Dangerous to Kiss (31 page)

She tossed her head. “Dare to lay a hand on me and you will answer to Leathe for it.”

His eyes flashed with an emotion so powerful that Deborah instantly regretted her rash threat. “Fine,” he said. “It’s more than time someone taught that young whelp a lesson.”

In the hall, a porter came forward to hold the doors. Deborah pulled the edge of her hood forward to hide her face and shrank into the folds of her cloak.

“Thank you,” said Gray. “No need to rouse the housekeeper, Ames.” He gave no explanation for bringing a woman to his house so late at night, but brushed by the porter, lifted a candelabra from the hall table, and made for the stairs. Deborah’s face was flaming in mortification as he dragged her behind him, forcing her to match his pace.

He opened a door at the top of the landing and thrust her inside. She caught herself as she fell, then recoiled as she realized she was in a bedchamber, a very masculine bedchamber with dark pieces of mahogany furniture, and blue and maroon bedhangings. His chamber.

Whirling to face him, she cried out, “How dare you bring me here!”

His face was a mask of scorn. “I have no designs on your person, if that’s what you are thinking. Even I, degenerate that I am, have my limits. I’ve never yet taken a woman who came from the arms of another
man. This room suits my purposes because it is private. No one will interfere.” He set down the candelabra, stripped off his gauntlets, and threw off his cloak. Slowly, pitilessly, he began to stalk her. “What? Nothing to say for yourself, Deborah?”

Her brain was numb. No reasonable explanation for being with her brother came to her, and she retreated, step by step, carefully skirting the bed. Her throat was so dry that her voice came out in a raspy whisper. “What are you going to do with me?”

“What I would do with my own sister. I’m going to put you over my knee and beat the defiance out of you. Then I shall track down Leathe and demand satisfaction.”

When he lunged, she screamed and dived for the other side of the bed. “Gray, you’ve got it all wrong. Leathe is not my lover.” Mercifully, her brain began to function. “I went to see him about Meg, to try to reason with him.”

“Liar,” he hurled at her. “I saw you kiss him!”

“It was an innocent kiss. Hart kisses me, doesn’t he? And Nick? It was innocent, I tell you. Why won’t you believe me?”

“Because I know you to be an accomplished liar, but I never took you for a slut until tonight.”

The vicious word had the effect of making Deborah’s temper blaze so hotly that she could not speak for it. When she found her voice, it was low and venomous. “You dare to say that to me, you … you hypocrite! Who is it that keeps a house in Hans Town for his string of women? Who is it pays his mistresses off with the price of a gold bracelet?”

He made a savage motion with one hand. “That is neither here nor there. Those women are professional courtesans. They are not pretending to be something they are not.”

“Now who is the liar?” Her voice had risen to a screech. “You gave Helena Perrin a gold bracelet with a ruby in it. I saw it with my own eyes, yes, and Meg winked at me as though it were a huge joke. And Helena is a respectable, married woman.”

Before she could take evasive action, he had vaulted the bed and had taken her shoulders in a punitive grip. He shook her so hard that her hood fell back. “Helena has many lovers. That I was one of them is of no consequence. It happened before I met you.”

“What are you saying? That there have been no women in your life since you met me? Again you lie! You visited that bawdy house in Wells, and had the temerity to bring those … those jewels to the cottage for your pleasure. I was there! I know what I saw.”

The furious light in his eyes gradually dimmed. For long, endless moments, he stared at her as if he had been struck by a blinding revelation. Finally, dropping his hands, he took a step back. When he spoke, there was no anger in his voice, only a kind of weariness.

“Is that why you went to Leathe? To pay me back in my own coin? It was quite unnecessary, you know. I can only repeat, I have not been with another woman in that way since I first met you.”

He turned aside and went to stand by one of the windows. He spoke with his back to her. “I won’t let you go to him, Deborah, no matter what. The boy is too reckless, too wild.” He emitted a low laugh. “I held off because I thought you were too good for me, that I was unworthy of you. Hell, you made it plain enough that that’s what you thought too. Then someone like Leathe captures you. I don’t think I shall ever understand the mind of a woman.”

