Chapter 23

Some days I wonder if I'll ever truly be happy.

~ The Duchess of A

F rom some peculiar state, Cadogan dimly registered… nothing . He existed within a big, black state of nothingness—empty and foreign and oddly, welcoming.

Where ordinarily, the faces of the men he'd slayed returned to pay a visit and promised to greet Cadogan when he joined them in the fiery flames of hell, this time, no one paid visit.

A flickering light pricked his vision and like a kaleidoscope constructed of day and night, the flashing glow dimmed, darkened, and then brightened once more.

What the hell?

Cadogan went absolutely motionless.

He angled his chin down and took in the lithesome beauty draped over his chest; her whiteish-blonde curls cascaded about them.

This wasn't the first time he'd awakened with a woman in his bed.

This, however, was the first time in which he'd been dead to the world, awakening when the goddamned sun was high in the sky and the pavement down below bustled with the distant laughter of passersby and the rattling of carriage wheels, and—

Fuck.

His heart pounding, Cadogan moved so quickly, Raina slipped off him. Her slender body hit the feather mattress and barely bounced.

Numbed by panic, Cadogan, on all fours, inched away from the slumbering Raina. When he reached the end of the mattress, he climbed down with such force, it interrupted his wife's heavy torpor. She muttered something incoherently, then rolled onto her back, and proceeded to snore.

His pulse hammering away, he stared dumbly at a thoroughly enervated Raina, curled on her side. With her long hair all tangled about her naked body, she had the look of a mermaid who'd been tossed about a tumultuous sea and washed ashore.

Granted, after all the ways you made love to her and her enthusiastic response, what did you expect?

Instead of that devil on his shoulder knocking Cadogan out of his horror-struck state, the dark beast of temptation led Cadogan further down the licentious path of all the depraved things he'd done with and to his bride.

Before he'd left her sated enough to sleep, he'd relished every single second spent waking her, and making love to her again, with his mouth.

Cadogan's breathing grew ragged.

Then again, a third time, when he'd shown her how to ride him.

Then, a fourth time when he'd buried himself ballocks deep inside erasing where he ended and Raina began.

Blood surged to his already impressive morning erection and Cadogan gritted his teeth.

Last night had been pure, unadulterated lust.

But Cadogan's slipping into a dead sleep? Now, that was as unforgivable as it was unexplainable. He didn't rest, and certainly not soundly. He'd been trained specifically on how to function without sleep.

Is it really that you're concerned about? Or was it the fact he'd left himself vulnerable, and in doing so, he'd left the delicate slip of a woman who now shared his name, even more vulnerable?

His body broke out in a cold sweat.

In sleeping beside Raina, anything could have happened. If not an intruding enemy, he could have awakened in a fit as he'd done too many times in the past. It's why he didn't sleep on damned cozy mattresses, but hard floors.

Another one of those endearing, bleating snores of hers split the quiet.

Endearing.

He recoiled and backed away from the bed—her bed, which happened to occupy a space in Cadogan's residence, directly across from his rooms.

And…

His meeting.

Fuck.

What the hell time was it?

Except, even as he hurried around the room, snatching the garments he'd hastily shed hours earlier, he knew.

The floorboards no longer contained a chill from the night's cold, but rather a warmth from where the sun's rays had touched the wood.

He found his trousers and grabbed the timepiece.

Twenty-six minutes past eleven o'clock?

Bloody hell. He'd slept and slept through most of his damned meeting with de Grey.

Fuck. Fu—

"Severin?"

Cadogan spun about.

" Raina ."

With the way she clutched that sheet they'd thoroughly rumpled last night, she exuded feminine modesty.

As if he hadn't made love to her nearly every way there was to make love to a woman.

As if he didn't want to now complete the remainder of the ones they hadn't yet.

"Good morning, Severin," Raina shyly greeted.

Sleep had leant her sultry contralto an even deeper husk that fired his blood.

And for a moment he forgot the source of his earlier panic. For an even longer moment, he wanted to join her in that billowingly soft mattress, and pick up precisely where they'd left off before he'd fallen as—

"Morning," he mumbled.

As Cadogan stuffed his legs into his trousers, one at a time, he felt Raina's eyes following him.

He made a grab for his shirt when her halting voice reached him.

"Are you…all right?"

He grunted. "I'm fine." I need to get the hell out of here.

Cadogan stopped and faced his wife.

Her eyes, those windows into her soul, radiated gentle worry.

"You aren't talking about now?" he stated, dumbly.

Something flickered across her face. "Well, I am speaking about now, too," she allowed, fiddling with the edges of her sheet.

Too. That single syllable, almost an afterthought, said more than all the other ones to come before.

A chill eased along his spine.

He narrowed his gaze.

"Drop the sheet," he demanded.

"S-Severin?"

He stalked over to the bedside. "I said drop the bloody sheet."

"Severin," she entreated.

"Drop the sheet, Raina," he hissed.

This time, Raina complied.

The material fell in a whispery pool about her waist, before pooling upon the mattress.

