IfYouDeceive_lit

by kc

  “You’re not my husband yet.”

  “If I were, would you let me take you in this room?”

  “Yes, if that was what you desired.” She’d surprised him, but she clearly meant it.

  “I will be soon, so what’s the difference? I want to be inside you. Now.”

  She shook her head firmly. “Not until we’re wed.”

  “Then perhaps I should no’ be buying you a new wardrobe as befits a wife, if I’m no’ yet a husband?”

  She stiffened, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “I’m not a whore. Buy me the clothes or not, but don’t expect sex in return. And don’t confuse my desire for you—and for self-preservation—with desperation.”

  “And do you desire me?”

  She put her chin up. “Yes. But I can still walk away.”

  “Ah,aingeal , it’s too late for that….”

  Twenty-four

  MacCarrick stalked around her, as if deciding what he wanted to touch or do first.

  “You already know you need me for more than just money or clothes, do you no’?” He seemed angry with her, but she couldn’t understand what she’d done to make him so. Finally he stopped in front of her, leaning in to press his mouth to her neck. As he brushed the straps from her shoulders, his rough palms made a delicious contrast to the silk. “Answer me.”

  “Yes,” Maddy admitted. The garment whispered to the floor, leaving her in nothing but stockings and garters.

  He nodded slowly. “Good lass,” he said, then bent his dark head over her pale breasts. She watched in the mirror, glorying in the way this man seemed to crave kissing her there. His hands were huge, the palms callused, yet the manner in which he worked them over her body was adoring.

  Her thoughts grew dim when he took her nipple into his mouth, his tongue circling it. After suckling both tips until they were hard, swollen points, he stood fully and walked behind her. Cupping her leg behind her knee, he lifted her foot onto the low stool, spreading her legs in front of the mirror.

  When she glanced away, he said, “Stay like this. I want to see you.” Then he coaxed her to face the mirror as his jet eyes flickered over the reflection—possessively lingering on her breasts and between her thighs. Most wouldn’t find his visage beautiful, but at that instant, he was the most irresistible man she’d ever beheld.

  Just when she was about to beg him to put his hands on her, he cupped her between her legs. Though she’d wanted his touch, she still jerked in shock.

  “Relax, I just want to pet you here,” he said as he spread her legs more. “Look at my finger stroking you,” he rumbled at her ear. “You doona want me to stop?”

  “No…”

  “Then tell me you desire me again.”

  “I do…you know I do.”

  With a triumphant gleam in his eyes, he pressed her up against the mirror, delving his finger inside her wetness from behind. Her damp nipples met the cool glass and she moaned, lost.

  Her sheath hugged his finger, shockingly tight as Ethan lazily thrust it inside her. With his other hand, he wrapped her hair around his fist, tugging her head back so he could watch her reactions in the mirror. How had he ever thought her experienced? Her responses were ungoverned, bare. She was so passionate—and his possession to do with as he would.

  She wore nothing but his ring on that ribbon dangling between her breasts, and her garters and stockings. The red silk of her garters stood out against the pale skin of her thighs.

  “So lovely,” he heard himself say. Her skin was sleek and soft, her nipples dark pink, like the bow of her lips.

  She hissed in a breath when he tried to fit a second finger into her, and her hand shot behind her to his wrist, her arm straight to push him away.

  “Shh, I’ll stop.” He withdrew it. Again that heavy feeling arose when he was reminded of how badly he’d hurt her that night—he hadn’t prepared her. He vowed to himself that when he did decide to take her, he would frig her for a damned hour till she begged him for it. “Here, put your arms back around my neck.” She hesitated. “Just trust me.”

  Once she tentatively grasped his neck, he began to tease her nipples, lightly pinching the tips. When she moaned, he ran one hand from her breast to her flat belly then to her sex, but she tensed. “Trust me. Let me make you come….”

  She gasped at his words but allowed his touch. With one hand, he spread the flesh around her clitoris wide and smoothed the pad of his other forefinger side to side over her swollen little bud. “Do you like that?”

  “Oh, my God, yes,” she said, panting. Soon she was trembling, her hands gripping his neck tightly. Keeping her open, rubbing her clitoris over and over, he watched as she grew wetter, her flesh glistening. When she began to undulate her hips to his fingers, he thought he’d spill in his trousers.

  With her brows drawn, clearly aching for her climax, she met his eyes in the mirror. “Ethan,” she whispered, saying his name for the first time.

  And it sounded like a benediction.

  In a flash, he understood that she hungered for this passion and pleasure, but that wasn’t all she was longing for at that moment. There was yearning in her eyes, so raw and furious he was staggered by it. Then her lids slid shut, which was good, because he was shaken.

  “Let yourself go,” he grated at her ear, barely recognizing his own strained voice. “Come for me, Madeleine.”

  When she did with a strangled cry, he knew she was his.

