by Claudia Dain
“As I said, you are surely an innocent to be so calm about the fact that I hold your life, in the most symbolic sense, in my hands. Which reminds me, I would like to hold your breasts in my hands again. Kindly lower your bodice.”
“I will not !” she said, her heart hammering wildly. He was not going to marry her? “And what do you mean you may even marry me? You made your intentions plain at Hyde House, both symbolically and verbally.”
“For your mother’s benefit, yes,” Ashdon said. “Do not tell me, Caro, that you are ignorant of the enmity between my father and your mother. What else has all this,” and he spread open his hands to encompass the coach, the two of them, the whole of London, “been about if not them?”
Oh, God.
“But you said you would marry me,” she said, sounding pitiful and knowing it, but unable to stop herself. She was rather disgusted with herself for not being able to stop herself where Lord Ashdon was concerned. “You told my mother.”
“And I told my father, by way of the gossip which is surely running through Hyde House since our departure. I’m sure he’s quite annoyed.”
“Isn’t your father always quite annoyed about something or other?” she asked, feeling as if the pearls were burning circles into her skin, but unable to defy Ashdon and remove them. She was a silly fig of a girl, quite as innocent and ignorant as he claimed.
“I think this will mark him rather more than usual,” Ashdon said. “Are you going to lower your bodice or not? ”
He was back onto that again?
“No, I am not,” she said, resisting the urge to clamp her hands over her breasts in outrage. She was not going to give in to outrage. She was going to proceed logically and rationally. Sense would rule the day, as it must in a civilized world. It was so unfortunate that Ashdon didn’t appear civilized at the moment, a definite flaw in her hastily devised plan to distract him. “Are you saying that you spoke of marrying me merely to annoy your father?”
“Must we talk of my father now? I would rather speak about your bodice and those pearls, sinking just out of sight into the deep shadow of your cleavage. You were quite right, by the way; you have the loveliest breasts. I would so enjoy seeing them again. Kissing them. Holding them in my hands.”
Her heart quivered like a captured bird, which did her no good at all.
What would her mother do?
Inspiration.
“How charmingly put,” she said. “Very well. I will lower my bodice, but only if we continue our conversation about your father and our marriage.”
“You’re negotiating with me?” Ashdon said with a wry grin. At least she hoped it was a wry grin; in this light, he could well have been leering at her and she would be the last to know the difference.
“If you must call it that,” she said.
“How charming. And here I thought all our negotiations were past, the pearls bearing the proof of that.”
“I’m beginning to hate these pearls,” she said. “I’m almost sorry I ever asked for them.”
“I’m not,” he said, and this time there was no doubt. He was leering. She could hear it in his voice. Blasted sot.
“You’re not foxed, are you?” she said. If intoxicated, that would explain much and ease her fears.
“Because I said I liked your breasts?” he said.
“Of course not!” she said sharply. Really. How insulting. “Because you are not acting like yourself, Lord Ashdon.”
“Am I not? You know me well, then?”
True enough. She hardly knew him at all, but what she knew, she found either irritating in the extreme or compelling in the extreme. Some days one wished for a simple mediocrity, a comfortable complaisance. Particularly on days like today. Particularly with Lord Ashdon.
And if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.
“I thought I knew you,” she said, trying for pity, a sort of innocence that would arouse his chivalric training.
“Take down your bodice and get to know me better,” he said.
So much for chivalric training.
“Talk to me about your father and my mother and I’ll loosen the tie,” she said.
“You are a determined negotiator.”
“I am a determined virgin.”
Ashdon laughed and shook his head at her. “It hasn’t occurred to you that I could slip my hands inside your gown without any assistance from you? You are already ruined, no matter what we do or do not do.”
“I believe at this point, Lord Ashdon, everything has occurred to me, including the fact that you are baiting me just to get me to refuse you.”
“You are refusing me. Your bodice is still up.”
“I meant about marrying you,” she said.
Ashdon sighed and leaned back against the squabs. “You can refuse me, you know. You have a brilliant start into the courtesan’s life.”
“You’d rather I be a courtesan than your wife?”
“Isn’t that what you wanted for yourself when this marriage was first broached by your mother?”
It was the perfect opportunity to tell him the truth, though telling the truth to a man was always a risk as their emotions ran a strange course. But as risks went, she had little to lose at this point.
“Lord Ashdon,” she said softly, one might even have said meltingly , “I have hoped for marriage all my life, as I expect most women do. I wanted to be pursued. I wanted to be admired. I never wanted to have a man, mired in debt, to be procured for me. And then,” she said over his rising anger, a force she could feel in the close confines of the darkened carriage, “I met you.”
