Excerpt of Property of the Viscount by Louisa Crane

Caroline emerged from a long, hot bath to find Rexton
standing before the cheval mirror in his shirtsleeves,
tying his long, voluminous white cravat. The nearly empty
gin bottle stood open on the dressing table next to him.

David Childe, Lord Rexton, was a singularly complicated
man—erudite, yet dissipated, ruthless yet generous, and
indecently beautiful. She wished he didn’t fascinate her.
She very much wished she hadn’t lain in that steamy,
rose-scented bath until her fingertips shriveled,
revisiting in her mind the sight of him relieving his
pent-up lust by his own hand. Never had she imagined that
she might find such a thing arousing, yet the very memory
of it had excited her passions to an almost excruciating
degree. She might have resorted to slaking her lust as
Rexton had slaked his, had she not forgotten to lock the
bathroom door. The prospect of him walking in on her as
she pleasured herself was too mortifying to risk.

He eyed her reflection in the mirror, his gaze lighting
on her damp hair, her fresh-scrubbed face, the gilded
steel slave collar, and her breasts, their contours all
too apparent beneath her thin silken wrapper. He met her
gaze, and for a fleeting moment she saw a glimmer of heat
in his eyes before they went cold and opaque, as if a
shade had been pulled down over them. He’d been much the
same yesterday, except for that brief moment of rapport
in the bathhouse.

“Shall I choose my own clothing, my lord?” she asked.

“Is that not what I told you to—shit!” He yanked at the
knot he’d just made, unwrapped the cravat, and flung it
to the floor. “Shit, shit, shit.”

He’d sworn liberally in her presence since yesterday
afternoon, as if she’d somehow been demoted in his mind
from lady to trollop.

Caroline picked up the cravat, which she folded just to
have something to do while Rexton paced across the room
and back again, the balls of his hands pressed against
his forehead.
“Do you have a headache, my lord?”

“No. And I don’t recall giving you leave to speak.”

Since yesterday, he had demanded that she keep her
counsel even in private.
He sank into a red leather chair, leaned forward on his
elbows, and scrubbed his hands over his face. Perhaps,
she thought, it would lighten his mood if she were to say
what she’d wanted to say to him ever since she woke up
that morning.

“My lord, if I might just—”

“Shut up!” He bounded up from the chair and stalked
toward her until she felt one of the urn-shaped bedposts
at her back. Hovering over her, flushed with fury, he
yelled, “Can’t you just fucking shut up?”

Say it. Just say it. It will help. “I just wanted to
thank you,” she said tremulously, twisting the cravat in
her hands.

He looked at her as if she were mad. “Whatever for?”

“I know that you bought me as a kindness, to keep Lord
Dunhurst from having me.”

“Has it occurred to you that he may have been right when
he accused me of buying you just to spite him?”

She shook her head, which held strangely wobbly on her
neck; her hands were trembling. “You did it for me. You
want people to think you’re cold and uncaring, but you
can’t hide your true nature. You have a good heart, a
compassionate heart.”

“This is all the heart I’ve got,” he said, holding up the
Master’s Pendant that hung around his neck. “It’s all the
heart I want. And if you think otherwise, you’re a fool.”

“Then, I’m a fool, because I know what’s in here.” She
pressed a hand to his chest, a wall of warm, solid flesh
beneath cool linen. “I can feel it beating. It’s the most
real and vital part of you.”

“Can you feel this?” Seizing her hand, he pulled it
downward, molding it to his sex through his trousers.
“This is a damn sight more real and vital than that lump
of meat in my chest.”

Caroline tried to pull away, but his grip was far too
strong. He pressed it harder to his member, which swelled
and stiffened as he rubbed her palm up and down its
length. She turned her head and closed her eyes, trying
not to think about what she was doing, what he was making
her do—and how it was making her feel, to be touching him
this way. The arousal she’d felt in the bath came rushing
back with breathtaking force.

Rexton seized her by the chin and jerked her head around
to face him. She opened her eyes and saw his eyes, black
and hungry and so close that she felt as if the sun had
winked out, turning day into night.

He said, “I’m not what you think I am. The sooner you
learn that, the better off you’ll be.”

He reached for the sash that secured her empire-waist
wrapper.

Bewildered by this sudden turn of events, she
instinctively tried to push him away. Rexton captured her
hands, raised them over her head, and snapped the wrist
cuffs together through one of the handles on the urn.

He untied the sash and whipped open the wrapper, leaving
her naked and exposed. With one hand, he kneaded a
breast; with the other, he unbuttoned his trousers. The
shock of his hot, rough palm on her bare flesh made her
sex throb wildly. Being bound was a relief, just as it
had been during the Inspection of the Slaves. This would
happen with or without her cooperation; she was helpless
to resist.