Taking the top of her bodice in his hands, he pulled at the fabric until buttons flew off in every direction and her breasts filled his hands. He played the heathen and knew it but didn’t give a fig.
Not too gently he pushed her back until she lay on the table before him, cheeks flushed, eyes glazed. Lifting her pink skirts to bare her legs, he ran both hands along the insides of her thighs until the tips of his fingers reached her moist opening. She groaned. He growled.
Justin lifted her skirts higher and plunged two fingers into the triangle of curls over and over until she cried out. When her legs wrapped around his hips and she murmured and writhed, he freed his cock from his too-tight trousers and nudged at her entrance.
“Open your eyes, bella.” It happened fast and nothing could stop it but he wanted to look into her eyes, to see her reaction, to revel in the pleasure.
As she stared at him, her tongue darted out to lick her bottom lip. He wanted to lick that bottom lip. He wanted to kiss her until he died from overindulgence.
“I want you so badly right now. I cannot stop myself.” He confessed his weakness, but from his position, the head of his erection probing at her passage, he knew he had to warn her.
“Then don’t stop.”
Her whispered words were all the encouragement he needed. He tensed, gripped her hips tight in his hands, silently promised to take his time later, and savagely thrust into her warmth.
The moment would have been perfect.
It should have been perfect.
But her cry wasn’t one of pleasure.
As the stars cleared from his eyes, the world as he knew it crashed down around him. He comprehended too late.
His songbird—a widowed opera singer, an angel, a temptress—was a virgin.
* * *
Carmalina tried desperately to muffle the scream that erupted from her throat by shoving her knuckle far into her mouth but he heard. Every soul in the house would have heard. Now she lay perfectly still, trying to get used to the feel of him inside her, his harsh, unsteady breath the only sound in her ears. Nothing else registered. Neither moved a muscle. The table bit hard against her spine and her legs ached wrapped as they were around his waist.
Why didn’t he move? Why didn’t he do something? Surely there was more to making love?
When she opened her eyes to narrow slits to stare at him, wonder vied with anger in his face but still he didn’t move.
“Justin?” Her voice was husky and broke a little but she knew he’d heard. A vein in his neck pulsed in time with his heart, and she could have sworn he ground his teeth.
“You should have told me,” he growled, his voice lower than it had ever been with her before.
“It didn’t matter.”
“It does to me!” he exploded.
Carmalina felt bereft, alone and incomplete, when he withdrew from her and refastened his trousers. His shoulders heaved, his skin a dangerous tinge of red, his movements jerky.
“Why should it? It is not something I go around proclaiming to the world.” Now she grew angry but had no idea why. If anyone should be affronted it should be her. He’d started something he had no intention of finishing and her body was not in the least happy about it.
“I will not marry you.” Of all the things he could have said to her, that was the least expected.
Carmalina released a resigned sigh, sat up and declared, “I don’t want you to.”
“You were a virgin!” He rounded on her with fury in his eyes, previous fevered passion forgotten.
Carmalina’s cheeks flushed as she righted her dress, pulled her skirts down and tried to refasten her bodice with most of the buttons now on the floor. When she didn’t deny it or defend it, he went on.
“Virgins do not become mistresses!”
“Would you stop shouting at me? I will try to explain.”
“You’d better have a damned good reason for lying to me.”
“I never lied to you.” She jumped down from the table with a wince and came to stand in front of the seething lion.
“You didn’t tell me the truth either.”
She should have foreseen this, could have forestalled his reaction but she’d never seen it as the big deal he was making of it now. “I couldn’t tell anyone. It is embarrassing. I am a widow. Everyone, including you—” she poked a finger at his chest “—assumed that I would have been made a woman of by now.”
“Don’t you understand what you’ve done?” He was shouting again.
“I am now your mistress in truth. It’s what you’ve wanted all along.”
“Not like this.” He gestured to the table, where moments ago passion had driven them both into a blind frenzy.
“What does it matter? It is done and over now. There is no going back.”
“No there isn’t.”
Carmalina watched as Justin’s shoulders slumped, the pain in his eyes so much harder to bear knowing this time it was she who had had put the despair there.
“Where are you going?” she asked, alarmed, as he threw the heavy door open with a crash.
“Anywhere but here.”
* * *
Justin rode like the devil himself gave chase wielding a noose ready to hang around his neck and pull on it until he was dead. He’d just signed his own sentence. Guilty and convicted of hastiness. But it had all felt so right. She’d looked so delectably irresistible with color staining her cheeks and her hands wringing nervously. He’d had to have her.
She was his champion and he’d wanted to bestow a boon.
Now he was stuck at the bottom of a deep hole he had no idea how to climb out of.
He could blame it on Carmalina but he was just as much at fault. He should have known she wasn’t overly experienced by the way she blushed and stammered, by her response when he’d licked and suckled her. Never in a thousand years would he for one second have thought her a virgin. She was a widow, for God’s sake! What kind of man had her husband been that he hadn’t shared her bed?
