She’d taken his breath away. She always had.
“Philippa. Close the window.” She turned her head and looked down. She glanced back at him, her eyes glowed with dark intensity, her lips parted on a spontaneous smile, heady with the euphoria of daredevilry.
She was going to try to climb down the facade.
“No!” Reflexively, he lunged toward her again, hyper-extending his arm behind him, nearly breaking it. She glanced once more with a certain piquant longing at the wind-lashed wall beneath her and with an annoyed twist of her lips, jerked the windows shut.
He relaxed, aware that he’d nearly given himself away. Again. For an intelligent and intuitive woman, she was ridiculously ignorant where he was concerned. How could she not know he loved her? But she didn’t.
And he wasn’t about to tell her.
How could he? She’d use that knowledge to break him just as she was using her knowledge of his desire for her to try to break him. And of late, she’d come damn close.
She ran untamed and undisciplined, as likely to speak her mind as a bird is to sing, tethered to respectable behavior only by the thinnest of cords and that held by an elderly, half-deaf aunt. She knew nothing of guile, little of inhibitions, less of pretensions. Indeed, as of this night every man and woman for ten miles ‘round knew Philippa Jones loathed him. Because she was as passionate in love as she was in enmity. He’d tasted both.
She had wanted him once. She wanted him still. There was no possible way she could have feigned her reaction to that kiss. But wanting and loving were not the same. Particularly, not in the lexicon of a wild creature like Philippa Jones. Though once he had thought…
Was it so few months back that she’d desired him and been so breathtakingly obvious in that desire? She’d conveyed it each time they’d met by her dilated eyes, her parted lips, and the veil of delight that cloaked her skin. And if desire hadn’t had time to ripen into love, she was young. He could wait for her heart to awaken.
But then she’d discovered he’d kept the truth of why he’d come to Trecombe from her. And having been deceived in one matter, she refused to believe he hadn’t deceived her in all others.
Even now, regardless of the price it had cost him, objectively he knew he’d had no choice. Because as easy to read as she was, as obvious in her affections, he hadn’t dared risk telling her the identity of the man he pursued. Only recently had he discovered it was the man she’d “loved forever,” Hal Minton.
But she hadn’t come to realize she loved Minton until after she’d discovered Ned’s “treachery.” It was like her to fall in love with someone she considered an outsider. She’d probably built Minton up into some misunderstood folk hero. The truth was that Hal Minton was two-faced, self-serving, and mean-spirited. But he’d been born and bred on the Cornish coast. And Philippa’s loyalties ran deep.
Damn her, for her unreasoning heart, which mistook loyalty for love. Anger and frustration hummed in his blood, mixing powerfully with the lust she’d awakened. From the first, he’d wanted to conquer his wild Cornish lass without breaking her spirit.
She stood before the window, the storm building on the horizon a dramatic backdrop for her beauty. She raised one slanting brow challengingly. Philippa: his promise and his blight, the most exasperating wench he’d ever been plagued by.
At that moment, he could have gladly throttled her.
He’d had about as much of her cold contempt as he was going to take. She’d started this and, by God, she wouldn’t leave this room until it was either ended or she was stepping over his dead body.
“Now what are you going to do?” he asked.
She shrugged elaborately. “Wait until the maids come. Then leave. Unless you plan to assault me in front of them?”
She was deliberately provoking him. She shouldn’t be playing these games with him. Not now. Not after all the other games she’d played with him throughout the last four months.
She cast him a roguish look. “Lord of the manor though you be, Ned Masterson, this isn’t the thirteenth century. No one lives or dies by your sufferance.”
“I would some did,” he growled.
“Are you referring to me?” She batted her eyelashes and despite his fury he felt a familiar twist of desire and amusement, the potent brew she’d always managed to conjure within him.
And now she’d added searing pain to the brew, because she loved another. She laughed with another. She fought with another. She allowed another’s hand to touch her as she relinquished herself to pleasure.
He had never been a jealous man. He had always measured his responses carefully. But now, jealousy fair consumed him. His imagination drove him with a flail made all the more excruciating because of its acuity. He recalled with acid-bright clarity every murmur, every one of her kisses, her smiles.
“Too bad,” she went blithely on, unaware of the havoc she wrought by spinning gracefully at the foot of his bed, well out of his reach, as pleased with herself as a kitten with a mouse. Her swirling skirts caught and released the light, the liquid glow of the fire molded itself to her body.
She’d thought she’d outmaneuvered him. It would almost be a pity to disabuse her of that notion.
He sat down on the bloody Masterson bed. If only the oaf who’d carved the great monstrosity had been a bit surer of himself—for clearly with a bed of this size and bulk there was some matter of compensation going on here—he’d have been able to drag it across the room. A foot was all he’d managed. Still, it might prove enough.
He lay down on his back, crossed his arms under his head, and stared thoughtfully at the ceiling.
“What are you doing?” she asked suspiciously.
“Relaxing,” he said with great patience. He glanced at her. “No sense in being more uncomfortable than necessary while awaiting my men.”
