“What did she do?”
“She went at him. With a knife.”
He sucked in a long breath. “Christ.”
Mara had played the scene over again and again, nearly every day since it happened. Her beautiful mother, an avenging queen, placing herself between her children and their father.
Refusing to let him at them.
“He laughed at her,” Mara said, hating the softness in the words. Hating the way they made her sound like the child she had been. She swallowed. Met his gaze again. “He was too strong for her.”
“He turned the knife on her.”
Another wound, blossoming with blood. This time, unlucky. “The doctors came, but there was nothing to be done. She was dead the moment he struck the blow. It was only a matter of time.”
“Christ,” he said again, this time reaching for her, pulling her tight against his broad, strong chest. Speaking into her hair. “And you had to live with him.”
Until he offered me to another man, and I had no choice but to run.
She kept those words to herself, in part because she did not wish to remind him that he disliked her. That she was the reason his life had taken such a turn. She liked the comfort and strength of him too well.
A lie of omission.
She pressed her face into the warm smoothness of him, inhaling the scent of him, thyme and clove, letting herself have this moment, however fleeting, before she was faced once more with the world. And she said the words she’d never uttered. “If I hadn’t broken that statue . . .”
His hand came to her chin then, long blunt fingers lifting her face to the light. To his gaze. “Mara,” he said, the name still foreign to her ears after a decade without it. “It is not your sin.”
She knew it, even if she did not believe it. “I paid for it, nonetheless.” One corner of his mouth twitched in the threat of a smile, and she read the irony there. “Paying debts that do not belong to you. You would know a great deal about that.”
“Not as much as you would think,” he said, his thumb sliding like hot silk across her cheek, back and forth, the stroke at once calming and unsettling.
He watched the movement, and she took the opportunity to study him, his broken nose, the scar beneath one eye, the other that had split his lower lip. For a long moment, she forgot their conversation, her thoughts lost in that steady promise of his touch.
When he spoke, she saw the words curving on his lips. “I thought it was my debt.”
He did not meet her gaze, not even when she whispered his name—that name that he’d taken when he’d become a new man, forged from exile and doubt.
“I thought I killed you,” he said, simply. As though he were discussing something thoroughly inconsequential. The morning paper. The weather. He cleared his throat, and his hand fell away from her cheek. “I did not, however.”
The loss of his touch was immense.
I’m sorry, she wanted to say.
Instead, she lifted her own hand to his cheek, the shadow of his beard tickling her palm. Tempting it. He met her gaze then, and she saw the regret in his eyes, tinged with confusion and frustration and, yes . . . anger, so well concealed that she would have missed it if she weren’t looking so closely.
“I never meant to hurt you.” She paused, her gaze flickering over his shoulder to the mirror where the women had watched the fight. “It never occurred to me that you would suffer.”
He didn’t say anything. Didn’t have to. The idea that her actions would have no consequences for him was pure idiocy. She kept talking, as if her words could keep the past at bay. “But, when I heard them . . . when they watched you . . .”
“Who?” he asked.
She nodded in the direction of the mirror. “The women. I hated the way they spoke of you,” she said, her fingers sliding away from his chin, down his chest, tracing the hills and valleys of his muscles beneath the linen. “I hated the way they looked at you.”
“Are you jealous?”
She was, but that wasn’t what she meant. “I hate the way their eyes devour you—like you’re an animal. A treat. Something to be consumed. Something less than . . . what you are.”
He captured her hand and pulled it from him, and she hated the loss. “I don’t need your pity.”
Her eyes went wide. “Pity?” How could he possibly think that this emotion—this wicked, unsettling feeling that coursed through her and upended everything she thought she knew—was pity?
It was nothing so simple as that.
“I wish it were pity,” she said, extracting her hand from his grip. Returning it to his torso, where the muscles of his abdomen stirred and stiffened, drawing her touch. “If it were pity, perhaps I could avoid it.”
“What, then?” he said, so low and dark that it made her feel as though this enormous room were the smallest she’d ever been in. Quiet and secluded.
She shook her head, every inch of her aware of him. Every ounce of her desperate for his touch. For his forgiveness. For him. “I don’t know. You make me feel—”
She stopped, unable to put the emotion into words.
His hand came to her neck, fingers sliding along the pulse there, brushing just barely, as though she might flee if he weren’t careful. “What?”
Her fingers moved of their own volition, threading into his hair, glorying in the softness of it. He stopped the caress with his good hand, pushing her back to the ropes, fisting her fingers around one thick cord—first one hand, then the other. When he was finished, he tilted her face to his. “What do I make you feel, Mara?”
After their sparring in the ring, all of London thought her his mysterious mistress. Was it not the thinking that made it so? Did it matter that it was in name only? Did it matter that she wanted him in more than farce? That she wanted him in truth? Hands and lips and body and . . .
She hesitated over the completion of the sentence. Over its meaning.
Over the way it would ruin her more thoroughly than any punishment Temple himself could mete out.
