Ostensibly she’d been reading for hours, but emotional turmoil scattered concentration. So much had happened today, her mind buzzed with questions and anxiety. Kisses, deepening attraction, confessions, the duke’s visit, William’s threats. And uncertainty about what would happen tonight. How could the rather insipid Edward Waverley hold her attention when fascinating Jonas Merrick might arrive any moment to share her bed?
After leaving the dining room, she’d made a halfhearted attempt to find somewhere else to sleep. But Merrick hadn’t exaggerated when he’d described most of the castle as uninhabitable. Since their picnic, the Turkish bower had been cleared of furniture and there was no fire in the dressing room with its much-maligned cot. Even so, she’d briefly considered taking some blankets from the bedroom and sleeping there, until she realized it was the first place Merrick would seek her. Hiding only put off the inevitable. And she’d promised to remain available to him, curse him.
She heard the door snick open. Nerves jumping like grasshoppers, she raised her head from the book she wasn’t reading. In his red robe, Merrick looked the soul of decadence. One hand curled around a half-full decanter of brandy and two crystal glasses dangled from the other. As he stepped into the room, the ruby ring flashed in the candlelight.
Insidious attraction rippled through her and her nipples tightened against her silky shift. “I hope you’re not naked under that,” she said before she could remind herself that his state of undress wasn’t the wisest choice of topic.
The erratic humor that always caught at her heart lit his face to brilliance. As he smiled, his white teeth were startling against his dark features. For a breathtaking interval, she didn’t see the scarring; she just saw a dazzlingly handsome man.
“Miss Forsythe, again you put me to the blush.”
She prayed he didn’t guess how her body hummed with awareness. She was appallingly vulnerable to him, especially at times like this when he wasn’t acting the rake but was purely his provoking, intriguing self.
“I don’t want you sleeping here.” With effort she kept her voice even, although her hands were unsteady as she shut the morocco-bound volume and placed it on the mahogany table at her elbow.
Merrick wandered across the room with a casual air she knew to mistrust. He set the glasses on the dressing table and filled them. “Don’t you?” he asked idly, approaching to pass her a brandy.
“No,” she said with lamentable lack of force. She’d expected more reaction to her statement. Raising her chin with a defiance that felt utterly manufactured, she accepted the glass. “No, I don’t.”
The only sounds were the fire’s crackle and the rain slamming against the curtained windows. The weather reminded her of the night she’d arrived, when she offered herself to degradation. Instead she’d found… what? She wasn’t sure she knew.
With the same unhurried air, he chose the chair on the opposite side of the marble hearth and sat with a flourish of red silk. She noticed as his robe parted that he wore loose gray trousers beneath. Relief tinged her next breath.
“Very well,” he said, still in that suspiciously mild voice.
This was all too easy. She drank to fortify failing courage, the brandy burning her throat. “So you’ll leave me alone?”
A smile teased his lips as he raised his glass in a toast. She tried not to watch the working of his strong throat as he drank. She sucked in a breath, but still her chest felt constricted. Air suddenly seemed in short supply.
“Of course not. You’d be disappointed if I did.” Laughter added such warmth to his words that she longed to extend her hands toward the heat.
Stop it, Sidonie.
“I’d live,” she said drily. “You said you’d cooperate.”
“No, I merely acknowledged your wishes.”
“You’d make a wonderful politician,” she said caustically.
“Come, tesoro. You know I won’t leave you alone tonight. This morning I woke in your arms. It’s a privilege I won’t willingly forgo.”
For one treacherous moment, she remembered how cherished and safe she’d felt lying next to him. When the last place she was safe was in bed with Merrick. Bracing her shoulders against the chair, she stared him down. She hoped he couldn’t see past her stalwart exterior to her susceptible heart. This new uninvolved Merrick left her drowning in a morass of confusion. She’d lay money he wasn’t nearly as tranquil as he pretended. When she met his silvery eyes, she saw the distance had returned. It made her want to scratch and kick at him until he returned to her.
