“How do you know he is dead for certain?” she flung back at him, her eyes glittering pools of denial. “How do you know that the man at Perdition’s Gate wasn’t my father?”
Valcour hesitated a heartbeat. “Because I opened his grave.”
“You what?” Lucy fell back a step, her eyes flicking with unabashed horror to the mud that flecked Valcour’s boots.
“I opened his grave. It was the only way to be certain. You will put this madness behind you now, Lucinda. It is over.”
“I see! The entire thing is decreed madness by the great and powerful earl of Valcour, so of course, I’m supposed to kiss your accursed feet and thank you for tidying everything up for me!”
“Lucinda, I know this is difficult. But believe me, it’s best this way.”
“Best! And you know what’s best for me, don’t you, you pompous, interfering son of a bitch! Far better that I be forced to marry you than do something crazed like go home to the people I love! You practically break my neck, racing on that accursed stallion of yours to the graveyard, because you’re furious that I didn’t show you the letter I brought to Avonstea. Of course, you don’t have to tell me a damned thing you don’t want to! You still shroud everything about my father in mysteries and riddles and answers that tell me nothing! You all but lock me in my bedchamber while you go out, without a word to me, and desecrate my father’s grave!”
“If your father had been alive, as you believed, I would have desecrated nothing.”
“You had no right! You had no right! It’s no wonder peasants want to chop off the heads of you aristocrats! By God, if I had an axe—”
“I know exactly where you’d aim!” Valcour grabbed her, her skin petal-soft under his fingers. “Listen to me, girl. If you’re going to survive this marriage, you will abide by a simple set of rules. I’ll not tolerate—”
“I’ll not tolerate being ordered about like some… some blasted dog! Sit, Lucinda. Heel, Lucinda. Curl up by the fire and lick my bloody feet, Lucinda!”
“You are my wife. You—”
“Believe me, I haven’t forgotten! I wish to God I could!” She gave a bitter, broken laugh. “This was supposed to be my wedding night, wasn’t it? The night where my husband claimed me for his own? This is the night my mother told me about, as if it were some sort of… of magical dream.”
Valcour tried to ignore the tiny catch in her voice. “We agreed there would be no consummation.”
“And you’re all so damned civilized here, aren’t you! I suppose I’ll have to get used to English customs. In Virginia, the wedding tradition is to steal the bride’s slipper to trade for a bottle of liquor. Apparently, in England the bridegroom trundles himself out to rob graves instead.”
There was something wild in her eyes, as if the strain of the past days had stretched her nerves to the point where they were about to snap.
Valcour caught her chin in his hand and tried to steady his voice. “Lucinda, I am going to take you to your room. You will get some sleep and calm yourself.”
“What are you going to do? Sew my blasted eyelids shut?” She yanked away from him, driving one fist hard against the wall of his chest.
Valcour’s jaw clenched. “I’ll do whatever I have to do to make you see reason.”
“You can’t make me sleep! You can’t make me calm myself! You can’t even make me stay in my room unless I choose to!”
Valcour stared down into that defiant, lovely face, her cheeks flushed, the neck-edge of her shift gaping low over one moonlight-pale breast. The edge of her nipple was a rose kiss, a sinful temptation peeking out at him, taunting him with the driving need that centered in that part of him that made him a man.
And in that moment, Valcour was aware of just how far this woman had pushed him. She had shattered his well-ordered life, inflamed the temper he had prided himself on keeping under control. She had charged into this room—this accursed room—and made him face a torment more exquisite than any torture master could have devised. And now she had his own body turning traitor. His loins raged out of control, as if he were a green lad. His hands shook where he touched her. His head was filled with erotic images of what he’d like to do to her, with her.
He wanted to draw out her pleasure until she begged him for release. Wanted to conquer her on the sensual battlefield of that lovely body, inch by supple inch.
Sweet God, he wanted to possess her so completely he could forget everything, everyone….
No! He had to end this—before it was too late.
