Page 58 of Outrageous

“Barry wasn’t a deserter—more’s the pity for the poor bastard.” Paul spat a bloody mouthful into the mud between them. “He’d probably still be alive if he’d deserted. But he had some cracked belief that you’d keep your men safe.” He barked out a laugh while throwing a clumsy jab, which Godric avoided with ease, repulsing Paul with a left cross that made him grunt and stagger back.

“He believed that drivel until the day he died. Hell, he probably still believed it as he waited for you.” Paul went after Godric with a flurry of jabs, driving him back. “But you never came.”

Godric’s chest was rising and falling more rapidly, his breathing audible even over the rain. A Season spent drinking and carousing had not been good for his wind.

Luckily, Paul couldn’t seem to stop talking and was almost as breathless. “Orthez, do you recall that, Colonel? Do you know the day I’m talking about, you bastard?” Eva saw it before it happened: Godric losing focus, paying attention to his opponent’s words rather than his actions.

Paul saw it, too. “You were supposed to bring support—but you split your men!” He flung himself at Godric and latched on, clutching him like a fatal lover while he delivered a series of punishing jabs to his side.

“Flynn—break them apart!” Eva yelled, but he was frozen, his expression avid: Paul was exacting revenge for every common man who’d suffered at the hands of an officer.

Eva lunged forward, but Andrew grabbed her upper arm, his slender hand remarkably strong. “Don’t,” he said, his voice sharp over the sound of fists hitting wet flesh. “You’ll only distract him.”

Eva jerked her arm away but knew he was right. What was wrong with Godric? He was standing limply in Paul’s brutal embrace—all but offering himself up for punishment.

“You left him to die!” Paul’s hoarse scream rang out like a war cry. “And you did it all so you could save your whore!”

His words were like spurs to the flank of a horse, and Godric, who’d been swaying limply under the onslaught only an instant earlier, exploded. “She was no whore!” he roared, his left arm a blur, the uppercut connecting solidly with the underside of Paul’s jaw and lifting him off his feet.

Paul stumbled, weaving, and Godric drove him back with a flurry of blows, which the other man absorbed with increasingly staggering steps, until his feet slipped in the mud and he went down on his back. And still Godric didn’t let up.

He dove on top of the prone man, his fists relentless hammers. “She was no whore—she was my wife!”

The words were so garbled and slurred together, it took a moment for Eva to recognize them, her brain slow to put meaning to the words.

His wife?

Chapter 12

It took all Flynn’s men except the corpulent man himself, to pull Godric off the now motionless Paul.

“You stay right here,” Eva ordered coolly, the point of the pistol aimed at Flynn’s substantial middle when he began slipping through the mud toward his wounded minion.

“But, Paul—he needs—”

Eva cut a quick glance at the men still trying to stop Godric’s punishing fists, more than one of them getting clipped in the process. “Paul will be fine,” she said.

Flynn goggled in justified disbelief.

There was no denying that Godric had lost track of himself and given in to his rage. Eva knew the feeling. Of course, she’d never had the option of pummeling a foe to pieces. It looked cathartic.

“Christ, woman—he’s going to kill him!”

“You were happy enough to leave Godric in his clutches a few minutes ago,” she reminded him.

Flynn shifted from foot to foot. “Dammit! He’s my brother-in-law.”

Ah, so that explained the emotional attachment.

“My wife will bloody kill me if something happens to him.”

Eva snorted. “You’re a bit late for that—something has already happened.”

And something’s name is Godric.

Eva smirked at Flynn’s shocked expression. “Don’t fret—look, he’s winding down.” She jerked her chin toward the fracas. It was true; Godric’s fists were no longer connecting to Paul’s body. There were two men on Godric’s left arm—which was truly fearsome to behold, the bulging biceps ribboned with ropy blue veins and smeared with mud and blood—and a man holding onto every other limb: five men it took to hold him down.

Warmth pooled in her belly just looking at his pale, sculpted body, old wounds colored by new bruises and fresh blood. He was beautiful and fierce and deadly, like some Greek warrior of vengeance.