Which was absurd. He’d never been with her. Not in any meaningful sense.
This was the third night from the mere week Sidonie had granted. Impatience tightened Jonas’s gut. Cam’s unwelcome visit had reminded him that he had only this short interval before the outside world shattered their isolation. Confound him for an arrogant dog, but he’d imagined she’d be under him by now. He had no difficulty reading the expressions flickering across her lovely face. Bewilderment. Irritation. Determination boding ill for his nefarious plans.
None the reaction he wanted.
He wanted melting surrender.
“You imagine you’ve got me where you want,” she said sharply.
“You can trust my honor,” he said, meaning it although he wished it wasn’t so. This awkward chivalry worked against all his predatory intentions. “Until you say yes, you’re safe enough.”
After a revealing pause, she spoke. “I won’t say yes.” She sounded sure, but he noted how her hand clenched in her blue skirts.
The fire blazing at his back was damned hot, no matter that it was cold as an ice storm in hell outside. Or perhaps he should blame the heat on his rampant lust. Jonas slouched in his chair and released the shoulder fastening on his robe.
“A gentleman would—” Any stricture faded and her gaze seared the triangle of skin under his open robe. She looked at him as she’d look at her first meal after a month of starvation. She looked at him as though he were a clear pool of water in the Sahara. It was like she touched him, although she remained decorously across the hearth.
Oh, Sidonie, stop torturing yourself. Stop torturing me. What use virtue if it smothers all passion?
She blinked as if returning to the real world and he saw the effort she made to wrench her attention from his chest. She lifted her gaze to his face, but he knew she didn’t really see him. His heart pounded like a drum and his grip on his glass threatened its destruction. If he’d guessed his nakedness would conjure this incendiary effect, he’d have run around bare-arsed the past three days. No matter that it was November and the wind off the sea cut like a saber.
He lurched forward to correct the slant of her glass. She seemed unaware of anything beyond the sexual energy blazing between them.
She blushed at his action and straightened against the gold upholstery. He was a cad to delight in her confusion, but she had him in such a maelstrom, he was devilish tickled not to suffer alone. Her eyes were glazed, her cheeks flushed. She licked her lips, leaving them glistening and, oh, so kissable.
Her voice was husky. “Sir, I…”
Damn this. He stood and prowled across to retrieve her glass before she spilled brandy over her pretty dress. Her fingers trembled as she pulled free.
“Shh.” He placed the glass on the side table. Ignoring her discouraging posture, he started to take down her hair.
She batted at his hands. “Merrick! Stop it.”
“Calm, bella.” He stood before her, blocking any escape.
“I won’t be calm,” she snapped, trying ineffectually to stop him spreading the mane of hair over her shoulders. It crinkled after its confinement and caught the firelight, shining gold and brown and red, the rich colors of autumn.
“Sir? Merrick?” he chided gently, reluctantly raising his attention from her cleavage and reaching for her hand. He felt the soft quiver of uncertainty undercutting her outrage. “You know my name.”
Her voice resonated with wariness.
“What are you up to?”
He urged her to stand. As expected, she pulled back against the chair. “Preparing to kiss you goodnight, bella.”
She cast him a look of smoldering dislike, which did nothing to hide the hunger darkening her eyes to starlit black. “Please leave this room.”
“Harsh, Miss Forsythe, harsh. Exiling me to a cold and lonely chamber on a night that would freeze the balls off a marble statue.”
She blushed at his profanity. “Mrs. Bevan will lay you a fire.”
“Cruel as well as harsh. I’d lack the soul of charity to disturb her slumbers.”
“You haven’t got a soul.”
He bit back the admission that if he had a soul, it had migrated into Sidonie’s keeping. Tomorrow surely, with Lucifer’s blessing, he’d return to his cynical, selfish, solitary self. He gave her hand a more determined tug and she rose, trembling. “Such pretty lips to say such nasty things.”
Before she mustered a reply, he kissed her.
