Dangerous to Love (29 page)

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Authors: Rexanne Becnel

Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Historical, #General, #Regency

BOOK: Dangerous to Love
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He’d just have to catch her off guard again, he decided. She thought she was going to control this confrontation, but she was wrong.
He tossed the studs onto a side table then, without responding to her challenging words, strode up to her. He leaned down, bracing a hand on each arm of the chair and trapping her in it.
“If you need to rage at me, then go ahead and do so. It won’t change the fact that you want me. Or that I want you.”
Something flashed in her eyes. Something that could have been pain—but was more likely fury, he told himself.
“You have no idea what I want.” She spoke softly, without inflection.
“You think so?” Still holding her gaze captive, he moved his fingers up her arm, sliding over the silky fabric until he reached her shoulder and the place where the wispy cloth ended and her creamy flesh began. Then, even slower, he began to trace the deep neckline of her gown, down to where it revealed her breasts to an almost scandalous degree.
Every portion of his body responded to the feel of her—to the warm scent of her. To the very proximity of her. But he forced himself to concentrate on her reaction, not his. He forced himself to rouse her and repress his own growing excitement. She had to learn that he would be lord and master of his wife, not the other way around.
“I think you want this,” he murmured, watching her eyes darken with pleasure until only a green rim showed around their luminous black centers. “I think you want my lips to run along here,” he whispered as his fingertip slid just above her nipple.
“I think you want my tongue here.” This time he let his finger slide over one peaked nipple, caressing it through the sleek fabric.
She was fighting not to respond. That was clear. But her sharp gasp at his erotic caress, and her breathy exhalation when he ended it, told him she was failing.
“If I’m wrong about what you want, Lucy, why don’t you tell me what it is you
do
want.”
She was breathing hard, and her eyes were bright, as if with a sheen of tears. But she didn’t cry and Ivan pushed back any hint of alarm. She was excited, that was all. And that was all he wanted her to be. She needed this from him. It was the one thing he could give her that she really wanted. It was the one thing that would bind her to him forever.
Or for as long as he
wanted
to bind her to him, he told himself.
He moved his finger over her sweet, quivering flesh and heard the satisfying intake of her breath again. Then, to his surprise, she took his face between her hands, holding him still before her. Their faces were but inches apart. Their eyes remained locked together. But there was an intimacy between them now, a clarity of vision that made his heart hammer from more than just physical arousal.
He wanted to look away but she wouldn’t let him. “I want you to make love to me, Ivan. That’s what I want, for you to make love to me.”
It was easy to do. It was nearly impossible.
Make love to me.
Ivan knew she meant more than touching her. Caressing her. Filling her body with his own. Those things he could do—he
needed
to do. Those things he must do or die if he did not.
But it was the other love, the emotional need she wanted him. to fill, that came close to deflating him.
There was only one way to break the excruciating connection of their eyes. With a half-curse, half-groan, Ivan kissed her.
It was like being sucked into a whirlpool, a dizzy, terrifying spiral, dark with emotion and rife with danger. But he was a man inured to danger, impervious to fear. At least that’s what he told himself as he sank into the warm welcome of Lucy’s arms. She could not hurt him, only provide him with the pleasures of the flesh. She was only a woman, albeit one he liked better than any other. But she was no more to be trusted than the rest of them, and no more to be relied on. If he needed her, it was only for this, this ability she had to rouse his body and excite his mind. If she thought this was love, she was wrong. And if she thought she could touch his emotions and make him believe love even existed, she was worse than wrong. She was a fool.
But what a delicious little fool. A sweet fool. A ferocious, hungry, passionate fool …
They never made it to the bed. She sat in the chair, her bodice pulled down, her skirts raised up while he made up for leaving her unfulfilled earlier in the evening. He made her grip the decorative carving at the top of the chair back while he teased her breasts and tortured her nipples. He made her stay in the same position when he moved his attentions to the sweet place between her legs. She was wet and hot for him, and it took very little to push her over the edge.
When she cried out and gave herself over to the passion, he was hard as a rock, as aroused as he’d ever been in his life. He wanted to possess her and fill her up, to explode inside her and mark her as his. Only his.
But some perverse .demon had him in its grip, and he needed more from her than merely that. As he knelt between her legs, watching the shuddering aftereffects of her climax, he wanted to make her admit that she belonged to him. He wanted her total capitulation. He wanted everything she had to give with nothing held back.
So he started it again, only this time using his fingers and hands. He wanted to watch it happen this time. He wanted to see her face, look into her eyes as she gave herself up to him.
He thumbed one perfectly formed breast, one rosy-crested nipple. Meanwhile he slid a finger inside her. Immediately she tightened around him. When he rubbed his thumb over the taut bud protected by her dark curls, she jerked in reaction.
“Look at me, Lucy.”
She opened her eyes, eyes glazed still with the power of her climax, and met his gaze. She was his, Ivan knew, and his overengorged manhood actually hurt from the knowledge. Still, he forced himself to concentrate on her, on arousing her further still. He stroked in and out of her and used her own dewiness to moisten the place his thumb still teased.
She was panting and flushed. Her bare breasts were rosy and her cheeks stained with color. Little cries of helpless pleasure accompanied her every breath. Her eyes began to close but he wouldn’t allow it. “Look at me,” he commanded, in a voice hoarse with desire. “Look at me, Lucy. You’re mine now, aren’t you? Mine.”
When she nodded, he could barely suppress a cry of triumph. When she cried out, however, then erupted beneath his hand, never once turning away from his hot eyes—he could not hold back his emotions any longer. She was open to him, body, heart. Everything. And he meant to take everything she offered.
He loosened his breeches, releasing his demanding arousal, and with a groan, entered her. At once she seemed to melt around him. To conform to him. To meld herself to him.
Or maybe it was the other way around.
But for the blessed moments of their union, it didn’t matter. Ivan didn’t care. As he poured himself into her and collapsed onto her, he cared only that they were together. That he’d found her, that he’d married her.
That he’d never let her go.
 
