She rose and crossed to him, unable to stay so far away when he was in pain. “I’m sorry.” She took his face between her palms. “I’m so sorry.”
“I can’t leave it now,” he rasped, his pale green eyes intense. “Don’t you see? They murdered Nick. I can’t let them get away with it.”
She bit her lip. “But your life is in danger.”
“And what is it to you?”
Her mouth dropped open. “What?”
He let his glass fall to the carpet, where it rolled under the settee. His hands grasped her shoulders. “What do you care if my life is endangered? Am I a friend you share a bed with? A brother-in-law you’ll invite to your wedding? What, Hero? What am I to you?”
She stared at him, trying to find the words. She cared for him, that much was true, but beyond that she couldn’t tell him. She hadn’t the words to describe her feelings.
She simply didn’t know.
He seemed to understand her dilemma. Frustration warred with despair in his eyes.
“Damn you,” he hissed, and kissed her.
HER LIPS WERE soft and yielding, but that didn’t assuage Griffin’s anger. He wanted to imprint himself upon her. To make her acknowledge that he was more than simply a friend or a potential brother-in-law. To ensure she never forgot him.
He wanted to engrave himself upon her very bones.
His grief and anger over Nick’s death seemed to twist and transform until all he felt was a raw ache for Hero. Right here. Right now.
He arched her over his arm, cruelly putting her off balance as he ravished her mouth. He could feel the clutch of her fingers in his back, but she wasn’t struggling. She made no effort to escape him or his savage plundering of her mouth.
That placated the beast within him a little. He pulled back and looked into her diamond eyes. They were dazed, blurred with sensuous need. He picked her up, ignoring her squeak, and bore her from the library like a rapacious Viking marauder.
Deedle had just entered the hallway. The valet’s mouth dropped open as his master passed.
Griffin shot him a glare, ensuring there would be no unasked-for comments. Then he was mounting the stairs with Hero in his arms.
She buried her face against his chest. “Oh, Lord! He saw us.”
“And he won’t say a damned thing if he wants to keep his position,” Griffin growled.
He strode down the upper corridor and carried her into his bedroom, kicking the door closed behind him. He flung her down on the bed and immediately began prowling up her supine form.
She looked at him with sleepily erotic eyes and whispered, “But he’ll know what we’re doing in here.”
“Good.” He straddled her, caging her with his body. “Were it up to me, all of London would know what we do here.”
Her eyes widened at his words and he expected protestations. Instead she reached up and ran her palms over his head.
“Griffin,” she said, low and a little sadly. “Oh, Griffin.”
The sadness made his chest hurt, but he wouldn’t have been deterred even if she had argued. Not now. Not this time. A great urgency was building inside of him, a need to complete this with her before it was too late. He tore at the laces to her bodice like a ravening beast.
She didn’t try to stop him but simply lay beneath him and smoothed her hands over his short hair as if to soothe him. He got her bodice open and threw it aside, impatient. Her stays seemed to resist him willfully. He who had never had trouble removing the clothing of any woman.
“Let me,” she murmured, and gently set aside his shaking hands.
She unlaced her stays, and he filled his hands with her warm flesh. He made himself calm, touching her as delicately as he was able to in this state.
“All of it,” he ordered. “Take off all of it.”
She raised her eyebrows but complied, slowly working herself out of the miles of expensive fabric while he went quietly insane. When at last she’d kicked off her shoes and reached for her ribbon garters, he reared up.
“Leave them.”
He examined her, like a connoisseur with a particularly fine piece of artwork. Her body was slight, her breasts high and delicate, her hips slim, and her moonlight skin seemed to glow in his dim bedroom. The tuft of hair at the apex of her thighs was a gleaming red beacon.
His cock was hard and throbbing, but it wasn’t lust he felt looking at her, naked and vulnerable beneath him. It was a strange kind of possessiveness, a need to keep her close, to defend and honor her. She could be hurt in so many ways, this proud woman, and the thought of each was like the cut of a knife, so that in the end his very soul seemed to be awash in blood.
Couldn’t she see his blood? Couldn’t she keep him from hurt in return?