She stood stiffly in his arms, beautiful, slender, discouraging. Except in the last days he’d learned to read her responses. She’d tasted delight and the experience left her dangerously open to his caresses.
“Give yourself up, Sidonie,” he crooned against her lips.
Still she stood silent and cold under his kisses. He stroked her hair, neck, shoulders, arms, deliberately avoiding her breasts. At last a soft whimper escaped. She shuddered deeply as the stiffness leached from her body. He’d prepared for more of a fight, but her arms circled his neck and she sagged against him with a sigh.
Triumph surged. Without giving her chance to protest, he swung her up and carried her the few steps to the bed. Carefully he laid her on the silk covers and came down over her, his legs bracketing hers.
Sidonie plucked discontentedly at his robe and he slid it off as he kept kissing her. Lips, cheeks, nose, breasts, neck. She made a sensual sound deep in her throat as her hands encountered bare skin. She stroked his back, up and down, up and down. The ache to bury himself between her thighs drove him to madness. Impatiently he reared up and wrenched at her dress. With shocking ease, the gown tore to the waist. The half corset and transparent chemise did little to hide her.
He nipped at her lips to keep her distracted. And because he couldn’t get enough of her taste. Urgency whipped him onward. He didn’t pause to savor, to enjoy. Although pleasure flooded him at every brush of her skin, every broken moan of surrender.
Jonas trailed kisses down her throat while his fingers drifted lower. Still he paused before touching her breast. Every second of this encounter was weighted with importance. He couldn’t describe the feeling even if he wanted to. She curved her hands around his buttocks, digging her fingers into the thin trousers. He shut his eyes, prayed for control, prayed for skill to give her pleasure, prayed he’d survive the next hour.
When at last his palm covered her breast, she whimpered against his lips. Gently he rolled her nipple. She bucked and the pressure against his cock blinded him with scarlet need. She moaned his name, the sound lovelier than music.
He took her other nipple between his lips. Immediately his senses drowned in Sidonie’s sweetness. She sobbed and arched. His hand meandered down to the soft curls covering her sex. Victory thundered in his heart. Vision faded to fiery darkness. Then fiery darkness exploded into light as he slipped his fingers between her legs. He groaned appreciation into the warm skin of her shoulder.
Carefully he slid one finger inside her. She was slick and hot, but not yet ready, in spite of the ragged saw of her breath and the way her arms tightened around him as he invaded her body. He slid in a second finger, moving in and out. He kissed her again, tasting desperation, and brushed his thumb against her center.
She jerked and cried out. Holy Hades, she was sensitive. She approached her peak and he’d hardly started. He kissed her harder while his thumb circled and tormented. She tensed and heat welled over his fingers. For what seemed an eternity, she convulsed against his hand.
He’d never forget watching Sidonie cross the threshold of pleasure for the first time. Except for two flags of color along her cheekbones, she was pale. Her lips were red and full. Her voluptuous breasts trembled, the nipples beaded. When he was old and sad, he’d smile to remember that once he’d held Sidonie Forsythe and shown her the path to bliss.
He wanted to quote poetry to her. He wanted to tell her what this moment meant. He wanted…
But he was merely human and what emerged sounded like a rake’s meaningless flattery, although he meant every word from the bottom of his worthless heart. “You’re so beautiful.”
His words shattered the spell of intimacy. Horror banished delight from her expression and her body straightened into rigidity. “Let me go,” she said in a raw voice, pushing uselessly against his bare shoulders.
“Sidonie��”
She was past heeding him. Her efforts to shove him away became more frantic. “Let me go. Now.”
He heard the seeds of hysteria and immediately shifted to the side, even as she continued to batter his shoulders. “It’s not—”
He stopped, not sure what to say. It wasn’t important? The problem was it was important. More important than anything in his entire misbegotten life.
Clumsily she squirmed away, bringing her knees high and cowering against the headboard as if she expected him to leap on her. With shaking hands, she wrenched her dress together.
“You took advantage.” She sounded as if she loathed him. Even on the first night, she’d never spoken to him with such rancor.