Perhaps she’d lied about that too? He wished he could silence the voice in the back of his mind that planted seeds of doubt with every pound and stamp of his horse’s hooves, but he was too angry. Too confused. There was no reason to do what she did unless she hunted a husband. He was now honor-bound to marry her. He’d taken her innocence and there was a price for it. But how bound was he? There were no rules for having a virtuous mistress. It just didn’t happen.
He needed advice from someone who’d lived amongst the ton for longer than he had. He had to know what to do next.
He would not marry her!
He couldn’t.
Tzander’s hooves beat a rhythm along the cobbles and sooner than he wished they crunched down a gravel drive as though hell still pursued. He reined his horse in with a spray of tiny pebbles and threw himself to the ground. He didn’t wait for a groom to come but instead wrapped the leather straps around a sturdy tree trunk and stomped up the steps to his uncle’s house with murder in his eyes and sadness in his heart. This time he really had gone too far.
As soon as Oliver’s butler saw him stride through the door, he pointed in the direction of the library. He didn’t bother with announcements or greetings.
Justin knocked quickly and then threw the door open with a slam against the wall, all attempts at politeness forgotten under the weight of his remorse.
“She lied to me!” he thundered to no one in particular since his uncle was nowhere to be seen.
“I’m sure it was for your own good,” came a voice from the second-floor landing.
“How could she do that to me?” Justin paced back and forth across the hearth, his hands clenched behind his back, his forehead creased.
“Some things are just too hard,” Oliver told him. “When a lie continues for long enough, sometimes the truth will only make things all the more difficult to bear.”
“But she should have told me she was a virgin.”
“What?” Oliver exploded as he step
ped onto the carpet next to Justin.
“She was a virgin. A widow, for God’s sake, why the devil didn’t she tell me?”
“Hang on just a moment. Who is a virgin?”
“Carmalina was but is no longer. Thanks to me.”
Oliver’s face pinched as Justin stared at him, waited for his uncle to say something, anything that would help him out of this mess but the bounder began to laugh.
Justin crossed his arms over his chest and tapped a toe until his uncle’s guffaws subsided to chuckles. “I’m glad you find this so amusing,” he said. “But I do not.”
“What the devil happened, lad?”
“Well, Mother stopped by to bribe her into leaving me, Carmalina slapped her and asked her to—”
“Your mistress struck your mother? Your mother offered your mistress money?” Oliver’s jaw fell open in disbelief.
Justin grinned and nodded. “You should have seen her, Uncle, she was magnificent. Stood up to the dragon and then kicked her out of the house.”
“Then what’s the problem?” Oliver asked.
Justin rolled his eyes. “The problem is that I have just taken a woman’s innocence and I think the scheming vixen planned it all along.”
“She did?”
“If she was married, how could she still be a virgin? How could any man in his right mind not want her? And, why would she have agreed to be my mistress, knowing full well of her innocence and the repercussions it would have for the both of us?”
“But you pursued her,” Oliver pointed out none-too-helpfully.
“I know that, dammit. What am I going to do?”
“What have you already done?”
“What?”
“I take it the two of you were together at the time you found out she was a virgin?”
Justin nodded, his cheeks warm.
“What did you do when you found out?”
He hung his head. Why had he acted that way? He was now officially without honor. “I left her.”
“Did you say any words?”
“I told her I wouldn’t marry her.”
“Then you’re an idiot.”
Justin’s head rocked on his shoulders as though he’d been struck. “I beg your pardon?”
“Now you’re going to have to go back and beg her forgiveness for being a jackass and ask her to marry you.”
“But I can’t marry her.”
“Why the devil not?” Justin had never seen his uncle furious before but he was well on his way now.
“She is my mistress. An actress. Both our names would be completely destroyed.”
“They already are, my boy. She has no reputation left and yours wavers on the edge of seeing you banished from England forever. Are you sure this is still the path you wish to tread?”
“I can’t marry her.”
“Give me one good reason why not.”
“She isn’t in my plans for the future.”
“You will have to marry eventually.”
“But not under the cover of scandal.”
“Everything you do is under the cover of a scandal! I don’t know why your father didn’t take you over his knee and spank some sense into you.”
Justin sat, speechless. His uncle was always on his side. He’d always been the first to chuckle over Justin’s exploits and his door always stood open, his ear ready to be bent. Why was he so furious now?
“Don’t look at me like that,” Oliver scolded. “I didn’t get you into this situation. You did. And now you have to find a way to make it right and forget about scandals. You will soon have a wife and brats hanging from your coat. You won’t have the time to kick up your heels and behave the fool.”
He didn’t want a wife and brats. He wanted to get his life in order and start again. He didn’t like the scandals and the schemes. He wanted to relax and have fun and live without the whispers and frowns and outright snubs. This was supposed to be the last one. His last act of defiance to make his father disown him so he could be his own man.
I have no choice but to marry her.
Damn his voice of reason. Voice of treason was more apt.