Caro loosened the tie to her bodice and eased it open, letting the sheer white muslin tumble down to fall against the swells of her breasts, let it be remembered, her lovely breasts. Ashdon’s anger melted into desire. She could feel that, too.
“How could I ever be a courtesan?” she continued. “Yours are the only hands I want to touch me. Yours, the only mouth. Yours, the only breath I want mingled with my own. I am ruined, Lord Ashdon, for any other man. I am ruined, and you are the man who has ruined me. Will you not take the spoils of your conquest?”
He did.
Ashdon wrapped his arms around her and pulled her onto his lap, his mouth taking hers in gentle plunder. She sighed into him, into the heat of him, into his scent and into his embrace. She wrapped herself around him, her arms around the starched linen at his throat, her tongue around his, her slippered feet around the bulge of his calves, and dove into his kiss without a thought of surfacing. Let passion take them both. He had said it: she was ruined. There was no going back, only forward, into marriage if she could make him bend against her will.
He would bend. He would bend against desire and then she would have him.
Ashdon’s hands went to her bodice and she moaned in supplication, urging him onward, past the pearls and everything they stood for, to her flesh. To desire.
Her bodice gaped, a flimsy barrier, and then his hand was on her breast, his thumb rubbing her nipple, her body fired by streams of passion. Thought fled. Sensation ruled.
She was lost. All that was left was for Ash to find her.
His mouth trailed along her cheek, to her ear; she shivered. Away from her ear and down the line of her throat; she moaned. His hand cupped her breast, his thumb flicking hard against her nipple; she groaned and her hips twitched against the hard ridge of his erection. He groaned. It was a minor victory in this war of desire, but she took it, enjoyed it.
“You would not have a gambler,” he breathed against the rise of her breast as his hand pulled her bodice down and down until she felt the full impact of the chill night air on her skin, the full impact of his hand upon her skin . . . the full impact of Ash. “No gambler,” he mouthed, “yet you gamble for stakes higher than I ever have. You’ve gambled your life, Caro. You’ve gambled it all. On me.”
“Have I lost, Ash? ” she whispered, her mouth against his neck, feeling the pulse of his life and his passion beneath he
r lips, driving what was left of caution out of her very bones. “Have I lost everything?”
He kissed her in answer, his hand plunging down further into her bodice until she heard the rip of fabric and knew she was completely bare-breasted before him, just like in the dressing room. Nothing like in the dressing room. This was raw passion in the dark. There was no pounding against the door, no threat of interruption, no possibility of censure.
She spun downward into passion, seated firmly on Ash’s lap. She fell out of her life and into his. She was caught by his hand and by his mouth, teased and tasted, consumed and consuming.
His hand pressed between her legs and she pressed them closed against him. She wanted his touch, ached for him, but as instinctual as it was to want him, it was equally instinctual to deny him. Not that. Not yet. Certainly not now.
“Open for me,” he breathed against her mouth.
She could not speak for want of air. She shook her head instead. No.
“Open, Caro.”
“Have I lost everything?” she repeated, her voice breathy and high-pitched. She sounded afraid.
She was.
“I’ve lost everything,” he said hoarsely. “Why not you?”
In the next instant she was no longer afraid. She was furious.
“You’ve lost nothing, you great oaf, nothing you did not toss away with both hands.”
She pushed him, pushed against his shoulders with her hands. He did not move an inch. He was stone, and just as sensible.
“I am not tossing you away, Caro,” he said roughly. “I am keeping you.”
She ignored the tremor that ran through her. She was going to ignore everything from now on that did not serve her well, and she had decided, somewhat belatedly, that Lord Ashdon did not serve her best interests. And to top it off, he truly was as ill-tempered, and ill-mannered, as his father. Her mother had been quite wrong about that when she had assured her that Ashdon only required careful managing. Wild boars could not be managed.
“I am not going to be kept by you, Lord Ashdon,” she said. “Since I am not going to be your wife, which is entirely your choice, then I am not going to be your ladybird, which is entirely my choice.”
For answer, he dropped his head and suckled her breast.
She grabbed the hair on the top of his scalp and pulled his mouth off of her.
He cursed in response.
She smiled in response.
He grabbed her wrists, but she slipped off his lap and landed on the floor of the carriage, her wrists still caged in his hands.
That part could have gone better.
“Let go !” she snapped, tugging on her wrists.
“I don’t know,” he said slowly. “I think I rather like you at my feet, bare-breasted, manacled.”
For answer, she bit him on the knee.
He cursed even more roundly, adding in a few words she hadn’t heard before. He didn’t let go of her hands, and so she bit him again. Harder.
