried blood on her cheek. “You were merely unlucky enough to discover a section we have not yet dismantled.”
“You knew it was there.”
He fixed her with a hard, angry look, his expression at odds with the gentleness of his hands. “Of course, I knew it was there.”
She had been so foolish to think that perhaps she had stumbled across something no one else had discovered. Hubris of the highest order, and had paid for it.
“What cut me?” she asked.
“An arrow. There was a crossbow lodged in the wall.” His hand paused on her cheek, and his jaw ticked. “If you had been standing one step ahead, it would have killed you.”
“As though I was unaware,” she snapped back. “I know how close to perishing I came, and believe me when I say I know how terrifying that was.”
“Why, then.” His words seemed to fail him, and he dropped the bloody rag into the water. Her cheek throbbed, but it no longer seemed to be bleeding. “Why did you disobey me? You wereneversupposed to enter that side of the house.”
Her anger rose, along with the fear that she might as well have lost her life. “Well, perhaps I wouldn’t have come if you had so much as explained to me the reasons behind your instructions.”
“I gave youonerule. Is that so difficult to comprehend?”
“You never gave me any reason to obey you.”
His eyes darkened with anger, and she saw the moment his rage overpowered his concern. “I am your husband,” he growled, rising to his feet so he towered over her. “That is reason enough.”
“Well, I’m sorry,My Lord Husband, but I disagree.” Emmeline also rose. She could not compete with his height, but by heaven she would match his anger. “I am not in the habit of blindly obeying without explanations.”
“That was what you agreed to when we married.”
She raised her chin defiantly. “I will obey you as and when you give me cause to. And my being your wife does not make a difference to me. You cannot control me just because I am bound to you by law.”
He caught her chin, but this time, there was no tenderness in the action. He was ablaze with fury, and she burned under him, matching him pace for pace. If he thought he was the only one with a right to anger, he was mistaken. And if he believed she would give ground purely because he expected her to, then he would be sorely disappointed.
“I am not the wife for you,” she said, delivering the words as though she hoped they would hurt. “You would do better to return me to London.”
“Is that so? And have the world think I am incapable of keeping my wife by my side?” His fingers tightened on her chin until they were almost painful, and the sensation made something bloom in her lower stomach. Warmth. Want. “I will not be sending you back to London, Emmeline, so accept that now. But I will punish you for your insubordination if you continue to defy me.”
Punish. Her heart leaped and stuttered at the word, but there was something in his eyes—an endless hunger—that made her tremble with anticipation and fear.
“Punish me? You wouldn’t dare?”
“Wouldn’t I?”
With his fingers still on her chin, Adam brought his mouth down on hers in a blazing, bruising kiss.
* * *
Adam had not intended to kiss her then. Underneath his touch, she quivered, and he might have thought it was fear if not for the way she opened her mouth to give him access to its sweet secrets.
This was madness, he knew it, and yet he felt like a man possessed as he kissed her again and again, deepening the kiss, sweeping his tongue into her mouth. She moaned, and he thought he did too, holding her close, his hands on her waist, then trailing up her back to the contained mass that was her hair. She had such luscious brown hair and always kept it tightly pinned at the back of her head.
He wanted to see it framing her face. He wanted to run his fingers through it.
