Taming of the Beast (Scandalous Affairs #2) - Christi Caldwell Page 0,94

an entirely different station than him. Part of a world where the people weren’t told no and didn’t believe it was a word that applied to them, and she couldn’t see or understand that. Nor did he blame her or resent her for that naïveté. It was, simply put, the existence she’d been born to. Just as he and those like him were instilled with a jaded cynicism and knowledge of the depravity and ugliness of society as a whole. It was the reality of their individual, very separate, and very different existences.

A muscle rippled in his jaw, a spasm born of a frustration he’d never felt at the station he belonged to.

Not truly. He’d accepted his existence. He’d never wanted to belong to the peerage. He’d been content with the wealth and power and opportunity to grow both that had been afforded to him as a self-made man.

Until now.

Now, there was a bone-searing resentment at the world.

Faye brushed her lips in a butterfly-soft caress over his shoulder, that puckered flesh his father had once tamped out his cheroot upon, forever burning the skin and leaving just one more unnecessary reminder of Tynan’s family’s station.

He drew away from that touch, leaving her lips to graze and kiss empty air.

“You’re a lady,” he said bluntly, unable to keep the resentment from creeping in. Not with her. Never with her. Only with the world as it was. And that reminder he issued was for her as much as it was for him.

“Yes.” She rubbed her chin back and forth along his shoulder. “Yes, I am. I was always honest with you in that.”

Aye, she had been. Just as she’d been unabashedly and unashamedly honest in everything where their dealings were concerned, a trait that had initially horrified him and that he’d, for unexplainable reasons, instead come to admire. He blanched. Good God, what in hell was wrong with him?

Faye stretched her hand out toward him, and once more, he drew back. “When I’m gone, you’re going to go on living your respectable life with some fancy lord—”

His words cut off abruptly, less a product of the dangerous narrowing of her eyes and more because of the conjuring that came with his words. This glorious woman before him would one day belong to another. In that moment, he was resurrected as the beast the world took him for, because the idea of her with another man made him want to throw his head back and snarl and then hunt down the nameless, faceless stranger.

“If you are wise, Tynan,” she murmured through those turbulent musings, “you’d not go about letting some imagined future husband or suitor be the reason for your wounded sensibilities.”

He felt his cheeks flare hot. “M-my… my…” he sputtered.

“Wounded sensibilities,” Faye enunciated slowly. She folded her arms, plumping the soft swells of her still-exposed breasts, the pebbled brown peaks on perfect display, straining the limits of his honor. He wrenched his gaze from that cream-white flesh he’d sell his soul to taste again, and hastily dragging the neckline up, he met her outraged gaze.

He recoiled. Good God. At what point had he become one who worried about behaving honorably? He was the Beast of Newgate. The man who accepted bribes and had gone to jail himself for it. “Honor,” he said under his breath. What in hell flipped-upside-down world was this that he’d become a man of honor in any way?

Storming to her feet, Faye positioned herself between his legs and lowered her brow to his so their gazes met. “You mention honor. True honor is not letting Society’s dictates decide what I should want or have as a woman, but rather letting me decide for myself.”

And she’d decided she wanted him…

Oddly, that did strange things to a heart that he’d thought entirely empty. As it should be. As was safe.

He held her impressively bold and direct stare. “I don’t bed virgins, Faye,” he said flatly.

Or he hadn’t. Until now. And he wouldn’t again after this moment of passion with her, with this woman. And Lord knew there had been plenty. Desperate, wealthy men who’d found themselves imprisoned had been willing to sell their souls—and their daughters’ virtue—for freedom.

Tynan dragged a shaky hand through his hair. My God, she’d asked to see his cock. She’d touched him with an unapologetic boldness. And all the while, she’d been… an innocent. Shame swirled in his gut.

Faye caught his tightly balled fists in her hands and raised them one at a time to her