“I never thought I was too good for you, leastways, not the way you mean. You abducted me! You frightened me! You still frighten me. Half the time, I don’t know what to make of you.”

“I have explained all that, but it makes no difference what I say. If you don’t know that I would never hurt you, you are right-you don’t know me at all.”

As her anger ebbed, the confusion in her mind gradually took shape and became comprehensible. She could hardly believe what her brain was telling her. Her own jealousy came as no surprise, but she had never dared to believe, hope, that he really cared for her. She had to know.

Her voice was scarcely as loud as a whisper. “Gray, are you jealous of Leathe?”

He didn’t answer her, didn’t look at her, but stood there motionless, staring out at the dark night. She felt the prickle of tears, and a bittersweet ache tightened her throat and slowly spread through her. She took a step toward him, then another, and with each step, everything became clearer, simpler. When her skirts brushed his legs, she halted. “Leathe is not my lover,” she said. “It’s not what you think.”

He turned to look at her. “Isn’t he? Then explain it to me so that I can understand.”

She had already made her decision. Going on tiptoe, she reached out and traced his lips with her fingers. It was something she had wanted to do for a long, long time. At the first brush of her fingers, his whole body went rigid. “Gray,” she said, “Leathe and I have known each other since we were children. He is more like a brother to me. I’ve never had a lover. There is only one man I’ve ever wanted, but he rejects me at every turn.”

“Who is he?” he asked hoarsely.

Her dimples flashed. “Who is he?” she mimicked. “You, you blithering idiot. Gray, please don’t reject me this time around. I don’t think I could bear it.”

“Reject
you?”

She nodded. “I’m warning you now, I’m going to have you, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

He looked like a man turned to stone and her confidence began to waver. Had she misread him? Misheard him? Then she saw the helpless need burning in his eyes, and she breathed out a soft sigh. She didn’t know how it had come about, but she sensed that the power he had always wielded in their relationship had slipped from his hands into hers. It fueled her confidence. It made her tender. It made her generous in victory.

She cupped his neck with one hand and drew his head down for her kiss. His eyes remained open on hers, open and disbelieving. “Don’t look so frightened,” she murmured. “This time, I promise not to bite you.”

Her lips brushed lightly over his, and when he didn’t respond, she moved in closer, adjusting her body to the
fit of his. She skimmed her hands over his chest and shoulders and felt hard masculine muscles clench beneath the tips of her fingers. He was lean, hard, and powerful, but there was nothing to fear here. His brute strength was not a weapon he would use against her. His threats, as always, were empty, and now that she had finally taken his measure, she knew that she would never fear him again.

She deepened the kiss, using the tip of her tongue to separate his lips. When he stopped breathing, she laughed softly into his mouth, then her lips moved on his, demanding his surrender.

Gray’s hands fisted at his sides. She didn’t know what she was doing, didn’t know what effect she was having on him. Somehow, his words had convinced her that he was as harmless as a tabby cat. She no longer feared him. But she would fear him if he yielded to his baser instincts. He’d suffered through hell in these last hours, imagining her in Leathe’s arms. His emotions were still in a turmoil. The murderous rage that had possessed him had turned into a lethal resolve to be master of his own woman. He wasn’t harmless. He was dangerous. He wanted to tear off her clothes and tumble her on the bed. He wanted to crush her beneath him, and make her surrender everything to him, and that was only the beginning of what he wanted from her. He wanted to be intimate with her as he had never been intimate with any woman. If she only knew how desperate he was to have her, she wouldn’t look at him with such big, trusting eyes. She would run screaming from the room, and if he didn’t get a hold of himself, that’s exactly what she would do. With every ounce of his considerable will, he forced himself to remain passive beneath her innocent, questing touch.

“Put your arms around me,” she whispered. “Now, kiss me back.”

He obeyed, but already his mind was working on logistics. The bed was made up and the room was far enough away from the servants’ quarters to ensure their privacy. He could get her back to Channings before dawn, and no one would be the wiser. The rest would
follow naturally; the engagement, the round of parties and balls in her honor; the wedding. One thing he must impress upon her. He didn’t believe in long engagements.

