To Beguile a Beast (Legend of the Four Soldiers #3)(60)
Author: Elizabeth Hoyt

“Is it?” he asked.

“What?” Her voice was distracted.

“Is it agreeable to you to eat here?” He splashed water on his face.

“I… I suppose.”

He took a towel and dried his face, turning to watch her. She’d halted by the window, staring down at her feet.

He threw aside the towel. “What did you do this afternoon?”

“Oh, nothing much.” Her fair skin blushed, the pretty pink moving up her throat and to her cheeks. She looked quite lovely, but she was lying.

He strolled toward her, examining her. “You didn’t go out?”

Her eyes dropped.

And he knew, suddenly and without any doubt. “You saw Lister.”

She jerked her head up, her gaze meeting his defiantly. “Yes. I had to at least try to make him see reason.”

Scalding hot rage bubbled in his veins, but he held it in check—barely.

“And did he?” he asked gently.

“No,” she said. “He’s determined to keep the children.”

He cocked his head, angling his good eye at her. “And he just let you go, tripping down his front steps and away without so much as an attempt to stay you? Perhaps he even waved his handkerchief in farewell as you left?”

Her blush deepened. “He didn’t try to keep me—”

“No, of course not. Why would he when he’s gone to all the trouble of kidnapping your children to get you back?”

Her head jerked as if he’d slapped her. “How did you know he wants me back?”

He laughed, the sound harsh and quick. “Don’t take me for a fool. A man doesn’t kidnap his bastard children when he already has three sons and heirs. I know him. I know his game. He’s using them as hostages to get you to return, isn’t he?”

“He said I’d never see them again unless I returned as his mistress.”

Something inside of him erupted. He felt the release, overflowing the edge of reason into insanity.

“Did you agree?” Somehow he’d crossed the room and seized her arms. “Tell me, Helen. Did you agree to return to him? To let him into your bed? To be his whore? Did you?”

She stared up at him with those damned drowning harebell eyes. “He says I’ll never see Abigail and Jamie again unless I return to him. They’re all I have, Alistair. My children. My babies.”

He shook her once. “Did you agree?”

“I can’t never see them again.”

“Goddamn you, Helen.” His chest was tight with horror. “Did you agree?”

“No.” She closed her eyes. “No. I told him no.”

“Thank God.” He pulled her into his arms and brought his mouth down on hers, crushing her soft lips. The thought of her with Lister was driving him beyond control. “Did he hurt you?”

“No,” she gasped. “He… he gripped my hand, but—”

He grabbed both her hands and saw red welts on the right. Abruptly, he stilled, cradling her delicate fingers in his larger hand. “He hurt you.”

“It’s nothing.” She pulled her hand gently away.

“Did he hurt you—touch you—anywhere else?”

“No, Alistair, no.”

“He wanted to touch you, I know,” he said as he rubbed his hands over her shoulders and to her arms. “He wanted to touch and taste and feel you.”

“But he didn’t.” She placed her palms, cool and soft, on either side of his face. “He didn’t touch me.”

“Thank God.” He took her mouth savagely, thrusting his tongue into her, wanting to blot the image of Lister from both their minds.

Her acceptance calmed him until he could once again pull away.

“I’m sorry.” He closed his eye in disgust at himself. “You must think me a ravening beast.”

“No,” she said quietly. He felt her soft lips brush over the scarred side of his face. “I think you a man. Only that. A man.”

And when she brought her lips back to his, he was able to kiss her gently this time. Sweetly. Worshipping her.

His eye was still closed—perhaps he no longer wanted to see the reality of their situation—so he only felt when she ran her hands over his chest, the pressure light through the layers of his clothing. Her hands descended down toward his breeches, and a primal male part of him waited, breathless, to see what she would do. Her fingers moved over the buttons of his fall, loosening, freeing him.

He reached for her then. “Helen.”

“No,” she said, quite firmly. “No, let me.”

And his hands fell away, because although he was a man of honor, he was by no means a saint. He heard the rustle of her skirts as she knelt, felt her fingers on his throbbing cock, and then the brush of her breath.

He made a heroic effort and tried one more time to dissuade her. “You don’t have to.”

Her whisper blew across the swollen head of his cock as she said, “I know.”

Then her hot wet mouth enveloped him, and he could only groan and brace his legs so he wouldn’t fall. God! He’d paid a whore for this once, long ago, but it’d been a disappointment. Then, there had been rough sucking and pulling and he’d barely been able to finish. Now… Now there was gentle pressure, the velvet touch of her tongue, and most of all, the knowledge that she was doing this to him. He couldn’t help himself. He opened his eye and looked down and nearly came on the spot. Her golden head was bent over him, his reddened prick sliding in between her pink lips, her fingers delicate and white against his rude flesh.

She looked up at him, his cock still in her stretched mouth, and her harebell-blue eyes were dark now. Mysterious, feminine, and the most erotic thing he’d ever seen in his life.

HE TASTED OF man and salt and life itself.

Helen closed her eyes, savoring the sensation of Alistair’s penis in her mouth. She’d done this a few times with Lister, but she’d found the act distasteful then. Something she’d only performed to please him. What she did now pleased her as well. There was power in holding the most elemental part of a man between her lips, feeling him tremble as she stroked him, hearing his breath come quick and hard as she sucked.

And there was something else. She liked the taste of him, liked licking his smooth head. Liked stroking the soft skin of his shaft and feeling the steely hardness beneath. This was erotic. Primal, and just a little bit naughty. Her breasts were swollen beneath her bodice and stays, her nipples sensitive and pointed. She could feel wetness at the juncture of her thighs, and she pressed them together and sucked strongly on him at the same time.