Page 11 of Sloth: The Fallen Earl (Seven Deadly Sins #4)

F ury lived within Wakefield, and he couldn’t determine whether that blistering anger stemmed from the fact the lady had simply up and left, or the way she hugged herself closely against the side of the carriage.

For all his lapses in character and judgement these past fourteen hours, he wasn’t given to harming or scaring women. Did she truly believe he’d hurt her?

As soon as that question was set free in his brain, he recalled everything he’d done with Cressida Smith and to her—how many times he’d taken her, fast and hard, like she was as broken-in as any whore. Whatever the lady’s intentions for him may be, she’d still been a virgin.

His anger cooled.

“Are you… well ?” he asked, gentling his voice.

Shaking her head, she stared at him from around her pearled mask like he’d spoken in tongues.

“I was…rough.”

Understanding filled her enormous eyes. “ Oh .” She dipped her gaze to her lap.

Heat slapped his face. “I did not realize you were a virgin,” he said between compressed lips. As if that pardons your treatment of her? “I was not as gentle as I would have been had I known—”

“Sore.” She cut him off, wearing a blush of her own. “I’m a bit sore.”

A bit sore?

“…Hold on tight, love. I’m going to give you the ride of your…”

Wakefield winced.

“I’m fine, truly,” the lady added for good measure.

For his benefit? Why in hell was she reassuring him ?

The honesty of her quiet response, and the strength behind it, jarred him. Would a duplicitous woman manage both? Certainly not.

Those were questions for later. He shoved them aside.

“Given our…activities.” He grimaced. “I don’t believe you are, in fact, fine.” He winced. “And I am deeply…sorry for that,” he said weakly.

How paltry.

Cressida Smith bowed her head in acknowledgement, and that motion drew his gaze to the slight lump forming on her forehead.

The fury that’d sent Wakefield tearing after the lady long forgotten, he stared at that knot. “You were hurt.”

Cressida gave another one of those confused head bobs, a cross between a nod and a shake.

“Here,” he murmured, pointing to the mark.

She followed his fingertip, and as one only just aware of her injury, she touched the little bump and started. “Oh. Uh…the carriage stopped suddenly, and I was unprepared.”

His eyes flicked away from Cressida. Christ. How many ways had he hurt her? Self-loathing threatened to swallow Wakefield whole.

He made himself return his stare to hers. “I have an addition to make to my…” He pulled a face. “Shamefully growing list of offenses against you.”

Unlike before when she’d insisted he hadn’t brought her pain during their intimacies, this time the lady didn’t deny Wakefield’s acknowledgement. It spoke to a woman comfortable in her truth, and it also revealed she’d not been lying for his benefit when she’d spoken about the discomfort he’d left her in after last night.

“You left without a word,” he murmured.

Miss Smith gave him a wry look. “Was I supposed to stay?”

Her question brought him up short. He hadn’t known what to expect where the lady was concerned.

Once more, his guard went up. This defiant side of the shy, blushing beauty he’d bedded so many times he’d lost count further roused his suspicion. How did a woman slide so easily between two personas?

He had plenty of reasons not to trust a woman who would portray herself to be one thing and then turned out to be an entirely different. A lady, a virgin, all of which screamed duplicity.

Wakefield got right to it. “What do you want?”

“What do I want?” The feisty sparkle in her eyes mocked him. “You, my lord, are the one who boarded my carriage.”

His jaw ached with restraint. “Is it money you are looking for?”

“If that were the case, I’d have taken your payment, my lord. If you are in need of the funds, you can find them precisely where you left them, on the nightstand at The Devil’s Den.”

Wakefield would have to be without hearing to fail to pick up on the soft but unequivocal sarcasm she mocked him with.

“I’m not in need of funds,” he said curtly.

She gave him a look. “I’m well aware, my lord.”

His attention caught on that. He narrowed his eyes on the mystifying minx. “ Are you ?”

Her bold swagger flagged. “I don’t know what you are suggesting,” she said, coolly indignant.

“Oh, I believe you do, Miss Smith.” Wakefield rested his palms on his thighs and leaned close, shrinking the space between them. “Let us not play any more games, madam,” he whispered. “Let us focus on the matter at hand.”

“What exactly would that be?” Her regal brows dipped. “I was of an opinion we’d already said everything there was to say this morning, my lord?”

Did he detect a faint note of bitterness in her reply?

Wakefield sat back against the uncomfortable carriage bench. Taking his jaw in hand, he contemplated the mysterious creature who’d left his world upside down.

There were too many questions.

What to do with her? What to do with her?

There remained the obvious fact he couldn’t let her out of his sight. Once she slipped away, she could freely share what’d transpired between them at The Devil’s Den. With one utterance, the good name he’d built would be destroyed. Wakefield would deservingly find himself in the same category of his philandering father before him.

Wakefield’s jaw rippled and buckled. There’d be one important distinction between him and the previous earl. Wakefield would never leave those dependent upon him in squalor as his father had left Verity and Livian.

He kept up his study of her.

Cressida, as intrepid as Joan of Arc from behind the pearl-encrusted mask he’d carefully unwound from her head last evening, boldly watched Wakefield in return.

This is who she was. This magnificently audacious creature glaring angrily at him. She bore no traces of the hesitant, fragile, hurt innocent with a trembling mouth from earlier this morn.

It was settled. It had always been necessary. He’d known it the minute he arrived in the kitchens to find Cressida gone.

“You are coming with me, Miss Smith,” he purred, his voice came rougher, hoarser than usual.

The lady’s delicately pointed jaw dropped, and she went shooting to the edge of her seat. “I beg your pardon. I am most certainly not returning to The Devil’s Den! Absolutely not.”

