Page 156 of Pride: The Rogue
I’m going mad.
When he finally reached Wakefield’s, Latimer jumped down before his mount came to a full stop.
He tossed the reins to an opportunistic young urchin who’d seen Latimer coming.
Without breaking stride, Latimer tossed a hefty purse at the boy’s chest.
The child caught it with a jingle.
“There will be more,” Latimer gritted out, even as he raced up the steps of Wakefield’s bachelor residence.
Hatred and fury and rabid jealousy pumping through his being, Latimer tossed the door open with such force it flew back and hit the wall with a loudthwack.
The second butler, a man two decades past due retirement, who’d been slumbering on the bench there, released a juddering snore.
By the time the befogged older man finally got himself fully awake, Latimer had already reached the top of the stairwell and disappeared down one of the corners.
Demoniac fury consumed him.
I’ll kill him.
His nostrils flared.
Latimer didn’t waste any time. He hooked a quick right and made his way down the hall. As he went, he threw open door after door after door on either side of the corridor.
That hungering to kill raged inside.
Behind him, rose the old butler’s belated hue and cry for other servants.
That healthy rage consumed Latimer the entire way, right up until he reached the last door on the left.
Latimer staggered to a stop.
Unlike the silence behind all the previous doors, from within this room rose a cacophony to bring down the house.
Desire-filled screams and wild moaning combined with the deeper, hoarse groans of a man.
Latimer jerked like he’d been shot, and God help him, he’d prefer death to this.
All his muscles knotted up, and a hiss exploded through his teeth. Paralyzed briefly by hatred, rabid jealousy, and anguish the likes of which he’d never known—no, the likes of which he’d never believed himself capable of—threatened to bring him to his knees.
Whatever Wakefield did to Livian, sent her cries climbing to a higher, fever pitch.
And where he’d tossed open each door before this one, Latimer couldn’t bring himself to move. For he knew exactly what tableau he’d witness unfolding in that room.
For all the ways in which he’d prided himself, andbelievedhimself, incapable of feeling anything at all, for anyone, he had discovered too late, and in the worst possible way, how terrifically wrong he’d been—he was a fucking coward.
His own body mocked him with the sudden discovery of his own frailness. His legs shifted under him, and to keep from collapsing, he pressed his damp palms upon the cold oak door panel.
Sweat slicked his entire body.
Latimer’s harsh breaths joined and twisted in some kind of sick symphony with Lord Wakefield’s grunting and Livian’s guttural pleas, her voice nearly unrecognizable from lusty huskiness because of Wakefield.
Something stung Latimer’s eyes, and he squeezed them even more tightly shut to stop the unfamiliar sensation that blurred his vision.
A cold sweat dripped down Latimer’s clammy cheeks that moisture confusingly hot.
Tears. My God, I am crying.