She brought the kiss to an end and smiled up at him. She sensed that he was unsure, and that pleased her. It made her bolder. “I think,” she said, “we would be more comfortable on the bed.”

A wave of lust roared through him, making his head spin. He rode it, bridled it, and forced it to recede. This time, he wasn’t going to frighten her off. This time, he was going to have her, and if that meant he had to play the part of a gelding, he would do it, up to a point. Moreover, she had told him this was her first time, and he believed her. A man would have to be a brute if he did not curb his passions and treat his woman with the utmost restraint. Even then, he was going to hurt her. Did she know it?

He spread one hand under her chin, bringing her face up, and he pressed whisper-soft kisses to her eyes, her nose, her cheeks. “I shall be very, very careful with you,” he said softly. “You need not fear that I shall deliberately hurt you.”

Her eyes smiled into his. “I trust you Gray, implicitly. And I shall be very, very careful with you.”

He opened his mouth and quickly shut it. He had warned her. A man couldn’t be expected do more than that, could he? His conscience was clear. Besides, he couldn’t describe in lurid detail what she might expect, for he hadn’t the faintest notion. He had never initiated a virgin before.

“What is so amusing?” Her eyes searched his face.

He pressed a kiss to her open palm. “I’ve been told that sometimes a woman’s first time can be a bit of a disappointment.”

“Then we shall have to try again, won’t we?”

His eyelids drooped. They would, nothing was surer, and next time around, they would do it his way. “Might I suggest we get a fire going? There’s a distinct chill in the air.”

“A fire?” Her gaze followed his to the grate where
kindling and logs were already set, needing only a spark to get a blaze going. She loved the way he thought of her comfort, loved the way he deferred to her. Smiling, she plucked a candle from the candelabra and touched the flame to the rolled papers beneath the kindling. When the fire crackled to life, she turned to replace the candle, and saw that he was already on the bed. He had removed his jacket and was working on his neckcloth.

“Take off your cloak,” he said. “You’ll be more comfortable.”

She had a flash of recall, an impression of her ruthless captor ordering her to take off all her clothes, then he smiled at her, in that way of his, and the image faded, and she saw Gray, only Gray.

She replaced the candle. With eyes wide on his, she unbuttoned her cloak and threw it over the back of a chair. The fire was behind her, and the flames cast a flickering, reddish glow from floor to ceiling. The room seemed smaller, warmer, and her skin began to heat. She could smell the faint fragrance of the potpourri in the glass bowl beside the grate, and the rosewater which she’d splashed on her skin after her toilette, earlier that evening. As her senses heightened, she became aware of other things. Gray’s chest was rising and falling and his breathing was audible. Her own breath caught and became shallow, erratic.

He held out both hands, palm up. “Come to me,” he said.

There was no hesitation in her steps when she crossed to the bed and grasped his outstretched hands. It took only a tug and a twist and she was up on the bed, half sprawled over him. She smelled the starch on his lawn shirt and the clean male scent of him, then she raised herself slightly to join her lips to his as his head descended.

It was so easy, so warm and sweet, that she wondered why she had ever been frightened of this. She had never suspected, that he was capable of such tenderness. But she should have known. She’d lived with him now long enough to know that when he cared deeply, he could be as fierce as a lion or as gentle as a lamb.
My
lion, my lamb
, she thought dreamily, and emitted a soft sigh of repletion.

He drew her closer with a moan, and rolled with her on the bed, bringing them to their sides to lie face-to-face. He didn’t want her to feel the bulge in his groin or the full force of his weight, pressing her into the mattress, didn’t want to remind her that his strength far outstripped hers. He was rigidly tempering the savage in him so that she would feel secure in accepting him as her mate. It was devious, it was unworthy, and at the same time, it was knowledge that came from the deepest reaches of his masculine psyche. As his hands roamed up her back, slipping buttons from buttonholes, he distracted her by deepening the kiss.

No one had told her that kisses could be like this. His tongue had penetrated her lips and was tentatively exploring the inside of her mouth, surging and retreating, inviting her to reciprocate. When she tentatively complied, touching her tongue to the roof of his mouth, he pulled back as though she had struck at him with a dagger.