Claiming the Courtesan

by Anna Campbell

  She could tell he laughed against his will, and she fought not to find that sudden glimpse of his humanity disarming. “You know, Verity or Soraya or whoever you are at this moment, sometimes your gall takes my breath away.”

  In spite of everything, she smiled. “I hope not just my gall does that, Your Grace.”

  He started to reply, but she slammed her mouth against his and began to use her tongue in an open-mouthed, passionate kiss. This time Kylemore answered her with desire. Not because he wanted to, Verity knew, but because he had no other choice.

  That was her last rational thought for a long time as the kiss swept her up in a conflagration of dark pleasure she’d never known before. It was hot in this firestorm, hot and dangerous, but she hurled herself into the blaze without a thought to her own protection. His arms lashed around her as he dragged her across his lap.

  Shamingly, Kylemore was the one who eventually pulled back.

  He lifted himself slightly away from her. She lay on the bench. Somewhere in that tempestuous kiss, he’d brought her beneath him. A few moments more and he’d have been inside her. The weight of him, hard and hot against her belly, even through her skirts, indicated that was still a possibility.

  Even this wasn’t enough to return her to reality. Without a squeak of protest, she lay beneath him lost in delight.

  “If I don’t stop now, I won’t,” Kylemore said tautly. His expression was strained. The arms he supported himself upon imprisoned her in a cage she could summon no great eagerness to escape. “Unless that’s what you want.”

  “Want?” she repeated stupidly, blinking up at him. Her mouth felt swollen and her heart pounded as though she’d run from him instead of surrendered mindlessly to his importunity.

  “Shall I take this embrace to its natural conclusion?” Briefly, he was the courtly lover she’d known in London.

  She sucked in a shaky breath to steady her rioting responses. The creaking of the coach was loud in her ears as she scrambled to gather her scattered thoughts and, even more importantly, her scattered defenses. Fleetingly, she remembered the duke describing his kiss as innocent. It had been about as innocent as Lucifer overseeing an orgy in hell.

  “Madam?” he asked, then very deliberately pressed his erection into her stomach.

  The crude gesture brought her back to herself as nothing else could have. All the lovely bonelessness drained away from her body as she stiffened in unspoken rejection.

  “No,” she managed to croak out. Then, on a note of desperately sought recklessness, “but I believe my sterling efforts have earned the end of my bondage.”

  He looked at her strangely. “I untied your hands while you kissed me.”

  “What?” she asked uncertainly, then realized it was true. Worse, her arms encircled him and she caressed his back.

  She was only a breath away from drawing him down for more of those devastating kisses. She vaguely remembered him tugging at her hands during their tempestuous embrace. He must have released her then.

  A different heat clawed its way up her face. Of all the humiliations her abduction involved, she’d hated those bonds the most. Yet she’d been so lost in the whirlwind of his kiss that she hadn’t even noticed she was no longer constrained.

  “Get off me,” she snarled, snatching her hands away from him.

  He didn’t budge. She should have known he wouldn’t respond to an order. “I’ve never had sex in a carriage before,” he said thoughtfully.

  Neither had she, but she refused to admit it. “I prefer a bed.”

  A slow smile crossed his face as the vehicle’s movements evocatively jostled her against him. For a moment, he looked almost approachable. “Does that mean you’ve reconciled yourself to returning to me?”

  Oh, curse her for blurting out these suggestive comments. Soraya would never be so easy to catch out. Verity was badly rattled and likely to plunge herself deeper into trouble with every word.

  In overdue self-protection, she spoke ironically, just as Soraya would have. “Do I have any option, Your Grace?”

  That couldn’t be disappointment in his eyes, could it? The fleeting expression vanished when he rolled off her and returned to his own seat. “No, you don’t,” he said.

  She sat up shakily, at last able to brace herself against the swaying vehicle, and began to straighten her clothing. Surprisingly, apart from a few buttons undone at her collar, everything was in place. She left her hair loose. Without pins or hairbrush, it was impossible to bring it into anything approaching order.

