Lord of Scoundrels

by Loretta Chase

“Sono il tuo schiavo,” he murmured. He felt the jump of her pulse against his lips. “It means, ‘I am your slave,’” he translated, as she snatched her hand away. “Carissima. Dearest.” She swallowed. “I think you had better stick to English.” “But Italian is so moving,” he said. “Ti ho voluta dal primo momento che ti ho vista.” I’ve wanted you from the first moment I saw you. “Mi tormenti ancora.” You’ve tormented me ever since.

my body can only get so ready

He laughed. “Then shoot me.”

my sweet summer child, just you wait

“Say your prayers, Dain,” she said. His gaze lifted from the pistol to her glittering, furious eyes. “Jess,” he whispered. She pulled the trigger.

fucking iconic

“How can you be such an idiot? Or have you done it on purpose? Look at you!” He addressed this last to her bodice. “At this rate, there won’t be anything left of you by the wedding day. When was the last time you ate a proper meal?” he demanded. Jessica supposed that, in Dain’s Dictionary, this qualified as an expression of concern.

in his eyes and all the depraved people like me who are into that sort of thing

He had said that someone had to marry her because she was a public menace, and he supposed he was the only one big and mean enough to manage her.

Just like a damned man, he thought exasperatedly. She got what she wanted, then curled up and went to sleep.

Since the Almighty had not done him a single act of kindness in at least twenty-five years, Dain thought it was about bloody time, but he thanked his Heavenly Father all the same, and promised to be as good as he was capable of being.

She was possessive…about him. The beautiful, mad creature—or blind and deaf creature, or whatever she was—coolly announced it as one might say, “Pass the salt cellar,” without the smallest awareness that the earth had just tilted on its axis.

A week with this amiable, blindly obedient stranger left him acutely uncomfortable. After two weeks, he was wretched. Yet he had nothing to complain about. Nothing, that is, that his pride would let him complain about. He could not say she was plaguing him to death when she never so much as hinted at disagreement or displeasure. He could not say she was cold and unresponsive in bed, when she behaved as willingly and lustily as she had from the start. He could not complain that she was unkind, when any hundred outside observers would have unanimously agreed that her behavior was nothing short of angelic. Only he—and she—knew he was being punished, and why.

this definitely reminds me of My American Duchess by Eloisa James, although I really didn’t like that book much

“Dominick, you are crawling with vermin,” he said. “There are only two ways to get rid of them. Either you have a bath in that handsome copper tub…” His son’s head came up. “Or you must eat a bowl of turnips.” Dominick drew back and gazed at his father in blank horror. “Sorry,” said Dain, suppressing a grin. “It’s the only other remedy.” The struggling and wails ceased abruptly. Anything—even certain death—was preferable to turnips.

The problem of cosmic proportions had shrunk to one sick and frightened little boy. And somehow, during that shrinking, something had worked itself out. As he gazed at his son, Lord Dain understood that the “something” had not been a silver of metal or bone. It had been in his head, or perhaps in his heart. Jessica had aimed left of his heart, hadn’t she? Mayhap a part of that organ had been immobilized…with fear? he wondered.

Yes, Papa. And in Lord Beelzebub’s dark, harsh Dartmoor of a heart, the sweet rain fell and a seedling of love sprouted in the once barren soil.

The swine was trying to steal her husband’s precious Madonna, and he was not going to get away with it. “You will not!” she gasped, slamming his head against the door again. “Never!” Slam. “Never!” Slam.

I love her <3