Wicked Lord: Part One (3 page)

"We will both talk to her," he said,
offering what support he could.

"I should have brought my shawl," Beth
muttered.

Adam thought she looked lovely as usual. She
would say, as women were wont to do, that she was too plump or just
barely pretty, not beautiful. However, he knew men turned to look
at the ampleness of her bosom and the sincerity of her laughter.
For all that, Beth thought she was average. She was a very sweet
girl.

"All right then," Beth announced, seeming to
gather her resolve, and then she began to step down the stairs once
again.

Adam watched Fanton looking up at them as
they came into view. Fanton's gaze latched onto Beth with a
serpentine look of gloating, while he slowly walked around Lady
Ariel. Lady Ariel's creamy shoulders were bare in a sparkling,
lavender-colored ball gown, while Fanton's hand lingered about her
waist. Fanton whispered something to her, which made her blush and
laugh. However, Fanton's slate-colored gaze stayed drilled onto
Beth, sweeping her cleavage as she hurried down the stairs.

"Lady Ariel, you should not be here!" Beth
exclaimed. Adam knew his sister wouldn't sound as harsh were she
not so upset.

Adam stepped beside Beth when they reached
the marbled floor and he saw Lady Ariel's pretty mouth turn into a
pout as her body leaned closer to Fanton's stocky but strong
figure.

"Your stepbrother, Lord Rothschild, invited
me inside," Lady Ariel informed them with an edge to her voice.
"Lady Beth, he has invited both of us to a glass of sherry before
our events." Lady Ariel smiled a pretty offering to Fanton, who
rounded her figure again. Like a wolf circling its prey, Adam
thought.

"A harmless invitation, really," Lady Ariel
continued with a dipping of her eyelashes. "And I might convince
him to attend the Valtimer's ball with us."

Beth blanched. She could hardly revile
Fanton to his face. He would make her pay dearly if she tried.
Fanton's stalking gaze told her he had her pinned just where he
wanted her, and the impossible red glints in his irises strobed
once, then disappeared. For the thousandth time, Beth wondered why
no one else could see the red glints when they appeared, not even
Adam, as she forcibly quelled the trembling trying to overtake her
body.

"Come, Beth, my sweet pigeon. Come drink
sherry with us," Fanton drawled with a heavy-lidded gaze that made
her wish for a stout coat to cover her bare shoulders away from his
leer. Fanton was not as a brother should be to a sister, and he
never had been.

Beth saw Ariel's gaze sharpen because of
Fanton's illicitly inflected words, just as Fanton added, "No need
for you to stay, little brother." Fanton stopped his circuitous
route around Ariel with his hand too intimately holding her
waist.

Beth wanted to snatch that hand away and
shout at him to leave her only friend alone. Instead, she nodded
her head with forced but demure manners, saying, "A glass of sherry
would be welcome, my lord. Adam, please do not let us keep you from
your friends."

Adam's handsome face and buff gray eyes
unveiled a stubborn look Beth had seen quite often. She balanced on
a fine line between Adam and Fanton. Adam wanted to defend her,
while Fanton could easily crush him.

"I'm in the mood to dance tonight," Adam
said, then he bowed to Ariel, straightened, and he held out his
arm. "Please, let me escort you to the sherry, Lady Ariel."

Oh no
, Beth thought, trying to keep
the distress she felt from her features. It was a very bad thing
for Adam to try to come between Fanton and what he'd set his sights
on. Beth knew Adam was trying to help her, by perhaps trying to
court Ariel's attentions away from their stepbrother Fanton, whose
eyes blazed darkly.

Ariel appeared instantly flattered. Adam was
fit, tall, and handsome … any woman's desire. So, enticed, Ariel
glided forward in her lavender silk gown with lace embellishments.
She took Adam's arm with a delighted laugh, leaving Fanton's hand
to fall free from her waist as the couple relocated to the
parlor.

Belatedly, Beth thought to move. To flee
from Fanton's reach. However, she'd delayed a bit too long and as
she tried to follow Adam and Ariel, a dauntless hand grasped her
forearm, stopping her.

