Free The Wickedest Lord Alive by Christina Brooke

legitimate heir.”
    “I’m not a simpleton, my lord,” she snapped. Of course she saw his point. It was abundantly clear. What she did not understand was why he’d abandoned her in the first place. Why he’d waited until now to pluck her from obscurity.
    And Mr. Allbright had never given her the slightest hint.…
    She thought of the vicar’s words to her tonight and touched the pearls at her throat.
    She supposed she must be glad she hadn’t known Steyne was aware of her presence here. Rejected not merely once, but every day of the eight years since they married. He could have come for her at any time, yet he had not.
    “I daresay this has all come as something of a surprise,” Steyne said.
    A surprise ? She almost laughed. “Indeed.”
    “You will need time to collect yourself,” he said. “But allow me to tell you now that my decision won’t alter.”
    Some of her spirit returned. “Regardless of my wishes? You do not even care that I am thoroughly opposed to … to…”
    He watched her and let her flounder without mercy. Then he said with something of a purr, “I will teach you any number of terms for what we are going to do, dear Lizzie. And any number of ways to experience pleasure.”
    In spite of her smarting pride, a dark thrill shot through her. The image of him moving over her in the candlelight made her throat tighten and her heart beat faster.
    “You are shocking and … and vulgar. I won’t listen to you.”
    She remembered the high, hot burst of ecstasy, the unwilling sense of closeness she’d felt in his arms. All that, despite their lack of empathy or acquaintance.
    The words she’d overheard earlier that evening rang in her ears: Love has nothing to do with it.
    To surrender herself to his ministrations without the slightest hope or expectation of love—that would be torment, indeed. To take this man inside her, yet never come close to touching anything inside him.
    To know that no matter how much she might long for true intimacy, such emotional connection was beyond him.
    If she hadn’t experienced the depth of his remoteness for herself that night, she might well have been tempted by his looks, his rakish audacity, and his air of mystery. But the desolation she’d known when he’d left her with such brutal coldness was the greatest anguish she’d ever experienced.
    It was as if she’d climbed aboard a life raft after years on a desert isle, and the raft had marooned her in some arctic wasteland. But she’d escaped her father’s house by her wits and determination, with no one to help her. She’d found a haven, safe and warm, in Little Thurston.
    Now she said, “If I refuse?”
    He could not, would not, force her to do this. She knew she’d have to obey him eventually, but she wasn’t going to make it easy for him. She wanted to punish him in some small measure for leaving her behind.
    He did not answer at first. Then he said, “Do not defy me, Lizzie. You’ll discover I always get my way in the end.”
    She persisted. “That night, you said we would not be obliged to see each other again.”
    “ Now she remembers,” he murmured with a sideways glance. His gaze lowered to her fan. “I repented of that statement almost immediately. I came back for you.”
    She hadn’t known that. She’d seen the shocking tableau in her father’s bedchamber and fled.
    With the small, insidious hope that her new husband had indeed made an end of her sadistic father. And the sure knowledge that she did not want to be there to find out.
    He had violence in him, this nobleman, and a ruthless determination. He would not scruple to do what was necessary to take her. Even so, his gentleness with her that fateful night was something she also remembered. The fleeting moments of tenderness. The wild, throbbing pleasure he’d drawn from her body, even against her will.
    The knowledge that he had returned to claim her on their wedding night gave his present demand a wholly different