Angel In My Bed (12 page)

Closing her eyes, she gasped, for his mouth was moving from the erotic arch of her throat to the valley between her
breasts. Winded, she gripped his shoulders and the corded tendons straining beneath the cloth of his shirt. Then her bare shoulders were pressing into the draperies and he was suckling her nipples through the thin cloth of her camisole, cupping her intimately.

And she began to tremble.

Warmth and musk and a hint of something exotic clung to the fabric of his shirt. She whispered his name, little realizing her feet were touching the ground. And then he was tilting her face with his palms before his mouth again laid claim to her lips. Somewhere in the tempest of her mind that separated her pleasure from his, reason and logic tried to rear their conjoined heads, only to be crushed by the intimacy of David's hands moving inside her pants and sliding them down her hips. Far enough down her legs that he could lift her and with his other hand wrapped around his erection, guided himself between her thighs.

Sin created desire in many forms. The glitter of a diamond in lamplight, the taste of chocolate on strawberries, a gold sovereign. Then there was David, she thought, opening her eyes.

Wrapped within golden damask of the curtains, she felt her voice catch in her chest. He was large. He hurt her, and seemed to know that he did. With what little control he seemed to have left, his dark hair disheveled, his shirt hanging open, he was looking at her with smoldering eyes all but scorching in their intensity.

“Myrrh.” She clung to him, adjusting to his size, her senses flooded by the weight of his memory. “I've finally figured out the other scent in your soap. Quince and myrrh.”

“My one vice in Ireland that I could not rid myself.”

Only one vice? She wanted to laugh. Her breath broke for
a moment, and she closed her eyes as he pushed deeper. “I wish—”

One hand braced against the wall, his thrust filled her completely. “What do you wish?” he whispered in a velvety hush.

Her heart scurried to answer. That she could go back and change the past? That she was anyone but who she was. “The curtains,” she rasped, and felt his hand grip the cloth behind her, sending the draperies another few feet to dim the light in the room.

Her eyes held his for a raw moment. His gaze flicked down to her wet mouth. “I confess…I have not done this in a long time.”

“A long time?” she echoed on a watery laugh, her body adjusting to the hot brand of his, her smile tremulous. But it was a smile, and she'd not felt so alive in so long. She traced her palms across the uncompromising contours of his chest. “It's unfortunate we don't have a bottle of wine to celebrate this moment,” she said against his throat.

“I don't need wine.”

She felt the defined muscles of his back strain, then his mouth was again upon hers, crushing her lips. His hands splayed wide over her hips and lifted her higher before he leaned into her, his breathing rasping into her ear. “Not when I have you.”

David was drowning in the scent of her. Her body consumed him. He could feel the thud of her heart, her breath against his ear. “That's it, Meg.” The words were hot against her mouth. “Take me deeper.”

She opened her mouth and he caught her cry in a slow, deep kiss. He braced his legs, thrusting unrestrained in his need to possess her. He tried to remember to breathe, but lost in the hot friction from moving inside her, a gasp ground
from his throat instead. Even as he held her crushed against him, she held him tighter, panting in his arms, taking his thrusts deeply into her body. He drove into her, all conscious thought lost in his shuddering climax. When he could no longer stand, he sank to his knees with her to the floor, and she was suddenly beneath him tangled in her hair and clothes. He hovered over her braced on his forearms, his hands in her hair, his lips opening against her temple, a sensual shudder going through him.

Meg lay beneath him, her chest rising and falling with every breath. He had taken her still wearing his boots and his trousers. It was a long time before he opened his eyes. Before a sliver of sanity returned to malign his conscience and kick him in the arse. More than years of celibacy had ended here tonight.

Suddenly her mouth drew down at the corners, and he realized she was watching him with steady eyes. “Nothing ever goes the way it should between us, David. Does it?”

Her hair spread around her, lush in the daylight. Hunger undeniable and fierce still burned within him. “Did I hurt you?” The words sounded harsh, even to his own ears.

