by Christine Merrill/Marguerite Kaye/Annie Burrows/Barbara Monajem/Linda Skye
The gown she wore underneath was of the sheerest ivory silk, inset with panels of blond lace. It hid virtually nothing, yet she knew he would not even permit her this much to hide behind.
Lifting her chin, she tore open the front fastenings until she could let that garment, too, slide down her body and pool round her feet on the floor.
In the distance, she heard the stable clock striking the half hour.
“No attempt to fuddle my brain with teasing and tempting me, eh? I can only assume you have learned your lesson from last time,” he said wryly. “If you play with fire, you risk getting burned. And speaking of which,” he said, “you had better come closer.”
For a moment, she hesitated. But then, tearing her eyes from his face, she saw he was gesturing to a mound of cushions and quilts covering the hearthrug.
Head high, she stalked across the room to where he sat. But her knees were shaking so much that she could make no attempt to sit down gracefully. She just dropped to the floor at his feet.
As soon as she’d done so, she found that the way he’d angled the fire screen had created a little nest, shielded from draughts.
“You will soon warm up,” he said.
She darted a hopeful glance up at him. Surely, if he’d seen to her comfort in this way, it must be a sign that he cared for her, to some degree?
“The sight of gooseflesh is not the least bit alluring.”
Her heart sank. Once again, she’d misunderstood his actions. What she’d thought of as a token of kindness had only been a precaution he’d taken to ensure nothing spoiled his own pleasure. Since he now knew she would not let him touch her, he’d set the scene to derive maximum pleasure from just looking at her. She suddenly felt like one of those slave women depicted in paintings, lying naked at the feet of some Eastern pasha. The fact that he wore a billowing silken dressing gown over his open shirt added to that impression. As did the horrid, superior look in his lazily hooded eyes.
“You look very beautiful with the firelight playing over your… hair,” he said, after a few minutes silent contemplation.
She glanced up at him and met a wall of heat. She could not hold that gaze. But as her eyes drifted downward she saw that his whole body was tense, trembling. And that he was very, very aroused. Already.
And it occurred to her that she was not as powerless as she’d first felt. She had set the boundaries—that he could look, but not touch.
She got a reckless urge to tip the scales still further in her favour. She didn’t see why she should be the only one feeling on edge tonight.
Keeping her eyes demurely fixed on the fire, she wriggled into the cushions as though to make herself more comfortable, whilst subtly arranging her limbs in as suggestive a pose as she dared.
When she heard his breath catch in his throat she could not resist smiling to herself.
“How long is it,” he said, his eyes lingering on the curve of her lips, “since you smiled at a man, the way you used to smile at me?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Oh, I think you do.” He set the glass down on the table, and picked up a glove that had been lying there amidst the clutter.
“And I have decided that tonight I will not permit you to tell me anything other than the complete truth.”
With that, he leaned forward and drew the glove down the centre of her torso, starting between her breasts, and ending at her navel.
“Stop that!”
“No. I am not breaking the terms of our agreement. I am not laying so much as one finger on you.”
As he drew the glove across her stomach she couldn’t help gasping, and clenching her muscles. And resenting him for taunting her with her own words by choosing a facsimile of fingers to inflict his retribution.
“D—don’t,” she begged him. He just smiled, and ran the glove over her hip.
Oh, but he could do anything with that glove. Flick it over her nipples, or play it between her thighs… and he wouldn’t, technically, be breaking the terms upon which she’d insisted.
In an instinct for self-preservation she pressed her legs closer together, but it was too late. Moist heat was already blooming just at the thought of what he might do. And she had only been naked at his feet for five minutes.
Damn him for reasserting his dominance!
He stroked the glove right down her arm, flicking it over her fingers, as though daring her to try taking it.
For a moment she considered doing just that, and tossing his implement of torture into the fire. Only, his reactions were likely to be very quick. He would snatch his hands back. She would be obliged to kneel up and there would be an ungainly tussle. Which he would win, since he was physically stronger.
She gritted her teeth and glared at him.
“I see what this is. You have come here to get your revenge because of the way I deliberately roused and thwarted you,” she said.
“Is that what you think? That I am petty enough to want revenge for what you did?” He leaned back and regarded her thoughtfully.
“If this is not some twisted form of revenge, then… ”
“Caro.” He sighed. “I could not let you get away with the trick you played on me at the Crossed Oars. You would not respect a man who allowed you to best him.”
Respect? How could he be talking about gaining her respect? While he was clearly intent on torturing her?
“Now,” he said, drawing the glove repeatedly between his nimble fingers, and eyeing her as though wondering where to ply it next, “to business.”
He started at her left knee this time and trailed the glove gently all the way up her outer thigh, then round to trace the curve of her hip.
She didn’t know if it was the texture of soft leather or the knowledge that his hand had once been inside the glove, that made the light touch so very… suggestive. If his fingers were inside the leather…
“Tell me the truth,” he said, his eyes gleaming with triumph when she shifted and squirmed.