But the match had started, and she knew it was futile to fight.
Especially as she wished him to win.
She clutched the ropes, her mooring in his tempest. “You make me feel . . .” She paused, and his lips found hers in the hesitation, his kiss more gentle than ever before, tongue stroking with delicate, devastating force.
He pulled away before she could have her fill. “Go on,” he whispered, not touching her and somehow destroying her. Holding her over a wide abyss, with only the ropes of his ring to keep her sane.
“You make me hot and somehow cold.”
He rewarded the words with a long, lovely, worshipping kiss at the base of her neck. “What do you feel now?”
“Hot,” she answered, even as a shiver threaded through her. “Cold. I don’t know.”
He smiled against her skin, and she adored his lips curving against her. “What else?”
“When you look at me, you make me feel like I am the only woman in the world.”
His gaze was on the edge of her borrowed dress, where the bodice seemed brutally tight. He slid a finger along the simple line of fabric, barely touching her skin, making her wish the whole thing was gone. And then he tugged on the little white ribbon that fastened at the front, slowly tugging at the crisscrossing tie down her bodice until he gave her what she wished, the fabric coming loose. Instinctively, she released the ropes, moved to catch it. To hold it to her.
But he was there, guiding one arm from the woolen dress, then the other.
And she let him. When he was finished, he said only, “Take the ropes.”
She turned herself over to him, grasping the ropes once more.
The dress was caught on her breasts, threatening to fall. He watched the way it held there, tenuous, and she wondered if he might be able to remove it with her gaze
.
He ran a finger beneath the wool, gently, perfectly, and it pooled at her feet. She gasped.
“Cold?” he asked.
“No.” Hot as the sun.
He bent his head, taking the tip of one breast in his mouth, chemise and all, worrying it through the fabric, leaving it wet and aching for more. For him. He lifted his head, meeting her gaze.
“What else, Mara?” he asked. “What else do I make you feel?”
“You make me wish it was all different,” she said.
He rewarded the confession by sending her chemise to the floor, leaving her in nothing but her woolen stockings and those silly silken slippers that had matched the gown she’d worn the night she’d arrived, but had no place here. Now. He watched her for a long moment, drinking her in, keeping her warm, even as he blew a stream of cool air across the tip of her breast.
She sighed her pleasure, and he lifted his head, finding her. Seeing her. Just as she saw him. The way he desired her. The way he craved her. And when he ran the back of his hand across his lips like a starving man, she went weak-kneed, grateful for the strength of the ropes behind her.
“You make me wish I were different,” she confessed. You make me wish I were more.
He shook his head. “It’s strange; I don’t wish that at all.”
The words brought a cacophony of thought, too tangled for understanding. All she wanted was to say the right thing—the thing that would bring him closer to her. That would give her what she wanted. What she ached for.
The thing that would make him hers.
“Everything,” she whispered, finally. “You make me feel everything.”
And there, in the ring that was his castle and kingdom, he sank to his knees before her, wrapped one strong arm about her waist, and pressed his lips to the soft swell of her stomach before responding, “Not everything. Not yet.”
He trailed kisses from her navel to the core of her, to the wicked edge of the soft curls there, and he stilled. Lingered. “But I will,” he promised her, his tongue sliding along the soft, unbearably sensitive skin there.
She sighed, one hand moving to his head, sliding into his curls.
He froze, snapped to attention at the touch, turning instantly to capture the flesh at the base of her thumb in his teeth. Nipping gently. “The ropes.”
She stilled. “Why?”
He met her gaze, and she saw the wicked promise there. “The ropes,” he repeated.
She did as she was told, grasping the rough cords behind her, and he rewarded her, his hand stroking from her ankle up the long line of her leg, around the curve of her knee, up the soft, untouched skin of her inner thigh, above her stocking. He lifted the leg from the pool of her skirts with one hand, hooking her knee over his good shoulder, as though it weighed nothing at all.
Her cheeks burned with embarrassment as the rest of her burned with desire. She was horrified and desperate all at once. A contradiction, as ever it was with him.
“Watch.”
As if she could do anything else. All she could do was watch him.
Watch him see her.
“In the mirror,” he said, and her gaze shot to the enormous mirror across from them, she’d been so caught up in him that she’d forgotten it—forgotten that it could give her a view she’d never imagined. Never dreamed.
She was nude, bared to him and the ring and the mirror, her hands tangled in the ropes, and she looked an utter scandal, spread wide like a sacrifice at this strange altar. But it was he who was on his knees, shoulders wide between her bare thighs, one leg tossed over his shoulder in wild, wanton abandon.
Anyone could see them.
The knowledge of what was beyond that mirror should have devastated her. Should have frightened her. Should have scandalized her. But instead, it made her want it more.
What had he done to her?
“Temple,” she said, softly, closing her eyes to the vision. To its power. Terrified of what he would do next.
Terrified of what he would not do next.
