Temptation (Avon Red)

by Leda Swann

  She had never slept in the same bed with anyone other than one of her sisters before. Let alone with a man who had made no secret of his desire for her. It was no wonder she had been restless.

  She looked blearily up from her mound of pillows. “No, I did not.” Yet another sin to add to his tally. “Did you expect I would?”

  “You need to relax. Stop worrying so much. Me? I slept like a baby.”

  She shut her eyes again. “I do not want to know. Are we returning to London today?”

  He reached out and brushed a tendril of hair away from her cheek. “Do you love me yet?”

  “No.”

  “Will you marry me anyway?”

  She twitched away from his hand. She didn’t want his tenderness. “Certainly not.”

  “Then I’m afraid we will have to remain here.”

  “Do you intend to keep me here until I agree to your demands?”

  “Only until my week is out. You are a smart young woman. By then I am confident you will have seen the merits of my proposal.”

  “You are mad. Utterly mad.” A man would have to be mad to run off with her, determined on making her fall in love with him. It was arrant nonsense.

  A woman did not fall in love with a man just because he wanted her to. She fell in love with him because she knew he was of good character. That was certainly the first thing she herself looked for in a man. Everything else was negotiable, but a good character was paramount.

  She turned her back on him. “You cannot win my heart this way. And you definitely will not win my hand in marriage.”

  “Do the two of them not go together?”

  “I am a practical woman. I do not ask for the moon and the stars as well.”

  After all, what did she know about the captain? He was handsome, sure, in a well-cut uniform and moustaches kind of way, but that was only his outside. His inside was so much more important. And all she knew of his character was that he was highly impulsive. That was no recommendation for a husband.

  Her brother, Teddy, seemed to like him well enough, but men were notoriously poor judges of character. Or maybe it was simply that the qualities that made a man a good companion were exactly the opposite to those that made him a good husband.

  As for his quest to make her fall in love with him? She’d known it was impossible from the beginning. Women did not fall in love at the drop of a hat—he should know better than that. A woman gave up so much on entering the married state that she had to exercise the utmost caution in accepting a man’s proposal. Her poor sister Emily had married a brute, and had had to run away from him. At least Emily was happy now, though she had burned her bridges with society and would never be respectable.

  Beatrice was greedy—she wanted to be happy and respectable. Marriage to a handsome soldier she had only just met, a captain in the army who was duty bound to serve in whatever far-flung corners of the Empire he was sent, was a recipe for disaster.

  But although she did not want to marry him, she could not pretend he left her indifferent. Love was one thing—but lust, she had recently discovered, was quite another.

  She had liked Dr. Hyde well enough to marry him, but she did not want to touch him. Not like she wanted to touch the captain. She wanted to take off all the captain’s clothes and run her hands down his body, to savor every inch of it. She wanted to run her hands through his hair, and over his chest. She wanted to feel the muscles on his thighs, and stroke his member until it stood up proud and strong for her. She wanted to feel him on top of her, his body matched with hers, skin on skin.

  Even now, lying half asleep in the mound of pillow, she could feel her body responding to his nearness, begging her to act on her fantasies. In between her thighs was prickling with heat, and she writhed uncomfortably on the bed to make the itching go away. It didn’t. Her movements only intensified the heat, and made it move across her body. Her chest was hot and flushed now, too, and she could feel her face start to burn.

  His eyes darkened as he watched her. “You can fight it all you want, but it’s not going to go away.”

  He knew what she was feeling, the desires that were tormenting her. Perversely, it made her all the more determined to resist him. “It may not go away immediately, but I can ignore it. I can refuse to give in to it.”

  He moved toward her on the bed, the mattress sinking beneath his weight, drawing her closer toward him. “Why refuse yourself something that you want so much?”

  She held herself stiff, refusing to relax into his embrace. He did not deserve her. “For the same reason that I do not eat a pound of chocolate at one sitting. Because it is not good for me, and however much I want to give in to the temptation at the time, I know it would make me feel ill straight afterward.”