“Don't feel guilty,” she said softly. “I wanted it as well.”

“It?” David pushed against his palms.

“A roll, a toss, copulation? Whatever you wish to call what just happened.”

“Thank you for putting it in perspective, Mrs. Donally. But I wasn't feeling guilty.”

Her beautiful eyes collided with his. “What were you thinking then?”

His gaze eased over her breasts and to the shadow of hair at the damp apex of her thighs where his body joined hers. “I was wondering what one says to an estranged wife—who is no longer quite so estranged.”

“Don't think too hard on the matter.” She pressed her palms against his chest. “I might want to come back tomorrow and do this again. Longer next time.”

Narrowing his eyes, David eased himself almost painfully from her body. He moved onto his back, where he adjusted his trousers, giving his hands and his mind something to do. He was the one still in torment, and he wondered how any woman could have so much power over him, filling his thoughts so completely at every hour day and night, taking such a place in his life that he would champion her to the exclusion of all else. There had never been anyone like her, but she had always been a complication. That fact hadn't changed.

He got to his feet, then pulled her up and helped her dress, because she was making no move to repair herself. “Look at me, Meg.”

“I don't want to be Meg.” She raised her gaze, and his eyes stared into hers. “But when I'm around you, I can't seem to help it. You bring out the worst in me.”

Stuffing his shirt into his trousers, he laughed, almost pulling her into his arms before he realized what a mistake that would be. “You've changed. But not that much. I think you've proved that adequately enough.”

She looked up, her eyes liquid bright and filled with hurt. “I really did think those footprints belonged to one of Stillings's men. I want you to believe
me
for once.”

Hell, Meg could frustrate him faster than any single person could. He had never bloody intended to get involved with her again. Not in this way. Not when he recognized the dangers, and knew they had no future. When he didn't even trust her not to poison his tea. Certainly not with Colonel Faraday somewhere at his back.

And still, he wanted to touch her, because being with Meg
did something to him inside—as if selling his soul to her once was not enough.

He waited until he had her full attention. “If I put a Bible in your hand, would you swear that you didn't rendezvous with your father?”

She hesitated several seconds, as the question began to sink through the muddle of her thoughts. “You actually think I went out that morning because you believe those tracks belonged to my father and you thought…? After everything you know about him—”

“I don't know. You tell me. There is a Bible in the other room.”

It was just like David to trust what anyone would swear on a Bible to be true, no matter the crimes and sins in a person's soul. She started to tell him she would put her hand anywhere he wanted. Before the thought stopped her heart.

The family Bible held the births and deaths of everyone who had ever lived in this house. Nathanial's birth would be recorded there. Was she ready to tell him her deepest secret?

Suddenly, she was terrified for her son all over again, afraid of telling anyone the truth, when there was so much danger around her. For a moment that afternoon in the cellar, she had forgotten that David was part of that danger. She had forgotten who he was and what he wanted. His only purpose to find her father and finish what he had begun years ago.

“Is this where tit for tat ends?” He put his finger to her jaw, and she sensed a strange unsteadiness in his hand. “No more spousal heart-to-heart?”

“Is that what happened between us just now?” Victoria adjusted her boots and swept past David to retrieve her cloak. “I have to go.”

He pulled her around, and she faced him with eyes flash
ing. “The problem with you, Meg, is that you have always known the difference between right and wrong. Yet you choose wrong. Who are you trying to protect with your silence? Your father?”

Her fingers trembled as she tried to disengage his hand. “I don't need insight into my character, or any rousing stiff-upper-lip, God-save-the-queen speech. Obviously some of us don't have your moral clarity. Let me go.”

“How hard can it be to choose?”

She yanked her arm from his grasp. “Some people make choices that no one will ever know about.”

“Tell me why you are so afraid of your father?”

She walked to the chair where she'd laid her cloak and stopped, hating the wretched memories that came with the helplessness. But she composed herself and spoke of something she had never told another soul.

