cut. Wetness smeared over her skin, over her madly flitting pulse.
His blood.
“That was foolish, Lady Calliope,” he snarled.
He was right, she realized. She was astride his lap, and his relentless hold on her brought their faces near. He was a handsome devil. She could not deny it; there was a reason why the Earl of Sinclair was better known as Sin.
Because he was the personification of it.
“Unhand me,” she demanded with a bravado she did not feel.
He had all the control.
“I think I like you here, my lady.” His lip curled. “How does it feel to be at my mercy? I daresay you do not like it.”
His breath was hot. She felt it on her lips. It was also scented with spirits.
“Are you drunk, Lord Sinclair?” she asked instead of answering his question.
His appetite for pleasure was renowned. Excess in all forms. Little wonder the former Lady Sinclair had sought solace in Alfred. Her brother had been kind and good. Everything this beautiful, cruel waste of flesh was not.
“Far too sober,” he said, his brown gaze so dark it was almost obsidian. “Am I going to have to tie you up? I had not wanted to, but admittedly, there is something so very pleasing about the thought of your wrists and ankles bound. About making you as helpless as you sought to make me.”
She tugged at her wrists, struggling to free herself without any effect. He was immobile. “I do not know what lunacy you are spouting. I did not write those memoirs.”
“Your denials are as useless as your attempts at escape.” His voice was low, his expression an impenetrable mask. “I was inside your chamber. I saw the drafts on your writing desk.”
How had he gotten into her chamber? Was he bluffing? How did he know she had a writing desk? Or that it was where she kept her drafts of Confessions of a Sinful Earl?
The questions were endless. Too many for her brain to work through.
Most immediate was the pressing need for escape. She knew where men were most vulnerable. She moved quickly, attempting to strike him in the groin with her knee.
But he anticipated her movements, and steered her away. Her knee connected with his inner thigh instead.
“Release me, you lunatic!” she cried out, thrashing against him wildly.
Her fear was very real now, a bitter, metallic taste in her mouth. Her heart pounded. When he had first invaded her carriage, she had been startled, but when he had blithely announced his intention to abduct her, and when the carriage had not slowed when she had demanded Lewis bring them to a halt, and when Lord Sinclair had removed that wicked, gleaming blade, her calm had fled.
With a suddenness that stole her breath, the earl moved them both, whipping her around so she was on the bench and he straddled her lap. He pinned her there with the strength of his big body.
“I think we both know which of us is the lunatic in this carriage, madam, and it damned well is not me,” he growled as he reached into his coat and extracted a cord.
Dear God. What did he intend to do?
She shrank back into the squabs and renewed her efforts to escape him. But it was fruitless. She was out of breath, outmatched by Sinclair in strength. She could not fight him off her. He looped the cord around her wrists and knotted it with a haste that suggested the action was familiar to him.
Her wrists were bound.
“You cannot abduct me,” she told him, hating herself for the tremble in her voice.
He bared his teeth, looking like nothing so much as a lion she had once seen in a menagerie. “I already did.”
Fear ricocheted through her. Sinclair was serious. He was carting her off somewhere and for some nefarious purpose she could only guess at. Strike that—for a nefarious purpose she had no wish to guess at.
“You are mad,” she gasped, still struggling beneath his weight, desperate to free herself.
A feat which was becoming less and less likely by the moment.
“I am perfectly lucid,” he sneered. “Which is far more than I can say for you, Lady Calliope. Your actions have certainly been those of a madwoman. What did you hope to accomplish by blackening my name and filling pages with vicious lies about me? Did it entertain you? Were you bored in your castle, princess?”
He spat the last as if it were an epithet.
The vitriol emanating from him was as potent as it was lethal.