  He leaned forward to raise the blinds. After the gloomy intimacy, even the brightness of the rainy evening jarred her. She narrowed her eyes and looked across at the duke.

  He was a study in rumpled elegance. How could such a hell spawn be so beautiful? When she’d first seen him six years ago, he was twenty-one, just emerging from youth. She’d thought him the most perfect creature God ever created. But even then, that eerie self-possession had already settled over his narrow, intelligent face. With a despairing honesty, she admitted that maturity merely added to his attractions.

  She watched him struggle to regain his usual unruffled manner. But his color was high, and his mouth was full and softer than usual.

  The world that called him Cold Kylemore had no real understanding of him. An inferno of passion blazed beneath the duke’s nonchalance. She could only guess at the effort required to keep that bottomless pit of emotion secret.

  Except it was no longer a secret—at least to her. He was angry, he was bitter, he was hurt, although she knew he’d face torture before he admitted to the last. He was also as randy as a hare in spring. It surprised her he’d kept his promise and not taken her. She knew him well enough to read some of his restlessness as unsatisfied lust.

  When she’d left him, she had thought he’d find another mistress quickly and, if not forget Soraya, at least do his best to ignore the rejection. The duke had a strong sexual drive. She’d always assumed that on the days he didn’t ride out to Kensington, he relieved his itch with other women. Someone like him would always attract feminine notice. She’d never duped herself into believing him faithful to her alone.

  But the man sitting opposite, who had gone back to staring at her, blast him, was almost feverish with desire. She could smell the lust on him. The unbelievable idea gained credence in her mind that he hadn’t had a woman in a long time. Perhaps even since she’d run away.

  It was absurd. It couldn’t be true.

  Although she thought, leaning down to untie her feet, that might explain what had driven him to this rash abduction.

  So why wasn’t he pumping three months of frustration into her right now? She couldn’t make him keep his bargain not to touch her. And he’d have her soon enough anyway.

  None of this made sense. Just as that furious kiss made no sense if he meant to leave her alone for the moment. Which, amazingly, it seemed he did.

  “What was that all about?” she asked a long time later.

  To his credit, he didn’t pretend to misunderstand the question. “The kiss? You said it yourself. It was to teach you a lesson.” He used the cold, cutting voice again, and despite herself, she shivered.

  “That you can touch me whenever you feel like it?” She injected a challenge into her voice. “I already knew that.”

  He smiled slightly. “Yes. But now you know when I touch you, you’re not immune. And that thought will eat at you like acid.”

  He was right, damn him. For the first time in this long, disheartening day, she was truly terrified.

  Chapter 6

  Kissing her had been an almighty mistake.

  Kylemore settled back against the squabs and strove to preserve his appearance of detachment. All the while, an unrelenting battle raged against his most fundamental urges. His muscles clenched to the point of pain as he stopped himself lunging for her and finishing what he’d started. The promise he’d made her didn’t matter a damn. But his own ability to master his animal passions
did.

  She’d been delicious in his arms, the fulfillment of every lonely dream that had tormented him over the last three months.

  She’d been too delicious. If he took her now, where was his victory? He’d be irrevocably back in her thrall and she’d know it, the clever little cat. He had snatched her from her brother’s clutches to demonstrate his power over her, not to become her adoring slave once more.

  Yet again, she confounded his most carefully laid plans. One kiss from the reluctant Verity Ashton, with her teasing, deceptively innocent violet perfume, and he was right back where he’d been with Soraya. Yearning. Longing. Needy.

  Hell.

  She’d brought him to his knees without even trying, damn her. He strove to keep the extent of his turmoil from his expression. Then he realized he needn’t worry whether his troubled emotions showed.

  Soraya—Verity—wasn’t looking at him but staring out of the window at the darkening landscape. The fading light revealed she was frantic with misery and fear.

