Dangerous to Kiss (12 page)

“So,” said the husky voice of her dreams, “now I know how to provoke those delectable dimples. You wouldn’t believe how much I have missed them.”

Her smile vanished, and she squeezed her eyes tight before slowly, slowly opening them. From a few inches away, his wicked blue eyes twinkled back at her. She swiftly closed her eyes and tried again. He was still there when she opened them a second time.

“And,” said Gray, “I have wanted to do this almost from the moment we met,” and he caressed her bottom with both hands, sinking his fingers into her tender flesh, tracing the furrow between her voluptuous curves.

She became painfully aware of several things at once. Their two straw mattresses were pushed together on the hearth, and the only thing separating bare skin from bare skin was her inadequate shift and the thin lawn of his drawers. Most humiliating of all, however, was the knowledge that he wasn’t restraining her in any way whatsoever. She was a full participant in this amorous encounter. In point of fact, she was restraining him! Her hands were clutching his bare shoulders as if she were afraid he would try to get away. It went without saying that he wasn’t putting up any resistance. What man would?

There was a moment of pent-up silence, then she exploded in a flurry of flailing limbs and flying fists.

“Whoa!” Gray grabbed for her wrists and rolled on top of her, effectively subduing her struggles. He was helpless with laughter.

She lay there shivering, staring up at him with murder in her eyes. The pain in her hip and shoulder from the press of his weight was the least of his transgressions. He had made her look ridiculous and that was unforgivable.

“You told me,” she said, grinding her teeth together, “that your tastes ran to something quite different. I should have expected something like this.”

He shook his head. “You are far off there. For my part, which I readily confess, I did drag your pallet
closer to the fire, but that was to stop your caterwauling when the roof started to leak. One would have deduced from your shrieks that I was trying to drown you. The whole house was in an uproar.” She had, of course, been almost insensate from the laudanum she had ingested before going to bed, but Gray, prudently, said nothing of that.

Brows drawn, she glanced around the room. It was barely dawn, but there was enough light filtering through the slats of the boarded window to illuminate her cramped quarters. She had a vague recollection of water dripping on her face. Sure enough, there was a pool of water where her pallet had been laid out the night before.

If he was waiting for her to thank him, he would wait till doomsday. She hadn’t asked to be brought to this pigsty. Had it not been for him, at this moment she would be tucked up in her warm bed in her pristine room at the school, waiting for the maid, Betty, to arrive with a cup of steaming hot chocolate. If he had wanted to, he could have held her in a more comfortable prison. She understood his reasoning. He didn’t want her to be comfortable. By heaping humiliation upon humiliation on her, he thought he could break her.

Those shrewd blue eyes were glinting down at her from beneath raised brows. It galled her that he was so handsome, and so unconscious of it. It galled her more that she was fool enough to be affected by it—at least in her dreams. She would wager her last farthing that he had this effect on most women. How could he help it? Women were so gullible. They wouldn’t look beneath those arrogantly molded features, those broad shoulders, that powerful torso that hadn’t an ounce of spare fat on it. It was to be expected that many females had given in to the itch to brush back those strands of silky blond hair that fell across his brow, or caress that golden skin that put her in mind of—

“Deborah, are you flirting with me?”

Her eyes jerked up to meet his. The mockery that so often incensed her was in full bloom. She gasped, she squawked and gasped again before she could get the
words out. “Your conceit is matched only by your stupidity. Does a prisoner flirt with her jailer?”

He relieved her of some of his weight, and breathing became a little easier until he began to slide the backs of his fingers along her bare arms. “She might,” he said quietly, “if she thought it would persuade him to go easy with her. Is that why you were trying to seduce me earlier, Deborah? Because if it was, I should warn you that it won’t work with me. I want that understood between us at the outset.”

Squawking was so undignified. Keeping her voice low and steady, she replied, with just a hint of haughtiness, “I was not trying to seduce you.” As if she would, as if she could. She didn’t know the first thing about relations between the sexes. She almost told him so until she remembered that she was trying to maintain the fiction that she was a widow.

