Page 134 of Pride: The Rogue
Her back collided with the same window she’d been staring out before Forfar’s arrival.
Trapped.
The viscount stopped. Like Andromeda to his heinous, Cetus monster, Forfar towered over her.
Dread sent her throat closing up.
He flashed an even, white supercilious grin. “Oh, youarea delight,” he marveled.
His gaze and expression turned dark.
Lowering himself down, Forfar climbed astride her.
“No!” she screamed. “Please, stop! Please. Please.”
Sobbing, Livian put up one more desperate—but futile—fight. The kick she aimed at the viscount’s groin, glanced off his thigh.
As he lowered his mouth to force her kiss, Livian thrashed her head back and forth. “Please, don’t.”
“Bitch,” he hissed. Drawing his arm back, he made to slap her.
Closing her eyes, Livian recoiled onto the floor.
But the blow never came.
Suddenly, the viscount’s body was gone from Livian’s.
Stunned, her eyes flew open, and she followed Lord Forfar’s body as it sailed several feet through the air, and then came down on the pianoforte bench.
The mahogany wood shattered into a thousand broken pieces.
Livian’s savior brimmed with such a terrific rage and beyond-human lethality the corded muscles of his back, arms, chest, and tree trunk thick thighs, bulged; his hard lips twisted up in a cold, humorless smile.
Relief brought Livian scrambling up onto her elbows.
Lachlan stood as the twelve biblical angels of vengeance merged into one man, his sanguinary gaze on the wrongdoer moaning and whimpering at the base of the same pianoforte where Livian and Lachlan made love.
“Lachlan,” she whispered.
She is all right.
She is all right.
I got to her in time.
Or had he?
Crazed, his heart thundering, Latimer frantically moved wild eyes over the courageous, strong woman now curled up in the corner like some hurt, fragile animal.
The white lace hem of Livian’s pink, satin gown lay in a wispy tangle around her legs. Her lustrous golden hair hung in a sloppy tangle about her quaking shoulders.
Latimer, his tongue thick, his throat tight, tried to get out the question he didn’t want the answer to. “Did he…?”
But God help him, he couldn’t. His words failed. Just as Latimer, by not being here to protect and defend when Livian needed him most, had failed.
Livian, his iron-willed, glorious queen found strength enough for both of them to speak. “He did not, L-Lachlan.”
The heady weight of relief that filled him lasted only an instant.