Cadogan looked Raina carefully over; forcing aside his hungering for her. He searched for any indication—

His gaze snagged on the awkward way she attempted to carefully angle her arm away from him.

His pulse thudded a sick beat.

"Let me see your arm," he demanded.

Raina hesitated.

"Now!" he thundered.

Raina quickly showed a long limb, for his inspection. He skimmed it over.

"The other one," he barked.

This time, Raina reluctantly revealed the other arm.

Then, he found it.

A buzzing filled his ears.

Stark and vivid upon her slender, impossibly delicate wrist; the dark, angry, imprints left by his fingers. She'd not sustained those bruises while they'd made love, but…after.

Cadogan sucked in a breath through his nose.

Christ.

"I'm fine, Severin," Raina hurried to reassure him.

She was reassuring him ?

"No. I'm fine," he gritted out.

Her regal brow furrowed in confusion.

Cadogan took an angry step towards her. "There is nothing wrong with…" His remaining words trailed off. For there was something wrong with him. Some nights, he became a beast.

He took a slow deep breath through his nose. "You on the other hand, wife, wear my marks upon you."

Her mesmerizing blue-green irises glittered with worry. "It is—"

"Do not say ‘it is fine," he bit out each syllable through gritted teeth.

"But it is !" Bold and undaunted, she'd never take orders from him. "We all have demons. You helped me to see my past does not ma—"

"It wasn't your past, Raina," he shouted. "It was your parents . Your parents. The things I've done—"

"You did them in the name of King and country, Severin," she entreated.

"And when I returned—"

"When you returned, it was all you knew , Severin. My God, Severin, they gave you the title ‘ Killburn' so you wear it as a reminder. It why you insist on being known as Cadogan."

He shook his head. "You're inventing things. Things that aren't true. Things I've never even thought."

"Only because you've never allowed yourself to freely think them."

Before he gathered her intentions, Raina took his hands and drew them to her chest. Her bare skin, warm under his hands; her heart, it raced—like his.

"It was all you knew," she repeated. She lifted adoring eyes to his, and he reeled under the power of emotion reflected in those depths. "But now, you know me," she said softly. "I love—"

" No ."

"You," she finished over his rough declination. "I love you," she repeated, with a warmth that slipped through cracks he'd never even known existed in the icy walls of his being. "I love you for who you are, and for surviving things no other man could and…."

A caustic laugh burst from inside him. "My scar tells another story."

"Your scar, I do not even see, Severin. I see a man who is brave. A man who'll sit for."

"It was my job," he gritted out.

"Your job was to sit for Millie's endless portrait session?" she said, gently. "You stayed, because you enjoyed her company."

Lies . "I didn't."

He may as well have saved his breath.

"And because you are not a man who believes himself above speaking with a child."

Cadogan swiped a hand through his hair; and darted his gaze about. Then, it hit him. "I know what you're doing," he breathed. "This is the next part of your and Argyll's plan. You'll pretend to love me and convince me I want a family with you, so I give up my work and take on ownership at his club.

"Oh, Severin," she whispered. "You've gone through so much of your life believing everyone is possessed of an ulterior motive, second-guessing, and triple-guessing people, that you can't even see the truth before you."

"You lied to me," he rasped. " Deceived me."

"No, I didn't," she said, with the kind of calm not even the greatest agent could fake. "You want to believe I betrayed you because you think it will be easier. But you know the truth, Severin, and somewhere inside, you do, too. You're scared of us and—"

"I'm afraid of nothing ," he snarled.

" This you fear," she insisted like the bold queen she was.

"And there is no us!" Cadogan hissed, his panic redoubling.

This was too much. Get control of yourself, man .

"I'm late for an appointment," he said, flatly. He resumed gathering up his things. "This will be the last time we sleep together."

Cadogan issued that reminder for himself as much as her.

Her features twisted into a paroxysm of such grief it nearly brought Cadogan to his knees.

Lies.

"Please don't push me away, Severin," she beseeched.

"Push you away?" Why would he ever do that? Unless she mattered to him. Which she couldn't. She didn't.

Raina gave a shaky nod.

" Push you away ?" he jeered. "Have I ever been anything but clear my only interest in you is of a carnal nature?"

She winced but remained otherwise proudly stoic. "I don't believe you."

It wasn't enough. They'd shared entirely too many intimacies. He needed to disabuse his whimsical wife of any fanciful dreams she had about the life they'd have together and sever whatever this power she held over him.

"You don't want to believe everything you said to be true because it makes you feel better." He looked down the length of his nose. "If I needed to push you away, it would mean I cared about you in some way beyond the physical." He locked eyes with hers. "And I don't, Raina."

Raina jerked like he'd dealt her a death blow, and in this instant, he'd have been all too happy to have someone deliver him a fatal strike.

The visible recoil of her pain caused all his muscles to clench and tighten and ache inside him.

Not bringing himself to look at her, unable to look at her, Cadogan finished dressing, turned on his heel and left.