A Baby To Bind His Bride. Caitlin Crews
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“If you knew you were going to run away like this, why bother marrying me? Why not pull your disappearing act before the wedding? You must know exactly what I’ve had to deal with all this time. What did I ever do to you to deserve being left in the middle of that mess?”
“You’re speaking to me as if you know me,” the Count said in a low, dangerous voice that she did not seem to heed.
“I don’t know you at all. That’s what makes this so vicious. If you wanted to punish someone with the company and your horrible family, why choose me? I was nineteen. It shouldn’t surprise you to learn that they tried to eat me alive.”
There was something sharp inside him, like broken glass, and it was shredding him with every word she spoke. He found himself standing when he hadn’t meant to move.
“I did not choose you. I did not marry you. I have no idea who you are, but I am the Count.”
His hand had ended up over his chest and he dropped it, ill at ease with his own fervency.
“You are not a count,” snapped the woman he was realizing, too late, was far more dangerous to him than he’d imagined anyone could be. And he couldn’t tell if that was a kind of apprehension that worked in him then or, worse, something far closer to exhilaration. And she clearly wasn’t finished. “Your family has certainly flirted with this or that aristocracy over the years, but you are not titled. Your mother likes to claim that she is a direct descendent of the Medicis, but I’m not sure anyone takes that seriously no matter how many times she threatens to commit a murder over a meal.”
The Count’s head was reeling. There was a faint, dull pain at his temples and at the base of his skull, and he knew it was her fault. He should have had her removed. Tossed back in that cell, or dropkicked down the side of his mountain.
There was no reason he should cross the room, his bare feet slapping against the bare floor, to tower there above her.
There was no reason—but she should have been concerned. If she’d been one of his followers she would have thrown up her hands in surrender and then tossed herself at his feet. She would have sobbed and begged for his forgiveness.
This woman did none of those things.
She tipped her chin up and met his gaze as if she didn’t notice that he was significantly taller than she was. More, as if she didn’t care.
“I would be very careful how you speak to me,” he told her, managing to get the words out through the seething thing that had its claws in him and that broken glass inside.
“What is the purpose of this charade?” she demanded. “You know I’m not going to be fooled by it. You know I know exactly who you are. No threat is going to change that.”
“That was not a threat. It was a warning.” He realized he wanted to reach over and put his hands on her, and that threw him. But not enough to back away. Not enough to put a safe distance between them the way he should have. “There’s a certain disrespect that I confess, I find almost refreshing, since it is so rare. And suicidal. But you should know my people will not accept it.”
“Your people?” She shook her head as if he wasn’t making sense. Worse, as if he was hurting her, somehow. “If you mean the cult on the other side of these doors, you can’t really think they’re anything but accessories to a crime.”
“I’ve committed no crimes.”
But he threw that out as if he was defending himself, and the Count had no idea why he would do such a thing. Nothing in his memory had prepared him for this. People did not argue with him. They did not stand before him and hurl accusations at him.
Everyone in this compound adored him. The Count had never been in the presence of someone who didn’t worship him before. He found it...energizing, in a strange way. He recognized lust, but the form it took surprised him. He wanted to drag his hands through her neat, careful hair. He wanted to taste the mouth that dared say such things to him.
He wanted to drag out the broken glass inside him and let her handle it, since he might not know how or why she was doing it, but he knew it was her fault.
“You swanned away from the scene of an accident, apparently,” she was saying, with the same fearlessness he couldn’t quite believe, even as it was happening. And she was carrying on as if he was about as intimidating as a tiny, fragile female should have been. “Your entire family thinks you’re dead. I thought you were dead. And yet here you are. Hale and healthy and draped in bridal white. And hidden away on the top of the mountain, while the mess you left behind gets more and more complicated by the day.”
The Count laughed at her. “Who is it that you imagine I am?”
“I am not imagining anything,” the woman said, and she seemed to bristle as she said it. Maybe that was why the Count found his hands on her upper arms, holding her there before him. Then dragging her closer. “I knew it was you when I saw the pictures. I don’t understand how you’ve managed to hide it for so long. You’re one of the most recognizable men alive.”
“I am the Count,” he repeated, but even he could taste the faintly metallic tang of what he was very much afraid was desperation. “The path—”
“I am Susannah Forrester Betancur,” she interrupted him. Far from pulling away from his grip, she angled herself toward him, surging up on her toes to put her face that much closer to his. “Your wife. You married me four years ago and left me on our wedding night, charmer that you are.”
“Impossible. The Count has no wife. That would make him less than pure.”
She let out a scoffing sound, and her blue eyes burned.
“You are not the Count of anything. You are Leonidas Cristiano Betancur, and you are the heir to the Betancur Corporation. That means that you are so wealthy you could buy every mountain in this range, and then some, from your pocket change alone. It means that you are so powerful that someone—very likely a member of your own family—had to scheme up a plane crash to get around you.”
The pain in his temples was sharpening. The pressure at the base of his skull was intensifying.
“I am not who you think I am,” he managed to say.
“You are exactly who I think you are,” she retorted. “And Leonidas, it is far past time for you to come home.”
There was the pain and then a roaring, loud and rough, but he understood somehow it was inside him.
Maybe that was the demon that took him then. Maybe that was what made him haul her closer to him as if he was someone else and she was married to him the way she claimed.
Maybe that was why he crushed her mouth with his, tasting her at last. Tasting all her lies—
But that was the trouble.
One kiss, and he remembered.
He remembered everything.
Everything.
Who he was. How he’d come here. His last moments on that doomed flight and his lovely young bride, too, whom he’d left behind without a second thought because that was the man he’d been then, formidable and focused all the way through.
He was Leonidas Betancur, not a bloody count. And he had spent four years in a log cabin surrounded by acolytes obsessed with purity, which was very nearly hilarious, because there was not a damned thing about him that was or ever had been pure.
So he kissed little Susannah, who should have known better. Little Susannah who had been thrown to him like bait all those years ago, a power move by her loathsome parents and a boon to his own devious family, because he’d always avoided innocence. He’d lost his own so early.
His own, brutal father had seen to that.
He angled his head and he pulled her closer, tasting her and taking her, plundering her mouth like a man possessed.
She tasted sweet and lush,