With an oath, Valcour swooped her off her feet, flinging her belly-down over his shoulder. Lucy gave a shriek of outrage, her fists hammering at his back, her legs kicking out as she twisted and writhed, trying to free herself.
Valcour’s arms ached with the effort of restraining her, but he did so, carrying her down the spiral stairway, through the dusty gallery, while she all but deafened him with her curses.
When he reached her bedchamber, he kicked open the door with one booted foot. The maid he had seen the night before was hunkered down by the fireplace, obviously come to stir up the embers. The servant squawked with alarm as Valcour stalked to the bed and flung Lucinda down upon it.
“You will leave the room at once,” Valcour barked at the maid, but the girl was already bolting as if he were shooting poisoned arrows at her backside.
“No!” Lucinda shrilled. “Don’t leave! You don’t have to do what he tells you!”
Valcour slammed the door shut behind the girl and stood there, his breath rasping in his chest, his heart pounding against his ribs like a blacksmith’s hammer on an anvil.
“Go to sleep,” he enunciated clearly.
“Go to hell,” his wife flung back.
“Get in that bed. Now. And stay there. Or…”
Lucinda stalked to where the washbasin stood and grasped the handle of the pitcher. For a moment, Valcour thought she might surrender, might be ready to wash her face, calm herself.
Instead, she wheeled on him like the huntress Athena and, with precise aim, hurled the contents of the pitcher into his face.
Cold water splashed his chest, his face, his neck, making the fabric of his shirt cling to his skin, the flap of his breeches outlining with even more painful clarity the purely physical effect the woman was having on him.
The idea that she should know how vulnerable she had made him infuriated Valcour beyond imagining With a roar, he grasped her by the arms and forced her backward until her delectable bottom slammed up against the edge of the bed. He jammed her back until she lay on the pillows, every muscle in her body straining, fighting him, as she arched her back, struggling to escape. But her arching thrust her breasts up against Valcour’s chest, and the edge of the shift caught beneath her, tugging to expose most of one pale mound.
In that instant, Valcour wanted her so badly that he didn’t give a damn what it would cost him. Later, much later, he would pay whatever forfeit was demanded of him. But now she was his wife. His wife, damn her! And he had felt swift rivers of attraction pouring through her as well, felt it sizzle between them like lightning.
Valcour grasped both her wrists in one large hand and pinned them over her head. His mouth came down on the belligerent curve of her lips, and he tasted his own defeat.
Chapter Twelve
Lucy struggled to free her hands from Valcour’s grip as his weight bore her down into the feather tick, but his rein-callused hand was unyielding as iron, intoxicating as mulled wine. She felt swallowed up by his big body, conquered by the sensations he loosed inside her like a firestorm.
Never had she felt anything so primitive as the response that exploded through her as Valcour’s corded muscles branded themselves into her breasts. He flung one granite-hard thigh over her hips to restrain her, dragging her tighter into his body. The wetness from his shirt soaked through her thin nightshirt, melding them together, until she could feel every sinew of his chest, the hardened points of his nipples.
She had al
ways seen him as a man of ice, but the heat their bodies were creating was so intense, Lucy half expected to see steam simmering up wherever he touched her.
She was furious at him, so blasted angry, and yet, as Dominic St. Cyr’s mouth traced hot, drugging kisses from her mouth and down her throat, she arched her head back to allow him better access.
“D-Damn you,” she choked out on a gasp as his teeth nipped with tender ferocity at an exquisitely sensitive place on her neck. “Don’t make me want you!”
“Do you, Lucinda?” Valcour growled. “Do you want me?”
She wanted to deny everything she was feeling, wanted to fling out words of disdain, wound his insufferable arrogance. He had hurt her in ways she would never allow him to know. Ways a man like Valcour could never understand.
“Why should it matter what I want? You’ve been ordering me around from the moment I met you. I’m your wife.”
“It matters.” Valcour’s free hand slid up her ribcage to where her nightshift lay twisted beneath the globe of one breast. His palm cupped the fluid weight as if molding it into a more perfect shape. His gaze touched the delicate shell-pink nipple, a dark inferno raging to life in his eyes.
