Page 128 of Pride: The Rogue
Each one, current members of Forbidden Pleasures—and of a certain few, eventual members of The Devil’s Den—Latimer knew each man’s vice.
Lord Forfar would strap Livian spread-eagled, face down upon a four-poster bed, and whip her until crimson crisscrossed stripes marred her satiny soft flesh.
The echo of her imagined cries—not of pleasure, but sorrow flooded his mind. They threatened to drive him beyond the point of insanity.
Sweat slicked his skin. No! He’d sooner kill the bastard than let her marry one such as Forfar.
Which left who as a potential groom…a fellow like Wakefield?
Lord Wakefield, who’d teach her to use her mouth on him the way Latimer hadn’t and would now spend every last of his waking days on this earth, aching of,dreamingof.
Latimer knew best how to pleasure Livian. As much as she’d spoken about wanting a partner in her husband, she would want tobea partner in that same man’s bed. The Cyprians fought with each other to have exclusivity of Wakefield as their lover, because of how generous and skilled and gentle he could be or rough as they wanted him to be—
An acrid taste filled his mouth.
In Livian, the earl—anyman—would find his every dream come true, and more, in the arms of his young wife.
An animalistic growl exploded from his chest, just as the room erupted into cheers at the latest completed game of charades.
As the swell died down, the duchess made soft, soothing, sounds. “I reallydidupset you, Mr. Latimer.”
He glanced at the place she looked.
At some point, he’d fisted his palms so tightly he’d punctured the skin. Pinpricks of blood seeped through his knuckles and ran down the sides of his hand.
Fuck. I’m losing control.
What would the mercenary shrew say if he admitted he’d nearly gone mad in public from the thought of not her, but Livian, with another?
“You needn’t be so angry,” she said softly, attempting to loosen the death hold his fingers had upon the palm of his hands.
One small slip of a spirited, otherworldly beauty had shaken Latimer as he’d never been—as he’d never wanted to be—or, for that matter, believed himself capable of.
If he were to construct an empire to shatter his former partners, the last thing he could afford was to be a stark, raving lunatic with absolutely no self-control.
Latimer ignored the woman whom he’d come to this godforsaken event to make his wife.
Keeping his eyes forward, he drew his hand out from under the Duchess of Argyll’s and withdrew his handkerchief. Latimer pressed that black fabric against the crimson remnants.
“No need for that, Mr. Latimer,” the duchess said quietly, while the assembled guests decided amongst themselves on their next parlor game.
She pulled her glove off and took Latimer’s improvised bandage. The white of her satin twisted with Latimer’s black and slithered to the floor where they lay in a tangle of light and darkness.
He stared at those scraps at their feet.
Latimer and Livian. That is what the warring cloths represented—
The duchess pressed her immaculate palm to Latimer’s blood-stained one.
“As I said, you needn’t worry.” A feral light gleamed in thelady’seyes. “I have no doubt, Mr. Latimer, when we are married, you will keep me so sated and filled every night, that I will not even be able to think of any other man, but you.”
Sophisticated and worldly, any man would long to claim the beautiful duchess.
That was, any man, other than Latimer.
“We’re both aware if we go forward with a union, ours will be primarily a business arrangement,” he said evenly.
The duchess trilled another sultry laugh. “Are you suggesting the sort ofarrangementwhere we do not share one another’sbeds, Mr. Latimer?” She wrapped her hands about his arm and whispered into his ear. “That you haven’t thought about taking me?”