"You'll do," Fanton drawled, tugging her off
balance and up against his hard body clad in impeccable black and
white evening attire. "You will always do, my shy, plump pet."

Beth's gaze darted to Fanton's blackened
hunter’s gaze and she thought to protest, loudly. But his musty
breath slid tendrils across her face, and a moment later she swayed
toward him.

Fanton gazed down his stepsister's ample
cleavage. It appeared to him as if her big tits wanted to leap from
the gown she was wearing. Quicker than a man could see, he reached
forward and squeezed one of her fat breasts, and then he dropped
his hand to the indent of her waist. Too late, Beth's hand lifted
to brush across where he'd groped, but his hand was long gone.

There was always Beth, so malleable
,
he thought. Yet she was a feast he dared only nibble at. Not
because they were related, as they weren't related in any biblical
sense, and not because they were a contrived family. That was a
lie.
No
, he thought, looking down at Beth's face as she
pushed with weakened resolve against his chest trying to escape his
strength. The reason he didn't devour her was that Lady Beth
Winslow, his stepsister, looked very much like the one portrait he
had of his mother.

"Yet," he uttered, closing his other hand to
squeeze Beth's waist between both his large hands. "My mother would
never
act as slutty as you do." Beth whimpered at the cruel
clutch of his hands and her warm breath fanned his face. "But that
other one, your friend," he drawled, looking up toward the parlor
doors, then back down at his slutty sister swaying before him. "She
looks nothing like Mother." That one was all blond with her tits
barely covered like his sister's.

"You do it to
tempt
men," Fanton bit
out as Beth clawed at the front of his black evening jacket. "Worse
than whores in the streets." His voice lowered into a hissing
sound.

"Lord Fanton? Beth? Are you coming for
sherry?" Adam's voice called from within the parlor.

Fanton sneered, releasing Beth and she
stumbled backward several paces. He adjusted his facial features
into as pleasant as he could arrange them. Then he looked over at
Adam, who had appeared at the parlor entrance, as he said, "Our
sister wants to monopolize me, little brother. I will tear her away
though."

"Come on, Beth," Adam called.

Beth's multi-colored eyes blinked and she
looked quite confused as Fanton sneered and walked past her toward
Adam, and then around him into the parlor. He arrived in the parlor
alone with the blond slut for a brief moment, and she instantly
dipped her bare cleavage at him with a whore's tempting gaze
fluttering his way. How quickly she forgot her other admirer,
Fanton thought. He was intrigued because she was a high society
piece and not a lower east-end whore.

"Lord Fanton, you must come to the ball and
dance with me," she said, with husky temptations in her voice. He
smiled as he circled the room, circling closer to her.

He began to wonder how fast she could run …
then he wondered whether she could really scream well. In some far
corner of his mind that acknowledged such things, he was surprised.
The urge was rising again so quickly. He reassured himself it was
simply the irresistible temptation of a noble bitch flaunting
herself at him. He'd never tried one of those before.

And, she was offering …

Chapter Three

"Ariel, please stay away from Fanton," Beth
remembered pleading with her only friend. Then she'd declared aloud
to Ariel, damned the consequences should anyone overhear and it get
back to Fanton, "He is
not
a good man."

That had been thirty minutes ago, and Ariel
had gaily laughed and patted her hand, declaring everything would
be all right. Ariel had danced off with Adam, and Beth had thought
she was safe. However, Beth discovered now she was gone, leaving
Adam holding two glasses of punch Ariel had asked him to fetch.

"I've been around the room once, Beth, and
she's not in the ballroom," Adam declared, setting the punch
glasses down on a nearby table. He turned back to her, while
swiping a thatch of sandy brown hair out of his eyes. "Damn," he
cussed lowly.

"I am so tired of trying to warn her away
from him, Adam. And she will not listen and simply take my word for
it," Beth said with frustration heating her words.

"I know," Adam replied, looking down on her.
"There comes a time when we should just …"

Beth gazed up at him as he left the sentence
hanging and in her mind, she finished it.
Give up and she will
do what she will do.
But instead she said, "I will look for her
in the ladies’ retiring room."

"And I will circulate through the upstairs,"
Adam offered.

