Tempt the Devil

by Anna Campbell

  She’d felt powerful when she put on the magnificent ruby collar. She’d even felt powerful when she chose to kneel to him. After all, the decision was hers, and her obeisance reclaimed who she was. A proud woman wholly separate from this lover who refused to let her follow the tired, safe patterns of her existence.

  “Last night—” She stopped. Discussing the glories of last night wasn’t the best tactic to shore up her defenses.

  For one blazing moment he met her eyes. Turmoil and determination darkened the gray. Then he sighed and studied the richly colored Turkish carpet at his feet as if it held the answer to the world’s deepest questions.

  Her fingers tightened convulsively around the tall mahogany column. “The arrangement was that I publicly acknowledged you as my master.”

  “No, it wasn’t.” He made a slashing gesture with one hand and sent her a quelling glare. For the first time, his voice held a thread of temper. “Dear God, I can’t remember the terms of that damned bet. I doubt we even got to specifics. I can’t remember and I don’t care. I certainly never demanded you on your knees in front of half bloody London. The collar was enough. More than enough.”

  “You wanted my surrender,” she said stubbornly.

  All day she’d berated herself for becoming so fatally vulnerable to a man. She knew men in all their selfishness and arrogance and weakness and unthinking cruelty. Erith at base was just the same as any other male.

  She had spent every waking hour steeling herself against him.

  Then he’d come to collect her for Perry’s party. Without a peep of resistance, she’d immediately fallen prey to his attraction.

  “Devil take it, stop talking about surrender,” Erith said. “This isn’t a war between two feudal empires. It’s a love affair, for pity’s sake. I wanted the woman I desired to desire me. I wanted you to acknowledge the attraction between us. I wanted you to enjoy sex. Private goals, all of them.”

  She flung away from the bed and resumed her pacing, trying to outrun what he said. “And what’s all this nonsense about dragging me to Vienna? Are you mad?”

  “It seems the obvious solution.” His brief flash of anger had vanished as quickly as it appeared. “Especially after last night.”

  His calmness only fed her resentment. “Last night means nothing! We had a bargain which you’re only too ready to disregard when it doesn’t suit you. I’m your mistress until you leave England. That’s what we agreed before we embarked on this disaster of a liaison.”

  “It’s not a disaster.” He was so still, he could have been made of stone. “It’s a miracle.”

  With an ominous feeling tightening her chest, she came to quivering rest on the opposite side of the room. Her heart galloped with premonitory fear. Cold sweat prickled at her nape.

  His expression became even graver. “And everything changed when I fell in love with you.”

  Erith heard his words crash into the taut, combative silence. Olivia flinched as though he’d struck her. All trace of color fled her face so her remarkable bone structure seemed carved from cold marble.

  “No…” she breathed in horror. “No, you can’t. You don’t mean it.”

  Sharp pain stabbed his gut at her immediate denial. It had been so devilish hard to say the words.

  She sidled away as though his love were a contagious disease. Only bumping into the wall behind her broke her retreat. She flattened her palms against the elegant blue and yellow stripes of the wallpaper.

  “Of course I mean it.” He kept his voice soft. He didn’t want to frighten her further.

  Because fear was her principal response.

  What the hell else had he imagined? That difficult, proud Olivia would throw herself into his arms with joyful abandon and tell him that she loved him back, that she wanted to stay with him forever?

  Not in any real world he lived in.

  In spite of his earlier avowal, he knew that this was indeed war between them. He’d just fired the first shot over her lines. He couldn’t expect her to raise the white flag before any casualties had fallen.

  Because he had no doubt she meant to fight him on this, fight as she’d never fought before.

  Which didn’t prevent her virulent rejection from making him feel like she’d stamped his heart to gory shreds beneath her heel.

  Stubbornly, he refused to retract his declaration. He’d acknowledged his feelings unwillingly and painfully. He’d loved her well before he recognized the fact. After so many years running from any hint of powerful emotion, that wasn’t surprising.

