Free Diana's Hound: Bloodhounds, Book 4 by Moira Rogers

“Sir is far preferable to master, in my opinion.”
    “Yes? Well, your opinion would be the one to matter, wouldn’t it?” After a moment, she made a disgusted noise and covered her face. “I’m sorry. I think I just realized it’s true. They really will see me as property. It’s unsettling.”
    Which made his arousal inexcusable. He focused on that disgust to shame his body into compliance. “It’s a despicable practice, from start to finish.”
    “I know many women are treated as such outside of Eternity, but I never have been.”
    At least her husband hadn’t been the sort to treat a wife unkindly, then. “I didn’t truly understand the trials a woman faces until Satira was left mostly in my care.”
    “It’s better for some, and worse for others.” She shook her head and laid her hand on his knee. “You’re not like that, I know.”
    “Age brings wisdom in some matters.”
    “The wisdom not to think of women as chattel? It seems rather like a lifelong commitment.”
    Her fingertips were warm. The longer they lay on his leg, the more they burned through the suddenly too-thin fabric of his trousers. “I enjoyed the privilege of not having to form an opinion on the matter for a surprisingly long stretch of my life.”
    She arched an eyebrow. “You had no opinions regarding the roles and duties of women until Satira became your ward?”
    He lowered his voice. “I became a Guild inventor at seventeen, Diana. I lived and breathed my work. I rarely encountered a woman who wasn’t a prostitute before my thirty-fifth year.”
    “Fascinating.”
    “Only as a study in a small, sad life.”
    “Or second chances.” Moving swiftly, she leaned over and kissed his cheek.
    It took willpower drawn from every atom of his being not to spill her across his lap. “You have a rare talent for finding the unexpected bright side in any gloomy situation.”
    “Anything for a smile, sir.”
    He couldn’t help but give her one. “And anything for you, pet.”
    She smoothed a hand over the front of her dress. “You may as well call me April.”
    The girl survived. Her name is April.
    He swallowed and tried the name he’d whispered a thousand times in his mind. “April.”
    She nodded slowly and withdrew to her side of the seat. “I feel small when I hear that name. It will serve us well here.”
    That he couldn’t let stand. He grasped her chin and forced her to look at him. “You should feel dangerous when you hear it. You should feel strong, full of the kind of fire most men would open their wrists to possess. You, April, survived an ordeal that has killed every man I’ve ever seen with the exception of one.”
    Her expression remained still. Solemn. “Now who’s looking for a silver lining?”
    The ship drifted toward a platform atop one of the tallest buildings in Eternity, and the pilot angled it toward an unoccupied gangway as a pair of stewards hustled to moor it. The side access door swung open, and Diana reached for the wide, dark parasol resting by her feet. “Allow me, sir.”
    Sir. No, the word wouldn’t hold the same seductive lure when she used it as a warning. As a reminder. At least there was that small mercy. He waved a hand at her in permission, telling himself that this charade only had to last until they were safely behind closed doors again.
    He prayed that it was soon.
    She stepped out onto the gangway and opened the parasol, lending him its shade. The port was bustling, and they made their way through the mostly human crowd and to the elevators.
    At the base of the gray stone building, there was an awning over the path, one with voluminous canvas sides only partially tied up in the waning daylight.
    “They think of everything,” Diana said brightly.
    They would. He suffered her to hold the parasol over his head and focused on facts. Facts would secure him against this surreal role he had to play. “I’ve heard there are tunnels beneath the canals, too. Some built of—” no, only