  He beat back the twinge of pity that swam up through the murky ocean of lust inside him. She was in this predicament through her own fault. If he’d cowed her into submission within hours of setting out, well and good. The baggage deserved to stew in her iniquity. Perhaps the kiss hadn’t been an unalloyed disaster after all.

  He shifted to relieve his discomfort. Hell, he had to have her. Desire threatened to scorch his resolution to ashes. Three months of agonizing abstinence howled at him to take her. Especially when for several heated moments, she’d wanted the act as much as he had.

  Well, perhaps not quite.

  He shifted again and tried to calm the tempest in his blood by telling himself he’d have her soon enough.

  But he didn’t want her later.

  He wanted her now.

  He’d set out to prove the advantages were now his. What he’d actually proven was that he was as vulnerable to her as he’d ever been, confound her. Humiliatingly quickly, the kiss had changed from an act of domination to something else entirely, something he didn’t want to think about.

  The irony was that the whole devastating encounter had in the end been remarkably chaste. They had kissed. That was all. He’d hardly even touched her perfect body. The body whose every curve and line was imprinted on his memory. With a stifled groan, he shifted again.

  He’d sworn he wouldn’t take her until they reached Scotland. The delay was designed to extend her torture so that by the time he actually bedded her, she’d already suffered days of apprehension and self-recrimination.

  So why did it seem the only victim stretched out on the rack right now was His Grace, the Duke of Kylemore?

  The kiss had been extraordinary.

  Bewitching. Intoxicating. Overwhelming.

  Puzzling.

  He’d almost say she hadn’t quite known how to go about the business at first. Which was ridiculous. Soraya’s clever, skilled mouth had already tasted every inch of him. His arousal tightened another excruciating notch as he remembered some of the things she’d done to him.

  Good God, at this rate, he’d be a gibbering wreck before they even crossed the border.

  He darted an angry glance at Soraya.

  Verity. Miss Ashton.

  She was close enough to fuck and she might as well have been in Timbuctoo. He couldn’t risk touching her again. His self-control had barely survived the last hour.

  It was going to be a very long journey.

  When the carriage rolled into the village of Hinton Stacey several hours later, night had fallen. Kylemore’s prisoner was still silent. But then, his mistress had never been the most garrulous of women. He told himself he didn’t care—he hadn’t abducted her for her conversation.

  “Put out your hands.” He reached for the cords. He hadn’t tied her up after that scorching kiss, although he’d meant to.

  Her face was a pale glimmer in the gloom as she turned toward him. “No.”

  So that’s the way of it, he thought, with a regret he refused to examine. Apparently, she’d devoted the hours since he’d kissed her to rebuilding her defenses.

  What had he expected? That one embrace would turn her into a quivering mass of acquiescence? His gaze dropped to the betrayingly unhappy line of her lips. He’d give up his last hope of heaven to taste that mouth again, which was odd, given that kissing her had never been a particular obsession when she’d been his willing lover.

  “I’m afraid the word no lost its power between us when you ran away.” With a roughness born more of his anger with himself than with her, he reached out to grab her hands.

  “I will not be bound!” she cried, sliding across the leather seat to avoid him.

  The idea of scuffling with her was too undignified to be borne. Or at least that’s what he told himself. He certainly wasn’t afraid of his own reactions to her in a struggle.

  “If I have to hurt you, I will,” he said, far from sure it was true.

  She treated the threat with the respect it deserved. “Oh, charming.”

  My God, but she was brave. All his life, courage was the quality he’d admired most. It was startling to realize at this moment that a lowly strumpet demonstrated more nerve than any man he knew.

  He injected a reasonable tone into his voice, recognizing bluster would never succeed—or not without him harming her indeed. And his much-vaunted ruthlessness recoiled utterly at the idea.

  A great villain he proved in this drama.

