by Jo Beverley
He’d rather shoot himself.
Maria entered her house on Vandeimen’s arm as usual, and as usual they all took a light supper and chatted. She thought he looked strained, and hoped desperately that he hadn’t fought with his friend over her. She silently berated herself for letting Major Hawkinville goad her, though how else she could have reacted, she didn’t know.
Perhaps she should write an apology, though she’d done nothing wrong. It galled her that he, too, saw her as an aging harpy prepared to suck the blood from a younger man. Did everyone? Sarah Yeovil hadn’t spoken more than the briefest word to her since that medieval affair.
And in a couple of weeks it would all be over.
If she were a weaker woman, she’d sink into tears.
Persistent Harriette was using Major Hawkinville’s appearance as a lever to open up discussion of Vandeimen’s friends and his home. He looked strained, but he was still in the room and talking, though saying little to the point.
She found herself watching him through a prism of his friend’s eyes. Major Hawkinville hadn’t seen Vandeimen for nearly a year, she assumed, and he had been disturbed. That was why he had attacked her.
She remembered the incident before dinner, and Harriette’s words. A glossy shell with nothing inside.
That was not true. There was a lot inside, all of it tangled, dark, and dangerous. And now, for some reason, he was pushed to a brink.
When they separated to go to their bedrooms she tried to persuade herself that her concerns were only tiredness—hers or his. As her maid undressed her, however, and combed out her long hair then wove it in a plait, she worried.
When she climbed into bed, she knew that tomorrow she must insist that they travel to Steynings.
It was duty that drove her. She must correct the terrible wrong that Maurice had done to his family. By now, however, it was more than duty. She had to rescue him. She could bear to let him go, but she could not bear to let him fall back into the pit.
It was as if she saw a wonderful person through crazed glass. His honor showed in the damnable fact that he’d never again tried to kiss her. His cleverness showed in the way he managed to exhibit devotion and passion in public without ever doing anything improper.
His natural kindness showed in many ways. He never made fun of anyone. He would dance with clumsy shyness as if with a beauty, talk with a bore as if with a wit, smooth over rudeness so it was almost unrecognized.
He even spent time with Tante Louise and Oncle Charles, and no one would deny that they were a sour old couple who constantly carped at each other and the world.
She began to see, however, lying there in the dark, that all his kindnesses came from dogged duty, the same sense of duty that had driven him into the next battle, and the next, and the next.
Dogged? He had been a madman, an enthusiast, hadn’t he?
Now she wondered, wondered if it had been more a case of never doing things by half measures, and whether that was what he was doing now, bleakness still in his heart.
And what exactly was he doing now, this very minute?
She tried to tell herself that he too had gone to bed, but something was screaming that he hadn’t. That he might have his pistol in hand again. After a struggle, she climbed out of bed and reached for her wrap.
Oh no. Definitely not. She was not going to look for him in her nightgown!
Feeling more foolish by the moment, she put on a shift, dug through her drawers for one of her light corsets that hooked up the front, then for her simplest round gown. She wound her plait around her head and pinned it in place.
When she looked at herself in the mirror, she saw a woman blatantly well past the blush of youth in a plain gown, with plain hair and no ornament. She turned toward her jewel box, but then stopped herself. To decorate herself would put a wicked twist on this errand.
Grabbing her candlestick, she went out to make sure that her demon was not bent on something hellish.
The house was still. Surely everyone except herself was sensibly asleep. She knew she couldn’t sleep until she had made a thorough check, however.
The ground floor was peaceful. She went back upstairs and checked the drawing room. Nothing.
She paused in the corridor, accepting what she’d always known. Whatever Vandeimen was up to, he was in the privacy of his bedroom, and she could not invade there.
Yet she could not let this rest.
She allowed herself to creep down to his door and listen.
Silence.
There, see. He was asleep.
Then she heard something. A movement, no more, but it suggested that he wasn’t asleep.
He could be ready for bed.
Even naked.
She stood there, watching candlelight play red and black on the gleaming mahogany of the door panels, hearing only silence. Then, with a sigh and a wince, she gave a tiny tap on the door.
A voice. She couldn’t tell what he’d said, but she turned the knob and peeped in.
He was sprawled on the floor in breeches and open-necked shirt, head and shoulders supported by the chaise near the empty fireplace. The room had been in darkness, and he raised a hand to shield his eyes for a moment.
“Devil take it, it’s the angel again,” he muttered, lowering his hand and staring at her. An empty glass was almost falling out of his other hand, and a half-empty brandy decanter sat on the floor nearby.
She almost berated him, but stopped herself. That would do no good. She closed the door behind her, thinking, thinking.
It had all been illusion these past weeks. He was still the half-drunk man who’d been about to kill himself, and she still had to save him.
Chapter Seven
“What’s the matter?” he said in a voice turned lazy by drink. “No one’s going to know except Noons, so I’m not breaking the rules.”
A chair sat opposite the chaise on the other side of the fireplace. She went cautiously toward it, but then at the last moment she turned to the table of decanters. She put her candlestick there, took a glass and the decanter of claret, and sat on the floor in front of the chair, facing him.
