My Bought Virgin Wife. Caitlin Crews

      Her gaze searched my face. “You want to be a monster, then. You enjoy it.”

      “You can call me whatever you like. I will marry you all the same.”

      “Again. Why me?”

      “Why does this upset you?” I didn’t fight the urge that came over me then, to reach over and take her chin in my fingers and hold her face where I wanted it. Simply because I could. And because, though she stilled, she did not jerk away. “I know that you have spent your life preparing for this day. Why should it matter if it is me or anyone else?”

      “It matters.”

      Her voice was fierce and quiet at once. And emotion gleamed in her lovely eyes, though I couldn’t discern what, exactly, that sheen meant.

      “Did you have your heart set on another?” I asked, aware as I did so that something I had never felt before stirred to life within me. “Is that why you dare come to me with all this belligerence?”

      It was because she was mine, I told myself. That was why I felt that uncharacteristic surge of possessiveness. I had not felt it for a woman before, it was true. Despite how much I had wanted Celeste back in the day and how infuriated I had been when I had lost her to that aristocratic zombie of a count she called her husband.

      I had wanted Celeste, yes.

      But that was a different thing entirely than knowing she was meant to be mine.

      Imogen was mine. There was no argument. I had paid for the privilege—or that was how her father planned to spin this match.

      He and I knew the truth. I was a wealthy man, my power and might with few equals. I took care of my sisters and my mother because I prided myself on my honor and did my duty—not because they deserved that consideration. And because I did not want them to be weak links others could use to attack me.

      But otherwise I had no ties or obligations, and had thus spent my days dedicating myself to the art of money.

      The reality was that Dermot Fitzalan needed my wealth. And better still, my ability to make more with seeming ease. He needed these things far more than I needed his daughter’s pedigree.

      But I had decided long ago that I would marry a Fitzalan heiress, these daughters of men who had been the power behind every throne in Europe at one point or another. I had determined that I would make my babies on soft, well-bred thighs, fatten them on blue blood, and raise them not just rich, but cultured.

      I had been so young when I had seen Celeste that first time. So raw and unformed. The animal they accused me of being in all the ways that mattered.

      I had never seen a woman like her before. All clean lines and beauty. I had never imagined that a person could be...flawless.

      It had taken me far longer than it should have—far longer than it would today, that was for certain—to see the truth of Celeste Fitzalan, now a countess of petty dreams and an angry old man’s promises because that was what she had wanted far more than she had wanted me.

      But my thirst for my legacy had only grown stronger.

      “If there was another,” my confounding betrothed said, a mulish set to that fine mouth and a rebellion in her gaze, “I would hardly be likely to tell you, would I?”

      “You can tell me anything you like about others,” I told her, all menace and steel. “Today. I would advise you to take advantage of this offer. Come the morning, I will take a far dimmer view of these things.”

      “It doesn’t matter what I want,” she threw at me, pulling her chin from my grasp.

      I assumed we were both well aware that I allowed it.

      “I never said that it did. You are the one who came here. Was it only to call me names? To ask me impertinent questions? Or perhaps you had another goal in mind?”

      “I don’t know why I came,” Imogen said, and I could tell by the way her voice scraped into the air between us that she meant that.

      But there was a fire in me. A need, dark and demanding, and I was not in the habit of denying myself the things I wanted.

      More than this, she was to be my wife in the morning.

      “Don’t worry,” I told her with all that heat and intent. “I know exactly why you came.”

      I hooked my hand around her neck, enjoying the heat of her skin beneath the cover of those wild curls. I pulled her toward me, watching her eyes go wide and her mouth drop open as if she couldn’t help herself. As if she was that artless, that innocent.

      I couldn’t understand the things that worked in me. To take her, to possess her, to bury myself in her body when she looked nothing like the women that I usually amused myself with.

      But none of that mattered.

      Because I already owned her. All that remained was the claiming, and I wanted it. Desperately.

      I dropped my mouth to hers.