Beth touched Adam's arm. "We will meet back
here. One of us will drag her back here if we have to."

Beth watched Adam's smile as he started
away, saying back to her, "We will find her."

She watched Adam with a worried gaze as he
climbed the elegant staircase at the Valtimer mansion. Immediately
she decided she couldn't keep putting Adam in the middle of the
situation she had with Fanton. She turned toward the conclave of
ladies’ lower-level retiring rooms.

"After I find you, Ariel, I shall break off
our friendship this very night," she muttered. She would do
something she'd not considered for a very long time. She would give
up her doomed search for a husband and she would apply to teach at
a school for girls.

"That will take me out of your reach,
Fanton," she continued beneath her breath. It would leave her
brother, so full of potential, an unfettered life to live to his
desires and not be worrying about her constantly.

***

"Come, Lady Ariel, walk with me in the
gardens under the full moon," Fanton drawled, massaging the lady's
slender neck from behind, with wisps of her blond hair curling over
his moving hand.

"But he is such a gentleman, and he's gone
to fetch me punch. I really should wait."

Fanton thought she spoke without any true
conviction as his fingers tightened on her neck and he felt her
begin to pull away from his hardened grasp.
No, no, noble
slut.

"Wait," he called. "There is a new game
gentlemen and ladies play who are courting that I want to teach
you," he offered quickly, forcing a touch of teasing into his
voice.

He felt his lady-prize stop withdrawing as
she leaned closer to him. "Courting game?" she asked, now nearly
breathless. He was so brilliant and she was such a slut, he
thought, as his sharp gaze traversed the ballroom. No one would
notice them. A moonlit walk was normal among these weak society
fools.

"Come, I will show you."

Then, as easy as that, he had a high-society
whore out in the deserted gardens at night … all alone. He could
feel no one else walked the gardens but he and the woman of such
low virtue beside him.

"The game is you shall run ahead and I stay
to count, until I reach twenty, then I will come to catch you and
if I'm able to catch you, you must forfeit a kiss to me."

"A courting game, Lord Fanton?" she
questioned with such hope in her voice, he nearly chuckled.

"Of course, my savory treat. You and I …" He
left the rest hanging for the blond slut to pick up, as he knew she
would.

"For a kiss then," she said brightly. "If
you can catch me!"

He told himself he would only play for a
little while … this time. He would simply show himself how easy it
was. Nothing more. He looked at the large glass-paneled doors to
the ballroom. They were closed, but light spilled out onto the
stone patio. He could hear the music and laughter as his gaze
turned to the pale, moonlit gardens and beyond into the dark
woods.

How easy this was. He'd never realized.

"I am counting," he declared. "One.
Two."

"Oh, Lord Fanton!" she exclaimed. "Don't
start yet. I am going. Oh! Don't look which way I go."

Fanton turned his back as if he were a
dutiful courting puppy and he heard the swishing skirts of his
prize as she skipped away. He looked up at a sliver of the full
moon trying to peek through the fog, counting aloud for the twit's
benefit as he wished the bobbing slut were Beth instead.

His mind began to fixate on how he would
adore chasing his plump Beth deep into the dark woods, while he
rolled his shoulders, shedding his evening jacket. Better yet, he
would strip Beth of the fancy silk she wore, ripping the material
from her lush curving figure, before he let her loose. Then he
would stalk her pale, naked body. His cravat came loose and he
tugged at the collar of his pristine white shirt. He would watch
Beth's fat breasts and wide hips as she would try to run from him.
But no. She was not fast enough to escape his power … his strength.
He would run her down. His Beth would try. Oh, she would struggle
so hard trying to stop him. She would attempt to fight him with her
frail limbs against his powerful strength. She would try to leave
him. Yet he would never …
ever
let Beth leave him again!

Shrill sounds suddenly pierced Fanton's
hearing. He snarled on the edges of a manic roar, looking down at
the blood washing his hands. His body shook as he wildly looked
around. What had he done? How had he come to this? Again!
So
soon.

***

Beth heard a blood-curdling scream split the
night air. It seemed to come from the woods behind the Valtimer
mansion.