An Heir of Deception (8 page)

“He—”

Alex must have sensed her coming denial because in the next instant he loomed above her, his proximity shrinking her back into her pillows. His face was all chiseled planes of rage, his lips curled back against his teeth.

“Don’t you dare lie to me. Not again. Not ever again,” he growled, deep and dark.

His tone frightened her, as if a mere gossamer thread of control checked a bottomless well of rage.

“Alex.” His name emerged a whispered plea, a calming tone of reason.

He pulled slightly back, enough to bring the full of him into sharp focus. Drawing in a breath, his gaze raked her form and it was as if fire and ice had decided to do battle. In a rare show of glacial strength, ice won.

Charlotte shivered in response and the skin on her arms gave way to gooseflesh.

His mouth tipped at one corner but in nothing that came close to a smile. Perhaps its not-so-distant relation irony or mockery.

“Had Charles not been traveling the year we were betrothed, you would have met him,” he murmured in the same conversational tone one might adopt when discussing one of life’s mundane trivialities. “One day, I shall show you a portrait of him when he was Nicholas’s age. Had I not known it an impossibility, I might have mistaken Nicholas for his.”

Even if Charlotte had the ability to speak, she had no idea what she would say. Denial at this juncture would be pointless. She’d been found out.

“When was he born?” he asked quietly, bracing his hands on either side of her face and closing the gap between them. “And this time I want the truth.”

As if the truth was alien to her tongue, she started to speak several times before the word finally emerged breathless and broken. “January.”

He said nothing for several seconds, just held her captive in his flat, empty stare before lowering his head until his mouth brushed the lobe of her right ear. “See, that wasn’t so hard was it?”

Arousal, razor-sharp in its intensity, cut her next breath as sensation spiraled at the fleeting touch of his lips and the warmth of his breath at her ear. Dear God, it had been so long since she’d been so intimately touched. Dreams were, after all, just dreams. Reality was…intoxicating.

He straightened and stood towering above her, his broad shoulders blocking much of the light. She felt his absence like a cold draft on feverish flesh. A sound, a mocking laugh, rumbled from his throat. “You’ve been back not yet one full day and you look starved for it.”

The
it
being the cause of her quickened breath and the way her nipples perked to lurid attention. The act of sexual congress.

Not quite finished provoking her, he continued on, his voice all
faux
commiseration. “The journey back must have been long.”

Despite his words and tone, his gaze ran hotly over her. She wasn’t alone in her physical response. He was just slightly more adept at concealing his. Her gaze dropped to the discernible bulge in the front of his trousers. Or perhaps not.

Turning her head didn’t stop the heat from flooding her face in shame. She hated that he knew. She hated that she’d reacted to him like a woman deprived of a man’s touch for five long years.

“Were you dreaming of me?” It wasn’t so much a question as a silky taunt.

Charlotte didn’t answer and didn’t dare look at him. She couldn’t bear to see the smug smile accompanying his words.

“Did you know you cried out my name in your sleep?” No longer did his tone hold that thread of jeer, it was now dark and husky.

She edged her head in his direction. He was staring down at her, his eyes half-mast, his bottom lip shiny as if he’d given it a surreptitious swipe with his tongue. While he held her gaze, he lowered himself to her side, the rub of his thigh now pressed along the length of hers. Fine Indian muslin proved pitilessly insufficient protection against the senses-reeling effect of the contact, even with his leg encased in black wool.

“What was I doing in your dream? Was I kissing you like this?” His head ascended and his mouth rubbed gently over hers. Charlotte was too bemused and breathlessly aroused to do anything but part her lips.

What started as a soft rub became something more all too quickly. Charlotte barely had time to savor the ecstasy of tasting him again, the slide of his lips against hers, before his hands cupped her face, angling her for a deeper, more thorough kiss.

His tongue wanted more than her acquiescence, it thrust and parried, demanding full engagement. She gave that and more, twining hers with his, seeking, sliding, demanding, meeting him stroke for delicious stroke. He made a sound in his throat. Raw desire with a hint of impatience.

Charlotte surrendered to feeling, submerged in pleasure so deep, so completely consuming she couldn’t think beyond the tangle of tongues and the hand that now moved from the curve of her cheek, gliding over the line of her neck, the hollow of her collarbone, to the swell of her breast.

Her nipple pebbled even further in anticipation of his touch. A whimper escaped her lips when it came, the flick of his finger over her nightdress. Moisture pooled between her thighs and heat washed her from head to toe, settling to torment the bundle of nerves where she needed him the most.

Suddenly his kiss grew fierce; he wasn’t playing with her anymore—if he ever had been. His tongue swept her like a windstorm, his kiss wild and out of control. Charlotte welcomed the pressure, the scrape of his bristled cheeks against her sensitive skin, the clash of his teeth against hers. Pushing the barrier of the light blue fabric aside, he first cupped then squeezed the roundness of her breast. On a labored breath, he tore his mouth from hers, his attention now wholly focused on the white mound of firm flesh filling his hand. With a glazed look in his eyes, his head began to descend.

Then with the violent shake of his head that acted like a dousing of ice-cold water, he was on his feet. So swiftly did his expression change, Charlotte could hardly believe she was looking at the same man of seconds before. Alex was cold again; no give to his expression or form.

