His Judas Bride (25 page)

“Listen, Princess, considering the damn fool you’ve made of me, it’s better than good. It’s enough to get me a sainthood. Of course, if you’d rather damn well have them tied, I can just as easily leave the rope on.”

Really? A jerk would look too much like defeat. She would sooner not. Not when she could fix him with her hardest stare. The contemptuous one that outlined exactly how this was going to be should he mistakenly even think of breathing on her, the effect probably ruined by the fact he did.

“After all, it’s probably a lot safer than getting my eyes scratched out by those dainty damned claws of yours. Did anyone ever tell you, you pack quite a punch for a woman?”

“Your eyes are the last thing you should worry about, if you don’t keep your own claws to yourself.”

“Me? Well, maybe it’s escaped your notice right now, you not having access to a mirror, in this fine room here, but you’re hardly belle of any ball. No. Much more attractive women have I seen and perfectly contained myself.”

“Really?” As ever the damned impertinence of the man was boundless. “In that case it won’t be any trouble for you to stop looking down my tunic front then, will it?”

Well, he did, didn’t he?

“
Your
tunic front? Well, maybe I’m just wanting to check and see if it’s mine. Of course there’s always such a thing as a blindfold.”

“If you think that would make yourself look better.”

“I wasn’t thinking of it for me exactly.”

Wasn’t that heartening to know? And yet, she acknowledged the folly of this puerile exchange. The clever thing to do would be to close her mouth as Ma had always instructed. This wasn’t about a grievance. The fact he defended her against Ewen made her believe what exactly? This was about her son. The fine mess she’d made trying to get him back and what she was now going to do about getting herself out of it.

When there was no future, none with this man she could possibly conceive of, what did it matter what he did to her? In fact it would be better if he did. Then she could properly hate him as she had conspicuously failed to do.

He shifted, the smile that edged his lips vaguely regretful somehow. “Anyway you should know you’re still one thing to me, something these other, more attractive women aren’t.”

“And what is that exactly?”

His eyes dark with challenge scorched in the blazing peat-light, and now he wasn’t smiling exactly, although his mouth still curved faintly. “You mean you don’t know?”

“Oh, do tell me. I’m sure it must be crippling you to keep the information of what that is precisely, to yourself. So, please.”

He let go of the chair arms. “My wife.”

Her throat, already parched as a calcified autumn leaf, crumpled at his bald statement. But no matter how she might argue she wasn’t, she had stood opposite him, hadn’t she? She’d had to prize herself off him. She had sworn. She had let him swear.

That moment above all others was one that would only take her further from the cool she sought to attain, if she thought about it though. A decent man like him who hadn’t deserved it.

She huffed out a breath, wishing she might free her hands. “Of course. So it wouldn’t be rape exactly. Is that the kind of thinking you indulge in?”

“Oh.” He canted his jaw, the flickering candlelight revealing that he wasn’t smiling. Not at all. And his gaze was far more intent than previously. “I intend to indulge in far more before the night’s out. But to answer that little question you just posed. You being my wife, it wouldn’t be rape. It would just be fucking. You know all about that. Hell. You’re good at it. You like it.”

Kara lowered her eyelashes, the bands cinching her chest tightening mercilessly.

Yes, she did. With him anyway. And right now, as things stood, it had cost her, her son. Cost her everything. Her dreams. Her future.

It had even cost her him.

With an abrupt movement she leaped from the chair and gained the door in one desperate bound. Her hands found the handle and fumbled in their attempt to thread it. For a second she thought they did, that the door opened, maybe a creak. But what she really felt was the slam of his body, hitting it, full force.

She tried to duck away but he lunged sideways, trapping her against the wall. Stupid, stupid, stupid, to have her wrists caught, to have tried to run only to find herself pinned. But the ruthless way he played, on and on and on, toying with her, with her senses, was unbearable. A torture when she had lost so much. And through her own fault. With the breath tearing in her lungs, she did not deny it. But air also tore through his.