  As he’d sat alone in the salon yesterday, waiting for Olivia to come home, before she tied him up like an animal, he’d reluctantly faced a number of inconvenient realities. Including the stark truth that he was hopelessly in love with his mistress.

  Ever since he’d met Olivia, she’d created an unprecedented storm in his life. An agitated melee of reactions he hadn’t suffered in years.

  Desire. Jealousy. Anguish. Anger. Possessiveness. Tenderness. Passion. Joy.

  Only love explained his extreme emotion during his precipitate ride to Kent. And after. When he’d fruitlessly burned to kill her tormenters. When he’d have taken every ounce of her pain on himself if it gave her one moment’s ease.

  Erith wasn’t a stupid man. And he’d been in love before. He knew what this soul-deep level of turmoil signified.

  Nothing but love could bring him to a pass where he was willing to surrender his dominance in the bedroom.

  Nothing but love could make him open his vulnerable heart to her now.

  She’d changed him forever. She’d revived a dead man, shown him the world still held hope and possibility.

  He wanted her to become part of his life. Not just until July. Always.

  “You love me, you say?” Her lips twisted in a cynical smile, but the corners of her mouth quivered. “I’ve heard those words so often. Many men have imagined themselves in love with me.”

  “That doesn’t change how I feel.” Any anger at her jeering died when he saw how she trembled. The brilliant rubies and diamonds in the collar flashed and scintillated with the convulsive movement.

  Bitter resentment glittered in her eyes. She continued in the same ugly, scoffing tone. “You just love the fact that you made me come when nobody else could. It feeds your unending vanity.”

  She was no fool, his beloved. And she knew where to stick the knife to inflict the most damage. Every cruel word felt like it sliced another layer of skin off his hide.

  His heart beat with a crazy, wayward rhythm. He fought to keep his voice calm while chill anguish coiled in his belly. “You think I see myself as some rescuing knight and you as a helpless victim?”

  “Don’t you?

  With an impatient movement, he tugged his tight black coat off and flung it over her dressing stool. He was so choked with emotion that its constriction was unbearable. “No.”

  The simple answer seemed to leave her at a loss.

  Oh, Olivia, my darling…

  She hated him for stripping away her defenses. He recognized the safe cocoon numbness provided. Except eventually the heart trapped inside the sealed haven started to perish.

  Not a trace of color remained in her lovely face. “I’m not staying,” she said through stiff lips.

  “Yes, you are.” He began to unbutton his waistcoat. From somewhere certainty, slow and sweet as syrup, seeped into his veins. By heaven, he meant to win this battle. “If you really wanted to leave, you’d have done it days ago.”

  “We had a wager.”

  “Devil take it, you didn’t stay because of a wager. You make a damned good show of caring about the bloody bet. A pity it doesn’t convince. I doubt it even convinces you, although you certainly give it a good try.”

  Her expression tightened at his scornful words. Grimly he waited for her to argue with his conclusions. Instead she raised her chin.

  “If not for the wager, why am I here?” Sarcasm added a harsh edge to her voice. “For the
sake of your beaux yeux?”

  “I know why you stay.” He shucked the heavy French silk waistcoat off and tossed it after his coat. He breathed in, gathered all his courage. And took the greatest risk of all. “You stay because you love me.”

  She flung her head back and laughed. The sneering sound echoed around the room.

  “Your conceit is beyond belief. I don’t love men. I take them to my bed, I service them and I despise them.” All trace of amusement left her face and she regarded him as if she loathed him. “All of them.”

  She was so hurt and so brave, and he wished to God he could make this easy for her. But it was impossible. If the way to her salvation meant she cut his heart to ribbons, well, so be it.

  He desperately wanted to take her in his arms. But touching her now would be a huge mistake. She was strung so tightly, she might shatter if he pushed her too far.

  “You don’t despise Perry. You don’t despise Leo.” He paused, watching uncertainty flicker in her beautiful eyes. “And you don’t despise me.”

