Page 28 of Lord Ramsey's Red-Headed Ruin
And so unfair to him.
To me, as well. Taking from him more than he should give.
His arms went around her, and he pressed his body, big and strong, to her back, his cock, long and turgid, against her derriere. She let out her breath, at ease, at her leisure, in his embrace.
“Tell me, then.” His voice could melt her. His gruff tones, so resonant with care, bored into her lonely heart like a flaming iron through a block of ice. “Help me understand you.”
“My aunt always kept me safe. I never knew what terror was, what nightmares could come to a girl from others. I had no parents. Not really. I remember them hardly at all. Just my aunt saving me at nine. My aunt, always there, always ready with a smile, help, a golden word.”
He settled her backward more comfortably. His lips nestled near her ear, his words moist breaths of compassion on her tender flesh. “What happened?”
“Carmes.”
He grunted. “Someone hurt you.”
Not a question, a statement. But it was wrong.
“Not me. Dear God, no. Not me. But one I did not know very well but whom I saw beaten to death.” She gulped to keep the horror down. To speak of the beatings, the rapes, turned her stomach. To speak of how Vaillancourt had stood by watching the brutal death of young Diane Massey was hideous. She deflected to the subject that was less upsetting. “My aunt saved me from the guards. Greedy, insatiable men who took the post to take what they could from women caught in a net. Tangled, stuck. It was…”
He squeezed her tightly to him.
She sighed, her head falling back, her neck arching. My, how she wanted him. Her belly quivered.
He dipped his head and put his mouth to the spot behind her ear. His attitude was reverent, nigh unto a benediction. Tears scalded her eyes as she realized he did not know how her body pulsed to have him inside her. “Tell me nothing, my sweet woman. I should not have asked. I wish not to terrorize you or to make you remember.”
He turned the talk from her craving for him to her reason to spy. She shook her head. She was saved. She was damned.
“Many men behind the consulate collaborated with those during the Terror who put innocents in prisons, like Carmes. Barras, Talleyrand, Fouché, and Vaillancourt.”
“I suspected,” he whispered.
“What happened to everyone in Carmes should not go unpunished. To men and women. To my friends… And most people have no means to do so. But I can.” She spun in his arms.“You know as well as I that if all power is given to one man or a few, they grow fat on it.”
He pushed her hair from her cheeks and lifted her chin. But his gaze was on her lips. “I do,” he breathed.
“You are noble to help me.”
“Am I?” He gave a sad little laugh. “Like you, I have my motivation.”
“To aid your own network—to protect me.”
Now his magnetic blue eyes held to hers. “From others. All others.”
“But now?” What did she ask? She should not venture into his mind, his secrets. Men’s thoughts were dangerous, and she knew it so well. She had much evidence.
He cupped her cheeks, stroking her skin and thrumming her senses. “My first duty was to guard you. Now it is to save you, and I do believe that means to save you from yourself.”
The tears that had burned her eyes escaped her lashes. “Are you telling me we cannot run forever?”
“Sweetheart, you know we can’t.”
His endearment filled her with a thirst to reply in kind. Yet she could not lead him on. She was now a woman without a cause. One only on the run. “But what else is there for me?”
He inhaled and wrapped her close, her head against his mighty shoulder, his big hand splayed into her hair. “Freedom.”
“Boredom,” she shot back.
“You would be useful to others with your knowledge of people, customs, language, and the turn of events.”
