She moved up the stairs, her mind racing with each step. Thoughts of Anthony, thoughts of Ronan, thoughts of Nicholas’s reaction if he knew what she had done…. Thoughts of disappointing others, of bringing harm to her children, of becoming too entangled with a man who had and could only offer her brief pleasure. These were thoughts she had debated before she made love to Ronan, but now they all seemed much louder, more intense.
So intense that she did not notice a person come up behind her, follow her into her chamber. Not until she turned to close her door and found herself face to face with the one man who would only confuse all the issues she was currently pondering.
It was Ronan, himself. If he had ever worn a jacket, he had discarded it before coming to her chamber. His cravat had gone with it and his crisp, white shirt was open at the throat, revealing tanned skin. He had rolled up his sleeves to his elbows, leaving his muscular forearms fascinatingly bare.
She wanted to say something. She knew there was probably some appropriate response to his sudden appearance in her room. But she couldn’t think of it. Even if she could have when she first turned, all words and thoughts and rationality left her when he reached back to shut and lock her door.
Chapter Eight
Rage stared at Lucinda for what felt like an eternity before either of them spoke. He had spent a night dreaming of her and a day fantasizing about her, but now that she stood before him, all he could do was memorize each line of her face and wonder at the fact that she had given herself to him so freely and so sweetly.
“Ronan,” she finally whispered and her hand stirred at her side like she wanted to touch his cheek, but forced herself not to do so. “I-I thought you were out with Nicholas for the day.”
He nodded. “We were meant to be, but I managed to convince Stone that he should enjoy having his wife back at home.”
Lucinda smiled, and though it was a smaller version of the bright expression that always so moved him, his heart still stuttered at it.
“Did it take so much convincing?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No. When it comes to Jane, Stone needs little convincing of anything. I suppose I never understood that until…”
He stopped. No, he could not compare the desire he felt toward Lucinda to the deep love that Jane and Stone felt. It wasn’t fair, not to them and not to himself.
“Well, I wanted to see you,” he said instead. “I needed to see you and be certain that what happened between us last night was real.”
Lucinda gasped and took a step toward him. “That is exactly how I felt all day. There were times when I wondered if I had only dreamed what happened in the garden.”
Once the words left her lips, she immediately blushed and turned her face.
He reached out and cupped her chin, lifting until she had to look at him.
“It was no dream,” he reassured her as he drew her closer. “And I have longed to repeat it today, only this time in a bed where I can take my time and pleasure you as you deserve to be pleasured.”
Her lips parted and a tiny sound escaped them, a combination of a sigh and a groan. Then she reached up, cupped his cheeks and kissed him. Her ardor surprised him for the briefest of moments, but then he surrendered to it, slanting his mouth over hers and drinking in her flavor like a man who had been deprived sustenance for days. It was as good an analogy as any, for he felt starved for her, hungry and out of control.
If she sensed that animal nature in him, though, she didn’t seem to mind. She returned his kiss with equal passion, intense desperation that gave him a sense of primal male pride. He had done this to her. He had made her needy and weak. And he could pleasure her until she wept and begged and shattered with relief and release.
He spun her around until he pressed her back to the door and broke the kiss. He stared deeply into her eyes as he ground against her, letting her feel the hard ridge of his erection, tormenting himself even as she gurgled out an incoherent sound of needy desire. Holding her steady with his hip, he reached up and popped the little buttons that ran along the front of her gown. They fell open and he tugged, pulling her dress away in one sweep and leaving her only in her chemise.
Last night they hadn’t had time, he’d had to rush to keep their clandestine activities from being discovered. This afternoon they had hours. Stone had been as anxious to reach Jane as Rage was to find Lucinda. He doubted either couple would find a reason to seek out the other.
He intended to take full, wicked advantage of that privacy.
He stepped back and simply stared at her, drinking in her loveliness as she leaned against the door and drew in short breath after breath.
“Why do you look at me that way?” she whispered.
He shook his head. “Because I’ve never been with a woman so beautiful, so desirable. So seductive.”
Her cheeks tinged pink. “I do not try to be seductive, I wouldn’t know how.”
He grinned as he reached out to take her hand. “And that is why it drives me wild. You seduce me by simply standing there. By saying my name.”
Her lips parted and then she whispered, “Ronan.”
He squeezed his eyes shut. How could she not know what that sound meant to him? Not his nickname, not his formal name… but his real name had hardly been spoken and the last people who had called him by it had done so with no kindness. But Lucinda whispered it and he wanted to be Ronan. Not Rage the boxer, not Mr. Riley the estate manager… but Ronan, a man he hardly knew, but who could make a woman like Lucinda Stoneworth desire him.
“Ronan,” she repeated, this time stronger.
He opened his eyes and watched as her trembling hand reached for him. She cupped his cheek gently before she drew him down and kissed him. Rage dragged her toward him, holding her against him as their mouths merged in a preview of what their bodies would soon do.
It was Lucinda who pulled away and for a brief moment Rage was filled with worry that she would tell him they couldn’t do this again. But then she smiled. She reached out to take his hand and guided him through her sitting room and into her bedroom. She pushed the secondary door shut behind them with a slight nudge of her shoulder and continued on to the bed. There she stopped and looked up at him with wide eyes.