  “There is a hot meal, a bath and a necessary awaiting us, madam. I’m sure you are as eager to step out of this coach as I. I am perfectly willing to leave you here under guard while I go inside. But I warn you—we travel the rest of the night and we do not stop. For any reason.”

  He sensed she was digesting this information. Eventually, she spoke in a small voice. “I hate to be tied up.”

  The conscience he wished he’d left in London with his extravagant town house and dissolute companions pricked him yet again. He fought to bundle it back into the recesses of his black heart before it troubled him further.

  “Give me your word you won’t try to escape and you may go free.” Strangely, he believed she’d keep any promise she made, in spite of how she’d tricked and used him.

  “I can’t do that,” she said sadly.

  “Then put out your hands. I have no wish to coerce you into submission, but I will if I have to.”

  “Very well.”

  She waited in trembling stillness while he tied her hands and ankles. For all her defiant talk, she was frightened. This time, his conscience didn’t merely prick, it kicked.

  “Don’t you want to gag me as well?” Her jeering tone did nothing to hide her misery.

  He kept his voice cold. “If you keep sniping at me, I may. So be careful.”

  He sat back, wrestling the compulsion to silence her not with a gag but with his mouth on hers. When he knelt at her feet, her teasing scent had swirled around him once more, a sly invitation to take her into his arms and kiss her again. Then move from kissing to full satisfaction.

  The carriage lamps outside shed enough light for him to see her brows contract with bewilderment. Kylemore understood her confusion at the seeming concession. But she’d soon find out that no help for a wayward mistress waited where they went tonight.

  Verity continued to sit in quivering silence after Kylemore tied her up. From his comments, she guessed they now headed for an inn. A disreputable inn where abducted women created no stir—not exactly unusual on any road north to Gretna Green.

  But when the carriage turned off the road, it rolled between gateposts carved with the Kinmurrie golden eagle. It was too dark to see much; the rain had stopped, but the sky remained cloudy. The carriage lamps illuminated thick bushes growing along the edge of the drive. To a woman teetering on the edge of panic, the sight was far from reassuring.

  They pulled up before a large country house, and a man rushed forward to open the carriage door. “Welcome, Your Grace. Madame. I
trust your journey hasn’t been too onerous.”

  The man had a distinct Scottish brogue. Surely they couldn’t be north of the border yet. Kylemore’s horses were fast, but they would need to fly to manage that feat.

  “It’s had its moments,” Kylemore said with an irritating huff of laughter as he stepped out.

  A blush rose in her cheeks at the deliberate reminder of how she’d succumbed to him. That melting, manipulative kiss had violated her inner self in a way sex never had. And worse, she suspected her tormentor knew it.

  The man continued, “Everything is prepared as you requested.”

  “Thank you, Fergus.” Kylemore turned to reach back into the coach and scoop Verity into his arms.

  He accomplished the awkward maneuver without difficulty. She wanted to despise him as nothing more than a hulking bully. But unfortunately, his physical dexterity, impressive as it was, paled in comparison to his mental agility. If she had to make an enemy, she thought on a grim spurt of humor, she’d at least chosen one worthy of the name.

  Under the impassive gaze of the middle-aged servant, Kylemore hitched her more securely against him. Four torches lit the smooth turning circle before the house, so she saw the Scotsman glance at her bonds, then look away with no change in expression.

  There would be no rescue from that direction. No wonder Kylemore hadn’t gagged her. She could scream herself hoarse and Fergus would just level another impersonal stare upon her.

  The duke’s arms were warm and secure around her and reminded her unbearably of how he’d held her when he’d kissed her. Although she knew it would do no real good, Verity stiffened to make it difficult for him to carry her.

  “Stop it,” he said sharply, shifting his hold. Curse him, he didn’t sound remotely breathless as he climbed the wide stairs up to the house’s main door.

  “I don’t care if you drop me,” she said defiantly. Fresh air and escape from the carriage, with its pervasive memories of how they’d kissed, combined to reawaken her spirit.