  “Yes, I do,” she said without conviction.

  “Liar.” He tugged his shirt over his head and let it drift to the ground.

  “That’s enough, Lord Erith.” She snatched up her skirts with a flourish and marched toward the door. She walked like a queen to the guillotine, proud, straight, defiant.

  Lonely.

  He caught her arm as she strutted past. He hated the pleading note that crept into his voice, but he couldn’t help it. “Don’t run away just because you’re afraid, Olivia.”

  “I’m not afraid!” she snapped, even as she quaked under his hand like a newborn foal. The eyes she focused on him were glassy with terror.

  “Olivia, I’m afraid too.” His pride revolted at the admission. “Don’t go.”

  “No one will ever control me again,” she spat, trying to wrench away. “I will never place my fate in a man’s hands. I swore that at fifteen, and it’s a promise I’ll never break.”

  For a brief, brilliant moment, he’d thought he could find words to convince her to stay. He’d thought he could find words to make her admit what she felt.

  But clearly and devastatingly for a man whose words were his currency, she wasn’t listening.

  Or there were no words.

  Sorrow ate at his gut. He released her with a gesture of apology. He knew what freedom meant to her. He couldn’t bring himself to curtail it.

  Anyway, what would compulsion gain? He didn’t want a reluctant lover. “Go, then,” he said hoarsely.

  She settled a startled gaze on him. “You won’t let me.”

  “Of course I will. You’re free.”

  “Yes, I’m free.” She sounded ridiculously uncertain. Again Erith saw a trace of the girl she’d been before a cruel world crushed her innocence.

  He stepped away from the door, his every dream crumbling to ruin. How bitter to remember that only seconds ago he’d thought to prevail against her anguish and fear.

  Except she hadn’t gone yet.

  Nor, he realized with a sudden rally of hope, had she denied she loved him.

  It took every shred of nerve to test his supposition. He leaned across and opened the door. “Good-bye, Olivia.”

  “You insist on my complete surrender.”

  He spoke with a hint of asperity. “Anyone looking at us would know I’m on my knees here, so any triumph is yours.”

  “So I win if I leave?”

  She willfully misunderstood him. Well, two could play at that game. He pushed the door wide. “If you believe that, go.”

  Her eyes were blank as she stared at the gap in the doorway. Her face was stony. She looked like her soul had fled her body.

  She took a step toward the door.

  His heart crashed to a shuddering halt. Bloody hell. Bloody, bloody, bloody hell. His rash gamble to keep her hadn’t paid off.

  Another step. Soon she’d be in the corridor.

  Then out of the house. And out of his life.

  His hands curled into tight fists at his sides as he battled the urge to drag her back. He couldn’t force her to anything. Too many men in her life had done that.

  “This is a trick.” She sounded like she accused him of murder. “You’ll come after me.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  “Of course not,” she snapped. “You deceive yourself if you imagine you have some significance. You’re just one more keeper.”

  “Just because you’ve had a string of men in your bed doesn’t mean you’re unworthy of love, my darling.”

  Her bravado vanished in an instant and he saw through to her essential wretchedness. “Yes, it does,” she said flatly.

  “I’ve had a string of lovers in my bed as well, Olivia. Does that make me unworthy?”

  “Of course it doesn’t,” she said with an emphasis that lit a spark of hope in his poor battered heart. “You’re a man. It’s different.”

  A sardonic smile curled his lips. “Can this be the great Olivia Raines? The brilliant, gorgeous, headstrong woman who’s beaten every fellow in the ton at his own game?”

  “I’ve never beaten you.”

  “No, just as I’ve never beaten you. Don’t you think there’s something marvelous in our equality?”

  “We’re not equal!” she snarled. “You’re an earl and I’m a whore.”

  He could only speak the truth etched on his soul. “I’m a man in love.”

  “Stop it!” She lifted shaking hands to cover her ears. She closed her eyes as if she couldn’t bear to look at him. “Stop it, stop it, stop it!”