“No?” he asked whimsically. “It felt very much like a seduction to me. When I wakened this morning you were plastered against me. I, of course, just did what comes naturally to any red-blooded male who wakes to find a woman in his bed.”

“Oh, of course,” she snapped. He would. And she could well imagine the succession of women he had wakened with over the years. Her voice was very prim, very proper. “If you must know, I was dreaming of my, um, late husband.”

There was a silence, and she couldn’t prevent a quick peek up at him. His eyes had turned opaque, shielding his thoughts from her.

He shifted to his side, and pillowed his head on the mattress close to hers, one arm flung loosely around her waist. She was steeling herself for another laugh at her expense. One thing was certain, she wasn’t going to fly at him like a terrified virgin when he had made it patently, insultingly obvious that she wasn’t his type. On the other hand, no decent woman would remain in this position with a man who was not her husband. Inch by imperceptible inch, she began to edge away from him.

“Do you miss being married?” he asked.

Sensing a trap, she said carefully, “It’s too painful. I … I don’t wish to talk about it.”

His lashes lowered to half-mast. “Do you miss having a man’s arms around you?”

Never in a million years. “There is that,” she agreed, trying to sound as though she knew what she was talking about.

“And his kisses?”

She couldn’t help looking at his lips. They were made for kissing, and by her reckoning, there would be scores of women who could vouch for it from personal experience.

It gave her great pleasure to say, with just the proper degree of shyness, “Tom’s kisses were incomparable. I shall remember them to my dying day.” This was no exaggeration. Tom had been a stable boy at Belvidere. She could well remember the day he had pounced on her and slobbered all over her. It was disgusting. Poor Tom. The other stableboys had made game of the black eye she had given him for his pains. She wished she could do as much to the man who was tormenting her.

“I presume,” said Gray, “that you enjoyed the conjugal bed, otherwise you would not have been so eager to seduce me when you awoke this morning?”

It was all so confusing, so subtle. She had the distinct impression that whatever answer she gave, he would use it to his own advantage. Yes. No. She couldn’t begin to see where it was all leading. Sensing that she was out of her depth, she made a stab at changing direction.

“Lord Kendal,” she said, trying to sound coherent, then caught back a great breath when the brush of his hand accidentally touched the fullness of one breast.

“Yes?”

Her voice lost force, and she whispered hoarsely, “What are you going to do with me?”

He raised slightly on one elbow to lean over her. There wasn’t a trace of laughter or mockery in his eyes, and that surprised her. “Tell me where Quentin is,” he said, “and I shall let you go. Persist in this fiction that you are a widow, and I shall take great delight in proving you a liar.”

She was a liar, a practiced liar, and she used all the skill that she possessed to say indignantly, “There is no use talking to you. You are determined to believe what you wish to believe. If I knew anything of the boy, don’t you think I would tell you?”

His eyes narrowed to slits, and the hand that was brushing along her arm stilled. “What boy?” he asked softly.

She understood that she had made a blunder, but she failed to see what it was. Swallowing, she whispered, “Quentin.”

“I never said that Quentin was a boy.”

She stuttered and stammered and finally got out, “You must have done, or I would not have known it.”

“That lie won’t save you. You see, Miss Weyman, I made it a point to tell you nothing of Quentin in hopes of entrapping you. And by damn, it worked.”

Desperate now, she cried out, “Then Nick must have told me.”

“By my orders, Nick was forbidden to speak of Quentin. Besides, when could he have told you? You have not spoken two words together that I was not there to hear. You are Deborah Weyman. I want to hear you admit it.”

“Even if it is not true?”

His gaze held her silent as he brought his hand to her throat in a gently caressing threat. Deborah’s heart stopped beating as she waited for the pressure of those long fingers to clamp down and choke the life out of her.

His beguiling voice belied the malice in his words. “Tell me what I wish to know, Deborah, or I shall prove that you are no widow woman. No, really, you would be doing us both a favor. I have no taste for virgins.”

Staring straight into his eyes, she made no attempt to shade her opinion of him. He was a monster and she could expect no mercy at his hands. How could she have forgotten it? And she had forgotten, there was no doubt in her mind about that. He was like a chameleon, changing before her eyes, confusing her with his many masks.