L
ucy awoke to the feel of her husband’s hand exploring her body. It was still night. Their room was completely dark. She had no memory of them coming to bed. Nor of undressing. But she was naked and so was he, and he was wide awake.
“I’m going to corrupt you,” he murmured.
His husky voice sent a quiver of desire racing through her. He was curved around her and his hand roamed her body at will, touching her, exploring her. The soft skin behind her knee. The depression of her navel. The crease between her buttocks and her thighs. He kissed the nape of her neck, then moved his mouth down her spine.
When she shivered and started to turn to face him he said, “Don’t move. I’ll do everything.”
Lucy sighed. Let him do everything? That would be easy. That would be heaven.
It was heaven, and more. But it turned out to be far from easy. For as he roused her with warm, damp kisses and ever bolder caresses, she found it impossible to simply lie there. She wanted to kiss him back. She needed to touch him too. But Ivan was adamant.
Only when he was in her and moving over her was she able to give back to him. She welcomed him into her arms and wrapped her legs around him as the full weight of his body crushed hers into the bed. Then he began to move, slowly at first, and it was so erotic, Lucy almost fainted. His chest and its coarse patch of hair rubbed against her sensitive breasts. The fine linen sheets slid against her back. She was helpless beneath him, and yet powerful too.
His breathing was hot and hard against her neck, his lips lost in her hair as he brought them nearer and nearer to that final, exploding madness he invoked in her.
“Ivan,” she gasped, clutching the sheets as it began. “Ivan!”
“I’m here.” The words were a steamy torture in her ear. “I’m here, love.”
Love. Though melting in passion, Lucy heard that one word and her heart soared. Love.
“I love you,” she whispered as the explosion began. “I love you, Ivan.”
They erupted together. They exploded into one another and around one another. The fire sucked them in and it burned them up.
But in the scorching aftermath, as they collapsed into the sweaty, twisted bed linens, something even better was formed. Something better than them apart, Lucy imagined. It was them together. Together and in love.
 
