The Highwayman (Victorian Rebels Book 1)

Dorian looked out of the third-story window of his London home and pondered the storm clouds gathering over Hyde Park. He’d tried to open the window and let in the cool wind of the approaching storm, but the ancient, wrought-iron lock handle had been stuck in the upright position for so many decades it may as well have been welded.

He ached for Ben More. For the concealing mists and the untamed sea. For the cold stone fortress whose halls he haunted at night like a restless spirit. There were too many people down there in the city. Too much color and noise, pleasure and pain, need and want and movement. Chaos in its purest form. So many suffered bereft of care. So many lived without a name. So many died, everyone died.

Even the powerful Dorian Blackwell. Though he’d made a name that was recognized in every corner of the realm and beyond, one day fate would pay him back for all the trouble he’d caused. And the empire would churn on, expanding and accumulating. Perhaps reaching to encompass the world, somehow. It wasn’t impossible. With their intrepid and enterprising cousins across the pond to the west, and their far-reaching interests in the east, perhaps in a hundred years or so, they’d all be connected. The economy would expand. Telegraphs would improve. Technology advance. And the world would become a small and manageable place, nothing but a ball trapped in the hands of greedy men like him until they closed their fists and crushed it.

And where did that leave him? What part of that inevitability did he control? More than most. Less than he’d like. A truly insignificant amount in the grand, global, eternal scheme of things. Damned irritating, that. The more one conquered, the more conquest was presented. Where did it end?

Taking his eye patch off, Dorian scrubbed his tired eyes and plunged his hands through his hair, scoring his scalp in frustration before leaning against the windowpane on one outstretched hand.

He’d done this for as long as he could remember. Controlled, dominated, and manipulated all those within his purview. First Newgate. Then Whitechapel, stretching his influence to the entire East End. It was never enough. None of his victories had ever made him feel safe or satiated his incessant need for more. Not manipulating members of Parliament. Not fixing judicial appointments or socially and economically crushing members of the peerage. Not reaching across the Atlantic and dominating Wall Street.

What was left to take? Without a Napoleonic motion of conquest on a corporate and imperial scope, he’d reached a sort of pinnacle.

And he felt as lowly as he ever had.

A blue eye reflected at him from the windowpane. The ghost of a boy long dead, and yet who lived on. Perhaps not in name, or perhaps in name only.

Who knew anymore?

For at this moment Dorian realized that, though he controlled the machinations of so much, he’d lost control of one small, four-chambered organ. One whose existence had been in doubt until now. It wasn’t that the Blackheart of Ben More hadn’t been born with a heart. It was that he’d not been in possession of it for nearly twenty long years.

And he had to abandon it, before the one who held it uncovered the secret buried within.

A tingle at the base of his neck and a quickening of his blood alerted him to her approach before the rustle of her skirts swept into the long solar.

“Dorian?”

A distant growl of thunder answered her. He didn’t.

Of course, Farah was never one to be deterred by brooding, scowling men. Damn her. She moved closer when she should flee. She soothed when she should scold. It had always been thus.

“Dorian, I know you’re cross with me,” she began. “Today was quite a victory, and I’d like to celebrate it as friends.”

She came to a stop behind him. Close. Too close.

“Tell me what I’ve done? What may I do to put things right between us?”

She could stop torturing him in that fucking dress, for one. She could cease smelling like lilac water and springtime. She could cease being the voice in his head, encouraging his repressed humanity to take root.

“You can leave,” Dorian clipped. “Go to your father’s in Hampshire. Reclaim your birthright.”

“Won’t you—come with me?” she ventured.

“I’d rather not.”

Her sharp intake of breath pricked a hole in his own lungs.

“I know that being locked up yesterday must have been rather awful for you.” She changed tactics. “I am sorry that you had to go through that because of something I asked you to do. I want to thank you for saving my friend and I hope that, in time, you’ll forgive me the pain it caused you.”

He didn’t look at her. Couldn’t look at her. Not now. Let her think what she would. If he ignored her for long enough she’d give up and leave.

“If you think about it,” she continued, forcing brightness into her tone. “It all ended rather well as Gemma was able to help us expose Lucy Boggs for who she really is and so—that was helpful—at least.”

Dorian continued staring, the jutting iron latch of the window his focal point. Maybe if he became cold enough. Hard enough. The ice he’d formed would turn him to stone. The vibrating that seemed to begin in his soul and ripple through his veins would freeze and still. He would have some fucking peace. The thoughts that tortured him. The emotions that heated him. The urges that tempted him. They would be encased behind an impenetrable fortress of his own making. He was a stone. He was a glacier. He was—

“Dorian. Please!” Farah seized his arm, tugging at it in an attempt to turn him toward her.

Before he was fully aware of his actions, he spun and seized her wrist, brandishing it between their bodies. “How many times do I have to tell you not to reach for me?”

Farah was staring at where his hand gripped her most delicate wrist with something like awe. Dorian glanced at it, too.

He wasn’t wearing gloves. The first time he’d actually touched her, and it had been in violence.

Fuck.

“I know,” she acknowledged with only a little regret. “I’m sorry. I can’t seem to help myself. It’s like you call to me, like you need me to reach out.” She uncurled her fingers, stretching them toward him.

The anger Dorian had been fighting since his most recent arrest flared anew. “Did you reach out to Morley?” he growled, tossing her wrist away from him.

