Caprice: The Masqueraders Series - Book One (32 page)

“You are engaged?” Emory sounded aghast.

“It did not seem necessary to mention the matter before.”

“But I saw you tonight, dancing with those old men, smiling and teasing, leading them to believe—”

“Believe what, Emory?” Clarissa introduced a tone of injured pride into her voice. It had always served her very well with ardent young officers. “They are gallant gentlemen. It is because they are elderly that I smile and dance with them. Had I behaved so with you, a handsome and virile young man, you could now reproach me.”

The many sudden shocks of the last minutes combined with the quality of liquor he had consumed during the day had Emory’s head reeling. “Then what I have done … it’s all for naught.”

His desperation touched her as his ardor had not. She moved toward him. “What have you done, Emory? Please tell me.”

But he jerked away as she would have touched him. “No!” He began backing toward the door. “I’m sorry if I have offended you, Princess. My apologies.” He sounded distracted, and a little nervous, but she thought it best not to stop him as he opened her door. “Good night. Forgive me.” He turned and fled.

When she had pushed the door shut, Clarissa leaned against it, half laughing, half weeping at the awful, ludicrous confusion which her life had become.

The unexpected knock sounding just beside her ear startled her. Even as she leaned away from it, the door opened. She had just enough time to jump back before it was flung wide by a powerful thrust and into the opening strode a towering, supremely angry Hadrian Blackburne.

“Hell and damnation! What have you been up to with my brother?”

Clarissa felt her face change from white shock to red fury. How
dare
he? His voice had carried enough volume to alert every servant in this wing of the house to his presence in her room. “Would you have me announce it to the assembled company?”

Without even a backward glance he grabbed the edge of the door behind him and flung it shut. The
crack
of the slam echoed like thunder through the room, but she was too livid to care. What did a slammed door signify behind his accusation?

Hadrian did not give his actions much thought either. He was far more interested in his observations, the most important being that she was still completely dressed and that the bed remained unwrinkled. But those were thin appeasements to his rage.

He had seen Soltana leave the ballroom, but it had taken him several minutes to realize that Emory had also absented himself. First he had searched the shadowy alcoves and then the immediate grounds beyond the ballroom doors, where he interrupted two sets of lovers. Then, from the rose garden, he had looked up toward the house to see Soltana standing by her open window. Before he could move away, Emory had joined her, embracing her in a kiss so ardent Hadrian had felt a response in his own loins. Rage, pure and lethal, turned his blood molten. Even as he lunged toward that wing of the house, his mind recorded the fact that she had not resisted his brother’s kiss—not in the least!

Now she stood before him, looking like a palegreen flame in the moonlight. “I think I have put up with enough from you,” he said in a deadly flat voice. “I have given you every opportunity. God knows! I have been more patient than it is in my character to be. But enough is enough!”

Clarissa held her ground as he strode toward her. He might be about to do half a dozen things to her, but she did not fear that he would strike her. Even so, she could not keep from flinching when he reached out to her. She heard him chuckle in grim amusement and took another backward step and then another until she was moving away from him nearly as rapidly as he was gaining on her.

Her retreat was finally blocked by the wall near the window. Even as she began to slip sideways along it, he placed a hand on the wall, blocking her escape. Very deliberately, he placed his second hand on the other side of her and then leaned his taller and considerably heavier frame against hers, pushing her back into the gloom just beyond the drapery. Pressed to the wall, she could feel the heat of his thighs on hers, and then he prodded her soft belly with the hard jut of his hips. Amazed by the bold evidence of his arousal, she gasped.

“Afraid of me?” he said softly. “Good. You should be. You should be absolutely terrified of me. Perhaps it will keep you in future from making a cake of yourself and a gudgeon of me!”

“I’ve never tried to gull you,” she retorted then realized that assertion was far for true. “I—that is, I never meant to cause you discomfort or humiliation.”

“I … don’t … believe … you.”

He said each word as though he were delivering blows. Instead he thrust his hips against her, forcing her to acknowledge his arousal and the superiority of his strength.