He let her go. She hurriedly planted herself on the squabs opposite him and, thinking it over rather quickly, let her bodice continue to gape around her rib cage, leaving her completely and scandalously exposed. She thought that last bit was something her mother might have done. Besides, he’d seen, touched, and tasted it all now anyway.
“Blast it, Caro! What the devil are you biting me for?”
She held out one arm in stiff command, directed right at his chest, but not actually touching him. She might be naïve, but she was not stupid.
“We are going to talk, Ash, and you are not going to kiss your way out of it!”
He studied her, studied her breasts, actually. She resisted the urge to cross her arms over them. She also resisted the urge to throw herself into his arms, but there was no reason for him to know anything about that.
“You know you’d rather my kisses than any conversation we could find between us,” he said in a hushed voice.
“If you try to kiss me, I’ll bite your lip,” she said coldly.
“Quite the little biter, aren’t you?” he said. “Definite possibilities there, if you learn some self-control.”
“I hardly think you are the person to lecture anyone on self-control!”
“At least I have all my clothes on,” he said, his voice smiling.
“Exactly my point. I am not the one who has done this . . . this . . . to me. You did it.”
“And rather proud of it, actually.” He was definitely grinning now. Stupid sot.
“It’s nothing to be proud of, but we’re not going to talk about that, and we’re not going to kiss, and you’re not to touch me until we get a few things settled between us before this coach arrives at Upper Brook Street.”
“You know, Caro, you really must learn not to assume so much.”
“What the devil does that mean?”
“Simply, what makes you so certain that my coach is taking you home?”
Her stomach sank to somewhere near her knees, but she wasn’t going to let him know that either. He already thought her laugh-ably innocent and unsophisticated. She was more than tired of that presumption. Being a virgin did not equal being gullible.
At least, she didn’t think it did.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said on a huff of disbelief. “Of course you’re taking me home. Where else would a—”
“A man who has paid for an up-and-coming courtesan go? Not to his home, certainly.”
“I wasn’t aware you had a home in town,” she said scathingly. “Not a home of your own at any rate.”
“Of course you weren’t aware of it. I keep it for nights such as this. And women such as you.”
“You mean women you’ve publicly pledged to marry?” she said chillingly. She was more than tired of his continual references to her brief and, yes, idiotic, plan to become a courtesan. “How delightful, Ashdon. You’ve bought me a house in Town. Or are we renting?”
“I thought it was you I was renting,” he said calmly.
How could he remain so calm? Weren’t her lovely breasts staring him, in a manner of speaking, in the face? Perhaps it was too dark for him to be fully devastated by the sight of her breasts as he had been in the Hyde House dressing room. Oh, for the illumination of even a single candle to help her along with the impossible Lord Ashdon.
“No matter where we are going, Lord Ashdon,” she said, “we are going to get a few things settled before we get there.”
“If we are going to talk, perhaps you should readjust your bodice. You look positively Amazonian sitting there, your dress collapsed around your waist.”
A positive sign, surely. He was distracted by her breasts. Of course, she was distracted by her breasts, exposed to his gaze as they were, his body just a foot from hers, her nipples throbbing and erect . . . but distractions were not going to stop her now. She was going to marry Ashdon, and he was going to cooperate about it.
“Oh? I hadn’t noticed,” she said, running the pearls through her fingers. He moaned softly, the sound coming from deep in his chest. Finally, she had Ashdon where she wanted him. About time, too.
“Stop touching those pearls, Caro, or you won’t be a virgin long,” he growled.
“Since we’re to be married soon, I won’t be a virgin long no matter what.”
“Is that an offer?”
“Absolutely not. I was merely pointing out the obvious.”
But she let the pearls drop to lie coldly against her breasts. Now that Ashdon was on his side of the coach and she on hers, she was becoming rather chilled. Best to get this negotiation done with quickly. She could hardly imagine a worse fate than a chest cough on her wedding night.
“Now then, Lord Ashdon, you have quite ruined me, in all ways, for any other man,” she said calmly. “You have declared your intention to marry me. Will you not marry me after all?”
“There is more to this than you imagine, Caro,” he said, dipping his head down, hiding the gleam of his blue eyes from her.
“I don’
t think so, Ash,” she said. “I know there is some revenge between our parents meddling in our actions. I know that you might feel, however wrongly, that you should like your own revenge upon me. For wanting to be a courtesan. For not wanting to be your wife. But I have explained that, haven’t I? I wanted to be wanted. Don’t you want me, Ash? ”
“It’s more complicated—”
“Just answer me,” she interrupted. “One question at a time. Do you want me ? ”