Lord Beast (20 page)

It was no wonder that Dani gasped
from beside him.

It didn’t come as any surprise
that her feet rooted themselves to the spot and she was unable to move for
several moments due to the sheer awe that riveted through her at the sight.

At that moment, at that place,
Rhys knew he had to have her. It rippled through his veins, reverberating
through his bones, that everything about her was perfect and his body, his
soul, were screaming for him to need her, to take the chance she had offered
him. It was sheer torment this wanting, this incessant and unrelenting need.

“It’s amazing!” she breathed
reverently, slowly walking towards the nearest painting. Her skirts rustled
softly against her legs as she did so, the sway of her hips drawing Rhys’s eyes
involuntarily.

Adoringly, she extended a slender
finger and traced the gilt-edged frame of the piece she was admiring; her chin
tilted towards the life-sized portrait of his uncle.

“Friend of yours?” she asked with
a jaunty smile, not looking at him.

“My uncle, Frederick Ashcroft. My
father inherited the title when he passed away, or so I’m told.”

She gave him a curious look
before transferring her stare to her left at the portrait next to the one she
stood before. “Is that…?”

“My father,” Rhys finished for
her flatly, following her gaze to the reason why he never visited the wing more
often.

It was a realistic
representation, almost exactly what Rhys had imagined him to look like- stern
and implacable.

“Do you look like him?” she asked
inquisitively, squinting up at the man Rhys loathed with every ounce of his
person and his soul.

The resemblance was uncanny.
“No,” he growled.

Dani gave him a dry look over her
shoulder. “Don’t lie,” she drawled, “I saw a bit of you at the ball, remember?
You also have dark hair… in fact, the entire face is similar.”

“I am nothing like him.”

She ignored the harshness of his
tone and turned back to examining the portrait of the earl. Black hair,
strange, amber-coloured eyes, implacable jaw… she remembered all of these
features so painfully well on Rhys the night of the ball. There were also the
strong, wide shoulders, passed down by many generations of Ashcroft, and an
unrelenting hardness about the eyes.

“I didn’t say you were,” she
murmured as her eyes trailed to the open space of wall next to the portrait
where Rhys’s own likeness was supposed to hang. “You haven’t had yours done
yet.”

“It’s not going to be done.”

Perturbed, she spun around to
face him and crossed her arms, giving him a very dry look. “You’re scared of
the scars,” she accused.

“
Scared?”

“You should definitely let me
paint you then,” Dani continued heatedly. “You’d be so unrecognisable by my
hand, people wouldn’t even notice.”

“Danielle-”

She held up a hand to stop him,
frowning. “I
know
, I know,” she sighed. “You’re not going to take the
hood off. You can save your breath.”

Rhys had to repress a patient
smile. Obstinate little thing was she. “Do you remember what you agreed to if I
removed the hood?” he asked wryly.

Dani stilled, her mouth dropped
open as she dared herself not to believe, to put too much hope into his words.
Unfortunately, the only coherent thought flying frantically around her mind was
oh my God!

“
Danielle?”

She snapped her mouth shut and
hastily nodded her head, beginning to come towards him with slow, even steps.
“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

“I’m not sure.”

Stopping close to him, Danielle
could not resist smiling tentatively into the shadows of his face, her heart
beating so fast she thought it might hammer right out of her chest. “You’re not
sure?” she asked hesitantly. “I think that means that you’re going to do what I
think you’re going to do.”

“Danielle…”

“Dani,” she corrected him and
shyly reached up to his face, her fingers stretching for the edges of his hood
that was pulled low. His hands moved sharply and then stopped, as if he were
about to yank her arms away from him. Dani paused, studying him intently, until
his hands dropped back to his sides. He didn’t say anything though, and Dani
couldn’t even hear him breathe he was so still.

Taking that as all the incentive
she needed, her fingertips traced the edges of the cloak, explorative and
reverent. She caught her breath, excitement and longing swirling and coalescing
vividly inside her. Time seemed to stand still in the dim sunlit room, the two
of them a pinnacle of mesmerizingly silent reverence. There was nothing more
important than this moment, the two of them, right here, in this room, at this
time.

And then, because she simply
couldn’t wait any longer, Dani hooked the material between her fingers and
slowly pushed it back over his head, and, oh, those eyes!

It was the first thing she
noticed- his eyes. Startling, mesmeric, eyes harbouring an intensity and
insecurity that made her heart clamp tightly. They were beautiful, those eyes,
and staring at her unblinkingly, relentlessly, watching her every reaction and
nuance that crossed her face. The rest of his face came into focus and Dani
admired the strength in his jaw, the aristocratically straight nose… a face
that had been moulded with the sole intention of making women yearn.

She saw the scars then, covering
the left side of his face. A large line of puckered skin marred the length of
his face, from temple down to jaw before disappearing beneath his loosely-tied
cravat. A myriad of littler, marring scars criss-crossed against his skin- one
near the corner of his mouth, a few across his unshaven cheek, but if it
weren’t for the big one, these would be largely insignificant against his skin.

He hadn’t taken his eyes off her
during her close examination of his face and Dani thought that he hadn’t even
chanced a blink. Knowing the significance of her reaction to him now, that
whatever she chose to say or do at this moment would map the rest of, and
continuation of, their relationship, she knew that she would have to choose her
words wisely.

Rhys had never felt so nervous in
his entire life. It might have actually been close to fear that he was feeling
but he would be the last person to admit it, even to himself. He found himself
hoping and wanting and regretting all in one terrifying, monumental moment. He
couldn’t face her rejection but knew it was imminent and hoped that it wasn’t.
So he studied her studying him, fastidiously, unblinkingly, searching her face
as her eyes drifted to the scars.