Her brow furrowed as she rubbed at the skin he’d just released. “What?”

Dorian advanced, fury tightening his chest and lungs, deepening his voice to a snarl. “I know you were alone with him.”

“How do you know that?” she hedged.

His fear flared to all-out suspicion. “How do you think? I have informants everywhere.” But not inside that office. Not behind that closed door. The possibilities had been driving him mad. “Did he put his hands on you? Did you kiss him again?” What had she had to do with Morley to get the chief inspector to release them so quickly? What promises had she made? What demands had she fulfilled?

“No!” Her eyes widened, filled with uncomfortable doubt. “I mean—I hugged him good-bye. I touched his face.”

The picture of even that made him crazed. He searched for a lie in her liquid-silver eyes. “Did you tell him you regretted marrying me? That you wished you’d said yes to him? That you belonged to him?” Dorian felt like a monster. The ice wasn’t there anymore. It hadn’t just melted, a foreign inferno had disintegrated it with alarming swiftness and intensity. Now he was flooded with liquid fire. Boiling with jealousy. Where was his chill? Where was his armor of ice and calm? Why couldn’t he control this tempestuous firestorm of possession and fear and anger and despair?

She should not have reached for him.

“I—I…” Farah stared at him as though he’d become a foreign creature. A monster of darkness and rage and loss.

And lust. He was so fucking hard.

Dorian reached behind him and ripped the golden-tasseled silk rope that held the drape back from the window.

Farah retreated a step, but he seized her before she could turn and run. “You’ll never belong to another, Farah.” He growled, looping the thick cords around each of her thin wrists as she struggled.

“Dorian—”

He jerked her toward him, cutting off her protest with his lips. Letting her feel the true strength of his hands for the first time as they shackled her arms. He could break her. So easily. Her bones were so small, like a bird’s, her skin so soft and translucent. The tiny webs of blue veins on her wrists and throat so delicate in contrast to the thicker ones pulsing beneath his skin.

How could someone so damned fragile hold the power to destroy a monster like him?

“You’re mine!” he snarled against her surrendering mouth. “Only mine.”

He might have been able to stop if she hadn’t kissed him back.

Even while grappling with this new beast of fire she’d provoked, she didn’t know the danger she toyed with. Didn’t know the consequences of her actions.

Dorian fought with the strength of a drowning man, but in the end, the beast won out. He’d always known it would.

Bending her over the window seat, he looped her bound hands over the ancient iron window latch, imprisoning her there.

She let out a whimper as he flung her skirts above her waist, and another as her underthings disintegrated in his hands.

He tested her slit as he freed his erection. A river of moisture drenched his fingers and his desire flared impossibly hotter.

He breached her body with one brutal thrust. Claimed her with the second. Branded her with his third. She cried out only a little. Her feminine muscles bearing down against his invasion for only a moment before drawing him in.

Mine. He drove forward.

Only mine. He seized the soft flesh of her ass, spreading it for his view. Watching his cock spear into her with deep, devastating thrusts.

The sight was too much, and he roared his brutal anger out against the window as pulses of fire poured into her receiving body. Sweat bloomed beneath his clothing, his hair fell into his eyes. His hands clutched at the globes of her ass with bruising force, as agonizing torrents of pleasure burst through him.

Thunder roared back at him from the sky, and the first drops of the coming storm pelted the window. It cooled his fire, but only a little. Once the orgasm passed, Dorian paused only to pull the pins out of her tidy hair, remaining buried deep inside her warm, wet flesh.

He bent over her, the width of his shoulders engulfing the slimness of hers. “I’m like this all the bloody time around you. I hate it. Do you know that? I have no control. I just want to fuck and fuck and fuck until nothing matters anymore. Until we can no longer move our limbs or lift our heads to eat.” He flexed his still-hard cock inside of her. “This is supposed to go away after I come. But it doesn’t. Not with you, wife. My passion is this insatiable perversion.”

Her hair tumbled down her back, falling in a tumultuous curtain of silvery ringlets across her face and onto the red window seat.

“It will destroy you,” he bit out, burying his hand in her hair as he surged forward again. “It will consume you.”

“Dorian—please!” Her voice trembled, her muscles clenched around his shaft.

“I’m sorry,” he gasped as a new blaze ignited on the embers of his previous climax. She would hate him. He already hated himself. But she felt so good, and he’d waited so long. “I’m sorry but I—I can’t stop.”

“No,” she gritted out, her voice low and guttural. “Please—faster.”

He fucked her then. One hand bracing her hip, the other grasping the hair at her scalp, imprisoning her head and exposing her throat as he pistoned into her tight body again and again.

Little pants of demand escaped her. Tight whimpers of pain or pleasure. Then she bucked against him, a reedy cry becoming a shrill one. She twisted and writhed, pulled and arched as her intimate muscles drew another soul-shattering climax from him. He could feel his seed leaving him and pouring into her. He sank deep enough to touch her womb with his own flesh. That such a thing was possible seemed like a miracle. She was a miracle. He’d found her. After all these years.

Mine.

His body and mind, for once, were in agreement. She could never doubt his claim on her. A claim he’d staked seventeen long years ago.

My Fairy.

The words echoed against the window. They both stopped breathing.

A tremor visibly ran down her spine and passed between where they were connected, undulating up his spine and ending at the base of his neck.

“Dougan?” she gasped.