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“I do,” he answered.
She snuggled into his chest, almost as if she were burrowing in. Her body sending tingles of renewed heat straight to his groin. He clenched his teeth, knowing if he surrendered to his body’s increasing demands, she’d be fortunate to arrive home before dawn.
“And if I shocked you by asking to stay?” she murmured. “With you?”
“Don’t, Sabrina.”
She rolled up onto an elbow. “That sounds very much like a thank-you but no.”
He ignored the scraps of heart left to him. Cracked his mind to the presence as a way to fight back against the temptation of her proposal. Immediately, the ominous brimstone anger overwhelmed his lust. Black emotions scorched the insides of his skull, leaving naught but the charred remains of his earlier desire. “I can’t protect you. I’m who you need protecting from.”
He stared at her. Without speaking. Unable to breach a gap of inches. No way around the dead bodies lying between them. No way over the mountain of sins he’d committed for the sake of his master. His creator. The Great One.
“Mr. MacLir.” A rap upon the door broke them both free. “There’s someone downstairs asking for you. A rather foul-tempered gentleman with a pistol and an unstable eye.”
St. John? Here? Could it get worse?
“Says he’s the Earl of Kilronan.”
Bloody hell. He’d had to ask.
Sabrina dressed in a frantic race, ears tuned to clomping footsteps on the stairs or a pistol report. Neither occurred, and she entered the parlor, more or less in a presentable and unfrenzied state. Hair bundled into a loose chignon. Stays abandoned, but stockings in place and gown right way around and buttoned correctly.
She hoped.
“How did you find me?” she demanded, pretending a bravery she didn’t feel.
Aidan swung around, brows drawn down over narrowed eyes, body radiating violence. “Recognize this?” He slammed her journal on the table.
She cringed, wracking her brain. Surely she’d hidden it away. She never left it out. But she’d stayed up late, jotting as much down as she could. Every moment. Every kiss. And this morning, Aidan’s arrival had surprised her from her normal routine. She must have forgotten . . . A weight pressed on her chest, making her fight for every breath.
All her thoughts. All her actions. Spread across page after page for anyone to read. Anyone and Aidan, who now looked primed for murder.
“Don’t even try the holier-than-thou act. Not when your own wife—” She swallowed back her words at the vicious glare centered on her. “It’s not the way it looks,” she finished lamely, though it was exactly how it looked. And Aidan knew it.
“Where is he?” Aidan seethed. “Has the monster left you to face the music while he skulks back to his master gloating over your maidenhead?” His hand gripping the pistol shook.
“Have care with your insults, Lord Kilronan. My rage can be fatal.”
The deep, velvety baritone slid along nerves still jumping with aftershocks of their lovemaking. She inhaled the sexy man scent of him. Reveled in the warmth of his body. If she stepped back, she’d be in the circle of his arms.
“Lazarus.” That one syllable filled with enough venom to kill. “I should have murdered you when I had the chance.”
Daigh stepped around her, the towering strength of his body emphasized by the tiny parlor. She’d forgotten how big he was. How he seemed to pulse with a savage light. How his very presence sucked every bit of air from a room and his gaze could smolder with enough heat to singe. “As I remember, my lord, you tried. And how is your lady wife?”
Wait. Daigh? Aidan? Aidan’s wife? Did they know one another? Apparently knew and loathed by the killer stare her brother focused on Daigh.
“Did you think to attack me through Sabrina? Were you planning on taking her to Máelodor for his pleasure once you were finished with her?”
Aidan looked in danger of exploding. His face purple. His eyes burning with a dark intensity she’d never seen before. Almost as if the shadow of another crouched waiting in the ruthless gaze. He brought the pistol up to level it at Daigh’s chest. The shadow overtaking him. His stare as soulless and empty as if someone else controlled him. Inhabited him.
Daigh never faltered. “That will avail you nothing.”
“You forget, Lazarus, I carry within me a little piece of my own monster. My own hell, thanks to you.”
“And would you summon it here? Risk losing yourself to the evil of the Unseelie?”
“A risk worth taking,” Aidan snarled.
