Page 108 of Pride: The Rogue
It was too much.
Livian took the corner at the end of the hall quickly, and finding no dutiful servant standing by, she let herself in a pretty parlor that mocked Livian with his cheery brightness.
The minute she’d closed the panel, she sagged against the door.
She’d thought to never again see Lachlan Latimer, the fierce warrior who’d defended her, watched over her, and who’d awakened Livian to the wonders of lovemaking—seated at the head of the table beside some other woman.
Why? Why?
And as that question repeated a frantic mantra in her mind, there were a thousand different reasons for that entreaty.
Chapter 17
Latimer seethed.
It’d been three damned hours, and Latimer hadn’t managed to snare a single, solitary, bloody moment alone with Livian.
The same, however, could not be said for Livian and that arse, Forfar.
If the bloody bastardaccidentallybrushed his fingers over the lady’s forearm one more time, he was going to have to fly over and separate the shite-sack’s limbs from his lanky body.
The viscount leered long and hard at the delicate crevice between Livian’s breasts.
Latimer growled.
It’s official. I’m going to fucking kill him, here and now.
“The gall of that one!” the Duchess of Argyll raged with the measured, polite restraint only an English lady could manage. “Can you believe the audacity, Mr. Latimer?”
Aye, seated next to the duchess, Latimer not only decided on the bastard’s fate, Latimeralsocontemplated all the ways in which to end the doltish, brash, lean-to-the-point-of-gaunt, Earl of Forfar.
“I cannot,” he gritted out between powerfully clenched teeth.
Surely Forfar wasn’t Livian Lovelace’s future husband?
He flexed his jaw.
That would certainly account for the blighter’s familiar touch and errant caress.
In a flash, Latimer recalled all the ways he himself had run his own hands over Livian’s slim, graceful, naked body and her low, soft siren’s moans as he entered her deep and rocked himself inside her until she’d come.
It’d been one hell when the man who’d one day have the exclusive luxury of possessing Livian’s body was an unknownface, it was an unremitting, deeper, blacker, fresh hell knowing just what man would receive that gift—a gift only Latimer had known once, but that Livian’s husband would know forever.
The duchess leaned toward the young gentleman at her other side and tapped his knee. “What say you, Dynevor?” she inveigled.
“About what?”
Bloody hell. With the slight shift forward, the duchess effectively cut off Latimer’s previously unrestricted view of the scene at the other end of the sunny, plushly ornate drawing room.
“Aboutwhat?” the duchess rebuked. “I asked if you’ve seen anything more reprehensible.”
By the lady’s breathless state, she sounded titillated at just the prospect.
The earl chuckled, a laugh rough and coarse like he’d taken in too many cheroots in his short life. “You know I have, Yer Grace.”
Argyll’s mother-in-law giggled. “Yes, I do.” She gave the boy a playful swat. “I meant, amidst Polite Society.”
As one, the pair followed to where Latimer’s gaze already currently rested.
