The Deadliest Sin

by Caroline Richards

  She smiled at him then, the lushness of her lips widening when he sucked deeply on her nipples, opening his mouth and devouring as much of them as he could. She writhed beneath him, lost, transported and he paused only to tell her, “You are incredible, Julia. More than I could ever imagine.” He alternated between licking and massaging. She turned her body toward him, her lips trailing his shoulder before she gave him a little bite, and then tensed to come in several small orgasms.

  The shudders of ecstasy barely subsided when she breathed soft, unclear murmurs into his chest. Urgently, he placed pillows beneath her to raise her to an angle to allow deeper penetration. Her nether lips were swollen and slick but the gentle urging of her hips told him what she wanted. He drew her legs apart and took her swiftly, unable to stop himself.

  Her eyes flew open. He was rough and her reaction was instinctive. She used her inner muscles, milking him, squeezing every fiber to cling to him, easing off and on again. He caught her around the waist and lifted her high against him until her breasts dangled inches from his mouth. He captured one swollen nipple between his teeth, and drew it slowly against the roughness of his tongue, again and again. Startled, she mimicked his movements, rising and falling on his hardness, finding her own rhythm, until wordlessly they came together just as she collapsed upon his chest.

  The night continued, an endless, mindless fog of sensuality. Exhilarated, drained, stunned, and horrified by their mutual, seemingly insatiable need, they finally slept.

  Bright sunlight stung Julia’s closed eyes. Reluctant to face the day, she burrowed her head into the pillows, her body entangled in bed linens and lingering erotic dreams. She felt, rather than knew, she was by herself, the cavernous space in the bed hers alone.

  Her body ached in places she’d barely known existed. Heat rushed from her cheeks to her toes when she thought of the previous hours. The last thing she’d remembered was Strathmore bringing a moistened cloth to the bed, sponging between her thighs, slowly and sensuously, until the cloth was tossed aside and she felt his skin against hers again, heard their breaths, absorbed the heat of their bodies melding, becoming one.

  She turned her cheek on the pillow and smoothed her palm over the depression in the cotton beside her, inhaling Strathmore’s elusive scent of forest, smoke, and desert. The cotton was cool, as though he had left her some time ago, igniting a small flame of anxiety in her chest which she tamped down, wanting to have those moments to savor her newfound discoveries.

  She was not ashamed, not humiliated, not in the least discomfited by what she had discovered about herself. She had wanted to make love with Strathmore, and had known it from the first. Anything more complicated did not have room in her thoughts or emotions while she lay satiated in the tangled linens.

  Julia rolled over on her back, staring at the low-burning lamp on the bedside table and listened to a clock strike somewhere in the town house. Slipping from the bed, she gave only a passing thought to the stiffness in her limbs, the swollen tenderness of her lips and the streak of blood left behind on the sheets. She felt set free, unshackled as a captive released from prison, with a newfound confidence that allowed her to believe anything was possible. With Strathmore at her side, Montagu Faron would have little chance.

  Behind the patterned screen sat a fresh tub of warm water and she eased into it with a grateful sigh, her body flushed with lingering pleasure. Soaping herself slowly, running the washcloth over her legs and the rapidly healing wound on her calf, she refused to let the bone-wrenching bliss melt away. After the water had cooled to the point that her skin began to pucker, she rose from the tub as though reborn, wrapping a linen towel around herself as a knock sounded.

  “Strathmore?” A welcome smile curved her lips as she curled onto a divan in the corner of the bedchamber, relaxing against the silken pillows. The door opened and she allowed her eyes to drink in the man who was her lover. The thought brought a flush to her cheeks as she watched him walk with his usual economic grace to stand by the bed.

  “I would love to move as beautifully as you,” she said with simple honesty, aware of her own native awkwardness, her propensity to bump into things. Fully dressed and shaved, he paid little attention to the tumbled sheets or the wild disarray of her hair.