“Lucinda, I may be the devil of a husband in many ways, but I promise you, you’ll never have cause to regret that I am the man in your marriage bed.”
No, Lucy thought with a strange tightness in her throat. I’ll only regret that you don’t care about me.
She looked into those ebony eyes, fierce yet wary, uncannily like the stallion she had tamed as a child. A stallion whose life had been filled with cruelty and hate. She sensed in that moment that if she pushed Valcour away, it would wound him on some level she might never be able to reach again.
It would have been the perfect vengeance, leaving him to stew in the wild desires that were consuming him. But for once, Lucy didn’t care about avenging past wrongs.
“Lucinda,” he repeated, his voice low, rough, sending tingles into the secret place between her thighs. “Do you want me?”
He was giving her a choice, this fiercely proud man, leaving himself open to rejection. He was also forcing her to take some measure of responsibility for what was about to happen between them. She wished he would just kiss her again, that he would put his hot palms on the places where she was dying for his touch. But he just peered down at her, his dark lashes low over eyes that promised heady seduction, his hard mouth still damp from kissing her, his breath rasping in his broad chest.
She could feel his heart thundering in counterpoint to her own raging pulse. Most intriguing and intoxicating of all was that part of him pressed against her thigh, a delightful mystery, a sensual promise….
Lucy moistened dry lips and looked straight into her husband’s passion-darkened face. “I want you, damn your eyes to hell.”
For a heartbeat, one corner of that unabashedly male mouth ticked up, in something like amusement—but the amusement vanished under a shower of intense need as Valcour dropped a kiss at the lower curve of her breast. “A countess…” He stroked his lips higher. “Doesn’t… swear.”
“This countess does.” Lucy could barely squeeze the words from her throat as Valcour’s lips burned against skin that had never been touched by another man. He pressed hot kisses in a circle around the edge of her nipple, his loose hair a delicious contrast, cool and silky, pooling in the cleavage between her breasts. The sensation was so exquisite, she felt as if one more grain of pleasure would be more than she could bear.
“You’re so damn beautiful,” Valcour whispered hotly against her skin. “And you’re mine. Mine.”
The words proclaiming ownership should have inflamed her fury, but they weren’t filled with Valcour’s usual cold tyranny. Rather, there was an undercurrent of astonishment in them, something almost like awe, as he drew the hardened rosette of her nipple into the hot, wet cavern of his mouth.
Lucy cried out in response, arching her back to deepen Valcour’s erotic kiss. She had seen her mother nursing the babies a hundred times and had eavesdropped on more than her share of bawdy stories around the campfires of the soldiers under her father’s command. But never had she suspected that an almost painfully intense pleasure could be centered in such an innocuous-looking place. Valcour suckled her with tender ferocity, the rough, wet point of his tongue toying with her in ways that made her whimper. She struggled against the grasp of the hand that still held her wrists, wanting to touch him the way he was touching her. And suddenly he released her.
She shoved against his shoulders, almost desperate to tear away the layer of cloth between them. She heard Valcour’s groan of protest, but he drew away. And Lucy saw in that moment he thought she had changed her mind.
“Don’t be afraid of me, Lucinda,” he rasped. “Don’t be afraid.”
Tenderness, from a man so unyielding Lucy had thought him made of stone. A rough plea from a man more proud, more arrogant, than any other she had ever known.
In that instant, she wondered what it would be like to be loved by a man like Valcour. The thought was bittersweet in its impossibility, bewitching in its power.
She drowned in the heat of those eyes one long moment then raised her fingers to the fastenings of his shirt.
Her intent inflamed Valcour further, and he yanked the garment over his head, revealing planes and hollows carved of muscle, gilded with a web of dusky hair.
Beneath his ribcage, his stomach was a mass of ridges bisected by a feathered silky ribbon that disappeared beneath the straining fabric of his breeches.
A primitive thrill shot through Lucy. The man who hovered over her was the incarnation of every secret fantasy she had ever had. She let it show in her face, let him see how much she wanted him, needed him.