“Sidonie, please…” All gifts of eloquence had abandoned him. Rolling out of the bed, hoping some physical distance would soothe her, he reached for her. She flinched away as though avoiding a blow.
“I’m so stupid,” she said in a broken voice, then set a great crack in his heart when she wiped her eyes with shaking hands. Sod it to hell and back. She was crying. He felt like the lowest worm ever to crawl upon this foul earth.
“You’re not,” he said, even as his belly cramped with sick shame and misery. In an attempt to ease her grief, he dared to touch her arm.
That was a mistake, too.
She recoiled and scrambled from the bed. Panting as if she’d run a mile, she stood in the center of the room. She looked young and afraid and heartbreakingly vulnerable. Not at all like the siren who had measured the heights of pleasure only seconds before. The mirrors reflected a woman with eyes huge and dark as bruises. A woman who stood proudly even as her mouth twisted in humiliation.
“Bella.” He stepped nearer even as reason told him she’d interpret any approach as threat.
“Don’t bella me.”
“I didn’t mean to upset you.” He was a blundering clodpole with no idea what damage he did. Why couldn’t she be an easy woman? Except if she was, she wouldn’t be Sidonie Forsythe and he’d rapidly reached the conclusion that Sidonie Forsythe was the only woman he wanted.
“No, you meant to seduce me before I realized what you were up to,” she said sourly.
He bit back another protesting Italian endearment. They both knew she’d fathomed his scheme.
She didn’t wait for his reply. She cast him a hate-filled glare. “The pity is I always succumb. You touch me and my mind turns to custard. I don’t know how you manage it, but it’s jolly clever.”
Her knuckles shone white as she clutched her bedraggled dress and backed toward the door. His great seduction had disintegrated into complete disaster. She blasted all stratagems to dust.
“Tesoro…” Then he remembered she didn’t want his endearments.
“Don’t try and bamboozle me with cheap flattery.”
How to make her believe that calling her his beauty and his treasure was the truth? “Where are you going?”
She inched toward the door. “Away from you.”
“It’s the middle of the night. This is the only warm room in the house.”
Her jaw hardened with purpose and she regarde
d him as if he were a snake. Frankly he didn’t feel much above one. “I don’t care.”
“Sidonie,” he said as evenly as he could. “I swear I won’t touch you.”
“After tonight, I don’t believe your word.” She was almost at the door.
He stifled the urge to excuse himself. He’d promised to await consent before he took her. He hadn’t really infringed the agreement. Except excuses were dry legalities. Ruthlessly he’d sought to quash her resistance.
“I’ll go,” he said grimly. Dear God, another night on the cot in the dressing room. He’d limp like an arthritic octogenarian tomorrow.
“No.” She tugged on the door until it slammed open against the wall, making the mirrors rattle. Her repeated image wavered around them.
“Don’t be silly.”
Her glare should have blasted him to ashes. “I’m not being silly.”
“You can have the bedroom,” he said, then made the ultimate mistake.
A few steps to reach her and he caught her shoulder. He felt the fine bones beneath his hand and the soft brush of her hair across his knuckles. He also felt endless, unshakable rejection. He’d made a right shambles of this, bugger him for a benighted fool.
With a violence that shocked him, she struck his hand away. “Don’t touch me.”
She took a pace back, another, then whirled to dash headlong into the corridor beyond.
Chapter Eleven
Sidonie ran blindly, stumbling in frantic haste. Anything to escape Merrick and terrible, dangerous temptation. Reason disintegrated. There was only primitive instinct. All she knew was the need to separate herself from what he’d done to her in that elaborate bed.
Through the hallway, carpet brushing bare feet. Down the staircase, over the chill of stone. To the cavernous great hall with its ghosts and faded tapestries. Like a hunted animal, she darted through dark rooms, thankfully empty and easy to navigate. The main door was locked every night at sunset and was too heavy for her, but she could reach the grounds through the rear of the castle.
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