Free Beauty and the Earl by Jess Michaels

stiffened for a brief moment, and he knew he had hit a nerve. He expected her to pull away, but instead she began to stroke her fingers over his chest in a small circle.
    “I was offered a marriage with a man I didn’t want,” she explained softly. “Or perhaps offered is too gentle a word. My father…well, he is a man of means, of power. He never publicly acknowledged me, but when I came of age, he decided to ‘help’ me.”
    Liam nodded. “Help you how?” he urged.
    She was quiet for a long moment, and he didn’t fill the silence, but allowed her to collect herself. “He demanded I marry a man I loathed. But the man had a son, who…”
    She stopped abruptly and was silent, as if she were considering the prudence of revealing something personal to a man she hardly knew. He recognized the look on her face. One of regret, sadness, the remnants of fear. He shouldn’t have wanted to know more, but he did.
    So he waited, without offering her an easy escape from her tale.  
    “To prevent a dilution of his father’s inheritance, his son did something that made certain that his father wouldn’t want to marry me.” She shook her head. “That anyone would want to marry me.”
    Liam’s eyes narrowed. “What did he do?”
    She looked up at him, dark gaze hooded and her expression one of silent, long-fought acceptance of a painful past. “He tricked me into getting very drunk. I was young and didn’t understand what he was doing. And then he…well, he did what some men do with girls who cannot say no.”
    Liam swallowed hard. “So he raped you.”
    “My father didn’t call it that.” She shrugged, but there was nothing dismissive in her low tone. Acceptance or not, the story still hurt her to her core. “He demanded that if I had ruined the good match he had lowered himself to arrange for me, that I now marry the man who had taken advantage.”
    Liam sucked in a breath through his teeth. He might have complicated issues with his sister, but he couldn’t imagine demanding she do such a thing. He couldn’t imagine anything but murdering a man who harmed someone he cared for.
    “I refused and walked away. Cut off from what little protection he once offered and without my virginity to bargain, I had little choice but to turn to alternate methods of protecting and supporting myself.” Her lips were thin, they were pressed so tightly together. “I met Olivia not long after I left my father’s protection, and she helped me.”
    Liam nodded. “Do you regret your choices?”
    She pondered that a moment. “No. No, I believe the path I am on is the one I was meant to travel. I came to enjoy sex, to appreciate the men I choose as my protectors. My body is my only commodity and I think I have used it well, without being harmed or abused.”
    She smiled and Liam could hardly stand how beautiful she looked in that moment. Her strength ran deep and made her all the more alluring.  
    “I’m sorry you endured so much,” he said, stroking a hand along her arm.
    She smiled. “We all endure, Liam. I think you know that better than anyone. Once we are dealt our cards, what else can we do but play them?”
    He stared at her, so certain in her life and her response. How she had “played her cards”, as she put it, was very different from his way.  
    She sat up, tossing long locks of hair from her shoulder.  
    “What time is supper?” she asked.
    He yawned, just as happy for the change of subject. “Eight o’clock.”
    She glanced at the small clock beside his bed and stretched. “Then I have just enough time to ready myself beforehand. Where is my chamber?”
    Liam hesitated. He had prepared a chamber for her, even though he hoped she would spend her nights with him. But sharing space with her things was far too intimate.
    “Normally I would put you in the guest wing with your friend,” he explained. “But that is too far for my taste. I’ve put you across the hall.”
    She smiled as she slipped from his bed