Tessa Dare

by Surrender of a Siren

  “Handsome enough. In my own way.”

  She bent her head again. “Oh, stop looking so smug. I’m not flattering you, I’m merely stating facts. Privateering was not your only profitable course of action. You might have married, if you’d wished to.”

  “Ah, but there’s the snag, you see. I didn’t wish to.”

  She picked up a brush and tapped it against her palette. “No, you didn’t. You wished to be at sea. You wished to go adventuring, to seize sixty ships in the name of the Crown and pursue countless women on four continents. That’s why you sold your land, Mr. Grayson. Because it’s what you wanted to do. The profit was incidental.”

  Gray tugged at the cuff of his coat sleeve. It unnerved him, how easily she stared down these truths he’d avoided looking in the eye for years. So now he was worse than a thief. He was a selfish, lying thief. And still she sat with him, flirted with him, called him “charming” and “handsome enough.” How much darkness did the girl need to uncover before she finally turned away?

  “And what about you, Miss Turner?” He leaned forward in his chair. “Why are you here, bound for the West Indies to work as a governess? You, too, might have married. You come from quality; so much is clear. And even if you’d no dowry, sweetheart …” He waited for her to look up. “Yours is the kind of beauty that brings men to their knees.”

  She gave a dismissive wave of her paintbrush. Still, her cheeks darkened, and she dabbed her brow with the back of her wrist.

  “Now, don’t act missish. I’m not flattering you, I’m merely stating facts.” He leaned back in his chair. “So why haven’t you married?”

  “I explained to you yesterday why marriage was no longer an option for me. I was compromised.”

  Gray folded his hands on his chest. “Ah, yes. The French painting master. What was his name? Germaine?”

  “Gervais.” She sighed dramatically. “Ah, but the pleasure he showed me was worth any cost. I’d never felt so alive as I did in his arms. Every moment we shared was a minute stolen from paradise.”

  Gray huffed and kicked the table leg. The girl was trying to make him jealous. And damn, if it wasn’t working. Why should some oily schoolgirl’s tutor enjoy the pleasures Gray was denied? He hadn’t aided the war effort just so England’s most beautiful miss could lift her skirts for a bloody Frenchman.

  She began mixing pigment with oil on her palette. “Once, he pulled me into the larder, and we had a feverish tryst among the bins of potatoes and turnips. He held me up against the shelves while we—”

  “May I read my book now?” Lord, he couldn’t take much more of this.

  She smiled and reached for another brush. “If you wish.”

  Gray opened his book and stared at it, unable to muster the concentration to read. Every so often, he turned a page. Vivid, erotic images filled his mind, but all the blood drained to his groin.

  As the sun inched higher in the sky, the crosshatched shadow of the grated skylight crept down the wall of the cabin and began its slow crawl across the floor. Soon the sun was directly overhead, painting the table with a checkerboard of shadows.

  Feeling drowsy and sluggish, Gray hooked a finger under his sweat-dampened cravat and tugged. He stole a glance at Miss Turner over his book. Her pale muslin gown had wilted with the heat, clinging to her form in a most appealing manner. She rotated her neck slowly, stretching with a lithe, sensual grace.

  “Is there any more tea?” Gray asked.

  “No.” She took up a handkerchief and pressed it to her brow, then her glistening, flushed décolletage.

  He shifted uncomfortably, feeling a new source of heat pool in his groin. “I’ll get after Stubb to bring water. In a minute.” He bent his head and closed his eyes and tried to think of anything cool. Those pretty flavored ices all the fashion in Mayfair, the ones he’d be certain to take Bel to sample. The trout stream in Wiltshire where he’d spent that summer between years at Oxford. Ale, fresh from the cellar in winter. Snow.

  Gray had a sudden image of Miss Turner standing in an English winterscape, dressed in rich velvet and dusted with powdery white snowflakes. Tiny crystals of ice clinging to her fur-trimmed gloves, her mantle, her hair, her thick fringe of eyelashes. Her pale skin contrasting with plump, flushed lips. An angelic apparition.