And then he did it, spreading her wide, looking at her, seeing her in a way no one ever had. A way no one ever should.
And she loved it.
That hand—that glorious, magical hand—moved again, one finger sliding along the most secret part of her, exploring folds and valleys and ridges, sending pleasure coursing through her. She closed her eyes at the sensation, leaning back, the ropes creaking beneath her, their rough threads scraping along her back, coarse where he was soft. Harsh where he was gentle.
“My God,” he whispered, his words at once sacrilege and benediction as his finger swirled and stroked, stealing breath and thought from her. “I don’t know how I thought I could ever resist you.”
An echo of her own thoughts. This had been inevitable. From the moment she’d approached him on the street. From before.
And then his mouth was on her, and she could not think at all, his tongue stroking in long, slow licks, teasing and tempting and torturing even as it wrought pleasure she could not believe. “Temple,” she cried, lifting, offering herself to him. Giving herself up to him.
Trusting him.
Trusting someone for the first time in what seemed like forever.
He rewarded her with his glorious mouth, wrapping his arm around her waist and pulling her tight to him, closing his lips tightly around some unbearable, unthinkable place and sucking more deeply, licking more firmly, scraping with a barely-there pressure that had her crying out for him.
“William.” She sighed the name that she’d thought a hundred times in the dead of night. A thousand. Never once believing that he could unlock such glorious pleasure.
He stilled at the name on her lips, and she looked down at him, finding his black gaze across the expanse of her naked body, knowing that this was at once terribly wrong and ever so right.
He swirled his tongue against her in the most wonderful way, and her eyes slid closed, unable to bear the torture of the pleasure. He lifted his mouth then, just long enough to say, “Watch.”
She shook her head, color rising on her face. “I can’t.”
“You can,” he promised, turning his face to press a kiss to the high curve of her thigh. “Watch me give you all there is to give.”
He set his mouth to her again, and she did watch, her gaze sliding from their reflection to his beautiful face, knowing that it was immodest and scandalous, but unable to take her gaze from his. Unable to stop herself from letting go of the ropes and sliding her hand into that glorious dark hair of his, and holding him tight to her. Unable to stop herself from moving against him. Unable to ignore the flood of powerful pleasure that coursed through her when that movement made him groan against her.
Made him redouble his efforts, his tongue and lips and teeth moving in perfect concert, sending her high, higher still on a wave of unbearable pleasure, until she came apart against him, calling out his name, fisting her fingers in his hair, taking every last ounce of glorious feeling from him.
Never once looking away, not even as she rocked against him, the ropes behind her sighing with the movement.
He held her as she returned to him, as her feet found the floor once more and, unable to hold herself upright, she sank to her knees with him.
He pulled her into his lap, and they sat there, hearts pounding, breath coming hard and fast, for an eternity, neither speaking, but both knowing that everything had changed.
Forever.
She’d never felt anything like this. Not even that long-ago night, the one she lorded over him, when they’d lay in her bed and kissed and touched. When he’d whispered teasing words in her ear and played with her hair and made her promises he’d never intended to keep.
When she’d taken his world from him.
She could not hide from him any longer. She could not lie to him. She would fin
d another way to save the orphanage. To keep the boys safe. There had to be a way.
A way that did not rely on using this man any longer.
She could give him that, at least.
Sadness coursed through her as she looked up at him, meeting his inscrutable gaze. Wishing she could hear his thoughts. Wishing she could tell him everything. Wishing she could lay herself bare for him.
Wishing their future had not been so well cast in such strong stone.
“I promised I would tell you—” she began.
He shook his head, cutting her off. “Not now. Not because of this. Don’t sully it. It’s the first time it’s felt real in . . .”
He trailed off, the words singing through her, bringing hope and promise with them—two things she could not accept. Two things she had learned long ago would destroy her if she gave them quarter.
She did not give them time to take root. “We never . . .” She moved from his lap, sliding to the floor. “It started, but did not get to here . . .” He closed his eyes at the words and took a deep breath, and as much as she wanted to stop, she soldiered on. “I should never have let you believe we did.”
His gaze found her. “So it was another lie.”
She nodded, wanting to tell him everything. Wanting to tell him that that night, long ago, when she’d done the thing she most regretted, was also the night she’d done the thing she least regretted.
He’d made her laugh and smile. He’d made her feel beautiful.
For the first time in her life.
For the only time in her life.
She opened her mouth to tell him just that, to try to explain, but he was already speaking. “Daniel.”
The name confused her. “Daniel?”
“He is not mine.”
Shock threaded through her at the words. At their meaning. She shook her head. “I don’t understand . . .”
“You said he’d been with you forever.”
Daniel, with his dark hair and blue eyes and his age—exactly correct if they had done this. If they had done more.
For a moment, she let the vision of it crash over her. Temple, strong and sure and handsome and hers. And a son, dark and serious and sweet.
No Good Duke Goes Unpunished Page 24