She filled the glass, then placed her decanter on the floor in mirror image of his and took a drink. “There are certainly times when getting drunk seems like an excellent idea.”
Guarded eyes rested on her as he sipped. “You mean there are times when it doesn’t?”
The bleakness hit her, but she tried not to show it. She didn’t know what she was doing here, but she knew she mustn’t fall into emotion. “Did you get drunk before battle?”
“Not on purpose.” He shifted slightly, relaxing. He was, at least, willing to talk. “Some did. They tended to die. Perhaps happier than the ones who died sober. Or even the ones who lived ... I was caught in the bottle once or twice ...”
He eyed his almost empty glass and the decanter, and then went about filling it with notable care.
Maria sipped her wine. This was the first time he’d mentioned the darker side of war. Was that good, or bad? Was it war memories that chained him in the dungeons, or the loss of his family, or both? She couldn’t wipe one away, or bring the other back. She had to try to give him reason to live.
“Why did you join the army?” she asked, as if making idle conversation. “You were an only son.”
“Still am. Last of the line as well. All the hopes and expectations of the Vandeimens rest upon these paltry shoulders.” He toasted her and drank. “You have a lot of hair.”
Instinctively, she touched the tight knot of plait, but she stuck to her purpose. “So, why did you join the army?”
The eyes half-glimpsed beneath lazy lids suddenly shot wickedness. “Let down your hair and I’ll tell you.”
Perhaps she should rise and leave now, but she knew she couldn’t abandon him here like this. She could call his bluff, but she suspected that Demon Vandeimen never bluffed.
She raised her hands and pulled out the pins, letting the braid fall heavily
down her back. “Don’t think to play your games with me, sir. You’ll neither win nor escape by pretending to desire me.”
“Pretending? You can come over here and feel if you want.”
Her breath caught and she couldn’t help glancing at his crotch. She hastily looked up. “So, why did you join the army?”
“That isn’t really down,” he complained, but then said, “The others were. Why not?”
“The others?” Her mind was stuck on his earlier words, however. He was aroused? Now? By her? A responsive beat began between her thighs.
“Con. Hawk.” He knocked back an irreverent amount of her very good cognac. “Con was a second son and willing to do his duty. Defeat the Corsican Monster. Save the women and children of England from invasion, rape, and pillage. Hawk saw a way to escape his family. As for me ... what more could a sixteen-year-old who fed on excitement and challenge desire?” Those dangerous eyes met hers again. “I feed off excitement like a vampire feeds off blood, dear lady. Do you want to come over here and let me drink your pale, angelic blood?”
“No,” she lied, beginning to burn with raw lust. She should leave . . . “And my blood is as red as yours, I assure you.”
“All the better.” He put down his glass and shifted to begin crawling over to her. In another man it might have been clumsy, but she immediately thought of a wolf, a lithe and lethal wolf. She wanted to flee, but she knew that would be disastrous. And part of her wanted to stay, even to bleed . . .
He knelt beside her on all fours and raised a hand to her neck. “So pale, so pure ...”
“I’m a widow.” Despite fingers stroking her neck, she used a cool tone, trying to deny all this, trying to summon the strength to flee.
His eyes were close now, intense, pupils large in the dim light. “You shouldn’t have chained me, dear widow, if you didn’t need me.”
Need. She did need him. It had been so long, and here was that danger that always drove her wild.
It was real danger now. Not her husband, who had only pretended because it excited her, and that excited him. It was this wild and wounded young man with heat and sex rising off him like steam.
A wise woman would get up and run.
A decent woman would save him from himself.
Mouth dry with fear and longing, she whispered, “Do you need a woman, Vandeimen?”
“I need you.”
“Then take me.”
He kissed her with brandy-soaked heat and greedy passion, and she kissed him back as fiercely, sprawled against the seat of the big chair. It had been so long, too long, and he tasted like hell and heaven combined.
Then she was flat on her back, her legs up over his shoulders and him in her, deeply, fully, in her. He reared up, hands on the floor on either side of her head, eyes triumphantly on hers.
Magnificent. Beautiful. Virile.
Lethal—and she loved it.
She clutched his arms, moving, then firing off into her own particular hellfire heaven.
When she opened her eyes, swooningly pleasured, she was still locked in position with him, wishing she could see behind his closed eyes and set face.
Was he in heaven or in hell?
He shifted, sliding out of her and away, letting her legs come down, head turning from her.
“Don’t,” she said quickly, “say you’re sorry.”
He knelt between her legs, sweaty, rumpled, troubled, but he looked up at her. “You liked that?”
“Is it unladylike? In these things, I am not a lady.”
She saw that he was hunting for evasion, for polite lies. She had no way to convince him with words, so she simply waited, lewdly disheveled, on the floor.
“What else do you like, then?” The unvarnished hunger in his voice made her want to smile, but she was afraid a smile might be misunderstood.
“A bed for a start. I’m too old for carpets all night.” She put in the reminder of her age deliberately. She wanted this, but honestly.