  Except that he couldn’t do to an angel what Gray saw himself doing with this snow-covered siren. He imagined himself licking a snowflake from her cheek, and his tongue curled around the sharp burst of cold. In his mind’s eye he tasted another, and another—and they were sweet. She was a rose-flavored ice, a delicacy beyond anything he’d ever tasted, and he was devouring her, taste by impossibly tiny taste. Snowflake by snowflake. Until he tumbled her back into the snow and bared the creamy mounds of her breasts, the plump berries of her nipples, the juicy curves of her delicious body—and feasted.

  CHAPTER

  SIXTEEN

  Sophia counted six clangs of the bell before Mr. Grayson jolted fully awake. He looked up at her, startled and flushed. As though he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t.

  She smiled.

  Rubbing his eyes, he rose to his feet. “Will I shock you, Miss Turner, if I remove my coat?”

  Sophia felt a twinge of disappointment. When would he stop treating her with this forced politesse, maintaining this distance between them? How many tales of passionate encounters must she spin before he finally understood that she was no less wicked than he, only less experienced? Perhaps it was time to take more aggressive measures.

  “By all means, remove your coat.” She tilted her eyes to cast him a saucy look. “Mr. Grayson, I’m not an innocent schoolgirl. You will have to try harder than that to shock me.”

  His lips curved in a subtle smile. “I’ll take that under advisement.” She watched as he shook the heavy topcoat from his shoulders and peeled it down his arms. He draped the coat over the back of a chair before sitting back down. The damp lawn of his shirt clung to his shoulders and arms. A pleasant shiver rippled down to Sophia’s toes.

  “It doesn’t suit you anyway,” she said, loading her brush with paint.

  He gave her a bemused look as he unknotted his cravat and pulled it loose. She inwardly rejoiced. Now, if only she could convince him to do away with his waistcoat …

  “The coat,” she explained, when his eyebrows remained raised. “It doesn’t suit you.”

  “Why not? Is the color wrong?” The sudden seriousness in his tone surprised her.

  “No, the color is perfectly fine. It’s the cut that’s unflattering. That style is tailored to gentlemen of leisure, lean and slender. But as you are so fond of telling me, Mr. Grayson, you are no gentleman. Your shoulders are too broad for fashion.”

  “Is that so?” He chuckled as he undid his cuffs. Sophia stared as he turned up his sleeves, baring one tanned, muscled forearm, then the other. “What style of garments would best suit me, then?”

  “Other than a toga?” He rewarded her jest with an easy smile. Sophia dabbed at her canvas, pleased to be making progress at last. “I think you need something less restrictive. Something like a sailor’s garb. Or perhaps a captain’s.”

  “Truly?” His gaze became thoughtful, then searching. “And even dressed in plain seaman’s clothes, would you still find me handsome enough? In my own way?”

  “No.” She allowed his brow to crease a moment before continuing. “I should find you surpassingly handsome. In every way.” She mixed paint slowly on her palette and gave him a coy look. “And what of my attire? If you had your way, how would you dress me?”

  “If I had my way … I wouldn’t.”

  A thrill raced through Sophia’s body. Her cheeks burned, and her eyes dropped to her lap. She forced her gaze back up to meet his. Now was not the moment to lose courage. Nothing held sway over a man’s intentions like jealousy. “Gervais once kept me naked for an entire day so he could paint me.”

  He blinked. “He painted a nude study of you?”

  “No
. He painted me. I took off my clothes and stretched out on the bed while he dressed me in pigment. Gervais called me his perfect, blank canvas. He painted lavender orchids here”—she traced a small circle just above her breast—“and little vines twining down …” She slid her hand down and noted with delight how his eyes followed its path. “I feigned the grippe and refused to bathe for a week.”

  Desire and jealous rage warred in his countenance, yet he remained as immobile as one of Lord Elgin’s marble sculptures. What would it take to spur the man into action? Frustrated, she blew a wisp of hair off her face and nodded in the direction of his arm. “Would you pass me the little pot of red?”

  He frowned down at the scattered cakes of pigment. “Which one is the red?”

  “The vermillion. Just there at your elbow. You see it.”