She wanted to sink inside herself, but instead made haste to right her clothing and conceal her breast. Her hands trembled at the task. And worse yet, she was still shamefully aroused.

“Were I the same fool for you as I was five years ago, I could not have stopped myself from taking you.” He paused, his gaze drifting to her nipple, now covered but clearly outlined under the thin fabric. His mouth quirked. “And you would have allowed it, wouldn’t you? Has it been that long, since you’ve had a man between your thighs?”

His words bit like gravel into her skin, as he’d no doubt intended them to, but she remained silent, accepting his treatment of her as part and parcel of her due.

“Don’t think to seduce me. It will not work. But as you have
my
son, what is between us is far from over.” If his words were not ominous enough, his narrowed eyes and rigid jaw punctuated his feelings on the matter.

Seduce him?
It had been he who had kissed her. But for her own wanton response, Charlotte could do little else but swallow and nod in mute affirmation, embarrassment lingering in her fiery cheeks and lash-veiled eyes.

He turned to go and then stopped as if confronted by a wall. Angling his head, he pinned her with a stare as bitter and icy as the north England winters. “And by God, if you run again and make me chase you—because now that I know you have my son, I
will
chase you to the ends of the earth this time—I’ll make sure you regret it for the rest of your days. Am I clear?”

Part of her wanted to do just that, run from the man he’d become. But an even larger part could not countenance the thought of being parted from him again.

“I’ll not run.” Her voice was scratchy and barely above a whisper.

“See that you don’t.” With that, he slipped from the room, disappearing into the dark hallway without hardly making a sound.

Another minute of silence passed before Charlotte looked down and noticed the stark whiteness of her knuckles as she clutched her bed sheets. Unclenching her hands, she forced herself to relax. She inhaled a deep breath and pulled the counterpane around her, enveloping herself in its warmth.

The risk had always been there that Alex would have deduced the truth about Nicholas. Her son could be a chatterbox when he got started and something—namely his true age—could easily have slipped. Hadn’t her sister guessed the truth, repudiating the existence of her conveniently dead husband with facile confidence?

What had followed was Charlotte’s retelling of those pivotal events that had forever changed their lives. A guilt-ridden tale ripe with omissions and half-truths.

She’d told her sister of the crushing weight of responsibility that had accosted her. When she’d agreed to marry Alex, he’d been the second son of a duke. But months after their betrothal Charles had died and suddenly she was to be a duchess. The culmination of it had all been too much. By the time she’d realized she was with child, she was so far from home and sick because of the pregnancy, she’d barely left her flat for four months thereafter. How could she return to England heavy with child? And then there had been her baby to consider. She could not have made the journey back pregnant and alone.

Charlotte thought her reasons all terribly valid and plausible. She certainly would not subject her sister to the truth, unvarnished and with the unsavory overtones of a penny dreadful.

But Lord, what was she to do now? Or perhaps a more fitting question was what would he do? Since he’d laid eyes on her, he treated her like something worse than leprosy. And then he had kissed her with a passion even he couldn’t disguise. She desperately wanted the kiss to mean something; an instinctive reaction to a passion long denied. She’d settle for lust if she must.

But while her heart craved the happily ever after of reunited lovers, her brain, ever the pragmatist, told her he’d made his feelings for her clear. He despised her. He resented her. He would never forgive her. To him, not only had she abandoned him on the most momentous of days, but she was now the enemy who had denied him his child.

Alex exited the bedchamber and glanced around the dimly lit hall. He knew every nook and shadowed corner of the manor. He’d played in it often enough as a child, and had frequented it plenty in the years Rutherford had resumed residence there.

All was quiet, everyone asleep in their beds—save Charlotte. And if he’d joined her in hers, he’d have had her up until dawn attempting to slake five years of hunger. As it was, Alex would have a time of it himself when he returned to his bed alone.

Having managed his midnight
visit
without discovery, he ought to make his escape as quickly as he could using the most direct route. But imprudence won out over caution.

Silent as a thief, he made his way to the wing housing the children’s rooms and paused in front of the nursery door.

Had the door been ajar, nothing could have stopped him from pushing it quietly open and peering inside to soak in the sight of
his son
, for Alex was certain Nicholas was asleep on the other side.

But he could only permit his imprudence to lead him so far astray and Alex could not be selfish and risk waking him. Now that he knew of Nicholas’s existence, they had a lifetime at their disposal to become properly acquainted in the manner of fathers and sons.

Alex turned from the door and soundlessly entered the narrowed hall of the servants’ sleeping quarters and then proceeded down the stairs to the ground floor.

Five minutes later, he was riding down the narrow trail in the rear of the house that led to his property miles down the road. The night was cool, the air the kind one welcomed when drawing a breath.

She had cried his name in her sleep. God, he wished he’d never heard it. The sound had shocked him, and his heart had skipped a beat. For a moment, he’d been taken back to that time before she’d left him. He’d loved her mindlessly then, but his feelings had left him vulnerable, blind and weak. And what had he gotten for opening himself so completely? Abandoned and betrayed.

When he saw the light of his residence up in the distance, Alex spurred Shalais into a gallop with the slight pressure of his knees on his flanks. The greater distance he put between them, the better. He could already see—feel—the effect she had on him.