Page 149 of You Only Love Twice
He'd been two seconds away from delving his fingers into the wetness of her body in the tower when he'd finally regained his senses.
Moments away from tearing the buttons on his breeches open and fucking his way inside her, the bloodlust shifting to somethingelse.
How utterly mortifying.
Adele.
Adele Hamilton.
Unwillingly consummating his marriage on the floor of the Ivory Tower with his dead mistress in the hallway outside and five bullets still inside him would have been at the top of his list of the most humiliating moments in his life.
But it could have been worse.
He'd had no sense of the world. No rational thoughts. All he'd been was a mess of need and hunger, and a sudden furious desire that still ticked through his veins, curse her inconvenient nightgown. Did she not realize how the light fell upon her?
She was clearly wearing nothing beneath the fine lawn.
The primal side of a blue blood's nature was dangerous to rouse, particularly in the presence of one's enemies. He was loath to call what he felt for Adele hate, for he wouldn't dare give her the satisfaction of such a thing, but he'd been faintly furious toward her ever since she trapped him into this farce of a marriage.
He could have killed her.
"Aren't you going to say something? A moment of conscience?" she mocked, clipping her vowels in the precise way he did. "Why, I'd have never thought you afflicted by such a grievous burden."
He cast a seething glance upon her sister. "Can you fetch your sister a robe? I should hate for her to catch a chill, though I suspect her heart is frigid enough to stave off that burden." He arched a brow toward Adele. "Is that better?"
Clearly he wasn't the only one who remembered that moment on the floor. Adele subsided with a waspish nod, as if relieved to return to the parry and thrust of their previous relationship, but her cheeks bore a rosy stain and she couldn't quite meet his eyes.
"You should speak of frigid hearts. It's been three days and this is the first you've visited," she said, instead.
Not entirely.
He'd called in on her the first night, when he'd finally staggered in on crutches, his right kneecap still shattered from where Gemma had shot him. Hattie had been sitting by her bed, fretting over Adele like a concerned mother hen, when he checked to make sure she'd recovered.
"Oh, His Grace did—"
He cut Hattie a sharp, incredulous look, and she shut her mouth abruptly as she secured the robe around Adele's shoulders.
"My apologies," he said to Adele. "I wasn't aware you were waiting for me."
"I wasn't. And stop glaring at my sister."
He forced his tone to be callously distant. "I've also been busy seeing to matters of the realm."
Adele subsided. "Important matters, I suppose."
"Indeed."
Keeping Gemma's head on her bloody shoulders. Trying to track down the source of that bloody chip, and finding nothing. Ghost was aptly named.
Making sure the queen was well guarded, all her servants forced to electrocute themselves mildly before they were allowed to see her.
Burying Isabella.
His breath caught, that dagger-sharp flare of guilt burying itself within his heart up to the hilt.
"You can burn my city. You can tear down all I've built. But you can never touch me,"he'd spat at Balfour all those years ago. "I have no heart anymore. You took it from me when you murdered Catherine.So do your damned best.You can't destroy me."
Balfour had revealed his hand in the most devastating way of all, as if to remind him of those words.
