Do it. Take her. She is willing. You’ve been without a woman for more than a year. Take what she is offering you.
His chin fell to his chest and he rolled off her. Adam cursed. He flung an arm across his eyes, focusing on the rapid beat of his heart, the swift inhale and exhale of his lungs sucking in breath.
Except those sounds weren’t enough to drown out her voice.
“Adam?”
“Quiet,” he rasped. He gentled his tone. “Please.”
What the hell had he done? Echoes of Georgina’s cry as she climaxed bounced around the walls of his mind.
Adam flung his legs over the edge of the bed and dropped his head into his hands. He had betrayed Grace. Just thinking of Georgina was a betrayal. But this. This was the kind of sin that had gotten Adam banished from Eden. The kind of sin that could not be forgiven. His stomach churned.
He tried to blame his lack of self-control on his captivity. Tried to shift blame from himself.
His efforts proved futile.
The mattress dipped. The faint rustle of her skirts fluttered about them. Georgina touched his shoulder.
He recoiled and she drew her hand back.
Adam jumped off the bed and hurried across the room to retrieve the sketchpad on the table. “Do not say anything,” he ordered. He needed her gone. He needed her to turn on her heel and leave him.
Georgina had worked her way into his innermost thoughts, had shoved out the face of the woman he’d left behind, and Adam had the sinking feeling this connection they shared was something more than mere lust—and it terrified the hell out of him.
A clamor from below stairs penetrated his thoughts.
The door flew open. Hunter filled the entranceway. His flinty stare honed in on Georgina’s wrinkled skirts.
Adam placed himself in front of Georgina, eager for Hunter. He wanted to lash out at something, destroy somebody, and there wasn’t a better target for his rage than his captor.
“You are needed downstairs,” Hunter snapped at Georgina. She hesitated. “Now.”
Georgina slipped out from behind Adam and raced toward the doorway.
Hunter grabbed her by the arm, whispering something into her ear. Georgina paled and cast a final glance in Adam’s direction. Hunter kicked the door closed behind her.
Adam charged Hunter. The other man slipped out of the room with a cold laugh.
*
Georgina wound her way through the house. Jamie led her toward a series of grunts and loud thumps. “What is it?” Dread licked at her insides.
“Quiet,” Jamie barked.
They reached the main foyer just as her father dragged a bound stranger past the parlor and into the kitchen. The man’s hands were tied in front of him. As her father nudged him forward, the stranger kicked his legs and toppled the side tables in his wake.
The stranger looked over his shoulder and spied Georgina. Their eyes locked.
Then the door closed behind him.
She ceased breathing. “Another man?” Enough was enough. It would end, now. One way or another, she had to stop this.
Jamie’s black glare cut into her thoughts. “I haven’t brought you downstairs to turn fainthearted on us.”
“Why did you then, Jamie?” She narrowed her eyes. “You didn’t need me, did you?” she taunted. “You just didn’t want me with Mr. Markham.”
The mottled red that stained his cheeks confirmed her suspicions.
She gasped as his fingers bit into the soft flesh of her forearms. “What? No concern for our newest guest? Or are you too eager to climb back into Markham’s bed?”
Her fingers twitched with the urge to slap his mocking face. “You’re mad,” she spat. Him and her father, both.
The sickening sound of flesh meeting flesh punctuated her statement. She wanted to flee to Adam’s room and free him, rush past her savage family and into the free night air.
“I did bring you down here for a reason,” Jamie drawled, wholly unaffected by the violent assault taking place on the other side of the door.
There was a loud crack, followed by a piercing scream.
Georgina clamped her hands over her ears to escape the agonized pleas for help.
Jamie had other intentions. He took her by the wrists, clenching them in his vise-like grip. “I wanted you to realize our need for Markham is not nearly as great, not with our most recent guest.”
She shook her head. “No,” she whispered.
Jamie smiled and released her. “Yes.”
The world shifted beneath her feet as Georgina faced the ugly fact—she didn’t want Adam Markham to go. He’d laid claim to her foolish heart, and because of that she’d not put real thought into how she might secret him away. Her unwillingness to free him had stemmed from a selfish desire to keep him here beside her. If he left, her heart, her very reason for living, would vanish with him.
Oh God, but now it was too late. The appearance of this new prisoner had rendered Adam useless to her father’s machinations.
His life was forfeit.
Gooseflesh dotted the skin on her arms. Father and Jamie had no intention of releasing him. Her legs gave out beneath her. As Jamie slipped into the kitchen to torture their latest prisoner, Georgina caught herself against the wall and slid into a puddle of emptiness as she confronted the truth—if she didn’t do something, Adam would be killed.
“Get in here, gel,” her father shouted.
Georgina shoved the door open just as Jamie grabbed an older, graying stranger and led him down the cellar steps.
She closed her eyes. Please God, make them stop.
But there was no God. There was only her.
She continued to hover in the doorway.
Father gestured to the chair. “Sit,” he barked.
Georgina rushed over to the seat. She froze. A stranger stood off to the corner. Her gaze swung back to her father and then back to the unfamiliar gentleman. She ignored her father and studied his guest. The man had the look of a demonic angel; an aquiline beauty with a sinister twist to his hard lips. His sky-blue gaze took inventory of Georgina. Her fingers trembled as she sat, her stare riveted on the cold, unflappable figure.
She jerked her gaze away from the angel-demon. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”
“Listen up, gel. You’ve failed with Markham. I’m trying something new. I have a meeting. This is Mr. Stone. He’ll be the new guard.”
Georgina sprang to her feet. “You can’t leave me alone with him.” She looked over at Mr. Stone.
He peered down his hawkish nose at her. A jagged scar ran along his left cheek and down a jawline that may as well have been chiseled in stone.
Panic gurgled up her throat and nearly strangled her. Danger fairly oozed from Stone’s skin.
“Come, gel,” her father said. “After you let Markham bed you, there really isn’t much for you to protect.”
Georgina gasped. Mortified heat climbed up her neck.
He didn’t await a response. “Jamie and I have a meeting. You aren’t to give Mr. Stone or the guards any difficulty. Is that clear?”