  He shook his head at her words. “It’s all your imaginings, Julia, how you persist in seeing yourself. You are an elegant creature if you just admitted it.” His smiled faintly, almost reluctantly. She had expected some awkwardness but there was a studied neutrality in his voice, an abrupt contrast to the uncontrolled murmurs and hot words of the night spent in his arms. His expression was closed to her and she was struck anew at how broad and tall he seemed against the sunlit windows. In his customarily plain black trousers, white shirt and jacket, sans cravat, he seemed ready to back out of the room at the first opportunity. His arms hung at his sides, not reaching for her as she so desperately wanted him to do. The reality of the situation hit her with a staggering finality. She had made love with that incredible man throughout the night, and everything and nothing had changed.

  She pushed herself up and glanced around the sumptuousness of the room, the heavy woods and rich fabrics bathed in sunlight. Resisting the urge to hold out her hand to him, she instead tightened the towel around her breasts. Her eyes sought his only to find the customary gray shadows keeping her from going any further. He was as distant and dangerous as he had ever been.

  That was their reality, after all. She had pushed it from her mind again and again over the past wondrous and terrifying hours and had given no thought to tomorrow, to her aunt and sister or to Faron. A flame of anxiety ignited in her chest, the embers burning higher.

  “We have little time to spare,” he began, the expression in his voice telling her things she didn’t want to know. “It’s imperative we discuss certain matters.”

  Frowning at the hollowness of his voice, Julia crossed her arms over her chest. She had been naked in his arms, but at that moment, she was overwhelmed by a feeling of self-consciousness, of being an actor who was fumbling for her lines in a play.

  She cleared her throat, a bid for honesty making her brave. “The night may be over but I meant what I said last evening, Strathmore. I was not lying when I said that I wanted”—she paused awkwardly with a covert glance at the bed—“that I wanted this.”

  “I believe you.”

  “Then I don’t understand.”

  “There is nothing to understand other than that you are getting what you wanted. You are going home. To Montfort.”

  Her fingers traced circular patterns on the towel gripped in her hand. “I thought we’d agreed that what happened last night has nothing to do with this situation involving Faron.” His silence chilled her blood. “Is that not what we agreed?” she asked again.

  “Circumstances dictate that you return home where you will be safe.”

  She watched him in the strong sunlight, his face devoid of the passion that had etched his features only hours before. “How have the circumstances changed? Yesterday, you wanted me to remain hidden, to stay here at the town house. As a result, I am staying with you. And pursuing Faron, as we agreed.”

  “We agreed on no such thing.”

  He strode to the chair where her cambric shift lay spread like a ghost against the upholstery. His strong fingers wrapped around the fabric and he studied the cloth caught in his hand as though trying to divine some truth from its delicate, feminine pattern.

  It took everything Julia had not to run to him, to press those same hands against her flesh.

  A dark cloud hovered in the room, her instincts clamoring for her attention. “You learned something last night, before we…before we…” She tried bravely, attempting to actually have a conversation rather than a stilted, cold exchange. “We did not have a chance to discuss your meeting with Lowther.” Suspicion reared its nasty head. “That was deliberate on your part, I’m beginning to suspect.”

  His gaze shot to hers, then narrowed. “
The faster you get dressed, the faster we can get you home.” He tossed the gossamer garment back in the chair.

  A knife’s thrust would have hurt less. Julia knew she had decided to live for just one night in his arms, and she had expected nothing from him but honesty, however brutal. But she recognized equivocation when she saw it, even when it emanated from a master such as Strathmore. Consumed with the stirrings of wounded pride mixed with simmering anger, she slipped from the divan, chin held high.

  “What are you not telling me?” she demanded. “You are obviously reacting to something that occurred or that you learned at your meeting with Lowther. Do not expect me to believe that you gleaned nothing from the rendezvous.”

  All but naked, she felt her breasts sway with every motion under the thin linen towel and she knew a surge of confidence when his gaze fastened upon her and his jaw tightened. She paused deliberately, one breast just brushing his arm.

