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Authors: Morgan Karpiel

Tags: #Historical Fiction

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BOOK: The Aviator
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Gilda smiled and leaned forward against the table, catching Nathan’s disapproving scowl from across the room. “The stronger, the better, your grace. You, of all people, know how much I enjoy testing my constitution with expensive vices.”

The Duke. The goddamn Duke and that half-wit, girlish look she gave him that shut out the rest of the world, acknowledging only the two of them as a pair of famous aristocrats in a room full of lesser beings.

Nathan glared at the shadows cast along the ceiling, knowing that he had to stop this, pull the image from his mind, the way he had so many times before. After all, this is exactly what she wanted, what she’d come for. She’d be delighted to know he couldn’t sleep, tortured not by the memory of the shuttle hurtling to its own destruction, or the thought that she might have gone with it, but by the image of the Duke’s slithering caresses on her skin, his thin, pale lips sucking on her breasts.

Nathan shut his eyes, reaching up to press his palms against them in frustration.
Stop. Stop. Stop. After this, you’re free. No more teasing. No more insults. No more petty manipulations. She’ll be on her own. Daddy’s spoiled little girl left to fend for herself.

He begged forgiveness, yet again, of Sinclair’s ghost for that, knowing full well how he’d failed the old man. Though it had never been said outright, he’d understood the obligation that had been passed to him along with the controlling share of Sinclair Airship.

Save the company from Gilda. Save Gilda from herself.

When he was younger, and completely besotted with her, he’d imagined himself doing just that, becoming the new visionary, the pillar that both father and daughter seemed to yearn for. But that was before he’d compromised himself, and Gilda, in ways poor Sinclair had never discovered. And before he knew how completely ruthless she could be.

He hissed through his teeth, wondering if he’d ever really be rid of her, no matter how much time or distance he put between them. She was part of him now, the lessons she’d taught so well, manifesting in his quick anger, his skepticism and distrust—attributes once so unfamiliar to the hopeless dreamer his mother had raised.

A loud
thump
issued outside his door, followed by a bright spill of laughter, its tone giddy and drunk.

He let his hands fall from his eyes.

“Mr. Lanchard,” Gilda’s voice rose from the other side of the door, her tone as sweet as an angel’s. “I suppose you’re hiding in there, sulking the night away. You’ve become a terrible boor. Did you hear me? You did. I know you did. A boor! You refused to even say hello to the Duke, and I object very much to that, because he is such a dear friend. He and I get along famously and I think he would order an airship just to please me. He concerns himself with pleasing me, not like some boors I know, who insist on sitting in the dark and crying themselves to sleep—”

He cursed in disbelief and rolled off the bed, swinging the door open in anger. Gilda fell through the doorway and landed at his feet. Her hair was loose, the onyx buttons of her jacket undone at the collar, leaving a pale slip of her neck exposed. She looked up at him in surprise, her blue eyes widening, her lips parted and shining. “Good Lord, Nate, when did you start sleeping nude?”

Nathan slammed the door shut, pitching the small, windowless room into darkness.

He was absolutely stunning. A shadow image of him remained standing, burned in her mind, even as the light disappeared. She hadn’t held his gaze for more than a second, her attention straying from the angry green of his eyes to the lean muscle in his shoulders, following his long, tight waist down to narrow hips and strong, well-formed legs…the full and heavy cast of shadows between them nearly breathtaking.

She still couldn’t quite believe it. Nathan was always dressed in a dark suit, a drab mechanics outfit, or other horrid use of fabric and thread, only to suddenly appear far superior to the most impeccably dressed men she’d ever known while caught in the act of trying to sleep.

“You demanded an audience,” he said coldly.

“And I forgot to recommend attire?”

“Nothing you haven’t seen before.”

“Not entirely true. The last time I saw you, sans garments of any kind, you were…smaller.”

“Younger.”

“And also smaller, university bound, as my father’s favored pet, a skinny boy with charcoal stained fingers and sleek, alabaster skin.”

“Irresistible, in other words.”

“Oh come now, you act as if you were the one who was ruined.”

Nathan swore under his breath and walked past her, a looming shadow outlined by the thin light filtering under the door. He sat on the bed and leaned forward, slow with exhaustion as he collected his clothing from the floor. His hair was loose, sable strands of it brushing along his neck, adding a darker dimension to an expression she couldn’t quite make out.

Not that it mattered. He was simply brooding again, unhappy for a myriad of Nathan-esque reasons she would never completely understand. Had she abused him over the years? Well, slightly perhaps, but he’d been rewarded for all his discomforts, hadn’t he? He’d received the best education money could buy, studying at the best university, under the Great Inventor himself, at her father’s insistence. He’d received a fine estate, and wealth beyond the dreams of most men, simply because he modeled himself as the perfect son, and his mother had been younger and prettier than her own.

God knew, beauty was the true strength of the Lanchard family, and the son certainly resembled the mother, with the same striking green eyes and dark, lustrous hair. It had been beauty enough to steal a kingdom, destroy the love of a lawful wife and cast a rightful daughter in shadow.

She glared at him, searching for the slightest hint of remorse and finding no sign of it. “So this is how you’ve decided to repay the old man? Discard everything he built, everything he invested in you, just so you can play at sandcastles of your own?”

