Page 18 of Master Wolf
Duncan turned his gaze on Drew. “Help me get free,” he bit out, and there was so much determined will behind that command, Drew felt it like a physical shove. The power in it was extraordinary. Shocked, Drew backed up a step.
“It’s all right,” Francis said calmly. “He can’t do anything to you. Not with me here.”
“Fuck you!” Duncan snapped, his head swivelling back to Francis. “I should have—”
“Shhhhhhhh,” Francis soothed, and Duncan lapsed into furious silence, forced to obey Francis’s gentle command. Francis was calm but Drew could scent his misery. He took no pleasure in exercising his power over Duncan MacCormaic.
Drew studied Duncan carefully. So, this was the man who had kept Lindsay in captivity for decades. The mighty wolf who could only be bested by the far too gentle, far too trusting Francis Neville. And yes, he had been bested. Even though he was sitting, he seemed to strain with effort, as though he fought against invisible bonds. His powerful thighs bulged, drawing the fabric of his breeches taut, and a muscle in his cheek pulsed.
His facial features were as big as the rest of him—big and dramatic. His mouth was wide, his cheekbones high and slashing and his eyes extraordinarily bright. Their colour was an almost otherworldly ice-blue, uncanny and mesmerising, fringed with long sooty lashes. The darkness of those lashes was matched by hair as black as a crow’s wing, which—now Duncan had his tricorn off—Drew could see was cut close to his well-shaped head. A day’s beard growth covered his face making him look both disreputable and carelessly handsome. Like a pirate.
And that was exactly what he was—a pirate. A pirate and a slave master and a thief. A brutal, merciless scoundrel who had already inflicted long, painful years of abuse on Lindsay and would do so all over again given half a chance.
Duncan had quieted as Drew examined him, and now his improbably blue eyes narrowed with interest. “You’re Lindsay’s pup,” he observed, a sudden grin curling his mouth. Evidently Francis’s gentle shushing only lasted so long.
When Drew did not answer, Duncan said. “Are you aware that your master is my slave?”
Tersely Drew said, “He is my maker, not my master.”
He regretted the words as soon as they were out. Duncan only grinned wider. “Don’t be a fool,” he chuckled. “If Lindsay was here, I could order him to kill you and he’d be powerless to resist. As would you be if he ordered you to bend your neck for his blade.”
“You’re wrong,” Drew muttered, the words escaping before he could stop them. When Duncan laughed outright, he felt a flush of shame crawling up his neck.
“Foolish pup,” Duncan mocked, his voice heavy with mock sympathy. “Your master would doexactlywhat I told him. It’s the nature of our beasts. Just look at me. Not a rope or chain in sight, but I’m as fixed to this chair as surely as though my master over there had nailed me in place. Only his will holds me.” He inclined his head in Francis’s direction, as though bestowing a compliment, though his lip curled in contempt.
“Why did you summon me?” he asked Francis. “You usually ignore me.”
Francis didn’t answer him. Instead, he turned to Drew. “Time for you to go, my dear.”
“My dear?” Duncan mocked. His eyes blazed and a new scent bloomed in the air which Drew automatically identified.
Jealousy.
Duncan studied Drew with resentful interest. “Are you being sent off after the Dauphin?” he asked. Drew frowned and Duncan added tightly, “Lindsay. Marguerite’s little prince. Are you being sent after him?”
As he uttered Lindsay’s name, his scent altered, a new emotion emerging. Not jealousy this time. Nor anger precisely, but something dark that Drew couldn’t identify.
“Why do you hate him?” he asked curiously.
Improbably, Duncan laughed. “Lindsay? I don’t hate him! I think he’sglorious.” He gave a sigh of pleasure. “Tell me: have you seen him collared and naked and covered in lovely welts? I’m sure you can imagine it if you haven’t.”
Drew’s gut twisted at the picture Duncan painted, but he said nothing, merely watched the man impassively.
Duncan smiled. “No? Well, I suppose between the two of you,heis the master.” He sighed. “The maker is ever the master and the made is ever his slave—however much either party might wish otherwise.” He eyed Francis again, eyes glittering.“Isn’t that right,master?”
Francis said calmly, “I told you how it would be before I bit you.”
Duncan gave a harsh laugh. “You did not say I would be unable to disobey you, a slave forever to your whims.”
Drew could scent Francis’s distress at that accusation, but the man’s expression remained remarkably tranquil. “I have never sought to command you. You are no slave—and I am no master.”
Duncan snorted. “A master is a master, however gentle, and whether he gives commands or not. My chains are real, Eunuch. I feel their weight.”
Drew’s stomach churned—Duncan’s words were uncomfortably similar to his own thoughts about Lindsay.
“What you really mean is that you have always wanted to masterme,” Francis replied. “To make me your slave, to force me to give you what I did not wish to give. You have never been able to bear the fact that I am able to refuse you.”
“Youmademe a wolf!” Duncan cried. “You made me crave you—and then you refused me. Was that fair? Was I was supposed to be happy with your milk-and-water friendship for the rest of eternity? When I had told you time and time again I would doanythingfor your love?”