  “This one?” He handed her a pot of Vandyke brown.

  Sophia flung her palette on the table and stretched for the red pigment herself. “If you don’t wish to help me, just say so. There’s no need to tease.”

  “Calm down, sweetheart. I’m not teasing you at all. I don’t see colors the way most people do, it seems.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t see colors?”

  He shrugged. “I see some colors. Just not as many as other people seem to see. You say, ‘red, green, brown’… they all look the same to me. If a sapphire lies next to an amethyst, I can’t tell them apart. Apparently, I had an uncle who was the same way. Once my tutor stopped beating me for mislabeling my Latin exercises, it’s never troubled me.” He turned his attention back to his book.

  “But … but that’s tragic! To go through life without color? Unable to appreciate art, or beauty?”

  He laughed. “Now, sweet—hold your brush before you paint me a martyr’s halo. It’s not as though I’m blind. I have a great appreciation for art, as I believe we’ve discussed. And as for beauty … I don’t need to know whether your eyes are blue or green or lavender to know that they’re uncommonly lovely.”

  “No one has lavender eyes.”

  “Don’t they?” His gaze caught hers and refused to let go. Leaning forward, he continued, “Did that tutor of yours ever tell you this? That your eyes are ringed with a perfect circle a few shades darker than the rest of the … don’t they call it the iris?”

  Sophia nodded.

  “The iris.” He propped his elbow on the table and leaned forward, his gaze searching hers intently. “An apt term it is, too. There are these lighter rays that fan out from the center, like petals. And when your pupils widen—like that, right there—your eyes are like two flowers just coming into bloom. Fresh. Innocent.”

  She bowed her head, mixing a touch of lead white into the sea-green paint on her palette. He leaned closer still, his voice a hypnotic whisper. “But when you take delight in teasing me, looking up through those thick lashes, so saucy and self-satisfied …” She gave him a sharp look.

  He snapped his fingers. “There! Just like that. Oh, sweet—then those eyes are like two opera dancers smiling from behind big, feathered fans. Coy. Beckoning.”

  Sophia felt a hot blush spreading from her bosom to her throat.

  He smiled and reclined in his chair. “I don’t need to know the color of your hair to see that it’s smooth and shiny as silk. I don’t need to know whether it’s yellow or orange or red to spend an inordinate amount of time wondering how it would feel brushing against my bare skin.”

  Opening his book to the marked page, he continued, “And don’t get me started on your lips, sweet. If I endeavored to discover the precise shade of red or pink or violet they are, I might never muster the concentration for anything else.”

  He turned a leaf of his book, then fell silent.

  Sophia stared at her canvas. Her pulse pounded in her ears. A bead of sweat trickled down the back of her neck, channeling down between her shoulder blades, and a hot, itchy longing pooled at the cleft of her legs.

  Drat him. He’d known she was taunting him with her stories. And now he sat there in an attitude of near-boredom, making love to her with his teasing, colorless words in a blatant attempt to fluster her. It was as though they were playing a game of cards, and he’d just raised the stakes.

  Sophia smiled. She always won at cards.

  “Balderdash,” she said calmly.

  He looked up at her, eyebrow raised.

  “No one has violet lips.”

  “Don’t they?”

  She laid aside her palette and crossed her arms on the table. “The slope of your nose is quite distinctive.”

  His lips quirked in a lopsided grin. “Really.”

  “Yes.” She leaned forward, allowing her bosom to spill against her stacked arms. His gaze dipped, but quickly returned to hers. “The way you have that little bump at the bridge … It’s proving quite a challenge.”

  “Is that so?” He bent his head and studied his book. Sophia stared at him, waiting one … two … three beats before he raised his hand to rub the bridge of his nose. Quite satisfactory progress, that. Definite beginnings of fluster.

  “Once, during one of my lessons with Gervais, I was sketching Michelangelo’s David, from a plate in a book. Only, I could not capture the muscles of the forearm at all.”

  “Him again?” He heaved a bored sigh as he turned another page.

  “Gervais stood up”—Sophia pushed back from the table and rose to her feet—“wrenched off his coat, and rolled his shirtsleeve up to the elbow.” She placed her hand flat on the table, directly in front of Gray.