“You think so?” she spat past the constraining lump in her throat. “That I liked it with you? Well, you touch me, just once, you bastard, and I’ll scream. You need be under no illusion it will be with joy.”

“Hell, you scream all you want.”

Oh God, it was not the thing to say to him, the way he jerked her up against the wall and his voice seethed in her ear.

“The castle walls are thick. No one’s going to hear you. And even if they did, do you seriously think they’ll come running? Join the fun maybe, but hell, that’s all. Do you think I don’t know how to touch you, to make you beg?”

He did. Which was why she must give him no inkling, she was in any way rattled by the knowledge. Although quite how she was meant to give him no inkling when she kicked her legs and flailed her body like this she had no idea. How could she stand idle though?

It was what she feared, more than anything. Him touching her. That would make her complicit.
She couldn’t be complicit. That would mean every time she had spat in a man’s face counted for nothing because she had enjoyed the unthinkable.

“I’m not that desperate.”

He tossed the hair out his eyes. “Neither am I. As I said before, all I desire right now is to untie you. Eat. Drink.”

And the hot, hard press of his body against hers? His harshly caressing eyes inches from her face? His treacherous breath on her cheeks? His lack of disguise was an invitation in itself. He wanted her and it was all he could do not to run his hands caressingly over her body, to tilt his head in invitation.

She could ignore what he said. But it wasn’t for nothing she’d learned in her father’s dungeon the value of a second’s respite. She just had never thought to require that moment because what sparked in her veins was so unruly. She supposed she should be grateful when it came to eating and drinking, the words
be merry
weren’t added to the list. “Very well.”

“In exchange for a little information.”

“Information? About what?”

“Truthfully, Princess, I’m surprised at you asking so stupid a question. Especially when we have this disagreeable little situation here, on what is technically our wedding night, concerning you, me, and your, well, whatever the hell that man I killed, was to you. Oh. And let’s not forget your noble father, who I have technically been at war with for five years. Long ones, which is why I won’t just cut that lying little throat of yours right now and send you home in a box.”

She glanced sideways, then back again. In all the scenarios she had imagined since Kendrick dropped dead in front of her, this wasn’t one. The being sent home in a box bit anyway.

It gave her a bargaining counter, didn’t it? Just because she had spent five years in a dungeon, it didn’t mean she wasn’t entitled to certain things. It didn’t mean he knew
that.

“Hell, Princess, cat got your tongue again?” He let go of her wrists, although she did not miss the watchful way his eyes grazed her as he stepped back. “Why tiptoe here when your talent is great for hobnailed boots? Just spit it out, if the story is you took one look at me across Father Andrew’s prayer book and decided to run.”

“No. Thank you.”

He huffed out a breath, a derisive one. “Hell. Why not?”

Although his footsteps echoed softly, his jaw had hardened. He was getting impatient. Up to a point she didn’t blame him. If she had brought him in here to show him all these nice things and he was being no end of stubborn, she would be impatient too. It was just, tell him the truth? How could she?

“Because.”

“Because what?”

“I don’t spit.”

He rounded on her. “Well, isn’t that the damndest thing. You don’t spit? And you don’t stick about after wedding ceremonies much either. But at least you don’t try spilling that you love me. Now, isn’t that one blessing to be thankful for?”

Well, wasn’t it? Great God Almighty, when she had not really considered it. Yet the knowledge of him today, standing in the castle yard, and at the hand-fasting. Later, when she had known, perhaps as she even knew then, in these seconds when she held him in that dance, she could not betray him because she could not imagine a world where she would do that, only a world where she’d sacrifice herself. Dare she think, was that love?

She had tried so hard to tell herself this, all of it, was lust. Because she had lived so long without that feeling—for her son perhaps, but nothing else. And all of this had happened at a rate she could neither grasp, nor comprehend, everything spinning beyond her control. She could not let it get in the way of Arland.

She could not let it get in the way of herself when previously such a runaway shore as she had danced on had ruined her life. And so she had not wanted to see, because she preferred not to, that here was a man she might like, because then it might be a man she could love. She did not know she was capable, the dried shell that she was.

