by Jo Beverley
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. Deliberately, 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.
When she swam out of the hot darkness he was still thrusting.
“Zeus, no,” she muttered, but he didn’t stop. Why did she think she could say no to this? And did she want to? Soon her body ripped off into madness again.
It happened one more time but that time he was with her, or far, far away from her. When he collapsed on her, she had to fight the urge to push him off and run away.
No more.
She couldn’t take any more.
But of course, there would be no more. It was not physically possible. Was it? What did she really know of this?
Maurice’s lovemaking had been strong, and when he demanded that daytime sex she’d been excited before he’d entered her, and exploded quickly. He’d always
stroked her to more pleasure afterward as if in a kind of payment. She didn’t know why, and had never asked. He’d seemed to enjoy watching her fall into pleasure.
She’d never experienced anything like this, however. Ravished expressed it perfectly. Ravished, razed, and conquered. Aching, burning, and drained, and ashamed about how much she was already grieving the loss of it.
There was no doubt. Lord Warren would never do this to her. . . .
She woke exhausted, parts of her body still sore. She gently touched her nipples and almost flinched. When she tried to move away from him, however, she found he was lying on her hair.
When had it been freed of her plait?
During that other ravishing sometime in the night, as hot, as fierce, as strong as before. Could she walk?
She had to.
The light through the partially open curtains suggested very early morning, but she must be back in her room when her maid came.
She looked back at him and saw his eyes open, watching her. Blank eyes. Guarded eyes. With a suppressed groan she knew she couldn’t let him feel the slightest regret about what had happened. And there wasn’t any. She just didn’t want more at the moment.
Or most of her didn’t want more.
Parts of her were shameless hussies.
“Good morning,” she said softly.
“Is it? Good?”
“It promises to be a lovely day.” But she realized they were going to have to talk about sex. It was not something she had ever imagined doing. She reached up to touch his stubbled cheek. “I fear you must have a low opinion of me this morning.”
By a sudden release of tension, she knew she had found the right words. He moved his rough chin against her hand. “You really enjoyed that?”
“Oh yes. But,” she added quickly, “I couldn’t take more now.”
Too late she realized that the “now” promised things she wasn’t sure about, but she couldn’t retract it.
“I liked it, too,” he said.
She tapped his cheek in playful rebuke. “You like challenge, Lord Vandeimen. How silly that sounds. May I call you Van?”
“Of course. Or,” he added with a grin, “Demon. You called me that a time or two.”
She knew she was coloring. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It’s one of my names. I’d rather you not call me George.” But his lids had lowered over his eyes.
“What is it?” she asked. “Better to be honest.”
He looked at her. “Was this what you wanted all along? What you’re paying for?”
“No!” Then she calmed herself. “No. I promise.”
But it reminded her why she’d started this, and that he didn’t know the truth. She didn’t want to tell him now, to spoil this strangely beautiful night, but she must. For the sake of the fragile connection between them, she must.
She eased her hair free of him, then laid her hand on his shoulder. “Van, I have to tell you something. I don’t want to, but I must.”
She felt the tension, even though her eyes could not detect it. “Yes?”
“I know your father lost most of his money and shot himself. . . .”
His brows twitched, but he didn’t say anything.
“The money was lost in an investment involving rubber production.”
“You do know a lot. Why?”
That was a more dire question than he suspected. She tried to find words to soften it, but there were none. “My husband was the principal in that scheme.”
She left it there, not trying to explain or excuse because there was no explanation or excuse, searching his still features, braced even for violence.
He moved slightly, freeing himself of her touch, lids lowered so she could no longer read his eyes. “And your part in this?”
“None! I knew nothing about it until after Maurice’s death. I found it in his papers, his accounts. . . .”
She noticed his chest rise and fall with his breaths wondering what else she could say to hold off disaster. But then he looked at her. “Is that why you sought me out? Why?”
Panic gripped her. If she told him, he’d know he didn’t owe her anything. He’d leave!
So be it.
She licked her dry lips. “When I realized what Maurice had done, I knew I had to put it right. From pride, however, I didn’t want anyone to know what a scoundrel my husband had been. I tried to think of cunning schemes. I followed your doings anxiously, and even thought of finding someone to deliberately lose a fortune to you at cards.”
“Why didn’t you?” But he was looking lighter, if rather dazed.
