"Deliverance, I swear to God?—"
"You swear what? That you won't get another mistress? That you'll be a better man?"
"No more mistresses," he ground out, like the words were dragged from his gut. "The minute you come back, I’ll even give up my whores."
I snorted. "Save it. This is your apology? Your promises mean nothing, and you deserve to rot in hell."
I thought I was a safe enough distance away, but at my words Gideon made a sudden grab, stretching through the bars until he gripped the back of my skirt.
Oh, godsdamn! I’d gotten too cocky. I should never have thought there was even a shred of weakness in him.
And then he began to pull me slowly toward him.Step by step.
I cried out in distress, instinctively clutching the small swell of my belly.
"What do you want from me, damn you?"he bit out. "Jewelry, a carriage, the carcass of anyone you so choose--I will provide it!"
Bartholomew leaped forward, but Gideon was stronger, his arm dripping with sweat as he bore me closer, against the bars, stinking like beer and blood, his voice low and gritty in my ear.
His beard rasped down the flesh of my naked throat, and suddenly my breasts felt heavier, swelling against the monk’s robes until my nipples prickled.
Gritting my teeth, I kicked back with my boot until I connected with a fleshy part of him.
“So I originally wanted to kill you?” my husband growled. “That’s none of your fucking business now.”
“You’re a bastard,” I panted. “Go use my money on your precious pile of rocks then. I don’t care anymore. Just let me go.”
"Let you go? Never.I love you," Gideon hissed angrily in my ear, his other hand on my throat, right over my fluttering heartbeat.
In this position, he could have killed me instantly, wrung my neck until he no longer had to be troubled with a wife.
"I hate you," I choked out, trying to wrench his bloody arm away, my teeth gritting as his mouth descended on my skin, sucking eagerly at my flesh and licking up every drop of sweat.
“This godsdamn cunny loves me and so do you. You’re just a dirty little liar.Come back to me.”
“Not only are you a hateful brute, but you’re a cheater, too.”
“So what? I took what I wanted from any woman I wanted. It’s a man’s damn right, but I told you I’ll stop whoring around if you come back to me.”
“You don’t love me and you couldn’t keep your prick in your pants if you tried.”
His teeth sunk into my neck and I squealed in distress.
But out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flash of brown cloth as Bartholomew picked up a thick branch, ramming it into Gideon's side to break the contact between us.
My husband choked out a vicious oath and I wrenched myself free.
As I stumbled away, I looked at Gideon's face, the rough beard over his jaw, the heavy-lidded eyes, and dark angry gaze, the way the gate was peeling strips of flesh from his arms but hejust kept coming.
"I want nothing from you, I care nothing for you,” I told him. “Even if you crawled on your belly, it would mean nothing to me."
My hands reached for Bartholomew's and we clutched them together desperately as I took one step, then the next, away from my husband's depraved savagery.
"If you think I'm giving up, you're mistaken," Gideon snarled. "You will be mine, happy or not.”
"Leave me alone!" I screamed, finally giving vent to my emotions after so many days of them twisting, burning inside me.
And then I heard it, an answering screech from somewhere on the moors. There was a flash, a wisp, of movement in the shadows. A face, a voice, I thought I knew.