  “We haven’t time at the moment. It’s imperative we get you back to Montfort.”

  “Time was not of the essence last evening, you’ll recall,” she said, holding out her hand for her shift. He thrust the undergarment at her without a reply and watched for several moments while she deftly slipped it over her head, let the towel drop to her waist, and began securing the hooks over her breasts. She stared angrily at his stone-hard profile outlined against the sunlight pouring in from the windows.

  He ignored the challenge and flipped his pocket watch open, glanced at it, and stuffed it back into his pocket. He turned toward her. “Last night, Julia, has nothing to do with this morning.”

  “Clearly,” she said, retreating a step and casting about the room for the rest of her clothing. “There is something you are not telling me.”

  “It can wait.”

  “I don’t think so,” she said stubbornly despite the cold despair that filled her stomach. “Let us pretend, that last evening never happened and let us continue as we left off—as we both promised to do. In the spirit of such compromise”—she swallowed hard—“I expect you to tell me what I deserve to know. After all, this is as much about my family as it is about you and your blasted ambition.”

  Her hands shook as she finished closing the last hook on her bodice. She spied her underskirts on the floor next to the oak commode. She pulled on the skirt, let the linen towel fall to the floor, forcing back unchecked anger. Her attempts at modesty were baffling, after what the two of them had done and shared together. Nonetheless, she felt as though she was donning armor. Pulling her dress hanging on the screen, over her underskirts, she struggled to knit the bodice together with its tiny and suddenly frustrating hooks and eyes.

  When she turned to face him, fully clothed, she had difficulty warding off the chill emanating from his gaze. “You believe you deserve to know,” he said, “but what are you not telling me, Julia? Holding back about Faron at this moment is a very dangerous thing.”

  She sighed, not attempting to hide her impatience. “Why do you always turn the tables when I ask a question of you? There is nothing to tell. I have nothing more to say about the matter.”

  “You place yourself and your family in grave danger with your willfulness. You are too strong for your own good.” He met her swift glance with one of his own. “What I want from Faron, as you are quick to remind me, has to do with ambition, nothing more. But what you want from Faron has, I sense, deeper implications.”

  Though he hadn’t moved from the center of the room, Julia felt a great need to inch away from him, to escape the probing tone in the gravel of his voice. Yet her feet remained rooted by the dressing screen, her body freighted by some invisible force he cast about her. Or perhaps some part of her wished to remain in the bedchamber, beside him, to shut out the past and present and never have to hear, or live with, the truth.

  “You do not believe a woman can be as strong as a man?” she asked.

  “Stronger.” For a moment, the specter of his mother hovered in the air between them.

  “Then why do you persist in badgering me about this matter, insisting that I am hiding some dark secret?”

  “Aren’t you?” The words were bleak. “You’ve a deep sadness in your eyes, a vulnerability that lifts only when you speak of your work or your sister and aunt. It’s that vulnerability, masquerading as strength, that keeps you from discovering what lies behind the torment Faron seeks to unleash upon your family. Do you not see that?”

  She turned away from him before she could give any visible sign that his statement had struck home. One hand gripped the dressing screen as she felt the familiar tightening in her throat, cutting off a torrent of emotion. She looked down at the floor, the rug’s exotic pattern swimming before her eyes. Silence, as always, was her best refuge.

  One hand closed over hers on the dressing screen while the other arm snaked around her waist. His closeness was exhilarating and terrifying at the same time, a force she could not negate.

  His voice was so close to her ear that she shuddered. “What happened to you, Julia, so many years ago before you first came to live with Meredith? I have to know. How else can I make it right for you? How else can I protect you from Faron?”

  She wanted to say nothing and everything. But her lips refused to move even though a part of her yearned to open her heart and memories to the man, to confide the depth of the darkness stalking her soul.

  “You may trust me, Julia. I can do this for you.” The ferns in the carpet swam as though under water and she tasted salt on her lips. She flinched when he pressed a linen handkerchief to the wetness of her cheek.