And even now, doubting that he asked her because he expected her to say yes, what pathetic integrity she still possessed in his eyes, would be irretrievably lost, if she did. Because even now it seemed, although there were many times they had not played it, this was a game.

“No. I—I actually don’t know why you’re asking me to spill that, when it’s obvious you don’t think so. And I don’t believe you’d have tied me up if you did. However—”

“Kara, how about you stop this now?”

“You—” Fortunately her scalp wasn’t so damaged, she didn’t have the presence of mind to snap her mouth shut on the word
know
. After all, he had never called her that.

Even as the thought stirred she knew he must be well pleased with his victory. Having created this moment, she doubted he’d shrink from taking it.

“Call it being one step ahead. You know, I honestly believe you thought I was stupid. Now are you going to tell me exactly what I want to know, so I can decide what I’m going to do about it, or must I take that information by any means I can?”

She shrugged. “If you’re going to rape me, you might as well get on with it.” After all, she had a son to protect.
She had already failed to put him first. She couldn’t do it again.

Chapter Eleven

So help him, she said that damned word,
rape
, again, he was going to struggle to keep his dwindling temper. Yes, he would have that information, but not like that. There were plenty ways of getting information. For example, he could try asking.

“Listen, you blasted minx. I brought you here out of respect for your position.”

Of course asking was not as easy as all that. He gestured toward her, where she stood against the wall as if her shoulders were pinned to it, although her head was bent. A first.

“As you so rightly reminded me earlier today, when I freely admit, I was angry, you’re my wife. For better. Or for worse. But there’s dungeons here the same as anywhere else.”

She lowered her head further. “I know. I saw them already. The other day.”

He could try being nice too. But that was harder. Especially when he knew perfectly well, bent head or not, she watched him. “Is that what you think? These ones you saw are all we’ve got here? Do you believe I have a reputation founded on these?”

“I’m sure you’ve more. Special ones. For people like me. Threats to the glen.”

“You rest assured, Princess, if I felt anything,
anything
for you at all, those paradoxically, are the ones you’d be seeing right now. Do I make myself plain?”

“Not really.”

He must also conclude this baggage thought she could evince her mastery of him, of this whole sordid situation, because Morven’s fate was a talisman that would protect her from him sexually.

She must.
And was that why she stood there, with her eyelashes coolly swept down, for all he stepped closer, prepared to face whatever she thought he devised—how could she think him so low—with the disinterest reserved for a distant, semi-senile grandparent?

If he was to be honest though, placing her in this situation, this clever one he had purposely devised precisely so she wouldn’t be able to face him up and force his admiration, hadn’t just widened the rift in his chest. It had ripped his chest apart. He knew he shouldn’t have played his hand at Maisie’s door. How much easier it would have been to pretend. Where she was concerned he was totally damned incapable.

Love? He wished he hadn’t used that word either. Had he thrown a viper at her, she couldn’t have looked more horrified. It made him look needy. What was more the fact he’d found himself waiting for her reply said he was, when he didn’t give a damn for this creature, dancing back from Edinburgh to do this. It had been easier to shag her though, those days in the cave, than admit to any doubt about her, hadn’t it?

She lifted her chin, looked right into his eyes. “Because the fact is I’m not now. Am I? Seeing these dungeons?”

Although his palms itched, Callm resisted the hitherto unknown urge to slap a woman. He couldn’t stand the faintly glistening, faintly hopeful look she edged him. He would like to determine it as smug.

Standing like this, listening to the minutes sizzling by in a spittle of peat flame, while God alone knew what would be burnt by morning—his people, his glen—he wasn’t sure.

He tilted his jaw, offering his best glare. “You never let me finish. I was going to say
if
I felt anything, anything for you at all, I’d be angry enough to lock the door and throw away the key, in any one of them. Stop you ever seeing the light of day again. Because that’s the kind of man I am, when I get angry, about things I care about. But I’m not that angry. And that should tell you, I’m not even that interested where you’re concerned.”