Page 5 of Road Trip With a Rogue (Her Majesty’s Rebels #3)

Daisy took a step back. Then another.

Vaughan was dressed in his usual impeccable black, and she had a brief, slightly hysterical thought that he must have come dressed as the devil himself.

His expression was certainly one Lucifer might employ; she’d never seen anyone so angry.

His eyes were almost black with rage, a muscle ticked in his jaw, and his entire body seemed to vibrate with suppressed energy.

He crossed his arms, as if not trusting himself not to strangle her with his bare hands, and positioned himself with his back to the door to prevent her escape.

Daisy’s throat was suddenly dry as she cast around for a plausible explanation for her presence. She opened her mouth, but he shook his head.

“I don’t recall sending you an invitation.”

His tone was so scathing it felt like a whip across her skin, but she tried to look uncowed.

“It’s Daisy,” she said coolly. “Not Dorothea. And no, you didn’t. But I never get invited to parties like this, and I wanted to see what all the fuss is about.”

“You’re trespassing. God, if you were my sister, I’d spank you!”

“You wouldn’t dare!”

His eyes glittered malevolently. “You little fool. Most of the men here are drunk, and the women are here to be pleasured, and then paid. They’re whores,” he hissed, as if she were too simple to grasp the concept. “Courtesans. Any man who sees you will assume you’re a whore too.”

His lip curled as his gaze flicked over her from her head to her feet, then back up. He lingered for a thunderous moment on her cleavage, then glared at her as if she’d done something unforgiveable.

Daisy could scarcely draw a breath. If she were sensible, she’d run. Out of this room. Out of this house. But he was standing in the way. Blocking her escape even as he told her to go.

His nostrils flared. “What if someone else had caught you and dragged you in here? Or out into the garden? Would you have protested?”

She started to speak again, but he waved her words away.

“Or is that why you’re here?” His expression darkened even more. “Were you hoping someone would relieve you of your virginity?”

“What? No!” Daisy couldn’t decide if she was more mortified or outraged.

“If you were only looking for a kiss, then you’re an idiot,” he continued brutally. “No man would stop at a kiss. They’d assume any protest you made was just an act, a titillation.”

He pushed off the door and paced toward her, effortlessly menacing. Daisy backed up even more, until her bottom bumped the hard edge of the wooden desk and she glanced around wildly for an escape. There was none.

He loomed over her, deliberately invading her space.

“You wouldn’t be able to escape. They’d have you flat on your back with your skirts over your head before you could even cry for help.”

She swallowed hard, her eyes stinging even as her body thrummed with his dangerous proximity. She hated the fact that he saw her as some helpless little fool, the pathetic, desperate little sister of his friends.

She tossed her head, feigning a bravado she didn’t feel. “I have a knife in my boot.”

“You’d be ruined before you even touched it.”

She winced. She had been foolish to come here. Not for the first time, her recklessness had landed her in a dangerous situation.

He stepped even closer, and her heart pounded so hard she was sure he could hear it, but she held his gaze, defiant to the last.

His hand snaked out like lightning. He caught the back of her neck before she could duck away, his fingers threading through her hair, and her lips parted on a shocked gasp.

His mouth twisted in a mocking smile. “ Now are you realizing how stupid you’ve been? Aside from your brothers, I’m probably the only man in this house who won’t fuck you.”

She flinched at his deliberately crude language, even as she battled a paradoxical disappointment.

Of course he didn’t want her. She was nothing like the women he usually chose.

She gripped the edge of the desk, trying to anchor herself, determined not to show how rattled she was, how out of her depth.

“Fine. I shouldn’t have come. Let me go.”

She’d never been this close to him. His lips were hovering over hers, barely a sliver of air separating them. She could feel the warm exhale of his breath, smell the intoxicating midnight-forest scent of him. She was practically shaking, her blood pounding in her throat.

He shook his head. “I don’t think you truly understand the danger. What you’re inviting. This .”

His lips crashed into hers, hard, an obvious punishment designed to prove his dominance and her foolishness. He leaned in, pressing her back with his weight, the hand at her neck holding her in place.

Daisy stiffened in shock, then tried to wrench herself free. She opened her mouth to tell him that he’d made his point, but the moment she did so he took ruthless advantage; his tongue slid between her lips, and the taste of him washed over her, so dark and forbidden she thought she might faint.

She made a noise, something between a gasp and a moan, and they both stilled.

Daisy thought he’d release her in disgust, but instead he made a rough sound in his throat, and kissed her again . His lips slanted over hers, his tongue tangling with her own, and she closed her eyes, hardly daring to believe what was happening.

Dear God, she was kissing Lucien Vaughan!

It was a revelation.

He set a deliberate, taunting rhythm, coaxing her to participate with little nips of his teeth and flicks of his tongue that caused butterflies in her stomach and a molten throb between her legs.

