When a Rogue Meets His Match - Elizabeth Hoyt Page 0,159

be touched by the devil to make up such blasphemous lies. That if I didn’t recant, then I would sacrifice my soul and be denied salvation.”

Adeline closed her eyes.

“Perhaps I did. Sacrifice my soul,” he whispered. “Because I did not recant. And they cast me into hell.”

“Bedlam.”

“Yes. A never-ending nightmare of mad-doctors, purges, starvation, and torture.”

“But you survived.”

“No. Joshua Westerleigh died there,” he said. “The boy who once believed in the goodness of people died. King survived. A merciless man who does whatever awful things are necessary to keep surviving.”

“You’re wrong.”

King clenched his fist and brought it down on the keys. He was rewarded by a jarring jumble of notes.

“What you did for Elliot tonight were not the actions of a merciless man. They were the actions of an honorable man.”

“Jesus, I did nothing except send him to fetch men who could make the evidence of what happened disappear. I am everything Marstowe said I was. Don’t try and…redeem me, Adeline. I do not wish or deserve to be redeemed.”

“I’m not redeeming you,” Adeline said. “I’m seeing you. I saw a man who sent a child away so that he wouldn’t know that it was his blade that killed a man. Elliot doesn’t need to carry that with him. Not yet. Maybe not ever. You let him believe that you killed Marstowe for what he tried to do.”

King looked away. “So? I’ve killed men before.”

“So have I.”

He turned slowly.

“I’ve killed because I did not wish to die,” she said in a whisper. “I’ve stolen because I did not wish to starve. Will you punish me for those things the same way you’re punishing yourself? I am merely a survivor of circumstance and fate, the same as you.”

King couldn’t look away from her.

“Kiss me,” she said.

Her words seared right through him, making his blood heat and stirring arousal instantly. “You don’t want this, Adeline. You don’t want me. In a fortnight you’ll be in France, where you’ll find a good man—”

“Stop talking.”

King’s mouth snapped shut.

“You left your door unlocked for a reason.”

“I left my door unlocked because locking it is pointless.” It sounded feeble even in his own ears. “You don’t want this. I don’t want this.” I can’t want this.

Her hand settled on his chest, over the left side where his heart might once have been. “I don’t believe you.”

His fingers fell from the piano keys.

Adeline extricated herself from the bench and stood before him, the fire dancing across her features and putting flames into the darkness of her hair. She reached for the belt at her waist.

“Stop.” He surged to his feet, the bench nearly tipping behind him. His blood was pounding in his ears, right in time to the throbbing in his cock.

Her hand paused.

He should walk away from this. It was what an honorable man would do, the sort of man that she thought he was. That he might have been.

But he wasn’t honorable. And he wasn’t strong. And he wanted her so damn badly. So, so badly.

“Have you reconsidered?” she asked in French, the beautiful lilt to her words caressing him and raising gooseflesh across his skin.

Very deliberately he grasped the hem of his shirt and pulled it over his head, letting it fall to the floor. He saw her swallow, saw her eyes flicker over his naked torso.

With the same deliberation, he unbuttoned the fall of his trousers, stepping out of them. He was entirely naked, every muscle in his body rigid, every fiber longing for her. She would be able to see the scars on his wrists and ankles, and the scars across his arms and chest. She would be able to see every act of violence that had followed him through Bedlam and then the streets of London. She would see everything that he was.

And she could still leave. Back away from what he was.

Except she wasn’t leaving. Instead her eyes were doing a slow dance over his body, her mouth parted slightly, her silver eyes smoky with arousal. If he had been hard before, he was like granite now, carnal need roaring through his veins.

“I haven’t reconsidered anything,” he growled.

“Yes, I can see that,” she said with a small, self-satisfied smile, and that sultry confidence was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

She stepped forward, her hands hovering just above his shoulders. He forced himself not to move. Not to push himself into her touch as her hands settled on his skin, her fingers traveling over his chest first and then