The Earl Who Played With Fire

by Sara Ramsey

  Alex stayed, unmoved by her coldness. “You cannot marry Thorington.”

  “You came to my room to discuss Thorington?”

  His shoulders stiffened. “I care about your well-being, Miss Etchingham.”

  “So you continue to say,” she said. “And yet you’re here, risking both our reputations. Whether I wish to become a duchess is really none of your concern.”

  He didn’t say anything for the longest time. She couldn’t see his eyes very well — the candle was behind him, edging his brown hair with bits of burnished gold and obscuring the expression on his face. Zeus might have looked like this, preparing to dazzle, then ravish, some innocent maiden.

  Alex couldn’t possibly be there to ravish her. And yet she sensed the moment when he made some decision about her — about them — that she couldn’t quite comprehend.

  He loosened his cravat. “You cannot marry Thorington, Prudence.”

  Her Christian name didn’t comfort her. She edged away from him. He didn’t love her — he had made it so shatteringly clear. Which meant he was there for one thing.

  “Are you drunk?” she asked suddenly.

  He snorted. “If only I were. But no.”

  “I wish you were,” she said. She knew he was a gentleman, but the odd intent in his voice, the very fact that he’d come to her in the dead of night when he didn’t love her, made her doubt him. “I don’t think I shall be able to forgive you if you take advantage of me while you’re in your sober mind.”

  He had fully untied his cravat, but his hand froze before he could pull it away from his neck. “Do you truly think I would do that?”

  “Isn’t that what men do?” she asked. “Take pleasure wherever they can find it?”

  Alex frowned. “That’s not why I’m here. Surely you know I value you more than that.”

  “So you would take pleasure if you didn’t value me?”

  He scowled. “Don’t turn my words against me. I came to apologize for not listening to you in the ballroom. Thorington had me too enraged to give a thought to your opinion on the matter. Will you be quiet long enough to let me apologize?”

  She almost laughed — claiming that as his reason for visiting seemed utterly absurd. A proper apology wouldn’t be given by a man who seemed intent on stripping his clothes off. She tried for a sharper tongue, one that might warn him away. “You proved capable of talking over me in the ballroom tonight. I’m sure you can find a way to do it again somewhere other than my bed.”

  Alex dropped his cravat to the floor and untied the string holding his shirt closed. He’d never done that in front of her. She saw a scrap of throat that she’d never seen before and suddenly wished that her room was full of daylight instead of darkness.

  But then he would have seen how she was blushing…how her hands were trembling as they still braced against the mattress. Better that she was protected by the darkness, even if she was no longer sure she wanted to be safe.

  She’d been so distracted that she lost the thread of their conversation. But Alex was still capable of picking it up. “I am sorry if you felt silenced. But I only had your best interests at heart.”

  “That is still not an apology,” she said. “Not for anything that has come before, nor for tonight. If I need you to keep my ‘best interests’ in mind, I shall tell you. If you deign to let me speak, of course.”

  It was an audacious thing to say, and not at all the sort of opinion a charity case should express to the man who provided for her. But then, that man shouldn’t be taking off his jacket.

  Alex stood and shrugged out of his coat as though it was entirely normal for him to undress himself in front of her. “If you have something to say, please, say it,” he said. “My apology can wait.”

  He was in his shirtsleeves. His braces still held up his trousers, but he slung those off his shoulders and let them hang against his thighs.

  What was he doing?

  She hadn’t realized she was holding her breath until the burning in her lungs demanded air. She sucked in a breath, then let it go in a rush of sound. “I’ve nothing to say. What are you doing?”

  “I had planned to apologize, then discuss your engagement as rational adults. But since the lady doesn’t want words, I shall try a different approach.”

  His grin turned devilish. It was one of those secret grins that he used to give her, when something happened at some boring society gathering that he knew would amuse her.

  It was one of those grins that had made her believe he might someday love her.

  She took advantage of his standing pose to pull the covers tighter around her chest. “Shall I ring for a footman to take you to Bedlam?”

  “Not when I’ve finally come to my senses. You looked beautiful tonight, you know. The purple color suited you.”

  “It was puce,” she said.

  She was already cursing how stupid she sounded when he laughed. “Puce, purple, plum, berry — call it whatever you like. I thought you looked perfect in it. I should have said so right when I awoke you, but I forgot in the aftermath of your vicious assault on my person.”

  He sat on the edge of the bed again. His voice was so light, but there was a deeper intention lurking in the curve of his lips, in the way his hand rested casually on her knee.

  “I am sorry I hit you,” she said.

  “I doubt that. Did you enjoy it, hitting me?”

  His other hand came to rest on hers, curling around the fist she’d made unconsciously. “Yes,” she whispered.

  She didn’t like herself very much in that moment. When had she become so horrid? What had happened to her heart, that she would take such vicious pleasure in knowing she had caused him pain?

  She didn’t want to be bitter.

  She didn’t want to be her mother.

  That thought was enough to toss an entire vat of cold water over her head, but Alex didn’t know that her thoughts had taken her in such a dark direction. He caressed her fingers until she opened her fist. “You may hit me again if it would help,” he said.