“I didn’t know how. That’s how I heard about your disastrous loss, though. It was so unlike you. I’d heard that you nearly always won. I knew I had to act.” She reached out again to touch him, and he didn’t move away. “Thank God I did.”
He collapsed down on his back. It broke contact again, but she didn’t mind. He was staring at the ceiling. “I wish your husband was alive to be killed,” he said, almost idly. “But it wasn’t entirely his fault, you know. There were too many deaths in the family. They broke my father’s spirit. In the end, he was probably glad of an excuse to go. I should have dragged myself away from war to help him.”
She took a risk and lay down beside him, close to him. He moved his arm and gathered her in, and she almost melted with relief. She’d told him, and it hadn’t destroyed everything.
“You were doing your duty,” she said.
“Doesn’t duty to family come first?”
“If it did, there’d be no more wars.”
“And that would be a good thing.”
She rolled closer, put her arm across him. “Speak of war if you wish, Van, but don’t torment yourself. Sometimes there are dragons, and they have to be fought. Doubtless Saint George left family behind to worry.”
“Saint George. We all wanted to be Saint George the dragon killer, so none of us could be. And Con ended up getting a tattoo of a dragon. I never did understand why.”
“So much worse than a demon?” she teased, licking over his grimacing devil, then blowing.
He rolled over her, smiling. “To us it was. To us the dragon was everything bad, from the head gamekeeper to the French. But he insisted.”
“It links in to the title he has now.”
“But he never expected to inherit that. . . .” He took a handful of her hair. “This is beautiful.”
“It’s mousy brown.”
“Not at all. It makes me think of young deer and the soft mystery of the forests. It’s very English hair.” He buried his head in it for a moment, then looked at her again. “If we couple again it will be on my terms. Gently.”
“You don’t like it like that?”
“I like it. But I want to cherish you gently to heaven one day, my lady.”
“This is only for the six weeks!” It came out harsher, blunter than she meant, but she meant the warning. To herself as much as to him. “In fact, as you now know, you owe me nothing.”
“Are you saying that I owed you this?”
She colored fiercely. “No. But the money is yours. You don’t have to pretend to be engaged to marry me.”
“I keep my word. I am still yours to command, my lady.”
A number of lewd suggestions flashed through her mind, but the saner parts of her body protested, and anyway, she still needed to help him heal. That had been the main purpose all along, and now she knew what must happen next.
“Then we visit your home for a few days,” she said. “Just us.”
He stared at her. “Why?”
“Why not? If I were really to be your bride I would want to.”
“But this is mere pretense.”
She tried not to show that the
flat words stung. “Why not?” she asked again.
“It’s been virtually uninhabited for a year and before that it hadn’t been kept up too well.”
“Then it’s time you assessed what needs to be done.”
He rolled away to lie on his back again, but this time it was hostile. “I know what needs to be done.”
Her mouth dried, but she had to continue. His fierce resistance showed that it was important. “You will soon have the money to care for it. You need to start making plans.”
He did turn back to look at her then. “Is this a command, O ruler of my heart?”
At the biting edge, she wanted to say no, to let him escape, but she said, “Yes.”
He rolled away from her, out of his side of the bed, shocking her with his beauty because her mind had not been in that place. Every muscle, every bone, was angry.
He turned. “Didn’t you want to get back to your room?”
She was tempted to clutch things around her and scuttle, but this was another of the demon’s damned battles. She climbed out of her side of the bed stark naked. Not trying to cover herself, but glad of her curtain of hair, she asked, “When can you be ready to leave?”
“In moments if necessary. How do we travel? Horseback?”
She winced at the mere thought, and knew he’d said that deliberately. “Curricle?”
“I don’t have one.”
“I do. You can drive if you want.”
“I don’t know how.” At her look of surprise he said, “It’s not something you do in the army in wartime. I can ride twelve hours at a stretch, though, if I have to.”
She wondered if it was only her lustful side that caught an ambiguity there, and leaped toward it even as most of herself recoiled. She turned to look for clothing, even if it did lose her points. Her shoes. Her corset. Her dress . . . Where was her shift?
Still in the bed. She turned and he had found it. He tossed it to her. She realized she was going to have to hide it and hope her maid didn’t notice the loss. She looked at him again. He was slightly erect.
She scrambled into her dress over nothing, and tugged the laces tight beneath her breasts. Without her corset she had to push them up first, and she glanced anxiously at him.