His right hand was still in her hair, but his left came up to cradle her jaw before his fingers traced the sensitive skin behind her ear, then slid along her throat.

Fire raced through her blood.

His kisses became harder, more demanding.

A wet, teasing slide toward insanity. Daisy kissed him back as though her life depended on it.

A terrible urgency was unfurling inside her, a need to keep on kissing him forever.

She pressed herself against him, wordlessly urging him on, and he stepped closer, between her legs, crushing her skirts between them.

Even through the layers of fabric, she could feel the heat of him. The hardness.

He dragged his mouth from hers and pressed a row of searing kisses down her throat.

“Another man wouldn’t stop.” The words were breathed against the top curve of her breast. He sounded dreamy, almost as if he was talking to himself. He kissed his way back up the other side of her neck.

“They wouldn’t resist such temptation.” He kissed her jaw, the corner of her mouth.

And then his fingers tightened on her skull and his lips stilled, just resting against hers. She was panting with arousal, his chest against hers.

“They would ruin you ,” he growled, a vibration so deep she felt it right through her body. “And it would feel so fucking good.”

Her heart skipped a beat at the raw intensity in his voice, but a splinter of alarm skittered through her. He seemed equally aroused and enraged. He was holding her precariously, bent backward over the desk at an awkward angle that gave him all the advantage of weight and balance.

“You don’t even have the wits to be afraid,” he whispered. “To understand how fragile you are. How easily they could break you.”

Her elation vanished as reality struck her with the force of a blow. He hadn’t been enjoying himself. He’d been teaching her a lesson!

His hand slid to her throat again, and her pulse pounded against his fingertips as he increased the pressure just enough to impress upon her his utter control. And her helplessness.

“You’re at my mercy.” He pressed the lightest, most teasing kiss to her lips, the gentleness at odds with his vicious words, and she fought back a traitorous shudder of desire. Her body still wanted him even though her mind was shrieking in outrage at his cruelty.

“And you should be thanking God that I don’t want you,” he growled.

Daisy wrenched her head to the side and he finally released her, stepping back and crossing his arms again. She shivered in the sudden rush of cold air.

His breathing seemed insultingly even, as if what they’d just done hadn’t affected him in the slightest, but her chest felt tight and her hands were shaking against the desk.

How had the evening turned from heaven to hell in less than five minutes? She was almost reeling with the abrupt change.

“You’ve made your point, Vaughan.” Her voice was a breathy croak, but she was proud of her composure. “Let me go.”

He shook his head, his eyes still glittering dangerously. “You’re not going anywhere. You’re going to stay right here until I come back.”

“Are you going to get my brothers?” That would certainly add to her misery.

“No. I’m going to call for a carriage.”

She didn’t know whether to be grateful or offended.

Thank God she hadn’t compounded her humiliation by touching him back. By threading her fingers through his hair, or stroking his jaw, or sliding her hands over the hard plains of his chest. She’d saved herself that indignity, small as it was.

He pointed to her mask, lying on the floor. “Put that back on. I’ll be back in a minute. Do not leave this room.”

Daisy glared at him as he gave her one last, simmering look, then turned to the door. She rolled her eyes when he took the key from the lock and used it to shut her in, clearly having no confidence in her ability to be sensible.

Or perhaps he thought he was protecting her from encountering a less-discerning gentleman, she thought acidly. God, she hated him. High-handed, arrogant bastard . He’d toyed with her like a cat with a mouse, and she, like a fool, had let him.

She ignored him when he returned, gliding past him into the corridor with a regal sniff. With her mask back on, he swept her through the crowded rooms, using his big body to shove drunken revelers out of the way and shielding her from the catcalls and lewd innuendos that followed them.

A servant opened the front door to a frigid blast of air, and Daisy practically ran down the steps and clambered into the waiting carriage.

She glanced up in surprise as Vaughan followed her and caught the carriage door before it closed.

His face was harsh and still annoyingly attractive in the lamplight, and she bit her lip at the horrible churn of conflicting emotions in her stomach.

How could she want him and despise him simultaneously?

His gaze met hers and her heart somersaulted.

“Go home. And don’t ever do something so reckless again. You won’t like the consequences.”

Daisy’s cheeks heated, but she gave a disdainful sniff. “Consider me duly chastened.”

He gazed at her for a long moment, then opened his mouth as if he was about to say something more, but the horses rattled their harness and he seemed to change his mind. He closed the door with a resigned shake of his head and shouted up to the driver.

She almost told him not to do anything stupid, either, like get himself killed while he was off fighting, but pride and fury kept her quiet.

The last thing she saw as she pulled away was his dark silhouette standing at the foot of the steps, the lights of the mansion blazing behind him, like Lucifer at the gates of hell.

I hate you, Lucien Vaughan.

But you’d better not bloody well die.