Read Online Ritual Sins by Anne Stuart - Free Book Online Page B

thought you were celibate.”
    He watched her, deliberating how best to handle her. His casual taunts were keeping her off balance—if the others heard him they’d be shocked by their saintly messiah.
    But he was tired of being a saint. And he liked the way she jumped every time he poked at her.
    Besides, the brief, wicked taste of her body had only whetted his appetite. He wasn’t going to be satisfied with a moral and spiritual seduction, as he was with the rest of his followers. He needed total capitulation in her case, and nothing less would do.
    “You don’t really believe that, do you, Rachel?” he said.
    Her reaction was priceless, her eyes widening. “You’re admitting you aren’t the saint everyone here thinks you are?”
    “No one is a saint, particularly those who think they are. What do you think?”
    “I think you’re a con artist who preys on neurotic people and rips them off. I think you seduced my mother, got her to leave all her money to you, and then …” Something, some vestige of restraint, stopped her.
    “And then?” he prodded. “What did I do then? Have her killed?”
    “Did you?”
    He laughed, knowing the sound would irritate her. “You’ve got a hell of an imagination, Rachel.”
    “I thought the Foundation of Being disapproved of profanity,” she shot back.
    “Rules don’t apply to me.”
    “Did you?”
    “Did I what? Seduce your mother? You must not have known Stella very well if you think she needed seduction. Part of her therapy was to confess her character defects, and sexual voraciousness was one of her major ones. She wasn’t the kind to wait for a man to make a move.”
    “So she seduced you?”
    “Why are you so passionately obsessed with my sex life, Rachel?” he asked softly. “Don’t you have one of your own to keep you busy?”
    “We’re not talking about me,” she said. “We’re talking about your sins.”
    “Not a concept we agree on, remember?”
    “You’re not going to deny you’re a con man?”
    “I’m not going to deny anything.”
    “Including that you cheated my mother out of her money?”
    “Your mother’s dead, Rachel. She has no need of money where she’s going.”
    “Then you cheated
me
out of her money!” She was up on her knees, moving closer. All he had to do was sit there, legs outstretched, and lure her closer. It was child’s play. He liked her awake, alive, furious. He wanted to taste her angry mouth when she could fight back. She would, he knew it. But she’d eventually surrender, making it all the sweeter.
    “Why do you think you deserve it?” he asked. “You couldn’t have been very close. She never talked about you. You’d think if there was any warmth or affection between the two of you she would have at least asked for you on her deathbed.”
    “And you’re telling me she didn’t?”
    He could hear the pain in her voice. He’d learned to soothe pain, to heal it, through lies and half lies and even, occasionally, truths. Healing her pain would avail him nothing. Hurting hermore would throw her off balance, make her more vulnerable. Vulnerable to him.
    “Not a word. You must have let her down very badly in this life.”
    For a moment he wondered whether he might have gone too far. He had known Stella Connery very well. He knew the deep, ingrained selfishness that had ruled her life, and he had little doubt that if, in truth, anyone had been abandoned in that tiny, dysfunctional family, it had been the angry young woman staring at him with hurt and denial in her eyes.
    She was shaking, he could see it, so furious she was almost beyond speech. She crossed the space that separated them, on her knees, catching his tunic in strong hands and yanking at him in blind rage. “How dare you pass judgment on me? You don’t know anything about me and my mother. You admit she never said anything about me. What makes you think it was my failing, and not hers? Did she strike you as the maternal type? The sweet, caring