  She took it from his hands, inhaling his scent from the smooth linen before she tightened her lips against the emotion that threatened to drown her. She saw the faint glimmer of pain in his own eyes, and her heart twisted in response. The words would still not come but something inside her cracked open, her hand beneath his relaxing its relentless grip on the screen.

  Staring at him silently, she took in the starkness of his features, letting her body communicate all she wanted to say.

  “If it is honesty you want,” he said slowly, retrenching, trying to capture some remnants of the intimacy they had shared in the bed behind them, “then I shall tell you something that lies buried deep within me.” He paused before adding, “So much of who we are begins in childhood.”

  Julia swayed toward him, wanting desperately to hear a truth, any truth, from this man, to plumb his soul and in some way bind him closer to her. Her eyes burned fiercely, mutely urging him on.

  “You caught a glimpse of my mother,” he said with a levity that sounded strained. “I’m sure once was enough to discern there is little love or respect lost between us.” His eyes drifted over her head as though looking into a past that was long dead to him. “Where and why the enmity began, I couldn’t say. It doesn’t seem natural, a mother rejecting a child, even in the cold aristocratic circles my parents inhabited. Admittedly, I was a wild child, difficult and recalcitrant compared to my biddable older brother, Oliver, and it seemed as though my mother always detested me, could hardly bear the sight of my face for more than a moment”—he smiled grimly—“which, of course, did nothing but encourage my bad behavior.”

  Julia parted her lips, her eyes following his every expression.

  “It became clear to me at a young age that my mother thought nothing of receiving her lovers at Dunedin, a never ending parade she flaunted in front of my father, a quiet, intellectual man several decades her senior, who preferred his books and horses over the London life my mother embraced with hedonistic abandon. Of course, she also loved the comforts and security provided by his title and wealth but resented his seeming indifference to her increasingly flagrant indiscretions.”

  Strathmore dropped his hand from Julia’s, relinquishing her waist, before he continued. “One evening, my mother appeared in the schoolroom, and asked me to summon my father and to accompany him to her chambers in the west wing of the house. I can remember the aroma of her heavy perfume, the
softness of her arms as she pulled me toward her in a rare display of affection. I immediately ran to my father’s study and with the enthusiasm only a child can generate, dragged him to her rooms.”

  Julia almost asked him to stop, curling her hands into fists at her sides.

  “She was in bed with another man,” Strathmore said starkly. “I can’t remember what happened immediately afterward, as I ran from the scene to cower in the nursery. In the morning, when I arose, I bolted down to my father’s study, where I found him. He had placed a gun to his head, neatly and precisely blowing his brains over the books and papers on his desk.

  Julia placed a tentative hand on his chest, feeling the tears burning in her eyes. His hand trapped her, though his gaze remained averted.

  “I was consumed with hatred—hatred for my mother and hatred at the weakness of my father. I was promptly shipped off to Shrewsbury, England’s strictest school for boys, most of whose students were considered well beyond reform. I saw my mother only once during the next five years. My interest in geography and the sciences took me away from the chaos that was the Dunedin family life. After awhile, I divorced myself from my past entirely, leaving Oxford after only two years to explore the reaches of the world furthest from my family. At twenty-one, I was fortunate to benefit from a trust that has supported my explorations.”

  Julia wished she could hold him closer and give him the comfort he needed.

  As though reading her thoughts, he tipped her chin up. Warm fingers curled around her nape and his gaze burned into hers. “Don’t feel sorry for me, Julia. That’s not the reason I told you this story. Children in factories, in slums, and in indentured service or worse, both in England and abroad, face far harsher realities than I ever did. My childhood was positively ideal in comparison. What I simply want to demonstrate is how our earliest experiences shape our later lives and why, in my case, my work is everything to me, like a fever in my blood. There can be nothing else. It is something that took me years to understand. I am not prepared to lose it now.”