Page 3 of Wicked Highland Heroes

“Everything I’ve heard about you is true,” she said. “You have no conscience.”

“In that we are alike. Should my father succeed in coercing me into marriage, I will make the worst sort of husband you can imagine. I will not settle down and sire an heir as he expects. Instead, I will send my wife to the family estate in Scotland while I go about my pleasures in London.”

“So the choice is desertion or ruination?”

“Be honest, the ruination was done long before you concocted this plan.”

“Plan?” she repeated. “I feel certain I can convince the magistrate of self-defense. After all, you broke into my room.”

“Think again.” Erroll reached into his pocket.

“Beware,” she said.

He slowly withdrew the key from his pocket and held it up. “The innkeeper was very obliging. He feels nothing should stand in the way of true love.”

She frowned, then comprehension cleared her expression. “I should have guessed. You think you can browbeat me into helping you avoid the marriage vows. You, sir, are the worst sort of knave.”

“So we do understand one another.”

“You are a fool,” she muttered.

He’d had enough. “You are the fool if you believe I will marry you.”

“Marry me? What—”

Erroll started toward her.

She took a faltering step backwards and he lunged. She gave a startled cry. He seized the hand holding the gun and shoved it upward in their tumble backwards. They landed on the bed, him on top of her. Her lush body yielded beneath his hard planes—his stiffening cock in particular. To his surprise, she didn’t struggle, but released the pistol. The weapon bounced off the mattress and struck the carpet with a thud.

“Is this how you described my having ravished you?” he demanded.

Shock registered on her face. He blew out a frustrated breath. He’d come ready to battle the vixen and she was already crumbling. Moisture appeared in her eyes. Ah, there it was. She was simply moving onto another tactic.

“Lies, pistols, tears, and…” He moved suggestively against her breasts and felt the rigid nipples beneath his shirt. “Your arsenal of weapons is impressive, madam.”

“I tell you, mamma, I heard a scream.”

A woman’s voice penetrated the door on the right wall. Erroll jerked his gaze in that direction as the door swung open. Two women stood in the doorway staring, one young—in her second season, he would guess—the other, the mamma the girl had addressed.

Erroll looked at the woman lying beneath him. “I thought that was a closet.”

*****

Panic streaked through Eve and she struggled to push Lord Rushton off her, but he continued to stare in shock as her mother fainted dead away.

Her sister’s wail split the deadly silence. “He is mine!”

The earl looked at Eve, a strange sense of understanding in his eyes. “She’s Miss Crenshaw?”

Eve wasn’t sure if his confusion was due to the fact he’d accosted the wrong woman, or that the woman he was supposed to have compromised was beautiful enough to rival Aphrodite. He wouldn’t be the first man struck dumb at first sight of Grace.

“He’s mine!” This time Grace’s wail became a banshee cry.

She hurled herself at them and landed on the earl’s back with a force that seemed impossible given her small stature. Eve winced when his hardened shaft dug into her pelvis. He grunted and she fleetingly wondered if it was Grace’s weight landing on top of him or the fact that even a steel rod could be crushed by the force of such an assault. It would serve him right if he never sired an heir.

Eve caught sight of his jaw tightening and realized he’d broken from the spell. Grace seized his head and shoved. His face mashed into Eve’s breasts. Her breath caught and she clutched at his shoulders. Muscle bunched beneath her fingers as he tried to push upward in unison with her shove, but Grace was like a rogue elephant pounding them with all her weight and might. The hall door flew open and Eve glimpsed their father in the doorway.

Lord Rushton jerked his head in an obvious attempt to look up, but Grace shoved harder, slamming his head deeper into Eve’s soft flesh.