“The truth about what?”
He slid the glove round her waist and slowly up her abdomen.
She caught her lower lip between her teeth as he stopped just beneath her left breast, remembering the time, so many years before, when she’d let him take it in his hand. He’d stroked it gently, palmed it, then bent his head to kiss its upper slope. The sensations he’d provoked had been so pleasurable, so strong, she’d taken fright and pushed him away. She closed her eyes and bit back a moan as those feelings surged through her all over again.
Stronger than ever. For she hadn’t been naked then, alone in his room in an empty house. If it was his hand on her breast now, rather than just a glove, would she have the strength to resist him? She’d regretted, so many, many times not having yielded her virginity to him, the man she’d loved. Then the brutish husband she loathed would not have been able to rip it from her.
“Are you going to beg me for mercy?”
The mockery in his voice jolted her from her reverie, and back to seething resentment.
“Never!”
“No, you are far too proud,” he said, drawing the glove across to her other breast. “When your back is to the wall, you refuse to let anyone see your fear. You would rather cover it all up with a smile,” he said, circling her nipple with one finger of the empty glove. “I was too young to understand it at your betrothal ball, but since then, I’ve been in some pretty tight spots myself.”
As her nipple contracted almost painfully, he mused, “I never touched this breast before. Never sucked this nipple into my mouth and felt it harden against my tongue… ”
Damn him! He knew was he was doing to her. The combination of those light, almost-there touches, and his evocative words, were driving her mad.
“I recognized the desperation behind your smiles that night at the Crossed Oars,” he said as he slid the glove down into the valley between her breasts, and slowly lower.
“I recalled that it was exactly the way you smiled when your father announced
your betrothal to Fallowfield.” The glove hovered just above the thatch of curls at the juncture of her thighs. She pressed herself down into the cushions to avoid its touch. Because if he touched her there…
“So when you gave me your version of why you went through with the marriage it all fell into place.”
She heaved a sigh of relief—or was it regret?—when he stopped threatening her with the most intimate touch of all, and drew the glove slowly back up her stomach, between her breasts, up her neck, then gently, oh, so gently, round the outline of her mouth.
“It was exactly the way you smiled in the tavern. Hard, determined, without a trace of real joy. For show, not for real.”
Through the haze of lust he’d created, she felt yet another of those irrational spurts of hope. He believed her!
“But you were so angry with me,” she said, raising her hand to push the glove away from her mouth.
He let it go with a rueful smile, and she found herself in possession of it.
“You assumed I wanted you upstairs to make up for what I hinted I would have missed with Molly. You turned your back to me, expecting me to be bastard enough to undo your laces. It was what you thought of me, and your willingness to just give in to such demands that made me want to slide my hands up round your neck and throttle you.” He looked down at his hands, which he promptly clasped tightly between his knees.
“I could not bear the thought of you playing the whore, confirming my worst suspicions of you,” he grated. “You are still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known. How, I wondered, could you be so lovely on the outside, yet so full of ugliness inside?”
“I’m not—I didn’t… ”
“I know. I know now, that is, but that night… ” He shook his head. “Yes, I was furious when you would not let me so much as kiss you. But at the same time, it was a huge relief to see something of the old Caro still existed—the one I’d begun to think I’d imagined. Once I sobered up, I began to admire the way you’d played the hand you’d been dealt. That’s one of the reasons I came here today. Some men feel threatened when a woman shows she’s got brains, but I’ve always relished a challenge.”
With a wicked smile, he turned to the table, and picked up the other glove.
“Which is why I have to demonstrate who is in charge here, tonight,” he said in a low, playful voice.
She swallowed. Her brief respite was over. The sensual torment was about to begin all over again.
Only this time, it was not so much the whisper of sensation the glove created, but the look in his eyes as he traced the outline of her body, which excited her.
“It was not avarice that drove you to marry Fallowfield, was it?”
“You know it wasn’t.”
Slowly, oh so slowly, he trailed the glove down the centre of her tummy.
“How would you describe it, then?”
“Duty… ” she just managed to gasp plaintively as those leathern fingers brushed over her feminine curls. She was panting now, her heart hammering in her chest.
“Just as it was your duty to come and find me, and make sure I attended Sebastian and Phoebe’s wedding?”
“Yes, yes,” she whimpered. She no longer cared that he was subjugating her. She’d never felt this aroused in her entire life. Though she was beginning to hate that glove. She wanted his hand on her. There. She let her thighs fall apart. He dipped the glove between her legs but it wasn’t enough. She whimpered, then bit down on a plea that he would stop teasing and really touch her.
“Why don’t you value yourself more, Caro?”
His question was like a slap in the face.
“You… you… ” She snatched the glove from him, furious that he’d driven her so far, only to mock her again.
“Why did you let them drive you to come and find me, knowing you would have to face my antagonism?”
He did not seem in the least bothered that she was now in possession of both his gloves. He just carried on speaking, his voice low and steady.
“And why did you let me foist that devil’s bargain onto you?”