“What do you mean?” she asked. She hovered near the foot of the bed, silhouetted in a radiant outline by the hearth light, her voice sharp.
“My darling girl, you don’t imagine that my men will simply sit on their horses for hours waiting for me to appear and then, when I don’t show up, sigh and say ‘Oh, well, there’s a night then,’ and go home?”
Actually, that was pretty much exactly what they would do lest someone took command. His men were too well-versed in the vagaries of their profession to assume every job proceeded like clockwork. Especially this one. In point of fact, it was late enough now that the operation to apprehend the smugglers might already have been scuttled.
But Pip didn’t know that. And just because one project had to be abandoned, didn’t mean another couldn’t be undertaken. He could see her luscious lower lip thrust out in vexation.
“No need for you to be uncomfortable whilst we wait.” He patted the bed beside him. “Best settle in for the nonce.”
“You’re lying. You’re a liar.”
“Tch. Your aunt would be devastated to hear you speak in such a manner to your elders.”
Even in the murky light, he could see her measuring the distance between where he lay and the wall. She clearly did not like the odds.
“I’ll scream,” she stated. “Someone will come and then I’ll be free and you—”
“And I will track you to the gates of hell itself before I let you go,” he promised. Then he smiled, shrugging indolently. “Besides, as you said, there’s a storm without and my ancestors built their walls thick and their doors thicker still. Apparently, they, too, had things they didn’t want overheard.”
“Let me go.” The taint of panic appeared for the first time in her voice. “Please. I have to try to find him.”
He jerked upright and swung his legs off the bed, standing slowly. He could not pretend indolence. Not with her reminder of her new lover. Next she’d be pleading for Minton’s life and that…no, he did not think he could stand that.
“In answer to your request, no. I will not let you go. Not now.” Not ever. Not by choice.
For a long minute, she did not
speak. But her chin rose and her shoulders straightened. “Are you threatening me?”
She took being threatened no better than he. She had always been his match in temper and spirit. Damn her.
“Yes,” he smiled. “And if you are wise, you will pay heed that threat.”
He could tell from the expression on her face that she’d had enough, he’d pushed her to her limit.
He understood her so well, each vulnerability, each quality, what she lived by, what she would die for. He had never known a woman as well as he knew her. In his very soul, he knew her.
And that, even more than the romantic picture she’d built around Hal Minton, was probably in truth why she’d made an end with him, he thought. Such intimacy would be immensely threatening to a wild creature such as her.
She moved toward him, and stopped just inches out of his reach. He watched her, barely masking his eagerness. A few more inches.
“You are so easy to manipulate, Philippa. You must acquire more mystique if you are to be a success at your chosen profession.”
“And what profession, pray tell, is that?”
“A dead man’s doxy.”
Chapter Six
Ned was right. Philippa had no impulse control.
Her hand shot out, just as he’d anticipated and just as he’d planned, he caught it before she struck him. But she was fierce, his Philippa, and not one to give in. Not without a fight.
She hit him hard with her other hand, so surprising him with the unexpectedness of her assault that her blow landed against his chest. He grabbed hold of her wrists.
“Let me go!” she demanded. “Let go of me and fight me, you coward.”
He stared at her, amazed. She undoubtedly knew that he would never hit her, just as she must know there was no possibility of her winning any fight between them. But, she was beyond reasoning. She glared at him, panting.
“You want to hit me,” he said.
“You have no idea how much.”
He dropped her wrists and took one step back, his arms at his side. “Fine. Hit me.”
She didn’t wait for a second invitation. She lifted both hands at once and began swinging wildly at him, with such ferocity—and no form, at all—that her balled fists sometimes met something other than his blocking forearms.
He absorbed the blows. He absorbed everything she sent him. All the months of anger and frustration and betrayal poured out of her, realized in a flurry of flying fists. Though she was no brawler, her wild rides on the rugged Cornish coast had toned her body, pared from it all laxity. She’d stamina and she’d desire and so it went, long minutes broken only by her occasional sob of frustration as he parried the majority of her wild blows. Still, she refused to stop, refused to lower her arms. And finally, at long last, when her face was damp with sweat and her hair hung wildly about her shoulders and her arms were so tired she could barely raise them, he could stand no more.
“Philippa…” he said, frowning as he warded a feeble hit. “Stop.”
“No!” she rasped. “No!”
“Easy,” he said, startled by her vehemence and finally, seeing no other recourse he wrapped his arms around her and held her tight.
“No!” she grated out. “No! No! It’s not fair!”
She was too wrought up. She’d exhaust herself. Do herself harm. “What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing? What do you want?”
“To hurt you!” she cried, raising her face to his. Her voice broke. “I can’t hurt you. I never could. It’s not fair.”
“You can’t hurt me?” he echoed disbelievingly. “Is that what this is about? You want to hurt me?”
She’d cut his heart out, wrung pain from him he’d never imagined possible, trampled on his pride, destroyed his peace of mind and she couldn’t hurt him?
