Chapters (64)
Undeterred, Priest shoved me into the cabin and kicked the door shut behind him with a rattling bang.
8
“Two years.” Priest prowled toward me, unleashing the force of his temper with a soul-shivering roar. “You are my wife!”
I flinched at the violence in his voice and swept around the desk in my private chamber, putting the heavy furniture between us.
Rather than chase me, he listed over dishware and maps on the scarred surface, using the long reach of his fist to ensnare the neckline of my bodice.
“So help me God.” He hauled me right up to his icy gray eyes. “I’m going to bloody your arse for the hell you put me through.”
“The hell I put you through?” My hackles rippled. “You betrayed me!”
A lantern glowed beside him, casting his expression in terrifying relief. He was all menace, vibrating rage, and man.
Predator.
His grip tightened on my bodice as his fingers tunneled into the valley of my breasts. My feet scrambled backward, but my body held fast, restrained by that large, callused, invasive hand.
The heat of it made my breath hobble, injecting an edge of thrill into the fear. The scent seeping off him was every bit the sun and sea, hot and male, leather and sin, everything I remembered and more, scrambling my senses. Disarming me.
And those unremitting iridescent eyes… Never in my life had anyone looked at me with such ardent concentration. It unnerved me. It aroused me. I lowered my gaze, evading the dark, dangerous, masculine beauty that caved in my lungs.
“Two years without you.” He pounded his free hand on the desk, nearly toppling the lantern. “You punished me for two unbearable years.” Yanking me closer, he gave me a hard shake. “Dammit. Look at me!”
Livid heat radiated off layers of muscle and seething brawn, dissolving my strength of will.
I lifted my gaze to his.
“I love you.” His brittle whisper barely penetrated the sound of blood beating in my head.
Outrage thrashed through me. Outrage and pain. All I could see was him clinging to another woman the same way he held me, whispering the same three words with the same arresting passion.
It put my life in perspective. A life that must continue without him, no matter how badly it hurt.
With a calm resolve that made me proud, I opened the desk drawer at my hip and removed a worn, heavily creased vellum letter.
“Do you love me as much as you love her?” I set the paper on the desk between us, turning it so he could read the bold, elegant scrawl.
He stared at it, refusing to answer, as his expression twisted with recognition and grief. His eyes darted over the words, and his hand fell from my gown to trace the handwriting.