“May I still have whatever I desire?” she asked.
Rage nodded slowly, mesmerized by her expression, a combination of nervousness and bold sensuality.
“Good.”
She smiled and then lifted her trembling fingers to the opening in his shirt. She let her knuckles brush his bare skin and they let out a sigh in unison. Her smile grew, mischievous and tempting, before she found the first button on his shirt and slipped it free. With each button, the rate of her breath increased and her eyes grew softer with desire and surrender.
It took everything in Rage not to throw her on the bed, lift the edge of her flimsy chemise and simply rut with her like an animal. He wanted to enjoy her seduction, and to enjoy seducing her in return. So he clenched his fists at his sides and allowed her to slip her hands beneath his shirt and slide it away from his shoulders.
She gasped and stepped away from him to stare.
“The moonlight did not do you justice,” she whispered as she lifted her gaze to his.
Rage smiled, though he came as close to blushing as he had in his entire life. Her stare was focused that it seemed she could see right through him to anything he wanted to hide.
But he forgot that discomfort when she edged closer and pressed her soft lips to his chest. Rage groaned and his fingers slipped into her hair, scattering pins across the floor at her feet as she gently suckled and tasted his bare flesh.
Lucinda could only go by instinct when it came to temptation. By what she liked, how she wanted to be touched. But judging by Ronan’s low moans and how his fingers fisted in her hair, she was on the correct path to pleasuring him. Her lips closed over one flat nipple and he swore.
She smiled against his flesh. So, she was stealing his control. Good. Aft
er all, he had more than done the same to her the night before.
He fisted her hair in his palm and very gently tilted her face up toward him.
“Be very careful, my lady,” he whispered, his tone rough and low. “You will soon pass a point of no return.”
A wicked thrill rushed through Lucinda. Perhaps he had meant that statement as a warning, but she took it as a challenge. How far could she go before his control would snap and he would just… take her? How much could she make him squirm as he fought to keep himself in check?
“You make that sound like a bad thing,” she said with a light laugh as she took the hand she had rested on his bare chest and began a soft, teasing trail down his stomach until she reached the waistband of his trousers.
His teeth ground as she slipped her fingers back and forth along the spot where fabric met flesh, then she slowly slid lower until she felt the ridge of his erection through the fine wool of his pants.
“Lucinda,” he managed past clenched teeth.
“So this is the point of no return?” she teased, full of disbelief at her own boldness. She cupped him, trembling at his hardness, then slid her fist from the base of his member to the head. “Or this?”
“Enough,” he growled before he swept her from her feet and deposited her on the bed.
In one smooth motion, he stripped from his trousers and then his heavy, hard body was on her, his mouth taking hers with hungry, wild passion that stole her breath, her words, her thoughts, her everything. She arched beneath him, rubbing her still cloth-covered breasts against his hard chest, clinging to his shoulders as she spiraled further and further away from anything resembling control or calm.
And then his hand was on her outer thigh, massaging her tender flesh, parting her legs with just the slightest encouragement. She felt the hard length of him at her entrance and held her breath as she waited for him to slam inside of her and set her free from a torment of her own making.
But he didn’t claim with violence or speed. Instead, he pulled away from her, watching her face as he glided into a perfect joining, inch by inch, slow and steady. Lucinda cried out as her body adjusted around his thickness, and lifted her hips to force him to fit himself into her completely, but he would not be forced or moved.
He chuckled, a low sound that tingled in her ears and made her nipples harden against the soft cotton fabric of her chemise.
“You started this game, Lucinda,” he murmured. “You toyed and teased and now you pay.”
Her eyes widened as she realized what a dangerous position she was truly in. She had played with fire, seduced with a master of seduction. And his revenge was clearly to be this slow, heated pleasure that tore through her veins and made her long to beg for more… more of him, more of this, more feeling.
“Please…” she began and her breath caught when he eased even further into her waiting body.
He laughed again and his bright blue eyes danced. “Very nice. I like Lucinda who begs. Say it again.”
She swallowed hard and he gently, slowly, swirled his hips. Pure pleasure rocked her entire body with just that small motion and the word he had demanded was torn from her lips.
“Please!”
“Interesting,” he drawled as he pressed his palms into the bed on either side of her head and lifted himself slightly. “I am learning so much about you, Lucinda. And trust that I am storing that knowledge away to use against you.”
He arched into her again and Lucinda cried out a second time. But of course he stilled, and her aching body burned for him to continue.
“You are terrible,” she gasped with a smile of her own. “Too cruel.”
“Indeed,” he said before he leaned down to kiss her mouth far too chastely for her taste. “Did no one tell you that I am a very…” he punctuated the word with another kiss. “…bad…” again he kissed her “…man?”
Despite her trembling body, Lucinda laughed. “A villain of the truest order. And you hold all but my life in your hands. So how may I bargain to obtain what I desire… what I need?”
