Page 98 of Sloth: The Fallen Earl
She whipped back like he’d struck her. It was a blow he’d rather have turned on himself gladly than see her visible suffering.
“I don’t recall you. I don’t remember meeting you. I don’t even remember if we shared a set.”
“We did,” she whispered so achingly that his heart cracked open. “It’s why I thought you’d purchased me, because you knew who I was. I knew the kind of man you are and believed you were saving me.”
Funny that Wakefield had spent the better part of his life hating his father.
Certain he could never loathe anyone more than he had the late earl, he now discovered he was wrong yet again. He despised himself with every fiber of his being, with a vitriolic intensity that burned him up inside. His eyes slid closed. All along, she’d believed he was purchasing her to save her because he was an honorable, good man.Respectable. A gentleman who both ladies and men alike knew could be trusted, only to have proven himself as vile and corruptible as every last lord who visited The Devil’s Den, a club which he now owned.
That’s what happens when you dabble in sin, you get tangled up with the Devil. Evil seeps into your life and blackens your soul and turns you into someone you don’t recognize.
“I…I’m at a loss. I don’t know what to say.”
And then she did the unthinkable. She pardoned him.
“Benedict, you needn’t apologize. As I shared with Lord Dynevor that night, I wanted to be there.”
She’d said that several times now, and yet it didn’t make any sense. Why would she have wanted to be there? This woman who clearly carried herself with the grace and dignity of a queen.
Had she sought to know a night of passion?
That didn’t make sense either. Though all the same questions resurfaced in his mind, those he’d sort out later. Now, there was this woman whom he’d hurt and whom he wanted to heal and whose pain he wished to heal and take away, not out of guilt, but because the sight of her hurting so continued to make him bleed inside.
“What I was going to finish saying, Cressida,” he murmured, “was that I don’t recall you, and yet now that I’ve met you, I marvel at the fact you escaped my memory. Knowing you now, I could never,everforget you.”
Her telling brown eyes went from hurting to soft, and then a rightful wariness flickered in those revealing depths. She didn’t believe him. Though, in fairness, what reason had he given her to believe in him? Though this time when Wakefield crossed over and stopped before her, Cressida did not retreat. Encouraged by that lack of recoil, he brought his hand up slowly and cupped Cressida’s smooth cheek, stained with flour and—
His expression darkened as his gaze caught upon the deeper, more pronounceable bruise upon her cheek where some man had struck her.
“What is it?” she whispered.
She’d sensed his mood shift and to tell her the truth would bring her and him to a place of darkness that he didn’t want to go to in this moment.
“You spoke about me being an honorable, good gentleman, but I’m not, Cressida. I’m a very flawed human being as you can attest to yourself. I bear the stains of guilt for unspeakable crimes against you. A young lady who’d been innocent before I stole your virtue and—”
“You didn’t steal it. I freely gave it.”
He ignored her defense of him. “For all the ways in which I’m flawed and for the mistakes I’ve made, I am still a man who does believe deeply in the truth. I’m not a liar, nor would ever be one. When I told you I didn’t remember you,” He grimaced. “that Idon’tremember you, I gave you the truth.”
He centered his gaze with hers. “Just as when I tell you now that you are special in every way, that you are enchanting and fascinate me endlessly, and that I will never forget you, I mean those words.”
Her lips trembled bringing his gaze to that flesh he’d spent the past days longing for with the same intensity he had at The Devil’s Den when she’d first walked upon that stage. And maybe he wasn’t as honorable as he gave her assurances he was, for Wakefield found himself drawn, unable to resist the pull of her.
He wanted to be gentle for her and with her because that’s what she’d deserved all along. But what he gave her was all he was capable of—a mad rush of desire.
He took her lips in a fury, latching one hand about her waist even as he curled the other into her nape and angled her to receive his violent kiss. He needn’t have bothered. She’d already melted against him and lifted her arms up to wind them about his neck.
Moaning like a siren, she opened her mouth and let him in. They kissed with a like passion. They made love with theirmouths. His tongue tangled with hers and hers in return danced with his.
“What is it about you?” he rasped between each frenzied kiss. “I am mad for you, Cressida.”
He filled his left palm with her buttocks and squeezed the flesh, dragging her even closer to his steel-hard shaft.
Her answer was to moan and rub herself against him like a contented cat who decided it needed more attention. He alternately licked and bit a trail of kisses along her nape, sucking lightly at that flesh until Cressida’s head fell back and a torturous moan spilled from her lips.
Wakefield guided her so that the edge of her lush buttocks rested upon the edge of the table and guided her muslin skirts up high enough that he could step easily between them. She instantly wrapped her legs about him, forcing him even closer.
A hiss slipped from between his teeth. He’d always considered himself a generous lover. When he bedded women, they always left his bed sated and fully satisfied, but nevermore had he existed with the sole intent of bringing pleasure to someone else, at any and all costs where he existed as a very secondary after thought.