  She shook her head. “Don’t torture me, Alex. Please. If you ever cared for me at all…just let me go.”

  He didn’t answer her for the longest time. He turned her hand in his, stroking her palm with his thumb as though it were his own. His knee still pressed against her thigh, his breath still mingled with hers. So close — and yet, he would never give her what she wanted from him.

  “I can’t, Prudence.” His voice, when he finally spoke, was almost hoarse, as though he’d argued with himself for so long that he no longer had the sound left to give her an answer. “I can’t let you go.”

  Then he gathered her up into his arms and kissed her.

  * * *

  He should have kissed her months earlier. Years earlier. She was sweet and warm, with the soft curves he’d dreamed of kept from him by only the thinnest layer of white lawn. She gasped as he claimed her lips, but it wasn’t a protest — it was welcoming wonder, a heady combination that threatened his tenuous control. He needed to be slow, steady, unaffected…

  She hesitated. She wasn’t quite enthralled yet. But she didn’t pull away.

  And then, unexpectedly, her hand came up to his cheek. Her thumb grazed his cheekbone, then skimmed lower, until her fingers wrapped sweetly around his neck. She was artless but unafraid.

  The combination was explosive.

  He buried his fingers in her hair, unraveling the plaits of her sleep-ready braid until her hair fell in rivulets of curls down her back. He let his other hand come up to her torso, skimming over the heartstopping curve between her breast and hip. He wanted to see her, to see everything, to strip her bare and explore the hidden territory he’d denied himself for so long.

  He didn’t. He had to stay disengaged. And anyway, she didn’t seem to want him to abandon her mouth. She opened for him, finally, and he pulled her closer. They fit perfectly, fused together, wrapped around each other. Her hand around his neck was no longer sweet — it was
demanding, keeping him in the kiss with all the intensity he wished he could give her.

  He should let her go. But he couldn’t — not if she wanted him there. Not if there was a chance that every night could be like this. Not if there was a chance that he could find the cure and have this life, not the life that condemned him to his study instead of her bed.

  He shut down that thought. He told himself that she was any other woman, any quick bit of pleasure the curse allowed him to take. He let his fingers go where they wanted, claiming her breast, reveling in how she filled his palm. She made a soft sound in his mouth. Her other hand dropped to his knee, bracing herself against him even as she arched into him. He was already hard for her, but her hand so close to his manhood and her breast so soft to his touch were going to kill him.

  It had been madness to undress himself. He would have to stop. He wouldn’t ruin her, not when he didn’t know for sure that he could keep her. Surely this was enough to make her think again about Thorington’s proposal.

  “Alex,” she whispered as he pulled away.

  Her eyes opened. She looked dazed, but she scanned his face. He loved and hated her for how well she knew him. He sensed the moment when she knew his intention, an instant before her body reacted. Her hands slid off his body, an army stopped mid-pillage and forced into a retreat. She pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them.

  “You should go to bed,” she said. “Please.”

  So polite, even as he broke her heart. “It isn’t you, Prudence. But I can’t ruin you.”

  She shot him a glare. “A shame you didn’t remember that while you were removing your clothes. It will be tedious to watch you dress again.”

  He touched her shoulder. She shrugged him off. “Prudence, listen to me. I…”

  “No,” she said. “You cannot do this to me. You cannot…” She stopped abruptly, as though her voice was choking her. But she forced herself to continue. “You cannot keep making me think you love me, then showing me you don’t.”

  He was a devil. She deserved so much more than what he could currently give her. And if he seduced her, then failed to break the curse, tonight was the night that would eventually make her hate him.

  Still, he couldn’t let her go. Not when his cure was almost at hand. If he could show her, once, that he meant it, perhaps it would stop her from seeking out Thorington. He would have to avoid her after, refocus on his studies with complete diligence until he broke the curse. But he’d avoided thinking of her too much before — he could do it for one more week.

  “I want you, Prudence,” he said. “And I plan to prove it to you.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Yes.

  He kissed her again. It was commanding, demanding — something that promised pleasure even as he took everything she had.

  She should stop him. Her memory knew what would come next. He would raise her hopes, then abandon her.

  But her memory was like Cassandra, wailing warnings that her heart and body didn’t want to hear. She had loved him, wanted him for so long that this was still a dream coming true, not a nightmare.

  “Let me show you,” he murmured, brushing his lips across her still-closed lips. “Let me prove it to you.”

  Why was he doing this? What game was he playing?

  Again, the warning of memory was lost to the onslaught of his touch. She parted her lips for him. He took the invitation, claiming her mouth with the sure, steady strokes that she was so quickly growing accustomed to. The feel of him in her mouth — in her mouth — was better than she would have guessed from all the illicit engravings she’d seen.

  She could have fallen in love with his mouth even if she had never loved him otherwise. She could fall in love with his hands as they caressed up her spine, as they coaxed her arms to fall away from her legs, as they nudged her knees apart. His hands were everywhere, somehow, as though they’d waited a lifetime and couldn’t wait another second to know her.

  She had already fallen in love with him. Her heart and body conspired to forget everything else. All that mattered was that she loved him and that he currently claimed to love her back.

