Any Wicked Thing by Margaret Rowe Page A

freckled and utterly delightful. “You are not stupid.”
    â€œOf course I am. Hasn’t my father always said so? ‘With various readings stored his empty skull, / Learn’d without sense, and venerably dull,’” Sebastian said, quoting Churchill again. Really, why was he trying to impress her? He attacked her other ankle.
    â€œYour father did love you.”
    â€œHe had a peculiar way of showing it. I don’t wish to talk about the pater. It’s simply too banal to have had an uncaring father whose secret life caused me to hide my pain by drinking and drugging and fucking everything in sight. Until, of course, I come under the influence of a good woman, who reforms the rake right out of me. I suppose you think that could be you.” He laughed at her look of loathing. “Why, I understand it all now! You were only trying to save me from myself all those years ago, isn’t that right? My God, our lives are worthy of a bad gothic romance novel. Here we are, in a crumbling castle, the wind whipping outside. There are ghosts. Goblins. The fair damsel is about to save my spotted soul for the second time. Horrors.”
    He gave a mock shudder. He’d made partial peace with his father’s indifference and sexuality long ago, seeing and doing a great many things since he stormed off in the middle of the night as a hurt young cub. Nothing could shock him anymore. The truth was, it felt damned good to be bad, and he saw no earthly reason to change his ways for the foreseeable future.
    â€œStop speaking nonsense. We are done.” She made no effort to hop off his lap, though. He took the opportunity to brush his fingertips against her nipples. Her breasts were full, more than a handful, and he had big hands, as he supposed he was big all over. Certainly he gave ladies no cause to complain about the size and thickness of his cock or the breadth of his shoulders or the length of his talented—if he did say so himself—fingers. He’d not feasted on her breasts enough tonight and would make up for it later. They were not done by a long shot.
    She was as tempting as Eve. He held a slice of apple to her lips in a role reversal, but she shook her head. He ate it himself, savoring last fall’s harvest, and supplemented it with a piece of sharp cheese. Had Freddie made it? Picked the apples as well and stored them in a barrel in a cool dark place? She was a model chatelaine.
    â€œNow,” he said mildly, “hear me out. Remember, I said I had a proposal for you. You want this wretched castle, although I cannot see why. You agreed to let me use you in any way I wished for a month. But you seem to have some objection to my methods now, although it did seem to me that you were enjoying yourself very recently.” His hand inched down the velvet of her belly.
    She slapped him away. “You are insufferable.”
    â€œWhat if we take turns, Freddie? You follow my orders one day; I follow yours the next? That way there will be parity. Equality. You will obey me tomorrow. Without question or objection. But,” he said, squinting across the room at the clock on the bedside table, “for the rest of today, I am yours to command.”
    Freddie was very still in his arms. He could almost hear the wheels whirring in her head.
    â€œYou can’t mean that.”
    â€œOh, but I do.” He took another bite of apple. Why not? He had confidence he’d get his way in the end. She had been a revelation, all heat and silk and artless innocence, with a touch of tigress thrown in for good measure. He could not remember the last time he’d enjoyed himself so thoroughly. He could not with honesty admit that his current vices bored him, for what red-blooded man could spurn the kind of life he’d led? He was the envy of his peers and the scourge of the peerage. Wives, daughters, Cyprians and milkmaids fell to his feet with alarming abandon, provoking his