Page 21 of A Duke for Stealing (The Devil’s Masquerade #4)

He was not used to this. Not used to having such intense cravings for a singular woman.

He was trying to stop. It was part of the reason he’d joined his friends today.

He needs to find a way out of her gravitational pull and remember what he used to be.

What he was comfortable being. Yet even now, just boxing with his friends with no other women in sight, he felt strange.

Too far. I’m too far away. I want her. I need her.

“I am just saying,” Tristan went on, breaking up Tristan’s thoughts as they circled one another, “That perhaps Rose needs your attention now. Not the Devil’s Masquerade. ”

Everett’s brows furrowed with a quick but heavy flash of annoyance, and he threw a jab with surprising speed.

Tristan yelped as it made contact with his cheek and sprang back after the hit.

Everett did not let that stop him, and he took two quick steps forward, landing a hit to Tristan’s left abdomen.

His friend grunted, made the shape of a T with his gloved hands as he stumbled back.

Everett dropped his gloved fists, letting his friend take the rest.

“Where did that come from?” Tristan asked, rubbing his cheek as Alistair rang the bell, signaling the fight to stop altogether. “I was expecting a witty retort, not a facer!”

“I suppose I am not so witty when I am sober,” Everett replied, his tone bitter.

“Easy, old boy,” Dominic said, meeting Everett as he left the ring, “Tristan was just offering some advice.”

He offered to help Everett remove his gloves, but Everett shook his head, using his teeth to untie the strings at his wrists himself as he walked off the mat.

“And what advice would that be?” he replied once he finished removing his gloves. “Pray, what secrets do you, the only unmarried man here, have to depart upon my marriage?”

“Just that you should maybe step back from the Masquerade is all,” Tristan answered.

Holding his hands up as a symbol of surrender.

“There’s a lot of eyes on it again. The latest talk is that it has something to do with Ezra’s group.

Or ours. We do not need that type of talk surrounding us right now.

Not with our success so close at hand. Do you not realize how close we all are to never having to worry about money again? ”

“Of course I do,” Everett retorted, “I am smart enough to understand my own accounts.”

Tristan shot Hugo a wild look.

“No one said you were not so,” Hugo replied, his tone careful, as if he were talking to an irritated child. It only served to annoy Everett further.

“We have all taken a step back,” Alistair added. “Even as persistent as some of us are to return. Just give it another month or so, so that things may calm down again.”

“Well, I hate to disappoint you lot,” Everett barked, “but I have not been to the Masquerade since Rose and I were married.”

All his friends looked on at him in surprise.

“You have not?” Hugo asked.

“I have been far too busy handling my brother’s estate. Not to mention trying to run my own businesses and be a father figure to my niblings,” Everett replied.

His friends all leaned back, as if just now remembering that the least fatherly-like man among them had become the paternal figure of not one, but two children in the span of a single night.

Then, as if he needed to justify himself even more, he added, “Not that it is any of your business, but Rose and I do spend time together. When we can. She has taken her new duties as Duchess of Stapleton quite seriously, and I shall have you know she is excelling quite beautifully at that. When she is not attending to them, she spends much-needed time with my nieces. They-”

He paused, sadness cooling down his anger.

“They miss their Mother,” he said softly, looking to the floor. “Terribly. And Rose is trying to make up for that as much as she can.”

Everett looked up after a collective silence following his words, and he caught the confused glance his four friends gave one another.

“What?” He demanded.

“Well,” Dominic began, “We were just wondering why you were still coordinating the Masquerade parties if you were not attending them.”

Everett let out a weary sigh. It had been a running joke between the four- now five of them.

As their tastes of depravity ran so deep, they jested that one of them must surely be the conductor of such a scintillating orchestra.

The last time they’d talked was when Alistair had just arrived in town to inherit his Dukedom.

With his power stretching from London to Scotland, they had all been sure that he was the secret mastermind.

Alistair, though, was quite adamant that he was not.

“How many times do I have to tell you?” Everett asked them.

“I am not responsible for the Devil’s Masquerade.

I attend the parties. I supply their whiskey.

But that is all. I do not coordinate them.

I do not even know the true identity of the man I do business with.

I receive a shipment order without a return address, and then the money lands in the business account.

My accountant has tried to track down the account it comes from, but has not been able to do so. ”

A moment of silence followed him.

“You were serious?” Dominic asked, raising an amused brow.

Everett forced his annoyance to cool a little more, and he let out a laugh.

“I swear. However, I have kicked myself a time or two for not thinking of it first. The man who orchestrated the Devil’s Masquerade has to be making a fortune.

Invitations used to be free, but now I hear some are willing to pay hundreds of pounds to receive one of those red envelopes.

But I am as curious and as clueless as you are about the man behind the mask. ”

“So it is not you,” Tristan stated, raising a brow.

“No!” Everett replied with a laugh.

“And you truly have not attended since you married Rose?” Hugo asked.

“Is that so surprising?” Everett asked.

Dominic and Hugo both chortled.

“A little bit,” Dominic laughed. “Out of all of us, you were the most intense rake.”

Everett opened his mouth to retort, but there was no defense to Dominic’s words. It was true. He’d chased women like hunting dogs chased foxes, with intensity and a ferocious appetite. Or at least he used to. Lately, all he craved was Rose. Not just her body, but her presence.

“I never would have thought you would take your wedding vows so seriously,” Tristan goaded.

Everett tsked his tongue as he forced a smirk, trying, yet again, to tame his annoyance. He could not be mad at his friends for their surprise. He’d never have guessed he’d be such a good husband, either. Being faithful was not something he’d ever suspected of himself.

Then again, he’d never been as obsessed with a woman as he was with Rose. Part of him wanted that obsession to go away- the other part demanded more. In truth, it was wrecking him.

“I am just too busy to take on a lover right now,” he stated, feeling the need to say something regarding his wandering ways.

Yet even as he said it, he wondered if that was true. He’d been busy in the past before, yet he’d always found time to dip his wick when the urge came to him. Now, though, his interests seemed to lie in Rose, and Rose alone. Even if, at times, their growing closeness bothered him greatly.

Images of the night before flashed through his mind then, and Everett felt his body stir with lust as he was reminded of just how delicious he found his wife to be.

It was not just her body that called to him, though.

It was her hard work ethic. Her dedication to his nieces.

To him. It was unlike anything he’d ever felt, and it left him with a confounding mixture of longing and the urge to run away.

He’d chosen to run away, and now, for the first time in his life, he felt guilty about leaving a woman’s bed.

“Too busy,” Dominic scoffed, rising from his chair, “Right. Yet you make time to box with us.”

Everett pushed his thoughts of Rose away, but they did not go far. She was always there, standing at the frayed edge. Waiting. Haunting.

“Well, I have to,” Everett scoffed, pushing his troubling thoughts away as he followed Dominic to the ring, “You lot are the neediest buggers of them all. When I do not give you enough time, you whine and complain worse than any wife could.”

“Say that again,” Dominic goaded, smirking as he raised his fists, “Come whisper it in my ear.”

With a chuckle, Everett raised his fists, took his stance, and waited for Hugo to ring the next bell.