  She exiled her reason to the cold side of her bed and embraced the warmth Alex offered instead. His hand brushed against the sleeve of her nightgown, tugging the fabric down, untying the ribbon that held it closed to free the breast he’d already explored. But the difference between his fingers grazing across cotton and his thumb caressing around her suddenly-bare nipple was shocking, enough so that she gasped against his mouth.

  He stopped kissing her. She thought she had done something wrong. But he didn’t move away — just moved down, grazing his lips over her jaw, taking a quick jaunt to her ear before sliding lower, down the aching column of her neck, down the suddenly sensitive ridge of her collarbone, down the slope of her skin to the point he’d already teased to hardness.

  It wasn’t overstating it to say that he was a revelation. She had wanted him before, but it had been an abstract kind of want. They were the dreams of a woman who had some idea of how he might feel, but who didn’t have the experience that would turn theory into knowledge.

  This was better than any dream she’d had of him. He sucked her into his mouth, biting lightly to draw a moan from her. Her fingers clawed against his shirt, wanting more, needing more…

  He pulled her up, pushing both sleeves down until she was bared to the waist. She nearly covered herself with an arm, but he grasped her hands in his as he pressed her back into the mattress.

  “I’ve dreamed of this, Prudence,” he whispered across her skin as he kissed the valley between her breasts. “If you knew what I dreamed of, you would run from me.”

  She closed her eyes, unable to meet the wicked look he gave her for fear it would turn to regret. But his voice didn’t stop. “I want to see all of you,” he said, brushing a kiss across her other breast, the one that ached from his neglect. “I want to undress you, strip away everything, consign all your clothing to the fire so you could only wear what I provided for you. You deserve bold silk, Prudence, not the grey gowns you came here with.”

  He paused a moment, swirling his tongue around her nipple in a gesture that took the sting out of words. “I want you to burn for me. I want you unable to sleep without me, the same way I cannot sleep for dreaming of you.”

  The whispered words turned fervent. She pulled her fingers free of his hands and let them run through his hair, let them press his mouth against her.

  “I’ve always dreamt of you,” she whispered.

  His mouth demanded again, abandoning words to wring a reaction from her skin instead. He stroked his tongue over her, matching it with his thumb along her other breast to keep it from missing his attentions. And then his hand slid lower, pushing her covers away, tugging at the hem of her nightgown…

  It all happened so quickly after that. Or perhaps it happened slowly, endlessly, but her brain couldn’t comprehend the impossible story her body tried to tell it. He pulled her nightgown up, shifted her in his arms so that it cleared her waist, and then stripped it off her body. It joined her abandoned reason on the other side of the bed, leaving her completely bare to him. He pulled off his shirt as well, in a fluid motion that was much too fast to allow her to thoroughly comprehend the rippling muscles of his torso.

  Her blush was strong enough to keep her warm. But his hands were hotter still, and his mouth could start an inferno. He knelt over her, his leg keeping hers from closing. He leaned down to kiss her again, deeply. Then he bracketed his hands on either side of her shoulders.

  “Prudence,” he said. “Look at me.”

  She’d closed her eyes, as though she knew that opening them would pull her out of the dream. But when she looked up at him, the need she saw there was worth the risk. His eyes were dark and intense, his lips hungry.

  She caressed a tentative hand over his chest, flattening over one of his nipples, both so similar to and so different from her own. She saw pain in his eyes
, suddenly, and wondered if she had hurt him. But he didn’t stop her.

  “I want you to have more than dreams,” he said. “I want you to have everything.”

  He kissed her again, too soon for a brain that had ground to a stop while trying to comprehend what he had just said. Any power she had to analyze, calculate, understand was destroyed by the onslaught of raw emotion his words had raised.

  All she could do was kiss him back.

  Eventually, he moved away from her mouth, down her body again, in a rhythm that she was becoming familiar with. But this time, he passed her breasts, going lower, lower still, passing her ribcage, passing her navel…

  And then his mouth came down on her, devouring her as though she was the last meal he would ever take.

  She moaned. It was a sound that might have embarrassed her, if she were younger or if he were less adept, but there was no longer room for any shame. “Alex,” she whispered.

  He knew it wasn’t a plea to stop — she was giving in to some deep, ancient desire to say his name, to claim him as hers even as his mouth did the same to her. He teased around her clitoris, avoiding it at first, until she somehow needed him there urgently even though he’d yet to touch it.

  Was he so good at this because he had more experience than her? Or was it because he knew her — knew how to read her body, knew how to listen for the shift in her breath? His mouth closed over that point where her pleasure was concentrated, flicking it with his tongue, giving it just the barest scrape of his teeth.

  She writhed under him, needing something she didn’t know how to ask for, hoping he knew because she was in the dark now, beyond where her imagination had ever taken her, with only him for a guide. His wicked tongue descended on her again, and it was enough to drive her to the edge. Then his hand came up and found her breast, tracing around her nipple with the same speed as his mouth teased her…

  He’d always been so proper with her before. But there was something supremely primal, supremely male as he looked up at her. “Come for me,” he murmured, before giving her another intimate kiss. “Let me give you this.”