Page 12 of The Devil’s Submission

“Grayson. Look at me. Please, please look at me.”

The feminine voice sounded far away, yet very insistent. He would obey, too, but for the damned anvil pounding his skull, and he’d eaten a pound of sand if his desert-dry mouth was any indication.

“Grayson. You look at me this minute!”

He blinked terribly heavy eyelids until his wife came into focus. “I live to serve, my dear…I’m on the ground.”

“You gave me such a fright,” said Eliza sternly, but her eyes were wide with worry. And the way her fingers were stroking his hair was so warm and soothing, he wanted to lean into her touch, until every memory of the past few hours had been caressed away.

“Not my finest hour.”

“Rather an understatement. I’m informed by members of the harem that before you went into that blasted club room, you drank nearly three bottles of brandy on an empty stomach.”

“Bloody turncoats. I hope you told them I’m cancelling Christmas.”

“Tell them yourself. But right now we are going upstairs and you are going to have a hot bath and eat until you are fit to burst.”

“I’m not cold.”

“Then why are you shivering? Everyone in Portman Square can hear your teeth chattering.”

Frowning, he peered down at his hands. Damned if they weren’t moving all by themselves. Actually, he was freezing. The kind of bone-deep chill that robbed a person of reason and direction. “I do feel a trifle off. Foggy, even.”

“Can you get up? I’d rather we were in our chamber than this hallway. If Prinny sees, the news will be across London within the hour.”

“I doubt it,” he replied, but he eased to his feet anyway. Fuck, he was as unsteady as a newborn colt. “The prince owes me money, so he is neatly avoiding me right now.”

“Everyone owes you money, Grayson,” she said with a laugh, sliding a soft arm around his waist, the care and comfort of the action constricting his throat. “If I recall correctly, you hold promissory notes from half the ton.”

“Maybe not quite that many. There are some aristocrats who pay their bills on time and don’t crawl to me, cap in hand, for a loan or debt forgiveness. The rest are bloody leeches, want, want, want, and they demand with such entitlement,” he said woodenly, barely able to suppress a wave of nausea at the never ending list of people who courted him for no other reason than financial gain. “At least Sin, Vice, Diaz, and Charlie are true. And you. My wife.”

Eliza stumbled but quickly righted herself. “Sorry. New slippers. Haven’t quite broken them in yet.”

His chamber was deliciously warm thanks to a roaring fire in the grate. Devil sighed in relief as three footmen filled a large copper tub with buckets of steaming hot water before swiftly leaving.

Devil hauled off his clammy, sweat-soaked shirt and tossed it aside, along with his boots and trousers, then climbed into the tub. The temperature near scalded him and, as if a curtain had been yanked back, every single excruciating moment he’d been in the activity room flooded his mind. Fuck. That had been the worst night yet. Usually he could will his mind away while he played at being an alpha, but in that room, every moan and whimper, every flick and slap of leather or drop of candle wax on flesh, had sliced his soul. The women around him had come again and again, their nipples rock hard, their pussies slick with juice, and he’d been in purgatory.

A soft cloth glided across his back, and he shuddered. “Thank you,” he said awkwardly into the heavy silence. “For downstairs, I mean. I wasn’t really enjoying myself.”

Eliza lathered the cloth with more soap and scrubbed his arms. “A mild understatement, Grayson. You hated it. It was the most distressing thing I’ve ever seen. Fallen is supposed to be about pleasure for everyone, but you were gaining nothing from what you were doing. Nothing at all. Why do such a thing if it makes you hate yourself?”

Devil froze.

Well, if that wasn’t the thousand-guinea question.

“I just wasn’t feeling well, that’s all. Far too much brandy on an empty stomach, as you noted.” The lie burned his tongue.

“Poppycock.”

“Eliza, I have a reputation to uphold. And to do that, sometimes I must do things I don’t enjoy to ensure that reputation stays intact. All right?”

“No, it is not all right,” she said angrily, tossing the cloth away. “Something that you have to drink three bottles of brandy to endure, and loathe every minute of, is not all right in any way.”

Abruptly, Devil rose from the copper tub, sending a splash of water over one side. “And what would you have me do? Apart from send away a very dear friend?”

“If she truly was your friend, she wouldn’t stand for you hurting yourself. Not ever. You aren’t to do that again, Grayson. I’ll tell Diaz and Sin and Vice to bar you from that room.”

Stepping out of the tub, he stalked toward her. “Oh will you now, madam wife?”