She stretched out a hand to be helped up, but he went to his haunches, put his arms under her, and rose to his feet. His raw strength started the thunder of excitement again. Oh, she was a wicked woman to like this so, but she did.
He staggered slightly as he carried her to the bed, but it was drink not weakness.
Was she taking advantage of a drunken man?
He wasn’t that drunk, and he was getting as much from this as she.
He placed her on the bed carefully enough. “Will you undress for me?” he asked. “As I watch?”
It stirred a little qualm. “If you’ll remember that I’m gone thirty, and can’t rival a sweet young thing of eighteen.”
“Does it matter?” He leaned against a bedpost, prepared to watch.
His comment could be taken many ways. She chose to ignore it. Even this was exciting her—the demand that she do something a little difficult and daring.
Did he understand her all too well?
Eyes on him, she loosened the drawstrings of her gown and pulled it off over her head. He was still watching. She had nothing on now but her shift and corset. Heart seeming to beat in her throat, she undid the front hooks of her corset, one by one.
He suddenly moved to brush her fingers away, to undo the last hooks and peel it open, almost reverently. She didn’t want reverence. She pulled his shirt out of his unfastened pantaloons. “Strip.”
With a laugh, he obeyed. She thought she moaned at the sheer beauty of his body. An anatomist could study muscles from him without dissection, but they were all sweetly smoothed by flesh—ands scars. Dozens of slashes, some puckered from rough healing.
For every one, she suspected, there was an internal scar. Scars, once formed, were permanent, though time did soften them. What of the scars that marked his heart and his soul?
She saw the dark stain of a tattoo on his chest, and remembered the duchess’s comment.
“Rumor says that’s a demon,” she said.
“Rumor tells the truth, for once.”
He came toward her and she saw that it was a demon, pitchfork in hand, amid red flames.
What was she doing here in a bed with a mad young demon?
He stripped off her corset and tossed it aside, then pushed her down on the bed in her shift. With a sudden grin, he ripped the garment open down the front.
Mad. Demon. And he understood her. It frightened her that, but thrilled her at the same time.
While her heart still raced, he spread the garment wide so she lay on it and leaned down to suckle her left breast, deep and firm.
“I love that,” she breathed, even though her body’s surge must have told him. “I love it. Teeth too, if you don’t draw blood.”
He looked up, bright-eyed. Whatever else, he was alive now, alive in this moment. Every inch of him. “And what if I do draw blood?” he asked, sending another mad shiver through her.
“You’ll spoil this.” Deep in her mind, however, an imp stirred with curiosity. No. She couldn’t want that.
He kissed her breast softly—both a tease and a promise. “You’re a remarkable woman, Maria.”
“I’m a hungry one, too.”
He laughed and returned to the ravishing of her breasts while she used nails to torment his skin. Without drawing blood.
Then he spread her legs and pushed into her again, and she rose eagerly, hungrily, nearly in orgasm already.
He moved in and out once with tortuous slowness. “It’ll be longer this time.” He made it into a thrilling warning.
She opened her eyes. “Will it?”
His wolfish smile was answer. “Do you like it long?”
Her head was buzzing, and the world swirled. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “My husband never went very long. He was over thirty when he married me.”
“You’ve had no one else?”
She could protest the implication, but just said, “No.”
“Am I better then?”
She laughed because it was only part tease. Delibe
rately, she challenged the demon. “I don’t know yet.”
He shifted and put one hand firmly over her mouth, while beginning deep, even strokes. She looked up, excited by that mild restraint. It implied that she had no right to object. That he could do anything with her, even draw blood.
And perhaps he could.
As she’d thought, Maurice’s demanding sex had been a very safe game. Now she might be in the jungle with the animals. It excited her as nothing before.
She moved to wrap her legs around his waist, but he said, “No. Keep them down.”
It could be a request. It sounded like a command.
Then he stilled and lowered his head to her breasts again, sucking painfully strongly, arching her, breaking a muffled cry from her. His teeth. She felt his teeth, pressing so carefully, but so lethally.
Her heart pounded with sudden terror and violent lust. His silencing hand felt like a gag, but when she tried to fight it off, it tightened. He raised his head and looked at her, a glint of triumph in his eyes before he lowered again to her breasts. Mercy on her, it was that contest again. What might it drive him to do?
Instead of biting, he licked. Slowly, lazily, he licked all around her breasts when she wanted to scream at him for more.
She lay there, pinned to the bed, resentfully enduring this meaningless tonguing, resenting even more that he’d assessed the game as a whole and was winning a Pyrrhic victory simply by being gentle. She was full with the burning hardness of him, and apart from an occasional twitch, he wasn’t moving at all.
He looked up again, claiming the mystery. She could hate him, but she didn’t. She realized that she was hot, hot all over, boiling with need, excited by being entirely in his power and that she’d never before had time to know what this felt like.
Desperately intolerable.
He took his hand from her mouth and began to thrust. Deep rhythmical thrusts that truly did feel as if they could go on forever. He was watching her as if she was more interesting than his own pleasure. She watched back, desperately fighting dissolution under those competitive eyes.
Losing.
“Bastard!” she hissed, and surrendered.