Cressida fell back on an angry huff. Folding her arms at her chest, she glowered at Wakefield.

While the carriage rocked and swayed along uneven streets, he contemplated her in ways he oughtn’t.

The fire in her maple-brown, gold-flecked eyes brought on a rush memories of those variegated pools bright with desire—when he’d licked her, sucked her, rocked himself deep inside her sweet, tight channel as she came loudly.

There’d never been anything more satisfying than the way her walls clenched and spasmed about his length.

Wakefield’s jaw clenched, this time not with anger but restraint. He drew in a strained breath slowly through his nose, and he couldn’t stop himself from recalling all of it.

The sounds of her climaxing filled his ears. Her breathless screams. Her soft, sultry moans.

Wakefield’s lust for her, and the yearning to take her here in this carriage, threatened to make him forget all the concerns he had about his reputation or her intentions.

The sight of her, so poised and belligerent, managed to break Wakefield from his spell.

He was stronger than his basic, basest instincts.

“You are going home with me, Cressida.”

“I most certainly am not going anywhere with you. There is no reason for it,” she protested.

“There is.”

Cressida stared at him expectantly. “ Yes ?” she urged. With the lady’s impatience, she managed to squeeze an extra syllable into that one-word response.

God, she was vivacious. Like a Vauxhall Gardens firework packed into a cannon and exploding in an effervescent display upon the night sky.

Wakefield curled his lips in silent provocation. “I want you to.”

Just as intriguing, she didn’t take his bait. “You want me to?” she repeated back bluntly, so emotionless he thought maybe he imagined the lady who’d greeted him this morning…and last night.

“Yes.” Alas, it proved an even more exquisite challenge, attempting to needle her. “And more importantly, you will be joining me.”

She surged forward and placed her pert nose near the tip of his hawkish one. “Do you think so?” she seethed.

Ah, yes, he far preferred her this way, all fire and spirit and not downtrodden and wounded.

He smirked. “Indeed.”

That did it.

The lady let fly a curse that would have made Dynevor blush, and the mouth on her only further intrigued him.

“You may go about having other men and women obey your orders and wishes, but I’ll do as I please,” Cressida ranted. She jammed a finger against his chest with an unlikely force that made him flinch.

Suddenly, her eyes grew stricken, and he wanted to rouse her to anger once more to prevent this sadness from shining through.

His efforts were too late.

“You are nothing to me, Lord Wakefield,” she whispered. Her voice trembled slightly, revealing a crack in her impressively sturdy armor. “And I am nothing to you.” Sitting back on her bench, Cressida wrenched her gaze toward the window.

“Cressida,” he said quietly. “That may be, but what we shared last night changes everything.”

Her cheeks bloomed with a delicate flush, betraying the sweet innocence that lingered within her, despite all the ways he’d touched her and the unknown sources who’d involves her in treachery.

“Benedict,” she said, shaking her head sadly, “you’re neither my brother, nor father, nor suitor. What makes you think you have any say over anything where I’m concerned?”

“At this moment, you may be carrying my child.”

Cressida blanched, but then swiftly regained her composure. “Yes, and whose fault might that be, Benedict?”

“As I see it, we were both willing partners. As such, you share some of the blame.”

Her features crumpled.

Oh, Christ. He stilled; an insidious, evil possibility whispered in his mind. “Cressida.” His stomach churned. “I consumed a glass too many last night. Were you willingly at the club and…and….”

The lady’s eyes were a window into her world. Through their present frames radiated so much sadness, but also, sincerity.

“Yes. I was there of my own free-will and also,” Her cheeks blazed cherry red. “An active participant.”

Wakefield barely heard her, but hear her he did. His eyes slid shut. Thank God.

“I was given…that is…I drank something…”

Her halting admission brought his eyes flying open. Wakefield remained silent. Certain if he spoke, she’d stop, and then he’d never know what the hell the important bit of information she intended to share.

Cressida traced her tongue around her lips. “It made me more…it made me feel…”

Ah. “You took an aphrodisiac.”

She nodded.

She did not, however, ask for clarification, which meant she knew what she’d indulged in.

“I just want you to know that I don’t believe I’d otherwise have been so…so…”

“Insatiable?” he supplied for her.

Cressida gave a tentative nod. Her blush burned like a fire. “And I should have thought of French letters or…sponges or…”

“Stop,” he interjected gravely.

Wonder of wonders, she heeded that order.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“I should have—”

“You shouldn’t.” It was his turn to feel the same humiliating flush climb his neck and cheeks. “You were a virgin.” A virgin who also knew about French letters and sponges.

There’d be time enough to consider that important information later.

“You were correct earlier,” he murmured. Humbled, ashamed, and humiliated by that realization, Wakefield bowed his head in a useless show of remorse. “You are right,” he regretfully conceded. Discomfited, Wakefield dragged a hand through his hair. “This is entirely my fault. It was a…” He found himself stumbling and searching for words as she had. “ An egregious, unpardonable offense I committed by not taking care.”

Whatever her motives or truthfulness, or lack thereof, the fact remained he’d ultimately been the one to take part in immoral playacting. He’d been the one who had made love to her over and over. He’d been the one to also come inside her, more times than he could remember. Whatever came of last evening and this early morning rested entirely and solely on him.

Wakefield drummed his fingertips distractedly upon his thigh.

The fact remained, the minute she was out of his sight, anything could happen. She could take some other gentleman as a lover. The minute that happened, there was no saying whose child it was she carried.

He clenched and unclenched his jaw. There was an absolute certainty for Wakefield. He would absolutely know which children he fathered. Whatever led this woman to his bed, he would always honor his obligations and do right by her. It was settled. Wakefield stopped his drumming.

“I’m afraid, regardless of your wishes, you are coming with me.”