He willed her to pull away and save them both—to slap him across the face and leave without looking back.
Instead, she clutched his hair even harder and moaned softy, inviting him deeper, innocently trusting herself to the worst man for miles.
Hugo had doomed them both.
He rewarded her trust by ravaging her, until she was breathless and whimpering. He took and took and took, and still she offered more. When her tongue tentatively stroked his own, Hugo stilled his pillaging and slanted his mouth, opening wider to give her access, inviting her to join in her downfall.
Had he ever enjoyed a kiss this much? Her joy in discovery made him realize that he’d never just kissed a woman for kissing’s sake. After all, whores weren’t hired for their kissing skills, were they?
Whores.
He imagined her expression when she learned he was a whore, and he jerked back.
“Hugo?” Martha blinked up at him. “Is something wrong?”
Her wide-eyed blue gaze was like the dangerous beauty of a whirlpool and Hugo allowed himself to be pulled down and down. Her eyes were easily the most expressive he’d ever seen, and right now, her pupils were huge with desire. For him.
You can still salvage this, a sly voice taunted. It’s only a kiss. So far.
He didn’t want only a kiss. He wanted all of her. Would taking her for himself—not just for tonight, but for all the days and nights ahead—really be so bad?
After all, Mr. Pringle had wanted Hugo to get his daughter off this godforsaken rock. It was Hugo’s duty to do what the vicar had wanted and marry her. He’d given the man his word.
Ha! The word of a whore.
Mr. Pringle had seen goodness in Hugo.
But he didn’t know you, did he, Hugo?
No, the vicar had no idea what sort of man he’d entrusted with his daughter.
Hugo shifted until he was no longer touching her—he couldn’t think straight with her in his arms. “Why did you agree to marry Clark, Martha?”
She knitted her brow. “Why are you asking me such a question?”
“Because a short time ago you wanted him enough to marry him. Yet now you are with me. You are in pain—confused—what if—”
“I was wrong to accept him.”
“What if you are wrong again? If there is even a chance for you and Clark then you should go.” The words tasted foul in his mouth.
“Are you saying—”
“I’m saying that staying with me tonight doesn’t just mean tonight, Martha. I won’t do that to your father.” He knew his face had twisted into an ugly sneer. “I might be rotten to the core, but at least I can keep my word. And if you stay, it means you will marry me, Martha.”
“Are—are you saying you l-love me?”
It wasn’t the question that Hugo had expected. More fool him; what young woman didn’t dream about falling in love?
He looked into her eyes, which bled emotion, and knew that he could lie about everything else in his life—and he would bloody well do so if she accepted him—but not this.
Hugo wanted her intensely, more than he had ever wanted anyone else in his life. His desires had always been money and what it could buy for him: security and safety. Wanting money was easy—you just found a way to make it.
Wanting another person? Well . . .
“I don’t have much experience with love, Martha—hell, I don’t have any experience with it. I doubt that I’d recognize it if it crawled up my trouser leg and bit me on the—well, I’m sure you take my meaning. I like you a great deal and enjoy your company more than anyone else’s. And I find you desirable—very desirable.” She turned a fetching shade of pink, just as he’d known she would. “But love?” He shook his head. “If I don’t know what that is by the age of thirty-two, I doubt I ever will. I don’t—”
“I love you, Hugo.”
Hugo’s jaw sagged.
“That’s what I discovered after I read my father’s journal—when I allowed myself to feel, instead of just doing what I thought my father would have wanted and marry Robert. I love you.”
A groan broke out of him at her declaration, and she flinched.
Hugo took her by the shoulders when she would have turned away. “I wasn’t groaning because you said, well, you know”—Hugo couldn’t even say the blood words. “Christ,” he muttered, and then grimaced when she jolted. “I’m sorry.”
If she found his habitual taking of the Lord’s name in vain, just wait until she learned about the rest of him. But Hugo had no intention of confessing the crimes of a lifetime to her.
Even so, she should know what kind of man he was.
“I’ve made a great deal of my money in ways which are both illegal and immoral. I am not a good man, Martha. It’s my nature to get what I want by any means. That’s the way I’ve always been, and I don’t see myself changing.”
“These—these things you’ve done, are you saying they would make me not want to marry you if I knew?”
Hugo gave an unamused bark of laughter. “I think what I’ve done would make you not want to even look at me.”
“Why won’t you just tell me?”
Yes, Hugo—tell her why you can’t share the truth. Tell her it’s because nobody in your life has ever loved you—or looked at you the way she does—and you want to see just how badly she wants you and if she’ll take you without knowing the truth.
Hugo couldn’t deny all that, but he was hardly going to admit it.
“I’m not ashamed of what I’ve done, Martha, but I also refuse to lay my past out for inspection—yours, or anyone else’s.”
“That’s not fair, is it?”
“That’s another thing I am not: fair.”
“Have you murdered somebody, er, not in self-defense?”
“No,” he said.
“Are you married?”
Hugo laughed, genuinely amused. “Murder and marriage are closely linked in your mind, are they?”
She didn’t laugh with him.
“No, I am not, nor have I ever been, married.” Nor did I
