Free The Prize by Brenda Joyce

raging lust—blood lust—savage and uncontrolled. The beast always
chose this moment to walk the earth. Devlin mounted her as he mounted the bed,
pushing her down, unfastening his britches, thrusting his massive hardness
inside.
    Elizabeth cried out
in pleasure, already hot and wet. He moved as hard and fast as he could, images
of Eastleigh filling his mind, gray of hair, fatter and fifty now, and then
fourteen years ago, slimmer, younger, crueler. His hatred knew no bounds. It
mingled with the lust. His mouth found hers and he thrust there deeply,
hurtfully, grinding against her, until he had become the beast itself.
Elizabeth never knew. She gripped his sweat-slickened back, keening wildly in
her ecstasy.
    He wanted to release
himself, too, but the hatred, the pleasure and the lust were so great and so
satisfying that he refused, pounding deeper, harder, but ugly memories rode
him now as he rode her...ugly, bloody glimpses of a dark and terrible past,
rising fast and furious—a small boy, a headless man, a severed head, sightless
eyes, a pool of blood.
    He forgot the woman
he rode as the wave preceding his climax, a wave of intense, growing pleasure,
turned into one of anger and pain, and he was swept forward, against all will,
a wave that now unfurled like a topsail, hard and fast. Be-
    hind that wave the
memories chased him. His father's furious, sightless eyes accused him now.
You let me die, you let me die. Devlin sought now only to escape, and when
he climaxed, he did just that.
    There was no moment
of peace, no moment of relief. Instantly he was conscious, aware of the woman
he lay upon, aware of the man he was cuckolding—aware of the gruesome memories
that he now must bury, at all cost. Devlin flipped over, away from the
countess, breathing harshly. In that instant a painfully familiar emptiness
emanated from deep within him and consumed him entirely. It was so huge, so hollow,
so vast.
    Devlin leapt to his
feet.
    "Good Lord, one
would think you'd been without for an entire year," Elizabeth murmured
with a satisfied sigh. Then she eyed him with a small, pleased smile, her gaze
lingering on his narrow hips and muscled thighs.
    Naked, Devlin hurried
across the bedroom, hardly aware of her words, quickly pouring a glass of wine.
He downed it in a gulp, shaken, as always, by the memories he had vowed never
to forget. He drained the glass and fought the beast until it finally returned
to its lair.
    "Nothing ever
changes, does it, Devlin?" the countess asked, sitting up.
    He poured another
glass of wine and approached her, aware of his manhood stirring. Her gaze moved
to his groin and she smiled. "You are becoming terribly predictable, Devlin."
    "I could change
that easily enough," he remarked casually, handing her the wine. As he
did, he paused to admire her breasts. "You haven't changed," he
added.
    "And you remain
a gentleman, in spite of your reputation," she said, but she was smiling
and pleased. "I'm a year older, a bit fatter and lustier than ever."
    "You haven't
changed," he said firmly, but now he noticed the slight wrinkles at her
eyes and the equally slight thickening of her waist. Elizabeth was several
years his senior, although he wasn't really certain of her age— -be had
never cared enough to learn what it might be. She had two adolescent daughters,
and he thought, but wasn't sure, that the eldest was fourteen or fifteen.
Neither daughter belonged to Eastleigh.
    "Darling, would
it ever be possible for you to lie quietly by my side?" she asked, setting
her glass down and stroking his inner thigh.
    He hardened like a
shot. "I have never pretended to be anything but what I am with you. I am
not a quiet man."
    "No, you are His
Majesty's Pirate, for that is what I hear you called from time to time, when
your exploits become dinner conversation." Her hand drifted upward, its
back brushing his phallus as she toyed with his thigh.
    "How boring
those dinners must be." He couldn't care less what he was called,