reality was that Dermot Fitzalan needed my wealth. And better still, my ability to make more with seeming ease. He needed these things far more than I needed his daughter’s pedigree.
But I had decided long ago that I would marry a Fitzalan heiress, these daughters of men who had been the power behind every throne in Europe at one point or another. I had determined that I would make my babies on soft, well-bred thighs, fatten them on blue blood, and raise them not just rich, but cultured.
I had been so young when I had seen Celeste that first time. So raw and unformed. The animal they accused me of being in all the ways that mattered.
I had never seen a woman like her before. All clean lines and beauty. I had never imagined that a person could be...flawless.
It had taken me far longer than it should have—far longer than it would today, that was for certain—to see the truth of Celeste Fitzalan, now a countess of petty dreams and an angry old man’s promises because that was what she had wanted far more than she had wanted me.
But my thirst for my legacy had only grown stronger.
“If there was another,” my confounding betrothed said, a mulish set to that fine mouth and a rebellion in her gaze, “I would hardly be likely to tell you, would I?”
“You can tell me anything you like about others,” I told her, all menace and steel. “Today. I would advise you to take advantage of this offer. Come the morning, I will take a far dimmer view of these things.”
“It doesn’t matter what I want,” she threw at me, pulling her chin from my grasp.
I assumed we were both well aware that I allowed it.
“I never said that it did. You are the one who came here. Was it only to call me names? To ask me impertinent questions? Or perhaps you had another goal in mind?”
“I don’t know why I came,” Imogen said, and I could tell by the way her voice scraped into the air between us that she meant that.
But there was a fire in me. A need, dark and demanding, and I was not in the habit of denying myself the things I wanted.
More than this, she was to be my wife in the morning.
“Don’t worry,” I told her with all that heat and intent. “I know exactly why you came.”
I hooked my hand around her neck, enjoying the heat of her skin beneath the cover of those wild curls. I pulled her toward me, watching her eyes go wide and her mouth drop open as if she couldn’t help herself. As if she was that artless, that innocent.
I couldn’t understand the things that worked in me. To take her, to possess her, to bury myself in her body when she looked nothing like the women that I usually amused myself with.
But none of that mattered.
Because I already owned her. All that remained was the claiming, and I wanted it. Desperately.
I dropped my mouth to hers.
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