Temptation & Twilight. Charlotte Featherstone

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      Patience, he told himself as the placket of his trousers fell open, and he was gripped by a knowing, skilled hand. Patience always paid off in the end. He had waited a long, long time for this. And soon, he would be rewarded.

      Soon, the Brethren would belong to him—to Orpheus.

      “Take me,” she whispered, and he rapped his walking stick against the carriage, sending the vehicle lurching forward.

      “Soon, pet,” he mumbled. “I have something to do first. A little surprise for His Grace.”

      “It’s not like you to be so kind,” she murmured as her lips worked their way down his neck.

      “I’m in the giving mood,” he mumbled, thinking of what he would do. “And Sussex will be the benefactor.”

      IN THE END, Black ignored his request, which was so typical of him. The bastard always did whatever he wanted. Instead of taking him to Sussex House, Black carried him, half-conscious, from the carriage and into Iain’s own town house, past his shocked butler, whose harsh, indrawn breath echoed off the fourteen-foot-high ceiling, and all the way up the ornately carved, curving staircase to Iain’s bedroom, where he dropped Iain onto the bed as though he were a sack of grain. Only then did Black rouse Sutherland.

      Shortly after, his valet stumbled into the room, wiping the sleep from his eyes. “And what scrape have ye gotten yourself into this time, my lord?”

      “What does it look like?” he growled. “I’m bleeding onto the sheets.”

      Sutherland grunted when he saw the extent of the wound he was expected to work on. “Won’t be a pretty sight after I’m done, my lord.”

      “He’s too pretty now,” Iain heard Black state in his characteristic sombre voice. “A little mark to remind him of his arrogance should be his reward for this night’s business. Patch him up, Sutherland.”

      “The ladies will only find the scar more endearing, I’m afraid.”

      “Yes. Peculiar how many ladies find something of merit in Alynwick.”

      “I’m awake and can hear every damn word you’re both saying.”

      “Good,” Sutherland muttered as he tore the blood-soaked shirt from Iain’s chest. “Then you know I’ll make a botch of this shoulder. But you’ll live.”

      “Scotch,” he demanded, before saying, “I don’t give a damn what it looks like, just stop the bleeding.”

      “You won’t be saying that once you have a look at my handiwork, I’ll wager.”

      “For Christ’s sake, Sutherland, I’m not a vain man.”

      “I wonder if you’d be claiming that if it was your face I was to work on.”

      “Well, then I’d look like the devil on the outside, just as I am on the inside, wouldn’t I?”

      Sutherland quirked a thick auburn brow. “Yer in one of those moods tonight, I see.”

      “Get on with it, or I’ll drag myself out of this bed and find someone more inclined to work, instead of prattling like a maid.”

      The sound of the crystal stopper popping out of the decanter was music to his ears. However, the roar he let out when Black poured a good measure of the liquid gold onto his shoulder was not.

      “Like bloody hellfire,” he gasped between gritted teeth, stiffening under the burning onslaught. “And there’s cheaper stuff to be used for medicinal purposes. That’s a twenty-five-year aged single malt, Black, and you’ve pissed it away for no good reason.”

      “I assumed saving your hide from a stinking purulence would be reason enough.”

      “The inferior brands can do that as well as any of them.”

      Black merely raised one laconic brow as he peered down at him from the side of the bed. “I’ll leave you to your duties, Sutherland. Nothing more to drink for his lordship, no matter what he says or threatens you with. I’m tired of lugging him about tonight. I want him to walk into Sussex House on his own two feet.”

      “Right, my lord.”

      Iain glared at the door as it slammed behind Black, then turned to give his valet a wrathful glare. “Cease coddling the damn wound and sew it shut. Or better yet, heat the poker and singe it closed.”

      It would match the brand on his chest, the one that had been seared upon his flesh when he had been anointed as a Brethren Guardian. Iain had stoically endured the pain, making his father press the glowing brand harder into his skin, trying to break him. But Iain had always been as stubborn as a mule and had refused to do anything but look up into the spiteful eyes of his father and dare him to do his worst. He had suffered silently beneath his initiation. He could withstand the same now.

      “I will not burn you,” Sutherland said with disgust. “Barbaric thought. I’ll sew you up good and tight and hope for the best.”

      “Much more expedient with the poker. Use it.”

      Sutherland ignored him as usual. And unable to provoke a fight to give himself something to fix upon other than the pain, Iain thought of pleasure. His thoughts drifted back to the hours before—at the Sumners’, when he had clutched Elizabeth’s voluptuous curves to his hard body.

      A man could make a meal out of her. He certainly wanted to. An image took hold, and he barely felt the straight needle prick him, diving under skin and tissue, grabbing more flesh before being pulled tight, tugging the ragged edges of his wound together.

      Closing his eyes, he thought of Elizabeth, her long, sable hair unbound, spilling in velvet waves upon a glistening mahogany dining table. Naked, pale, full curves outlined against shining veneer, beneath the delicate glow of a chandelier. She was surrounded by wine goblets and tiered plates of grapes and strawberries.

      He sat at the end of the table, sipping a dark merlot, studying the landscape of her body, the way it arched and curved before him. He would wait—would make her wait—as he watched her. He would talk to her, suggest wicked, lascivious things he wanted to watch her do. She would respond to his voice, would be helpless to stop the movement of her body along the table. Her lips would move and part, her breasts … He groaned, not in pain, but pleasure, as he thought of the way her breasts would bounce and sway. He’d have her on her knees, palms planted on the table as she crawled to him, amidst rolling grapes spilling from overturned silver dishes, and streaming rivulets of red wine snaking from toppled goblets. He would watch her, unable to take his gaze off her breasts, the turgid nipples, the way her shining hair moulded to the sway of her full, rounded hips.

      “Lower” he would command, and she would respond, as she had once responded so beautifully to his voiced commands. In this fantasy, it was no less true. Lower … And she would raise her hips, lower her breasts till they just scraped the table with their pointed tips. He’d watch the red wine cover her nipples as she crawled, and the wine drip from them.

      Licking his dry lips, Iain watched his fantasy play out in his heated mind, the drops of crimson wine slipping from elongated nipples, the slow, seductive crawl on her knees to him, the feel of his cock, so СКАЧАТЬ