“Resigned, Deborah?” he asked, taunting her.

Only one thing kept her from blurting out the truth
like a panicked child. Quentin. She must protect Quentin whatever the cost to herself. As his massive shoulders loomed over her, she tried one final, delaying tactic. Eyes glistening, she said fiercely, “Nick will kill you for this.”

She could see that her words had an effect. Those brilliant, all-seeing eyes went as dark as the muddied waters of the Thames, but it wasn’t enough to make him change his mind. His answer came softly, deriding her. “But my sweet, Nick is not here. And the door is locked.”

When he lowered his head, she went for him with her balled fists. Then he was upon her, his hands snagging her wrists and forcing them behind her back. There was a rending sound as he tore her shift from throat to waist. Bucking, twisting, she tried to throw him off. He subdued her with his weight, crushing her into the depths of the mattress, forcing her legs apart with his powerful thighs. His kiss was bruising, punitive, and she snapped at him with her sharp teeth, surprised and afraid when she bit into the soft swell of his bottom lip. Numb with fear, she waited for what he would do next. He retaliated in kind, and she cried out as her own blood filled her mouth.

He drew back, staring down at her, all emotion concealed behind half-hooded eyes. Her fear and anger ebbed away. He had hurt her, and deep down, she really had believed he would go so far and no further.

“Deborah?” he whispered.

She lowered her lashes, shutting out the sight of him.

She heard him sigh, then his lips were on hers, washing away the pain and blood. This newfound gentleness was her undoing. She wanted to be held and comforted, but she didn’t want
him.
She wanted her mother, or Miss Hare, or some other, kindly lady who had her best interests at heart.

She wasn’t given a choice. Rocking her now, he held her to him, lavishing her bruised lips with soft kisses, lifting her tears with the tip of his tongue, returning to her lips, opening them with gentle pressure to tenderly assuage the hurt he had inflicted. Her head was nestled
in the crook of his arm. Her protests were feeble and lacked conviction. He ignored them and angled her head back, taking his fill of her with lips and tongue.

His touch was so different, his softly murmured words so soothing, that she found it hard to believe he was the same man who had terrorized her only moments before. She couldn’t face a return of the man she feared. Just thinking about it made her dissolve in a fresh bout of hiccups. She was so tired of trying to outwit him, so tired of being brave.

There was solace to be had in the hands that were moving over her, drawing her close to the warmth of his body, and if anyone needed solace, it was she. She’d been through hell in the last several months. There was only so much one person could withstand.

“Yes,” he whispered, when she turned into him. His fingers were lost in her hair, separating each silky strand, savoring the texture. “I knew it would be this color. Kiss me, Deborah.”

She couldn’t fight him and win. The thought kept her passive as he took her lips again, but at the first touch of his hand on her breast, she tried to pull away. The flat of his other hand curved around her bottom, holding her steady, and her dream came rushing back to her in a flood. Her body was throbbing, her breathing was labored, and the ache in her loins was as palpable as any pain. She moaned and when he heard that small pleasure sound, his breath became suspended, then accelerated as he sensed her arousal.

In the blink of an eye, the pattern of his sweetly comforting caresses changed. His kisses seemed to suck the very lifeblood out of her; his hands slipped over skin and bone, caressing, touching her intimately. There wasn’t a part of her that did not receive the homage of his lips and tongue; her breasts, her waist, her calves, her knees. She was burning; she was drowning; the pressure in her body tightened in a delirium of pleasure.

It was some time since Gray had given thought to anything but his driving need to possess the woman who, he readily admitted, had tantalized him from the first. He was positioning himself to take her, lifting her
knees, when, from the rooms below, he heard faint movements as Nick and Hart roused themselves for another day. He didn’t want to think about Nick and Hart. He was only a moment away from burying himself in her delectable body, a moment away from completion.

The outside door slammed, and the focus of his thoughts shifted. There was a purpose to this, and he would do well to remember it. He was supposed to be terrorizing her, not lusting after her like a callow youth with his first woman. What the hell had come over him?