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No, not just to watch. It’s not that simple. Those last few minutes in the study rattled me. The exchange with Zeke. Old feelings I thought were buried deep rising back to the surface. How does he truly feel now, years later? Has he forgiven me? Because he hasn’t forgotten. That’s obvious. But I can’t exactly blame him for that, can I?
My mother is another story. She won’t like what I have to do to Isabelle. She already doesn’t. But she won’t interfere, either.
I shake my head to clear it. I need to focus. Need to deal with Isabelle Bishop now because she’ll meet my daughter tomorrow. And I need to get her in line before that. I will do what I need to do to protect Angelique. And I can’t care about the cost to the Bishop trembling before me.
“Isabelle?” I raise my eyebrows.
She squeezes her eyes shut, presses the heels of her hands to her eyes and I watch her drag in a deep breath. She’s steeling herself. Good girl. When she opens those eyes again, she has mascara smeared across her skin. And the blue of those eyes is like blazing shards of glass. Christ. She’s fucking beautiful.
“Why?” she asks, voice coming across stronger than earlier.
“Why what?” I ask, aware she can hear the taunt in my tone. It only makes her angrier and I’m entertained.
“Why me? Why this? What did I do to you?”
“Fair questions,” I say, turning a circle around the tiny room, noting the cobwebs in the corner. The bare, stained mattress on the rickety bed frame. I pick up the sheet of parchment that had fallen and set it with the others on top of the bed. When I look back she’s folded her arms across her chest. “Why not you?”
Her eyebrows furrow. It’s not what she expected. “Carlton did something to you.”
It’s a statement, not a question. And it isn’t what I expect. My jaw tenses and I know she sees it. I see the way her eyes shift, how her back straightens just a little.
I take my hands out of my pockets and step toward her. Her shoulders curl in protectively. I smile, take her wrists, and draw her folded arms to her sides. I look at her mouth and I wonder if she realizes she licks her lips when I do. I let my gaze drop farther to the swell of her breasts and she tries to pull her wrists free. I don’t let her. Instead, I watch her as I slowly turn her to face away from me.
“I want your hands on the wall,” I tell her, raising her arms above her head, pressing her palms to the cool stone. I don’t let go of her wrists as I take her in, her shoulders tensed, skin stretched tight, shoulder blades protruding. I hold both wrists in one hand and with the other, brush her waist-length black hair over one shoulder to bare her back.
She sucks in a breath at my touch. That sound, the tremble of her body when I bring my nose to her pulse and take a deep breath in, makes my dick hard. My own breath is short and she’s not even naked yet. I swallow, catalog her scent. Springtime and innocence camouflaging acrid fear. Barely.
I run my chin over the curve of her neck, and she whimpers. I draw back to look at how her pale olive skin reddens where the stubble irritated it then lean my mouth to her ear.
“Don’t move,” I instruct as I slide my hands down over her arms, watching goosebumps rise in their wake, fingertips feeling the contour of long limbs, slender muscle.
When I lift my fingers from her, she fists her hands, and I can almost hear the battle she must be having. Stay or move? Do as she’s told or fight?
“I said stay,” I whisper against the jumping pulse at her neck, letting my breath tickle her, feeling the warm shudder of her skin against my lips.
A moment later, her palms are flat against the wall, and I look at the back of the dress. It’s a corset top held together by some sort of ribbon. Silk. I pull that ribbon to undo the bow and begin to unbind her. The corset was too tight. I can see how her skin has creased against the bonds of the dress.
“Please don’t,” she says, still not moving her hands.
“Shh.”
I swallow as I pull the top of the dress apart, see the bare skin of her back. The curve to her hips. My own breath is ragged. I hope she can’t hear that. I’m also glad she can’t see me as I tug the two sides wider, wide enough that I can push the dress down over her hips and let it drop to the floor.
Isabelle whimpers, shuddering, and drags her arms down a little.
“No,” I tell her, and she stops their progress. She’s obedient. Probably because she’s terrified. I know what she’s thinking I’ll do. And there’s a part of me that hates myself for it. Hates that I’m letting her think it. Only a monster could.
I fist my hands, close my eyes, and clear my head.
She is a Bishop.
She does not deserve your pity.
“Nor shall she have it,” I say under my breath and look her over. See the jagged scar running down her spine. Another flaw. One I have to force myself to look away from. I study the contours of her body instead, the taut muscle, the narrowing to her waist, the swell of her hips, her long, slender legs, ankles tickled by the feathers of her dress pooling around her feet.
“Another mark,” I say, my voice hoarse as I bring the tips of two fingers to the top of that scar. I can feel the thickened tissue beneath my fingers, hear her hiss of breath as I trace the rough line of it. The skin over her clavicle was stitched. The doctor did a shit job of it. This has no stitch marks. “This one?” I ask.
“Fell,” she says.