“When I was a little girl, my father told me my mother hated me and ran away with an artillery officer in the army. Years later, I tried to find her.” Her voice faltered.

“What happened to your mother?”

Scraping the hair from her eyes, she looked at David. “I found out that the artillery officer in question had vanished one day shortly after he and my mother had gone away. Months later, his shriveled head had been discovered in his bed, but no body and no blood was ever found in the bungalow.” She straightened her shoulders. “I have no doubt my mother committed adultery or that my father believed his act of vengeance was justice. All while he used me to rob people blind. My sire, if God wishes to call him that, is a monster. Don't ever accuse me of siding with him again.”

He paused there, looking at her. “Yours was the anony
mous tip that led the authorities to him all those years ago. Wasn't it?”

Her heart skipped then thundered. She could not say the word, so deeply buried was her betrayal. She'd spent nine years protecting Nathanial from the threat that one day her father would find them. Except it had been David who found her, and now she was just as afraid, no longer at peace in a life that had given her nine years of happiness.

“I'm not asking for your approval.” She folded her arms to keep from touching him.

“You did the right thing with your father.” His voice held her gaze, his eyes her heart, and she did not know how to tell him everything else. Only that she should. “I cannot imagine what it must have been like for you growing up as you did,” he said.

“You were in Calcutta. You knew what my father had been like. Will you insert yourself into my mind now? Soften me up?” She flicked at the V of his shirt, easily rallying around her anger when he was wont to let her vent now. “Or is this the part where you'll offer a few more minutes of ecstasy in exchange for all the secrets in my soul?”

His eyes lost their expression and grew still. “I am glad that your pleasure and mine still coincide so completely, Meg. Fooking you is the best thing I've done in years.”

She gasped. “And that out of the mouth of a former man of God. Maybe you didn't retire.” She pointed a finger at him. “Maybe you were run out of Ireland with a stake at your back, your halo shattered when people began to see through your mask.”

“Have I touched a nerve?”

Ignoring him, Victoria arranged her hair to one side and
flung the cloak over her shoulders, nearly sweeping a crystal lamp from the table between two winged chairs.

“Someone needs to touch something inside of you. Hell, I don't know.” He scraped his fingers through his hair, leaving the ends standing all over the place, then peering at her as if his state of frustration were her fault. “Maybe all we both need is another round at each other. Upstairs in bed. Nothing so miserly as a few minutes between us next time.”

“Truly, David. You can be such a bore.” She flipped up the hood on the cloak and waltzed past him into the foyer.

This place needed dusting, she realized in some distant portion of her mind as she yanked on her gloves. Retreating in silence, she didn't want to think about this house, any more than she wanted to dwell on David or his hateful accusations. Or wonder how she would ever reconcile her life now to her past.

Her hand pausing at the door, she shut her eyes. “I swear, I have not seen my father in nine years,” she said after a moment, her voice muffled by the cloak.

When he didn't reply, she looked over her shoulder and found him leaning negligently against the newel post, his eyes burning with something other than anger. “Beware of dead men and the secrets they hold, Meg,” he quietly said, folding his arms. “If you want to live, then I suggest you stay away from cemeteries.”

A hot flush stained her cheeks. But if David thought he knew her reasons for going to the cemetery that night, he was wrong. “There are some things in which I am innocent, whether you believe me or not, David.” She flung open the door to the late-afternoon chill, the cloak flowing out around her as she hurried down the steps.

Stepping outside onto the porch, David watched her flee,
her head and face hidden by the cloak's hood. Rockwell waited with the cart on the drive, but Meg swept past him.

His mood remained mired in uncertainty, because she was his wife—and he wanted her, despite everything. With her height and her hood shielding her face, no one would have recognized her finer feminine side, hidden beneath the heavy layer of the cloak.

Unfortunately, he knew all too well that ivory perfect flesh, and ached to touch her again. Let her think she was fleeing him.