  “He took my hand and dragged my fingers over every slope and sinew of his arm.” As she spoke, Sophia traced the tendons of her planted wrist with her free hand. When she skimmed her fingers up to the hollow of her elbow, she heard his breath catch. Good. More progress.

  “And after touching them,” she said, “I had no trouble sketching those muscles at all.”

  Gray snapped his book shut, tossed it aside, and stared up at her in challenge. The dark intensity in his eyes gave Sophia a heartbeat’s pause. Slowly, she stretched one hand toward his face. “Now … hold perfectly still.”

  His eyes closed as she touched one finger to the bridge of his nose. With deliberate slowness, she traced the uneven, bronzed slope with her fingertip. His breathing grew husky. At last she broke the contact. He kept his eyes closed.

  She ran a thumb across his left eyebrow, then drew a bold line from his temple to his cheekbone. His skin was softer than she’d expected, and oddly cool beneath her fingertips. She dragged her fingers down into the rough growth of beard along his jaw, flattening her hand to let the bristles rasp against the sensitive skin of her palm.

  He drew a ragged breath that verged on a groan, but his eyes remained shut. He held perfectly still.

  Something hot and hungry surged through Sophia’s veins. Desire, mingled with the heady thrill of power. She traced the contours of his brow, skimmed over the soft, vulnerable curves of his eyelids. His lashes, long and curved as a child’s, trembled under her touch, and a sweet pang of tenderness swelled in her heart. She followed the circumference of his face, running one fingertip down to the cleft of his chin, then climbing the thin scar slanting to the corner of his mouth. He exhaled roughly, and Sophia felt the heat of his breath swirling through her blood. Emboldened, she slid her thumb along the ridge of his lower lip.

  His hand shot up to capture hers, holding it pressed against his cheek. He looked up at her mournfully, his hair mussed and his breathing labored.

  Oh, yes. Fluster accomplished.

  “Gray.” She leaned closer, the damp fabric of her shift tangling around her thighs.

  He tensed. “Don’t do this. I’ll only hurt you.”

  “I’m not an innocent, Gray. I know what you want. Can’t you tell I want it, too?” She leaned over to whisper in his ear. “I could show you colors. Colors like you’ve never dreamed. The cool blue of my eyes …” She blew gently over his neck and watched the tendon there go rigid. “The golden silk of
this hair …” She wound a stray lock around her finger and brushed it over his cheek.

  “Sweetheart …”

  Sophia hovered above him, bringing her lips within an inch of his. “I could teach you the taste of perfect, luscious, rose-petal pink.”

  He shook his head, almost imperceptibly. “I said I wouldn’t pursue you.”

  “Is that so? Well, as it happens, I’m tired of being pursued. I’m rather enjoying taking the other role.”

  “Sweet, believe me, I’m not worth pursuing. And if I …” He squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them again. “If I let this happen, I never will be. I gave my word, and for once I want to keep it. I’m a scoundrel, by trade and vocation, and I’m all wrong for a girl like you.”

  “A girl like me? But I’m already ruined.”

  “Ruined? Because you’ve known pleasure? There’s nothing about you that’s ruined. You’re young and beautiful and full of dreams. You’re exquisite.” He touched her face. “Perfect.”

  Tears pricked at her eyes. Such sweet words. How she wished she deserved them.

  His fingers caught a stray lock of her hair. “This tutor who attempted to ruin you, he was clearly an amateur. But sweet … to my shame, I’ve had a great deal of practice. I’m trying to go respectable. I’m trying to be a better man.”

  “You’re trying to be someone you’re not. And it’s making you miserable.” She pressed her free hand to his other cheek, framing his face between her palms. “You do have the face of a scoundrel …”

  “You see me clearly, then.”

  “But what of the man beneath? There’s so much more to you, I know it. I feel it. A passion for life. Such strength …” Hooking her fingers under his collar, she slid her palm toward his muscled shoulder. “And this heart.” Her fingers strayed lower over his chest, grazing the border of his scar.