Rage arched a brow. This playful Lucinda, seductive and spirited, was a new side to her and he liked it, probably more than he should have. It also drove him to keep her this way, to never let her frown or her tears return.
And that he could not promise, even if she wanted such a thing.
But he had her now.
“You wish to bargain with me?” he teased. “To obtain this?”
He punctuated the question with another painfully gentle thrust. Her body clenched around him like a hot vice and his cock already felt close to explosion from pleasure. But he liked tormenting her and teasing her and taking his time with her.
“God, yes,” she gasped as she arched into him.
He smiled. “There are so many interesting demands I could make, but you are too pretty to torture, especially since I, in turn, torture myself with every moment I do not move within you. So I will ask one boon of you. Ask me very nicely.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “All this and all you want is to hear me ask you… again… to make me yours?”
He nodded. When she put it like that, yes, that was exactly what he wanted her to ask of him.
“Please, Ronan,” She emphasized his name and he shuddered. “Please make me yours. Claim me now. Please.”
He could have responded, kept teasing her, told her to phrase her plea a little differently, but there was something so pure in her request, so real that he couldn’t hold back anymore. He drew back and then drove into her, not hard but steadily. She quivered beneath him as he took her, rising to meet his every thrust, clinging to his shoulders as he claimed her body with each slippery stroke.
Lucinda never took her eyes from his face and he could see the strain in her delicate throat, in the flush of her cheeks. She was close to the brink of shattering with pleasure. To help her along in her crisis, he began a few short grinding thrusts, letting his pelvis stroke her clit even as he moved deep within her.
He felt her orgasm before she let out the keening cry that accompanied it. Her entire body tensed, quivers massaging his cock with delicious tiny earthquakes. She dug her fingers into his back, stiffening up into his chest as tears of relief and release rolled down her hot, pink cheeks.
Her crisis cued his own and with a grunt, he withdrew and spent with his own primal cry that merged like music with hers.
When their panting breaths had blended to one, Lucinda wrapped her arms around him and pulled him close to her for a kiss that was filled with sleepy, satisfied passion and warmth. He melted into it and into her as he rolled to his side and tucked her against him on the bed.
For a long time, they were both silent and Rage let his eyes come closed so he could simply enjoy this moment of peace and pleasure. They had been so few and far between in his life that they still shocked him when they occurred. He glanced down at the woman in his arms and wondered for a fleeting moment how many more of these moments they could share if only…
Luckily she cut off that dangerous thought by letting go a soft sigh. She lifted her hand to his chest and gently smoothed her fingers along his pectoral muscle. That light touch was enough to begin his blood pumping again.
“I have heard of tattoos before,” she said softly and she moved her fingers from his chest to his exposed right arm where she traced the character there. “But I’ve never seen one before. Does it have some significance?”
Rage nodded as he watched her fingers glide across his marked skin. “Stone and I trained with a man from the Orient when we fought in the Underground. He was from China and this is a character from their language.”
“A letter?” Lucinda asked as she slid her hand back to his chest.
“No. Their language is different from ours. The characters are more like words themselves.”
She glanced up at him. “And what does this one mean?”
“It means anger.” He swallowed. “Rage.”
She shivered and he was fairly certain th
at the reaction had nothing to do with pleasure this time. A genteel lady was not exposed to that kind of intense emotion very often, or at least she should not be. The concept of that kind of passionate fury that was the very definition of his name could very well be too overwhelming to her. He expected her to turn away, but instead she rolled over on her stomach and leaned her arms on his chest. She stared at him.
“May I ask you a question?”
He laughed as he looked down at their naked and intertwined bodies. “I am surprised you must ask, we have shared a great deal by now.”
She shrugged. “Physically, but my question is personal. And you may not feel comfortable in answering it, even if you have known my body as well as the most intimate of…” She blushed. “…friends would.”
He hesitated. Personal questions had never been comfortable for him. Even Stone, who had been his best friend for years did not pry too deeply into his private life.
“Ask your question,” he finally said, though he let his gaze slip from her face. “And I will decide if I wish to answer it.”
“That is fair.” She tilted her head. “I have known you… or at least known of you… for many years. I have never seen you in a ‘rage’ and yet that emotion is how you identified yourself as a fighter, as a man… you even felt so strongly that you permanently marked it on your skin. How did you come to be called Rage?”
Rage stared at her. Over the years, he had been with many women, but he had never told any of his lovers about his past. That was too close, too personal. His life was private, closed off from those around him. And it certainly wasn’t for the ears of a lady, but looking at her he almost wanted to reveal the truth to her. To say the things he had kept in his heart for years.
“You may be offended by what you hear,” he warned her. “And perhaps you will never want to touch me again. Perhaps you will be sorry you did so in the first place.”
She stared at him in wonder, then leaned up on her arms to bring herself closer.
“Is that what you think of me, Ronan Riley?” She shook her head. “I am not so fragile a flower as you believe. I want to know you because I have touched you, because I have every intention of doing the very same thing again and again. If you don’t want to tell me about your past, I wouldn’t dream of pressing you to do so. But don’t hide your thoughts because you think me too weak to handle them. I wouldn’t have asked if I thought I could not.”
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