Free Tainted by Temptation by Katy Madison Page A

Lilith’s manner of death. There were other secrets he wanted kept from Iris’s ears. Skeletons he shared with no one. His relief tightened back into a knot.
    “What is the answer?” he asked sharply. “How does one shield a child from gossip and innuendo?”
    Velvet’s mouth tightened and her gaze lost focus, as she seemed to turn inward. Pain flashed across her face.
    “I don’t know the answer,” she finally said, as if she hated to admit ignorance.
    He wanted to comfort her, hold her. Rumors had affected her life too. But she hadn’t turned to him for comfort, and she’d put a chair under her door handle to keep him out. She wasn’t here for him.
    He moved past her, taking a couple of steps toward the cliff. He stared out at the ocean, but the calm it usually gave was elusive. Velvet filled his thoughts.
    He turned and studied her. Her back was to him and she seemed extraordinarily interested in the gray granite of the back wall. Her neck curved in a way that invited kisses. The urge to have her resurfaced. His blood quickened and his body hummed with an awareness of her.
    “If you do not . . .” The warm wash of her voice made him shudder. Her dulcet tones were the kind he wanted to hear when engaging in the flirtation that proceeded seduction. “ . . . then I shall need to retrieve them from your room.”
    His room. All he heard was that she wanted to come to his room. An image of her copper hair spread across his green counterpane flooded his mind. Blood roared in his ears and pulsed low in him. If she came to his room, it must mean she was willing . . . to . . . he shook his head. She was talking to the wall instead of him.
    Not everything added up. “You want to come to my room, Miss Campbell?” He closed the distance between them.
    “Four of Iris’s dolls are in there. I had Mr. Evans take them host—”
    Needing to see her face, he gripped her shoulder and whipped her around to face him.
    “—age. Oh, God,” she whispered. Her eyes rounded, the pupils tightened to black pinpoints in a sea of green. The bloom in her cheeks drained.
    She took a faltering step back.
    Terror was not what he expected, not what he wanted.
    She squeezed her eyes shut and took more steps backward until she ran into the wall. Her nails scrabbled on the granite.
    Was his arousal so obvious and so abhorrent to her?
    He whirled around to face the sea. He wanted to hide the scars that marked him. Many feared him. And obviously Miss Campbell had heard the charges leveled against him. Did she believe he’d tossed his wife over the cliff?
    “You may do as you like with Iris’s discipline.”
    “Th-Thank you,” said Velvet on a shaky breath. “Pray, excuse me.”
    She slid along the wall and around the corner.
    Velvet was fierce in her determination to do the right thing for Iris, even if it meant crossing him. He admired her at the same time he hated that she probably thought him guilty of tossing his wife over the cliffs, as everyone did. That she would confront him about the rumors surrounding his involvement in Lilith’s death was incredibly brave. He shook his head.
    His last argument with Lilith echoed in his head. He knew he was responsible for his wife’s untimely death. He didn’t deserve the comfort of a woman as beautiful and good as Velvet in his bed.
    Velvet fought the bile rising in her throat as she gripped the rail. While she was pulling herself up as much as climbing the stairs, her shaking legs weren’t helping her ascent.
    She knew she would have difficulty with the cliffs so close to the house, and she’d wanted to face them on her own. Going out to clean up the doll’s remains mere feet from the plunge to the sea had seemed like a good idea. But in her head the shattered doll kept blending with images of her brother’s broken body. She swallowed hard against her emotions. A smashed human head left pools of blood; dolls didn’t. She shouldn’t have been so affected, but she was still