But Clarissa was rapidly regaining her composure, for she had learned many things about this man in the last weeks, and much of it had to do with the nature of his passion. Though she was in shadow, his face was flooded by the light of the full moon and his expression was far from frightening. The cut of his mouth, the tension in his face, and the black depths of his eyes revealed the source of his rage. He was jealous, afraid of losing her to another man, and the fear had made him at last vulnerable to the desire that had been humming ominously between them for the last five days.

“I don’t care what you believe,” she said softly and, quite without thinking about why, reached up to touch the scar gleaming like a silver streak across his brow. “Who did this?”

Hadrian shuddered under her light caress, but his voice remained steady. “Not who. What. A eunuch’s saber.” He chuckled and reached up to touch the place where her veiling was hooked behind her ear.
“Shaitan
had dared to enter the Sultan of Algiers’s harem.”

“Who is
Shaitan
?” she asked, tracing the arch of his brow to the corner of his eye.

“The name is Arabic for devil, as you well know. It was once my name. I am very good at deception,
Bahia.
Almost as good as you.”

Clarissa smoothed a fingertip over one feathery set of his sable lashes. “I see.”

“Do you? I wonder. Deception is a very dangerous thing. You can get caught up in circumstances that can make you do the unthinkable. I have killed,
Bahia.
Does that shock you?”

“Yes,” she admitted, and tried to wriggle free of his body’s disturbing pressure.

“Then you will be stunned when you discover what I want to do to you!”

He leaned even more heavily upon her until she could not quite catch her breath. Yet if he was trying to frighten her, he had chosen the wrong method. She had begun to shiver in the night air, and the heat of his body was warming her everywhere they touched. In fact, a slow burn had begun just beneath the surface of her skin, causing her to unconsciously press against him.

He snatched her veil away so quickly she had not time to react. He could not see her face, smothered in deep shadow, could not tell if she was regretting her reckless behavior with Emory. He did not mean to give in to any of the delicious suggestions that were now running hotly through his mind. He only wanted to punish her for accepting his brother’s embrace when she should have been in his arms. But she was struggling so enticingly beneath his weight, her soft warmth rubbing his lower belly, stroking him until he forgot his resolution.

His hands moved from the wall to pin her shoulders as he brought his mouth to within an inch of hers. “I want you,
Bahia,
so badly I ache. Here.” He rocked his pelvis on hers. “Feel me,
Bahia.
This is what you do to me. What do I do to you? Tell me.”

Clarissa shook her head. She could not explain to him what he did to her. She did not have the words to describe the sensations so like smooth fire that rippled in scalding waves through her where he touched her. But she was a woman and female intuition told her that words were not really what he wanted.

She leaned forward and licked his firm, warm mouth, letting her tongue supply her wordless answer.

He stiffened against her, and she wondered fleetingly if she had succeeded in shocking him. Or perhaps she had miscalculated.

His hands tightened painfully on her shoulders as he said, “Show me more,
Bahia.
Show me how you welcomed my brother’s embraces. Show me what he inspired in you.”

She could not guess how he knew of the kiss she and Emory shared, nor did she have the heart to dissemble. All that was left was honesty. “I did not kiss him, my lord. He kissed me. It was not like your kiss. Shall I show you what your kisses do to me?”

This time there was no question that her words caught him by surprise, for he became tensely still. Though they shook with trepidation, she raised her hands and framed his boldly modeled face with her fingertips. She half expected him to rebuff her touch, but he did not. Closing her eyes, she leaned forward and placed her lips ever so softly on his.

As her lips met his, Hadrian held his breath, too angry to react. Did she think he could be manipulated so easily? Her soft mouth slanted across the implacable line of his unresponsive mouth. Did she think that all she had to do was to thread her fingers through the hair at his temples, her little fingers curling into the infinite sensitive hollows of his ears, to rouse him from his righteous indignation? Did she think that by reaching up on tiptoe and melting against him so that the burning impression of her full breasts rested on his chest, she could sway him from his mood? Or that because the seductive impatient dance of her hips upon his made his pulse leap and throb, he would capitulate?