“You’ve gone too far, Philippa.” His voice was as cold as his rage was hot. It had always been a barometer of his emotions, at distinct variance with what he felt. It was frigid now.
He yanked her around, spinning her effortlessly, and lashing his free arm around her waist. His manacled hand clasped her throat.
She stilled, her back against his naked chest. Her heart thundered. Even through the thin material of her dress, he could feel its pounding. Her shoulder blades cut into his pectorals with each draw and release of her agitated breath. She was afraid of him. More pain.
“You haven’t any idea, do you? You’ve no concept of what you’ve done to me. Well, sweet darkness, you can rest easy for I swear to you, you hurt me,” he rasped, his lips inches from the velvet cockle of her ear. “Now, give me the key.”
“Take it.”
Things were moving too fast. Every act committed now unalterable, each word irrevocable. No time to think, plan, only time to act on instinct, and perhaps something less dependable, less reliable. Emotion.
Her whispered challenge caught him off guard. He hesitated. Her body was as lithe and supple as a spring willow, a feminine mystery. But not completely so. Not to him. He’d trespassed there and had craved a return until he ached.
He’d played with her, drawn a line along the velvety curve of her hip. His palms had weighed the slight, soft abundance of her breast. He’d tasted her. And it was the sensory memory of her that roused him and caused him to hold himself away from her.
She undid him.
“Don’t play with me, Philippa.”
She let her head fall back against his shoulder and gazed up at him now, unafraid and unreadable. Philippa, his open book, unreadable. It should have made him laugh but he could not even find a smile. He had no idea what was going on behind those dark, luminous eyes. Treachery? Simple desire? Some odd, desperate combination of both?
“You won’t like my games,” he assured her under his breath.
“I might.”
Was she daring him? He slipped his hand up her throat, capturing her jaw. He pressed his lips against her temple, fanning her closed eyelids with his breath. “We’ll see.”
Before she could react, he spun her around, put his hands on her shoulders and shoved her, toppling her on the bed. He followed her down, imprisoning her beneath his body, his arms braced on either side of her, his hips heavy and insistent over hers. Even through the layers of her skirt she could feel him.
She squeezed her eyes shut. He grappled her wrists together and pulled them over her head, trapping them, just as she’d done to him.
“Open your eyes!”
Her eyes flew open at his fierce tone. The minute they did, their gazes locked in contention.
“Do you see me?” His voice had turned into a harsh whisper. “Do you?”
“Yes!”
“Do you feel me?” His lower body moved against her and she gasped.
“Yes,” he whispered, answering for her.
His lips drew back in equal parts self-derision and desire, needing her to acknowledge what she was doing and who she was doing it with. “My name. Say my name.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said.
With his free hand he raked the heavy hair back from her face, clutched a handful of the dark stuff and tugged her head back, exposing her throat. Her heart thundered beneath him. “My name.”
“Are you going to hurt me?” she asked, still not afraid.
“Hurt you?” he asked, honestly amused. His head dropped alongside her throat. His lips glided over her flesh, assaulting her in ways against which she had no defense.
She’d always been ruled by sense and sensation far more than sensibility. Her body heeded the sensual call. Her eyelids shut, and she caught her lower lip beneath the pearl white ridge of her teeth.
“I would that I could, Philippa, and pay you back in kind for the hell you’ve put me through. But you’d need to feel something other than lust for me to do that. So, I have other plans for you.”
“Ned—”
“So you do know who has you.”
“Yes.”
“You wanted this. For me to force you,�
� he accused her.
“No.”
“Yes,” he said. “You wanted me to control this. Because you’re afraid of it. I’d never have pegged you as a coward, Pip.”
“No.” She shook her head violently, her dark hair whipping across her pale face. “No, you’re wrong. I know what I’m doing. What I’ve done. But I hate not being strong enough to say no.” Her eyes blazed up at his. “And if I’m not strong enough to say ‘no,’ I’ll be damned if you are.”
He laughed acrimoniously. “That, darling, is the most obtuse bit of reasoning I have ever heard.”
She flushed brightly at his laughter. “Let me go. At least let me go back to the other side of the room.”
He laughed again. “But I haven’t found the key yet.”
“I don’t have it.”
“And I no longer care.”
She bucked beneath him and he kissed her. For an instant, she resisted and then she was kissing him, kissing him with a hunger he’d thought he’d never know again. He released her wrists, slipped his arms under her and lifted her up into his embrace.
Her arms closed around his shoulders. Her fingers raked through his hair. Her tongue thrust deeply in his mouth, sounds—sweet Jesu!—sounds of desperate want and pleasure rose from deep in her throat.
He drank passion from her mouth like a drunk imbibes mead, sweet, honeyed, intoxicating. He burned with the need to bury himself within her, to finally take this to its ultimate ends, to finish this madness and complete the dance they’d begun so many months ago. To complete himself. With her.
He thrust his chained hand between their bodies, dragging the metal over her belly as he grappled with her skirt, fisting the thin material in his hand and dragging it up over her thighs. Suddenly, she broke away from his kiss, shoved her palms flat against his chest and pushed.
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