Then again… His mouth stretched into the beginnings of a brilliant smile. To marry her would only be the beginning. It would upset his father so much he would probably suffer heart failure. There was no way his sire would be able to ignore his marriage to an opera singer. And an Italian one at that.
“What?” Oliver asked, reluctance to know the answer written all over his face. “I don’t like it when you get that look about you.”
“I believe I am about to be affianced, Uncle.”
“What happened to ‘I won’t marry her’?”
“What else can I do? I have ruined her more than she knows and now I must make amends.”
“Where are you going?” Oliver called after his fleeing form.
“I’m going to tear up our ridiculous agreement. I believe the seven-day condition no longer applies.”
Chapter Fourteen
With a quiet sob, Carmalina folded another dress and placed it in her battered old travel case. Her movements were mechanical; tears rolled endlessly down her cheeks. She wasn’t sure if she cried for what could have been, for what she had lost, or who.
She’d come to care for Justin over the few short days they’d been together. It felt as if she’d known him for months and Carmalina had truly started to enjoy herself. She really hadn’t considered her innocence as such an enormous hurdle. At six-and-twenty, she was well within her rights to say goodbye to her ridiculous virginity and experience womanhood in all its glory.
Only it hadn’t been glorious. It had been painful and embarrassing.
Another tear rolled down her cheek as she reached for the velvet gown she’d worn to Lucifer’s. Snatching her hand back as if burned, she decided to leave that one. It held far too many memories of her downfall and she didn’t need any more reminders of Justin after she left.
Unopened packages rested on her bed and the floor but she wouldn’t take any of those. The few gowns she had would see her through. The shoes on her feet were a must but she would leave everything else. She didn’t deserve any of it. After all, he’d purchased them for his mistress and she was hardly that, was she? She was now a woman without the benefit of the tiny piece of membrane that marked her innocence.
In the future she could lie and say it was her husband who had taken her virtue, rather than a rake, a rogue, a passionate, powerful man. Carmalina sobbed, sniffed, reached for another item to pack.
She was so lost in depressing thoughts she didn’t hear the door open until a deep voice penetrated the silence. “Where do you think you’re going?”
Although startled, she didn’t turn. She didn’t want to see the fury or the pain in his eyes again. His voice held enough emotion for her to know how he felt. “I am leaving.”
“The hell you are.”
This time she did whirl to face him, anger taking over again. “You don’t want me. You said as much yourself.”
“I said no such thing,” he insisted. “You surprised me.”
“I will not stay here with you.” She wanted to yell at him that he’d betrayed her, that he wasn’t the man she believed him to be, but her lies had got her into this situation. She should have been honest and told him about her husband and her “marriage.”
“We have an agreement, bella. You cannot leave now, or you will have nothing.”
“You can’t make me stay. And it was you who broke that agreement.”
He appeared perplexed for a moment before comprehension dawned on his face. “By raising my voice? I apologize. It was very rude of me to yell at you after…well…”
“Say it, my lord. After you used me.”
“I did not. I wanted you.”
Carmalina’s shoulders sagged and her chin lowered. I wanted you. Past tense. Now that he knew she wasn’t experienced, why would he want her around?
“You wanted a scandal. Well, you’ve got o
ne.” Carmalina wrapped her hand around her travelling case, lifted it off the bed and turned to face him for the last time. “I hope you achieve your ends, sir.”
“Dammit, Carmalina! You are not going anywhere.”
“You can’t stop me.” Another tear rolled down her cheek but before it dripped from her chin, he reached out and took her wet face in his hands.
“I don’t want you to go.”
“And I don’t want to stay.” As soon as the lie passed her lips, she wished she hadn’t said it. She didn’t want to go anywhere and not because of their silly agreement, but because, despite his despicable behavior, she was falling in love with him.
But she didn’t want to love anyone, especially not the morally unstable third son of an earl.
“Please?” He stroked her cheeks with his thumbs, wiped her tears away. She tried to break from his gaze but couldn’t. Gently he pulled her closer until she had no choice but to stare into his fathomless blue eyes. “I’m sorry, I behaved like an oaf. It was a great gift you gave to me and I squandered it as worthless.”
She choked on yet another sob. Why did he now have to be so nice?
“Please, I will make it up to you,” he pleaded and kissed her lips so softly, the stones in her stomach turned to butterflies, lurched and took flight.
Through a haze of her own tears she saw conviction shine from his sincere gaze. He would make it up to her if she let him. Carmalina released a sigh because she knew it was all wrong and then sank into his embrace and kissed him back. She should walk out the door but her body called to his to finish what it had started. She knew there had to be more to sex than the pain she’d received. When he had loved her with his mouth, her world had exploded to the heavens and back again. She wanted that with him. She wanted that for him.
She was lost.
“Put your bag down, bella.”
With a muffled thud the bag hit the carpet and her arms wound around his neck as Justin deepened the kiss. He wrapped an arm about her waist, drew her against his body until her feet were off the ground, then he walked them both to her bed and laid her down on it as though she were made of glass.
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