  “I taste better than chocolate.”

  She turned her head away, fighting temptation. “I would not know.”

  “Don’t you want to taste me?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Like I tasted you in the hansom cab?”

  She gave an involuntary jump and turned to face him, her eyes wide. How could a woman do that to a man? “You mean…?” She wasn’t quite brave enough to put her question into words.

  “Yes, a man likes to have a woman’s mouth on him, just as a woman likes to be tasted by a man. Are you not curious to try it?”

  What would it feel like to have his cock in her mouth? She had held him briefly in her hand the other night, and had felt how strong and smooth he was. But what would he taste like? Would he like to be licked gently, or would he want to put as much of himself as he could in her mouth, and to have her suck on him?

  Whatever he tasted like, she would never know. “You would taste like too much chocolate,” she said firmly. “And I do not want to have a stomachache.”

  He sighed then, a sigh dragged out from the bottom of his soul. “I have been patient with you, Beatrice. More than patient. And I am not, by nature, a patient man.”

  “I’m sure it is good for your soul for your patience to be tried once in a while,” she replied flippantly, turning her back to him again and snuggling back down into the bedclothes. He had abducted her against her will—she saw no reason to entertain him. “After all, you have a lot to atone for.”

  “But I have run out of patience now.” With those ominous words, he pulled her over onto her back, looped a length of silk over her wrist and tied it tight.

  There was no point in fighting him—he was stronger than her and would have his way in the end. She merely glared at him while he looped the silk over her other wrist and tied the ends to the bedposts.

  She had seen such bonds on severely disturbed patients who were so out of their minds they were a danger to themselves or to their caregivers. Never had she imagined that one day she would find herself tied up in such an undignified fashion, totally helpless, unable to move, unable to protect herself, unable to have any will of her own. Trust the captain to seek to impose his will on her in such a manner.

  “Tying me up will do you no good,” she said calmly, as he pulled back the covers and looped similar lengths of silk around her ankles, spread-eagling her on the bed. “I am not a dog to be chastised.”

  When he had finished, he stood back and looked at her, his naked body standing proud in the early morning sunshine. “I won’t hurt you.”

  “Let me go.” Secretly she did not want him to let her go. Secretly she wanted to stay tied up like that, powerless to resist him. The thought that he could do whatever he wanted to her and she would not be able to resist him made her prickle with wet between her legs. She wanted him to take her like that, to thrust his cock into her while she lay helpless, unable to prevent him…

  “I can’t do that. Not yet.”

  “What are you going to do to me?” She didn’t need to ask, but she wanted to hear him say it out aloud. She wanted to hear the words on his lips.

  “Nothing that you don’t want me to do.”

  “I want you to let me go,” she li
ed, as convincingly as she could.

  “You will be begging me to make love to you before I am done with you.”

  She would stay tied up for a week before she humbled herself in front of him. “I will never beg you. Never. I would rather die.”

  His only answer was a grin, a look of truly devilish delight. “I consider that a challenge. I’m a soldier. I love challenges.”

  Dr. Hyde was not rostered on duty at the hospital the next morning. The matron on the wards gave Lenora a suspicious glare when told the matter was urgent. “Can’t it wait until tomorrow?”

  Lenora stood her ground. When matters called for it, she had a backbone of steel and nerves of iron. She could outface even the scariest matron when the safety of her best friend was at stake.

  Five minutes later she was back on the street, the direction to Dr. Hyde’s lodgings clasped tightly in her hand.

  He lived in handsome lodgings close by St. Thomas’s. A maid opened the door and ushered her into a pretty parlor as Lenora explained the urgency of her message. There she sat, twisting her hands together and staring at the flocked wallpaper as she waited for him to make his appearance.