Valcour’s hands delved into her hair, a cascade of gold tangling about long, bronze fingers. His mouth came down on hers with such savage fervor it made the world spin crazily off its axis. Lucy reveled in the ferocity of his kiss, her jaw clamped hard against whimpers of need.
He seemed to want something, his mouth so insistent, but she didn’t know what.
At last he traced kisses down her cheek, caught the lobe of her ear gently between his teeth. “Lucinda, open your mouth.”
“M-My… mouth? You’re always telling me to—to close it.”
A low chuckle rumbled from Valcour’s chest, and even through the haze of her desire, Lucy was stunned at the beauty of the sound. “I want to kiss you, hoyden.”
“You were kissing me so—so well it’s a wonder the bedsheets didn’t catch fire. And don’t think it doesn’t cost me to say that. You’re arrogant enough as it is.”
The chuckle turned into a low, caressing laugh. “I’ll try not to let your flattery turn my head, hoyden, if you will do as you’re told. Now open your mouth. I want to kiss you inside, treasure. Deep.”
“It sounds… disgusting,” Lucy said faintly. And it did. To someone halfway rational. But the thought of Valcour exploring any part of her was sweet intoxication.
“I think you’ll find the sensation amazing.”
“You’ve amazed me… already,” Lucy said. But she raised her lips to his experimentally, first inviting another hot kiss, with her lips barely parted.
But when the very tip of Valcour’s tongue swept along the seam of her lips, she sucked in a shuddery breath then allowed her mouth to soften, to open.
She hadn’t known what to expect, but it wasn’t the liquid arousal caused by Valcour’s tongue stealing deep, possessing her mouth in the way he would soon possess her body.
The sensation of his deep kiss was honeyed fire. It bedazzled her, melted her as his tongue toyed with hers, acquainting her with male passion.
Lucy kissed him back, following his lead, testing, trying what he taught her. She couldn’t have known that the questing of her untutored mouth and inexperienced hands were more sensual than the lovemaking of the most skilled courtesan the dark earl had ever possessed.
Lucy arched her hips
against his, his kisses seeming to have created a yawning void inside her, waiting to be filled.
Valcour drew back, his eyes flashing to where one exposed breast trembled above the ribbon-trimmed neckline of her shift. The soft mound still bore the faint pink blush of his caresses, her nipple glistening wet from his suckling. The sight of her seemed to push him higher, harder.
His fingers knotted in the neckline of her nightshift, but the drawstring was hopelessly tangled. With an oath he tugged at the snarled blue ribbon, but the fabric ripped beneath his impatient fingers.
He glanced up at her, starting to release her, but Lucy cried out in protest. She closed her hand over his knotted one, imprisoning the wadded-up cloth in his fist. At her silent goading, the last vestiges of civilization vanished from his countenance. He levered himself to his knees above her, then he ripped the garment down the middle, as if it were made of nothing more substantial than moonbeams.
Sunlight drizzled butterscotch patterns over Lucy’s nakedness, the garment looped about her arms, and pooled on either side of her, framing her peach-glossed skin like petals framing the heart of a rose.
Valcour’s fingers went to his breeches, and there was something excruciatingly erotic about his long fingers unfastening the flap, stripping away the black fabric that clung to his muscular thighs like a second skin.
In a heartbeat he was naked. Magnificent. Indomitable. And Lucy wondered if having such a man as her lover wouldn’t be some consolation to the fact that she would never have a man who adored her.
She couldn’t breathe as Valcour’s eyes swept over her body, fierce and savage. It was as if in that instant he possessed her soul, a soaring hawk, ready to claim its mate. A stallion, preparing to mount his chosen mare.
Always when Lucy had envisioned her wedding night, she had imagined darkness to cover her nakedness, hide the flush of embarrassment, the awkwardness that would come from her inexperience. But Valcour could see everything about her—from the tiny freckle beside her navel to the dark blond curls that glistened at the apex of her thighs. A place that felt heavy with yearning, liquid with anticipation, pulsing with a craving that she didn’t fully understand.
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