  He spread his hands in a gesture of helpless longing and spoke from the depths of his aching heart. “Stop what, Olivia? Loving you? I can’t. You’re in my blood. You may as well tell me to cut off my right arm. You’re heaven and earth to me. How could I not love you?”

  When she lowered her hands, he was appalled to see tears shimmering in the eyes that met his. “No good can come of this.”

  The words, and even more, her continuing presence, were an admission of sorts. With a decisive gesture, he tugged the door shut. She wasn’t going anywhere tonight.

  Chapter 23

  Erith watched Olivia start at the sharp snick of the door. He waited for some protest, if only for her pride’s sake. But she remained silent, her great, wary eyes focused on him.

  She still trembled and her pale face and glazed stare told him she teetered on the brink of exhaustion. He knew this peace was a hiatus. But only a man completely lacking compassion would compel further concessions now, beyond the tacit one she made by not marching out.

  When he reached for her hand, she didn’t resist, but didn’t respond either. Gently, he drew her toward the bed. He wanted to cherish her. He just hoped to hell she’d let him.

  “Stop fighting, Olivia,” he said softly.

  “I don’t know how.” She came with him readily enough, although he knew it was cooperation born in desolation, not joy.

  “Trust me.” Last night he thought he’d won that battle. He discovered now that he had to fight it all over again. His only weapons were his sensual skills. He intended to exploit them to their fullest.

  “I’m not coming to Vienna,” she said, even as she stood beside the bed and let him begin on the long row of black, silk-covered buttons down her back. Weary defiance tempered the bleak numbness of her tone.

  “We’ll talk about it tomorrow,” he said softly. He flicked open button after button, revealing her white back and shoulders above the black silk shift and corset. Leaning forward, he kissed the point of a shoulder revealed under the flimsy strap of her chemise.

  “You’re the most frustrating man,” she said without venom.

  He nipped her where he’d kissed her. He heard her breath catch. She wasn’t immune to him physically. Far from it. At least that part of last night’s victory was still his, thank God.

  The shimmering black gown slithered to the ground. Erith held her hand while she stepped out of the billo
wing skirts. For the moment she accepted his touch. This might be a concession purely of weariness, but he was in no mood to argue with his fortune.

  When she angled her neck toward him, he couldn’t resist the invitation. He kissed her hard on the tendon that ran up from her shoulder. She’d have a mark there tomorrow. He was heathen enough to delight in the knowledge that she’d wear his brand.

  His campaign against her descended to guerrilla warfare. She’d refused to accept his love through words. He’d make her accept it through passion.

  He already guessed her strategy. She thought to make him forget love by transporting him into a paradise of sensuality. How misguided she was. His overwhelming desire was an indelible part of his love.

  Her haunting scent surrounded him. Soft and smoky with arousal. He curled his hands around her and cupped her breasts through the delicate material of her shift. His every touch told her how he treasured her, should she choose to read his meaning.

  She drew a shuddering breath. Her chest rose under his hands, filling his palms with sweet female flesh. He brushed his thumbs across her peaking nipples.

  Tonight he planned to linger on her pleasure. Show her there was more than she’d already experienced, sublime as that had been.

  She gave a voluptuous shiver. “Mmm.”

  The deep sound thrummed through him and made him harden.

  “I need to undress you,” he whispered.

  “What’s stopping you?” She didn’t sound nearly as tired as she had. Nor as disinterested. She raised her arms above her head and twined them around his neck, pushing her breasts up into his hands.

  “You are.”

  “Mmm.”

  She rubbed her back sensuously against him. He couldn’t stop himself pressing forward to rest his erect cock between the cheeks of her buttocks. He tilted his hips, luxuriating in the hard slide against her firm flesh.

  Slowly. Slowly.

  She pushed back uncertainly, then with greater purpose. The old, familiar dance. Forward, back, forward, back. Delicious friction. Endless torment because clothing prevented ultimate connection.