  It seemed an age before he strode into the parlor. The room seemed to shrink to half its size when he came in. He was so strong, so male. His hair was so freshly washed and combed it was still wet, and he was still buttoning his shirtsleeves. “What is it, Miss Coppins? Has something happened at the hospital?”

  She gulped. Seeing him in his shirtsleeves was so intimate. Almost wifely. She had to look away until he had shrugged on his jacket. “No, everything is fine there. It’s Beatrice.”

  His eyes took on a guarded look. “Well?” he demanded, when she did not immediately start speaking again.

  Now that Dr. Hyde was standing in front of her, she did not know quite how to tell him. “I think she is in some kind of trouble.”

  While she was speaking his face had turned an interesting shade of pale. “Trouble? What sort of trouble do you mean?”

  “She did not come home last night. I know something bad must have happened to her because she is always at home by ten o’clock at the latest. She is not the sort of girl…not the sort of girl who…”

  “Did she give you no indication of where she was?”

  “I told Mrs. Bettina that Beatrice was missing, but she told me not to worry.” Now that she had found her voice she could not stop talking. “She said that the sergeant-major she looks after had said something about Captain Carterton preparing a surprise for Beatrice this weekend, and not to worry if we didn’t see her until Monday. But Beatrice mentioned nothing to me about being away, and she was due to start work this morning. It didn’t seem right to me. Not when she and you…”

  Her voice finally trailed off in embarrassment. It was harder than she thought telling Dr. Hyde all she knew. What if he were to blame Beatrice for the situation? But no, he was a fair man. He would not harbor a grudge, or blame Beatrice for something that was not her fault. “I thought I’d better come to you and tell you what had happened. I knew that you’d know what to do.”

  The longer she spoke, the more agitated he became. “You have done right to fetch me,” he said, when she eventually ran out of breath. “You say that one of the patients at the hospital knows what might have happened?”

  “I should have stopped by and asked him when I was at the hospital, but I didn’t think of it,” Lenora confessed. “I only thought of finding you as soon as I could.”

  “Walk back with me. We shall go and interrogate the sergeant-major together.”

  Lenora fell into step beside him on the street. With his coat and hat on, and carrying a cane in his free hand, he was every inch the gentleman.

  If she had been the woman lucky enough to engage his attention, she would have fought to the death rather than allow herself to be taken away by another man. But Beatrice did not yearn for Dr. Hyde as she did. Nobody could yearn for Dr. Hyde as earnestly as she did. Beatrice did not burn in the night for the touch of the doctor’s hands on her body, or spend her daytime hours dreaming about the feel of his lips on hers.

  No, Lenora feared that Beatrice burned for the touch of the captain instead.

  Lenora waged a war within herself. Was it disloyal of her to her friend to hint to the doctor that maybe Beatrice did not love him as he deserved to be loved? She cared for Beatrice dearly, but was it quite fair to Dr. Hyde for Beatrice to marry him if she did not love him?

  Even if Dr. Hyde adored Beatrice—and she could understand why he would—wouldn’t it be better for him to wait until he found a woman who really cared for him in return? Wouldn’t it be better for Beatrice, too, to marry a man she truly wanted?

  Lenora did not harbor any illusion that the doctor would turn to her for consolation if Beatrice were to leave him. She was plain-featured, not pretty like Beatrice was. Her mouth was too wide, and her hair was far too red. Her hips were too plump and her bosom was ridiculously generous. She was too earthy to be any man’s ideal wife.

  No, Dr. Hyde would never love her as she loved him. But there were other women in the world who might love him as much as he deserved, even if they couldn’t love him quite as much as she did.

  In the end, she decided it would be wisest to hold her tongue. If Dr. Hyde had not worked out for himself that Beatrice did not really care for him, she did not want to be the bearer of bad news. Worse still, Dr. Hyde might think she spoke out of jealousy and not out of love for both of them. She could not bear for him to think badly of her.