He dipped his index finger into his glass of wine.
“How could you sacrifice yourself for your family, all over again?”
She flinched as he leaned forward, and very deliberately sprinkled several drops of the ruby-red liquid onto her right breast.
“Did you think it would make them respect you?”
She shook her head furiously, not sure whether she was answering his question or trying to deny the feeling of being so completely at his mercy.
“From what I have observed, Phoebe is a spoilt madam, who cares only for herself. And as for your father… ” His face twisted in disgust.
Just as the stable clock struck midnight.
“It is Christmas Day,” he said flatly. “Our bargain is at an end. You have paid in full.”
He sat back, but his eyes followed the droplets of wine as they merged then slid down the slope of her breast toward her cleavage.
She saw hunger in his face, but what moved her to speak was the sadness she sensed in him. A sadness that matched her own.
“What if I tell you that I don’t want to leave?”
His eyes flew to hers. His chest heaved as he sucked in a deep breath.
“It is a new day. Couldn’t we agree that whatever happens, from this moment on, can happen because it is what we both choose?”
He dropped to his knees at her side.
“You would choose me? Freely?”
In silent invitation, she held out her arms to him.
With a groan, he bent his head and licked along the trail of wine, laving the side of her breast before swirling his tongue round her nipple, then sucking it into his mouth.
With a wild cry, Caroline arched up off the cushions, and clasped him round his neck.
His mouth met hers then, in a passionate kiss. As their tongues tangled, she pushed the robe from his shoulders, marvelling at the feel of sculpted muscles under her questing fingers. She drew back briefly to admire his body, gleaming in the golden glow of firelight. Then it was her turn to run her hands all over him. She caressed his chest, his taut abdomen. He flung his head back with a groan when she found the fastenings at the waist of his breeches and fumbled them undone.
“Just once, Crispin, just once let us love each other, not because of any obligation, or out of vengeance or… or anything but because we just want each other.”
“No!”
To her utter shock and dismay, he reared back as though she’d struck him.
“I won’t let you use me,” he grated. “You are only acting like this because I roused you past the point of bearing.”
He scrambled back to the chair, ploughing his fingers through his hair.
“God knows I have sunk about as low as a man can get, but I refuse to let you treat me as though I am worthless. As though I mean nothing to you. I have had enough of meaningless couplings over the past six years. I tried so hard to blot you out of my mind, with drink and vice of all sorts. But the hell of my own making was no improvement over the hell of imagining you with him… laughing at me… ”
“I never laughed at you… ”
He carried on as though he hadn’t heard her.
“And if you let me into your body tonight, then walk away from me once more, I don’t… ” He thrust his fingers through his hair again. “I will survive. Don’t go getting the idea I will do anything dramatic or foolhardy. But there will be no coming back from your defection, not a second time.”
She knelt, and placed one hand on his knee. Tears streamed down her face.
“Crispin, surely you know by now that I would never deliberately hurt you? I—I love you.”
There. She had said it. He might say he no longer believed in love, but it made no difference. She could not deny what she felt. What she had always felt for this man.
He seized her hands and clasped them between his own.
“Love isn’t always enough,
” he said grimly. “Not in your case. When it was tested, last time, you put duty to others first. And don’t say you had no choice,” he put his fingers to her lips when she was about to protest exactly that.
“There is always a choice,” he finished fiercely.
“Well now I choose you. I do!”
“Only because you lust after my body. You would not entrust your whole future to me.”
“I would!”
“Would you indeed?” He looked at her intently. “I have seen how far you will go for duty. But how far would you go for what you say is love? I have already told you that I will never touch a penny of that man’s money. And I cannot keep you in the style to which you’ve become accustomed.”
“I don’t care! Not about his money, or the life he insisted we follow. I hated it. Every minute of it. You have no idea how worthless I felt, how cheap and tawdry, in spite of… no—” she laughed bitterly “—because of the jewels he made me wear. Each one of them was a reproach. They weighed me down like manacles.”
“You are not worthless.” He stroked her face. “And you deserve better than to live in a hovel with a man like me.”
“If only I could believe you loved me, that you really wanted to spend the rest of our lives together, that it would make you happy, I would… I would even get a job in the Crossed Oars!”
His mouth firmed and he flung her hands from him. For one awful moment, she thought it was because he did not believe her. But then she saw he was rummaging through the heap of papers on the table. He stopped when he came to one particular document.
“This is a special licence,” he said, handing it to her. “If you mean what you say, we can make it a double wedding with your sister and my brother. “Well,” he continued with a nonchalant shrug, “you know I cannot stand weddings, so it makes sense to get it over with while there’s already a wedding breakfast organized.”
She clasped the licence to her breast. He might feign nonchalance, but she could see through him. After that incident in the Crossed Oars, he’d gone straight out and procured a licence. Which meant that he’d come down here hoping for a chance to ask her to marry him. When she’d reacted to his arrival in that aloof and frosty manner, he’d applied what pressure he could to break down all her barriers.