Dear Lord, yes!

He released a deep sigh that ended on a groan and gave up to the voluptuous desire to touch her back.

His hands moved from her shoulders in a slow heavy caress that slowly molded every part of her body more closely to his. He felt the tremors of her response coursing just beneath the silken surface of her frock as his hands slid down her spine, arching her back so that her breasts were flattened to his chest. How warm she was, and soft and sleek. It was all he could do to keep from shredding her dress to get to the luscious skin beneath.

Clarissa welcomed the heavy cocoon of his warmth pressing in on her. When his hands brushed aside the short sleeves of her dress, dragging with it the scanty bodice, she shivered in delicious anticipation. And then his hands found her, the light touch welcome on the quivering firmness of her breasts. His thumbs moved very deliberately, circling and rubbing until each nipple swelled in response. And then he was sliding down her body, his mouth leaving a hot wet trail on her skin, down the side of her neck, past the hollow of her collarbone, and onto the swell of a breast.

A moan of desire shuddered through her as he claimed his prize. His tongue followed the action of his fingers, stroking then sucking each tender bud until she whimpered, her head bent forward over his, her cheek resting on his crown.

Yet through the haze of her newly aroused passion, tiny warning bells went off inside her head even as her body encouraged his.
Not like this,
she thought.
Not as strangers.
He must know whom he made love to. For if it was Princess Soltana, not Clarissa Willoughby, he wanted, then he could not have her.

Clarissa wrenched away from him so quickly that she surprised him into releasing her. Even as he gained his feet, she stepped into the slanted wash of moonlight. With the conscious effort of one who has chosen to mount the scaffolding unaided, she turned her face into that white light.

In the effluent glare Hadrian saw the familiar beauty and soft sensuality of feature of Clarissa Willoughby. But apprehension robbed her face of animation and a nervous quiver tugged at her mouth, drawing down one corner repeatedly.

For a long moment they stood staring at each other. There was fear and doubt in her expression. But in her gaze there was desire. It communicated itself to him with the same intensity as a physical touch. “I knew,” he said simply.

“Don’t lie to me.” She sounded so vulnerable and uncertain.

“No,” he said warmly and moved closer to her. “I wouldn’t. Not about this.”

Moments before he had been furious with her for being beautiful and enticing, for her ability to lure a man, in particular his brother, to the indiscretion of entering her bedchamber. Now all he wanted to do was to possess her, to master the accumulated passion she had been arousing in him for weeks and thereby prove to her, and himself, that she belonged to him.

He reached out to her again, one fingertip tracing the imaginary path of the veil she had worn from one cheek across the delicate bridge of her nose to the summit of her other cheek. There were many questions left unanswered by her revelation but they could wait. He closed even the short distance between them, bending to lay his mouth over hers.

“I … want … you, Clarissa,” he murmured, punctuating his words with flicks of his tongue over the surface of her lips. The arms that came up to encircle his neck felt like a benediction. Then her lips parted under his to offer further secrets, and he quickly drew her shy but eager tongue into his mouth.

One hand spread out below her waist and pressed her hips to the hard throbbing of his manhood, but his aching only increased. Reaching under the firm swell of her hips, he cupped her buttocks to lift her up off the floor. Leaning back, he took her weight on the cradle of his pelvis. “Straddle me,
Bahia,”
he whispered. “Ride me like a stallion.”

Clarissa felt the pressure of his hand between her thighs and tried to wrap her legs about his hips but her skirts were too narrow. Within moments, his hands had worked the binding material up about her hips. The cool night air struck her bare skin, making her shiver, and then his hands were like brands on her naked thighs, coaxing her to again try to embrace him with her thighs.

This time she succeeded, wrapping her legs about his hips and locking her ankles together behind his back. He then pressed her back against the wall, pinning her for the leverage he needed in order to direct her hips with his hands to meet the impatient suggestive rhythm of his masculine thrusts. But the very act of touching her seemed to gentle him. The mouth fastened to his was impossibly sweet. And how soft.