“Play at sandcastles,” he repeated, his voice a cold hiss in the dark. “Yes, that’s exactly right. Nothing escapes you, does it?”

“You’re still angry about the shuttle.”

“Another brilliant stroke of insight.”

“It saved lives.”

“If you had come five hours later, the sea would have been calm.”

“Five hours later those men might have been dead.”

“We’re at war, Gilda. Men die every hour of every day. If we throw away our prototypes, they’ll die even faster in the future.”

“You do not have to explain war to me.”

“It would be helpful if someone did. Oh, you’re a creature of destruction, I’ll grant you that, but it’s a far prettier version than what appears in those bloody trenches out there, in the burned-out buildings and fields of corpses. What would you know of that? You take your pleasure in petty games and public seductions, punishing any man that ever crossed your path. That’s certainly war of a sort, though one wonders who you think the enemy is, or perhaps you simply don’t care.”

She narrowed her gaze, refusing to be cut down by this man,
of all men
. “If I am a harlot at war, sir, I think we might agree that at least I am not a profiteer. I would have had to take lessons from your mother for that.”

For a moment, he was terrifyingly silent, his anger burning hot between them, a solid presence darker than any shade of night.

“Get out,” he said finally.

Gilda knew that she should. It would be a simple matter to rise quietly from the floor and leave without a word. It was the wisest course, the safest course, surely.

But then, by God, it felt good to finally say what needed to be said between them. If he wanted to scream back at her, then so be it. Let him rise up and yell at the top of his lungs, prove his own flawed humanity for once, lose the shining veneer of Nathan the perfect son, the perfect engineer, a man with no petty games or public seductions to make his life anything other than the same colorless gray, day after day.

Stop living in denial of what you are, Nate. A man who inherited a fortune because his mother chose to whore herself to a rich aristocrat, a man with no right to call himself Lord Sinclair’s heir, no right to act as my judge, or my keeper… Not after everything you’ve taken from me.

She shook her head, her tone low and vindictive. “I must admit, I have often wondered how your real father, the one who died in those horrible bloody trenches, would have cared for his replacement in your mother’s bed, an old man with a wife and child of his own.”

“That’s it.” He was on his feet, grabbing her by the arm and pulling her up from the floor, his restraint frayed to its last thread.

He was furious, so deeply furious, his breath a vicious hiss through his teeth, his fingers biting into her skin as he half-carried her to the door. The warm distortion of the brandy offered no apologies, no regret, only satisfaction that a defensive wall had been breached and no quarter taken
.

She laughed at the ridiculousness of it and lost her footing, tipping his balance and running them both into the wall. Nathan cursed, but kept them upright, involuntarily trapping her against the metal.

Her laughter faded. She was pressed to the gray paint, Nathan’s warm, naked skin at her back, his strong hands planted above her shoulders. She felt the solid weight of muscle against her, the sexual nudge of his groin rubbing over the top of her rump. His breath was in her hair, hot against her ear, the sound of it tortured and uneven.

But he didn’t move. Not one millimeter.

She half-closed her eyes, old resentments surrendering to old desires. The warm spin of brandy conjured images of being taken this way, against the wall, her hands grasped tight around the bone of his wrists, her body shuddering with each powerful thrust. She’d not forgotten how large he was. The first time—the last time—he’d taken her she’d been able to do nothing but bite back virginal cries of pain. There would be no pain this time, only a full and beautiful stretch, a languid ride to completion.

His cock was already swelling for the task, jabbing against the soft velvet of her jacket with its thick, silken head. Gilda let out an intoxicated sigh, rising on her toes so that his hardening shaft rubbed into her skirt, finding the crease that would push its way between the tight cheeks of her rump, slip down to the aching pink skin of her quim.

Nathan trembled behind her, with desire or rage. It didn’t matter which, at least not to her. The only thing that mattered was that he wanted to use her, as ruthlessly as she wanted to use him, and it would feel good when he did. It had been so long, and they were both different now.

His voice was a low whisper in her hair. “You never stop, do you?”

She shook her head, spilling blonde curls over her eyes. “You can’t truly hate me, Nate. We both know you want to, but you can’t.”

“Find someone else to torture.”

“Is that what you’d like? Another man’s hands on me tonight, drawing my skirt up and pushing his way in, just the way you want to? Perhaps the Duke is not yet retired.”

“Don’t.”

“Truly foolish of you, to think that I cannot recognize how displeased you are when I converse with one of my dear chaps, my good friends. That deeply jealous look that crosses your face…”

“It isn’t jealousy. It’s amazement. You have so many ‘good friends’.”

“More than you? More than any of the men you know?”

“More than me. And you’re not a man.”

“So you begrudge me my lovers? How ironic, as you were the first.”

He pressed closer, pinning her tight against the wall, so tight she couldn’t move, the hard weight of his cock nudging and stroking between the cheeks of her rump. “Naïve of me, at the time, to think that I meant anything to you. None of us mean anything to you, do we?”

She paused, the words finding an unshielded place, some ounce of hurt she hadn’t known he could reach. She raised her chin, unwilling to give him the satisfaction of knowing it. “Poor Nate. I suppose you thought that night would lead to a beautiful spring wedding?”

“I never thought to ruin you.”

“In truth, I was not ruined. I was freed.”

“Ah yes. And has your freedom made you happy, your ladyship?”

BOOK: The Aviator
12.7Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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