  He leered at her reflection as her back arched, her breasts quivering. He felt a savage thrill as she rolled against his finger, tensing and shivering to his touch. “That’s it,” he murmured. “You like that.”

  He slowed his strokes as the tension began to leave her body. Though he had a fierce need to come, he decided he’d further demonstrate to her that he was no horrible lover. He dipped his finger into her wetness, spreading it all around. Without warning, he sped up the rhythm once more.

  “What…?” she cried, lowering her arms, trying to wriggle away from him, but he looped an arm around her waist to hold her firm. “Oh, God. It’s too much!”

  But he was merciless, rubbing her, kissing and licking her neck, until she’d stopped struggling. When he sucked her earlobe, she began meeting his fingers again. “Do you find me a horrible lover now?”

  “N-no—”

  “Tell me when you’re goin’ tae come again.”

  “Now,now ,” she said, the word breaking on a moan. As she climaxed, he slipped the forefinger of his free hand into her sheath, thrusting it fast. “Oh, yes, Ethan! Feels…so…good,” she cried.

  His head fell back, and he groaned to the ceiling, feeling her sex squeezing his finger so tightly, in a rush of wet heat.

  Even after she’d finished, and though he was about to explode, he took his time, delving inside her as she sagged against him. He wanted to accustom her to the feeling, to trust him to touch her this way.

  Her response was so rewarding that part of him said to let this be only about her, to act as though he could give without taking. But when his cock ached like this he didn’t feel very giving.

  Unfastening the front of his trousers, he pulled himself free with a hissed breath. Then taking her hips, he pressed his shaft against her arse, his thumbs covering those dimples above her bottom. He groaned as he thrust over her plump curves, settling between them to grind against her. His cock head was so slick he daubed wetness against her lower back. He could readily come like this, but he wanted her hands on him. He choked out the words, “I need you tae ease me.” He slid his cock against her hip. “Touch it.”

  She inhaled, trying to catch her breath, then nodded. Reaching down, she brushed the pad of her finger softly on the crown, making unhurried circles around the slit, but he grasped her wrist and put her palm to his shaft. “No teasing. No’ yet.” He met her eyes in the mirror. “I’m starving for this,aingeal .”

  “How should I…what do you want me to do?”

  “Stroke me as you did that nigh
t in the carriage.”

  When she wrapped her soft palm at the base and drew her fist up, a wave of pleasure and elation swept through him. How in the hell had he lived without this for so long?

  “Tighter,” he commanded, and she gripped him harder. “That’s it.” He thumbed her nipples to urge her on. “Good, Madeleine…,” he grated. “It’s so damned good.”

  He squeezed her against him, covering her breasts with his hands, groans and coarse oaths breaking from his chest. “Faster.” She did, pumping her fist on him as he bucked into it. “Clever girl,” he rasped against her damp neck, “you’re making me come.”

  At the last second, he placed his hand over hers, pressing down. Yelling out, he ejaculated, pumping hot seed directly against her wicked garter, over and over.

  When he was finally spent, he shuddered and stayed her hand, astonished by the pleasure he’d just experienced, unable to remember its equal, but for the night he’d taken her.

  He still held her against him and wanted to stay like that as they caught their breath, yet he expected her to disentangle herself. Instead, her head fell back against him, and he had the leisure of watching her breasts rise and fall with her panting, her flesh perfectly flushed.

  She caught his gaze in the mirror. Between breaths she whispered, “If you give me a chance, I’ll be a good wife to you, Scot. Just please, don’t hurt me again.”

  “I will no’,” he said, holding her tighter, and for the briefest moment, he might have meant it.

  Twenty-five

  Madeleine stood on her toes and pressed a kiss to his cheek, touching his scar with her lips—not even seeming to mind.

  Having never experienced this kind of gentle affection from a woman, he had no idea how to proceed with it. She seemed delighted by what had happened, humming as she strolled to thesalle de bain to freshen up and change into one of the previously tailored dresses.

  When she returned, clad in her smart new clothes, with her shining hair braided atop her head, he found himself saying, “We’ll go to the garret now. If you want to take something to your friends, we can put a couple of bottles of champagne on the tab.”

  “Really? For Bea and Corrine?”

  “Aye.” And that one gesture earned him an expression from her that could only be described asadoring— the way she’d regarded him that night in London. He pulled at his collar.

  The overjoyed modiste had used her break to tally their bill, saving him time when paying. He thought Madeleine was going to faint when she sneaked a glance at the total. But he would have spent twenty times that if he’d known how he was to be rewarded.

  As the girls wrapped the bottles of champagne and fitted them into a narrow carrying basket, Ethan told the modiste that he’d wire directions for shipping the rest of Madeleine’s clothing once they finished tailoring them. Whatever was completed today, they should send to his hotel.