For the first time, Rhys couldn’t
read her. He couldn’t sense what she was feeling or how she would react. Her
eyes were calm and assessing rather than repulsed and when the hood had fallen
from his face, there was even a flash of wonder across her face. But she had
quickly recovered and went about her examination expressionlessly.

It was the longest minute of his
life.

But then, to his disbelief, she
frowned and pursed her lips, looking annoyed. “Really?” she asked, her eyes
rising to meet his again. “
This
is what all the fuss is about?”

She was telling him
off?

Not waiting for a response, she
continued, “Honestly, Rhys, if I had known that a few scratches had been the cause
of all this nonsense, I would have pushed you into the fireplace long ago.”

 “You-” he couldn’t manage more
than that, so shocked was he by her reaction. He was used to the pity, the
revulsion… but this? He’d never been teased for his insecurities, or
reprimanded for them. The little wench.

“In fact,” she continued happily,
“show me to the rest of your cloaks. We’ll start now. To the fireplace with
them!” She enunciated her sentence with a fist pump and Rhys effortlessly
caught her arm and dragged her to him, abruptly closing the narrow space that
separated their bodies.

“Not,” he said implacably, “until
you settle your debts.”

He had a moment to enjoy the look
of startled surprise in her wide blue eyes before he tilted her face up in his
hands and lowered his mouth to her lips.

She gasped once before her body
melted against his, seductively moulding to all the right places as if she had
been
made
for him. Her mouth parted beneath his, submitting to his
ardour and artless need for her while his fingers buried in the thick silken
mass of her hair, disturbing the carefully laid pins that had been holding a
coiffure neatly in place. His mouth plundered wantonly, taking all that she was
giving him, tasting her sweetness and surrender with a fiery heat of uncontrolled
passion.

God, she was sweet and lovely in
his arms. His body was on fire, burning for her, needing her with an intensity
that overwhelmed and finally delighted him, knowing that she, at last, was his.
He groaned when she timidly lifted her arms and clung to his neck, her body
arching into his deliciously. How much more torture he could take, Rhys wasn’t
sure, and his hand seemed to drop to her breast of its own accord, shuddering
with her gasp of pleasure.

He was losing himself in the
goodness of her, the euphoria of finally claiming her after yearning
relentlessly for so long. It would be so easy to lay her down, her body awash
in the dim sunlight streaming in from the room, making her glow, beautiful- his
body convulsed with the thought, the need-

“Well,” Victoria Sinclair said
smugly from the entrance, “you’re going to have to marry her now, Rhys.”

“Oh.”

Dani stiffened in his arms and
belatedly realised his hand was engulfing her breast. Already enflamed, heat
poured through her as she hastily and clumsily swiped his hand away. This… this
was too much for her. She had hardly ever thought about something promiscuous
in all her three and twenty years and now here she was, lustfully embracing a
man while her best friend happened upon them in a magical, enchanting gallery.

Absurd, that’s what it was.

Immediately upon Victoria’s
announcement, Rhys had stopped kissing her and buried his head in the hair
coming loose and falling across the side of her face, groaning inarticulately,
and all Dani could do was stand there, in his arms, humiliatingly dumbstruck.

Oh, it was mortifying.

“Of course I will marry her,”
Rhys mumbled from the recesses of her neck, his lips brushing against the
sensitive, heated skin of her temple.

Victoria looked like she wanted
to burst out laughing. “Good,” she told them. “I never had a doubt that you
wouldn’t.”

Finally, Dani’s passion-dazed
trance shattered and she said, “Wait. What?”

Nimbly, she extricated herself
from Rhys’s arms and glared at both of them. “Victoria, are you mad?” she
demanded, finding that every limb in her body was shaking in the aftermath of
Rhys’s torturous caresses. She was certainly in no state of mind to have her
best
friend demand such a thing and from a man who had made it transparently clear
that the last thing he wanted to do was drag her, Danielle Carmichael, to the
altar.

The raven-haired woman raised a
haughty brow at that. “Dani, I only think it’s the necessary thing left to do,”
she explained dryly, “especially after what I’ve just witnessed.”

Victoria? Being proper? That was
like a chicken trying to grow fins and live underwater. “You can’t expect him
to marry me,” Dani retorted. “And since when have you ever been prone to
chivalry? You and Gab-”

“You know that this is for the
best,” Victoria stated a bit more implacably. “You have been running around
this castle by
yourself
for about two weeks. Honestly, Danielle, it was
going to happen eventually. You should be grateful that it is me who is
demanding it and not somebody else.”

“She’s right, Dani,” Rhys said
gravelly from beside her, causing Dani to whirl around and glare at him
furiously.

“I’ll not be subjected to your
pity!” she snapped. “You said that you didn’t want to marry, that you would
never marry me. I’d rather be labelled a-a
harlot
than allow you to
marry me because of propriety!”

“Dani, be reasonable,” Rhys urged
softly.

She turned to him and her heart
lurched painfully. His golden eyes were boring into her penetratingly, silently
imploring, and she felt her resolve crumbling just by looking at him. She
wanted to marry him, didn’t she? She couldn’t ask to have anything happier
happen to her… but she couldn’t live with the knowledge that he had only
married her because he had to. It would be utter agony having to endure a husband
that didn’t love her. Oh, she knew that the Quality hardly ever married for
love but wasn’t she allowed to hold out a little hope that she might find a
love-match? It was not such a far-fetched notion and she only had to think of
Victoria and Gabriel to know that it existed, and that she could dream of a man
who loved her beyond all else.

“I’ll not!” she snapped,
irrationally and then, childishly: “You can’t make me!”