  She would have to stand by watching and waiting, and hope that no lives—not Beatrice’s, not Dr. Hyde’s, and not her own—were ruined in the muddle.

  Eleven

  Beatrice lay tied on the bed as the Captain walked around her, just looking at her.

  “Your nightgown is bunched up underneath you. You would be more comfortable if I were to take it off.”

  She stayed silent, trying not to look at him too obviously. She’d not seen him naked before, and he was well worth a second look. His chest was broad and strong, and his arms were tanned a golden brown from the South African sun. His thighs were thick and strong, his buttocks were firm but full, and his member stood up proudly from its nest of curls. If her hands had been free, she would have wanted to touch it.

  “I shall take your silence as consent,” he said easily. Bending over her, he took the edges of her nightgown in his hands and pulled.

  The fabric ripped all the way to her neck with a screech. He pulled the torn pieces from under her and tossed them on to the floor. “I trust that is more comfortable?”

  He made her feel as though she was spread out like a meal on a table, waiting to be feasted upon. How could any woman be comfortable tied up to the bedposts with a man staring at her as if he wanted to eat her. She merely looked at him without bothering to answer.

  It would be easier to deal with him if only she did not want him so much. If she was indifferent to his touch, she could shut him out of her mind and pretend he did not exist, whatever he did to her. But she was not indifferent. And she could not ignore him.

  “I never heated you any water for washing last night,” he continued in a conversational tone. “I shall have to remedy that lack right away.”

  Still stark naked, he strode out of the bedroom. She could hear the sound of a match being struck and water being poured into a kettle.

  Before long, he was back in the room with a large basin of steaming water and a washcloth. “I’m afraid I cannot untie you and allow you to wash yourself, but you will find that I make a good body servant.”

  Setting the basin of water down on the floor, he dipped the washcloth in it and brought it to her body. The water was pleasantly warm against her skin and she gave a little shiver as the drops ran down her body.

  “Is it too cold?” he asked solicitously, as he ran the washcloth over her stomach. “Shall I heat the water a little more?”

  “You shouldn’t be doing this,” she muttered
, in a desperate attempt to stave off the temptation of giving in to him, of letting him love her just this once and to hell with any possible consequences.

  He gave her a wide-eyed look of mock innocence. “You prefer being dirty?”

  “That is not what I meant,” she wailed. “You always twist my words around to suit yourself. Of course I do not want to be dirty.”

  “Then lie still and let me wash you.”

  “Do I have any other option?”

  He stood back and looked at her again. “No, I’m afraid you don’t.”

  It was actually quite pleasant having him attend to her just as she attended to her patients. If she could overlook the fact that her nurse was both naked and obviously male she might even have enjoyed it. But her nerve endings were on edge. Every stroke of the washcloth felt like a caress. He made her feel as though he were not washing her, but loving her.

  By the time he put down the washcloth and proclaimed himself satisfied with her state of cleanliness, she was shaking. He had touched her everywhere, everywhere, on the pretext of washing her, and she could not stop him.

  She needed him so badly she was almost ready to give in to his demands. If only he would simply take her, and not bother to ask. Then she would not, could not deny him. “Untie me,” she begged.

  He put the washcloth back in the basin and sat down next to her on the bed. With his good arm, he reached over and lightly stroked one of her breasts. “Will you marry me?”

  “I cannot marry you. Marriage is forever. I do not know you well enough to tie my future to yours.”

  “By the end of the day you will know me very well indeed, I promise you. Will you agree to marry me then?”

  “No.” She almost screamed the word in her frustration. “You cannot expect it of me.”

  “Then I’m afraid I cannot untie you just yet.” He moved his hand to stroke between her thighs. “And I’m not sure you really want me to untie you. You like being at my mercy. Feel how wet you are here.”

  “I am not,” she protested. “You are imagining it.” But she knew she was wet. She could feel her juices slowly oozing out of her body and onto the sheet underneath her. If she were to move, there would be a damp stain beneath her.