  When he and Madeleine exited the shop and he offered her his arm, she took it without hesitation. On the street, passersby gave them openly quizzical glances. He knew they wondered what she was doing with him, which reminded him that he used to be handsome. Before, he would have been a fitting match for her. Instead, he was a man who had to spend money on a woman to get her attention.

  Ethan was feeling something for her, some kind of appreciation for what had just happened between them, but that only disgusted him. He was like a starving wolf that had been fed a scrap and was happy to get it—a thirty-three-year-old man grateful to have his cock stroked. He ground his teeth, seething. He was never supposed to have ended up this way.

  And her parents were to blame for everything.

  Things used to be black and white. He was a man not bound by any fixed moral code; she was the daughter of two people who’d wronged him.

  How could there possibly be any hesitation or second thoughts about what he was planning?

  There wouldn’t be. All he cared about was getting her beneath him enough times to work her from his system.

  “Thank you for today,” she said, smiling up at him. Was she pleased with him because he’d spent a fortune on her or because she’d enjoyed what had happened between them? Why did he even care?

  “You’re welcome,” he said, for probably the first time in his life.

  When they arrived by cab in La Marais and he helped her down, the streets were harried and chaotic once more. Madeline stood out here like a diamond in dust.

  “Oh, look, there’s Berthé!” she whispered. “The one who tripped me last night. Make sure she sees us.”

  He hid a frown. Did Madeleine want to be seenwith him ? Or did she only want to show off her new finery? Just when he’d decided on the latter, he felt a distinctly proprietary patting on his arse.

  “Madeleine,” he growled in warning, and she yanked her hand up.

  “Sorry,” she murmured. “I just couldn’t resist.”

  Why was he oddly…flattered?

  At her building, he followed Madeleine inside and to the stairwell. “Hold onto the rope,” she said, taking the bottles and hastening ahead of him as though she could see in the dark.

  As soon as the stair head groaned, Bea’s door swung open, but it was Corrine who rushed out to meet them. “Toumard’s men came by again,” she said. “You have to get out of here, Maddy! They roughed up Bea—”

  “What?” Madeleine cried. “Bea?”

  Corrine nodded. “She wouldn’t tell them where you’d gone, and then she had to go and spit in one’s face. She’ll be all right, but she’s lying down now, resting.”

  The news of this threat made that feeling of protectiveness for Madeleine surge in him again. “Go check on Bea,” Ethan told her. “Corrine will tell me what happened.”

  Once Madeleine hurried to Bea’s room and softly closed the door behind her, Corrine said, “I see that look in your eyes. You really are going to take care of Maddy from now on.”

  He hesitated before giving her a quick nod. “Madeleine accepted my proposal.”

  Corrine sighed in relief.

  “But I need to know some things about her past, and the lass is tight-lipped.” When Corrine nodded ruefully, he asked, “How did she burn her arm?”

  “Oh, that was in the fire of forty-seven. Her building went up like a wick, and she was trapped upstairs. She very nearly lost her arm and came close to losing her life.”

  If she had been eleven or twelve, she’d just been forced away from her home to move to a foreign city. Her father had just died….

  “That’s one of the reasons Maddy’s so terrified of Toumard—his men love to break arms,” she continued. “Maddy’s been like a cat sidling round a boiling pot of porridge these last few weeks. Fit to break your heart.”

  The idea of her being afraid, day after day…

  Toumard was as good as dead.

  “Why does Madeleine no’ live with her mother?”

  Corrine lowered her voice. “Well, she doesn’t like people to know this, but her mother’s…dead.”

  “You canna be serious,” he snapped. She nodded, and suddenly all Ethan could hear was his heart pounding in his ears. “Dead…”

  All the time I’ve wasted hating, wanting to hurt someone—someone who didn’t even exist any longer….

  Corrine’s hands twined. “Maddy’s been an orphan for years. Her mother died when Maddy was fourteen.”

  He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Anorphan .”

  Ethan had thought he’d been hell-bound before. Now there was no doubt. He gave a bitter laugh. This must be a jest.

  He’d deflowered a penniless waif. An orphan.

  “She had friends in England,” Ethan said. “When her mother died, she could have petitioned them for help, and they would gladly have given it.”

  “She’d been here for some time already. Living in La Marais makes you feel a bit…worthless, especially in the young. She was ashamed. The only reason she went after that man in England was because Bea and I wouldn’t let it rest. We eventua
lly got her to promise to try before she married Le Daex.”

  “Le Daex, the count?” he demanded. “Her mother didn’t arrange that?”

  “Yes, years ago. But after she died, Maddy ran away before the wedding. We only recently revived that cull with La Daex. But all it did was get Maddy in debt.”

  And put an unprotected young woman under Toumard’s notice.

  Ethan supposed he’d hoped Madeleine had been close to Sylvie, that they were two of a kind. Instead, Sylvie was dead, and Madeleine had suffered destitution for years by Ethan’s hand, bearing the brunt of a revenge meant for another. She’d suffered alone.