Ivan was already awake when Lucy first stirred. He’d been lying there as the dawn began to fill the room with light, lying there as still as death. Petrified with fear.
She loved him.
He’d heard her breathy words, but he didn’t believe them. She believed them, though, and that was a problem.
But why should it be? The truth was, he should be well pleased with her admission. After all, that’s what he’d wanted, to own her, to possess her. But as for love …
A woman’s love was fleeting. His mother’s had been. His grandmother’s had never been love at all. He gritted his teeth. The fact that Lucy had professed her love meant nothing. Even if she had meant it—which she might have at the time—it didn’t mean it would last.
Still, as angry as that knowledge made him, it wasn’t what had his heart pounding and his palms damp with sweat. The reason for that was far, far worse. For he could no longer deny the truth, at least to himself. And the bitter truth was that
he
had fallen in love with
her.
To even think it made sweat bead on his forehead.
She moved, stretching her legs, arching like a cat. Her foot grazed his leg and his panic increased.
Then she stiffened and he knew she was fully awake—and that she was uncomfortable to find him in the bed with her. Was she already regretting what she’d said to him in that moment of complete surrender?
They lay there quietly. He pretending to sleep, she obviously debating what to do. Finally, with carefully controlled movements, she began to edge away from him.
Ivan wanted her to go. He wasn’t ready to face her just yet. But it galled him that she wanted to slip away from him. As she reached the edge of the bed and began to rise, he could restrain himself no longer. He caught her by the arm.
“Where are you going?”
The startled face she turned toward him was white as chalk. Her eyes were huge and frightened. Frightened. But of what? “I … I … I’ll be right back. I need to visit the … the water closet,” she stammered.
She was lying. He could tell, and it devastated something deep inside of him. Last night she’d loved him. This morning she couldn’t get away fast enough.
His eyes ran over her, over the naked perfection of her soft, white skin, her full breasts, and her glorious, disheveled hair. Desire reared its head once more, but ruthlessly he tamped it down.
“The water closet?”
“Yes. Please, Ivan. I must go. I have to.”
His eyes narrowed. There was no color in her cheeks this morning. In fact she was more than pale. Her face held a pallor that was closer to green.
“What’s wrong?”
“Please. Let me go. Oh!” She gave a desperate yank and stumbled back when he released her. She ran for the door, but stopped when she realized she was completely naked. Wild-eyed, she stared about and Ivan felt the first inkling of alarm.
“Lucy? What’s wrong?”
She didn’t answer. Instead she lurched toward the commode, grabbed the porcelain bowl that sat there, and vomited violently into it.
Ivan shot off the bed, then stopped. What should he do? She was obviously sick and he had no experience with sickness save for that due to overimbibing. Had she drunk too much last night? He didn’t think so. Was she ill?
She heaved again and he felt like a cad for his initial anger at her. He had to do something, but what? He yanked his breeches on then moved nearer to her, frustrated by an unaccustomed feeling of helplessness.
“Are you all right, Lucy? Can I do something to help you?”
She shook her head. “Just go away. Go away—” Again her body spasmed as her stomach rebelled. Ivan’s heart began to pound. She looked so vulnerable and pale, so weak and frail. Had he used her too harshly?
Panic overwhelmed him. He tore across the room and jerked the heavy door open. “Help! Somebody help her!”
By the time the two maids and the butler burst into the room he had covered Lucy with a thin robe. But she still hung over the bowl.
“Please, Ivan, just … just go … I’ll be fine. Fine …”
“My lord. Can we be of service?” Simms asked.
“My lady, are you all right?” one of the maids asked in a concerned voice.
“Oh, my,” the second maid gasped. “Could it be milady is expecting?” she whispered to the other two servants.
Though she hadn’t meant her voice to carry, Ivan heard her. So did Lucy, for she stiffened. One of Ivan’s hands rested on her back and he felt it, and he went cold.
Expecting? As in, expecting a baby?
Ivan pulled his hand away from her as if he’d suddenly been burned. He felt as if someone had punched him in the gut. Hard. She couldn’t be expecting a baby, could she? Not so soon.
But when she looked up at him, her eyes huge and watery, and filled with dread, he knew. She
was
expecting a child. His child.
He drew away from her, too stunned to think straight. The two maids hurried up to Lucy. The older one pushed him gently away. “We’ll see to her, milord. She’ll be feelin’ better soon enough. You just take yourself off now. We’ll take good care of her. You needn’t worry over that.”
Ivan was only too happy to comply. Lucy sick was bad enough. Lucy in the family way was inconceivable. He grabbed his shirt and boots and strode from the room, but not before hearing Simms exclaim, “Won’t the dowager countess be pleased?”
The dowager countess. The vicious old harridan who’d manipulated his life from the beginning. Yes, she would be pleased, damn her miserable witch’s soul. This was what she’d wanted all along. This was why she’d introduced Lucy into his life in the first place.
Between the house and the stable Ivan jerked on his boots. While the surprised groom saddled a horse, he shrugged into his shirt, shoving the tails into his pants. She’d gotten everything she wanted. He’d become the Earl of Westcott, he’d married a suitable woman, and he’d planted the seed for his heir in his wife’s very fertile body.
“Son of a bitch!” He swung up into the saddle, unmindful of the groom’s startled expression. Then, unable to stay another minute within the stifling confines of the Westcott family’s grand mansion—a place that was his and yet would never truly feel like his—he kicked the horse into a gallop, turned it away from town, and let it run.
 
Lucy sat in the window of her bedchamber, staring out at nothing. She should have told him sooner, she berated herself. She should have known this would happen. After all, it had happened every morning for the past two weeks. Why she’d thought she could hide it, she didn’t know. Why she’d tried to was even harder to understand.
If he hadn’t been absent these past two months she would have told him right away. The fact still remained, however, that she could have told him last night. She’d planned to. But somehow when he came upstairs after the ball, she’d been too distracted to tell him about the baby she carried. His baby and hers.
But he knew now, and considering that he’d been gone nearly four hours, Lucy could only assume that he was not thrilled with the idea.
The selfish wretch! Had he ever considered that she wasn’t precisely overjoyed with the idea either?
She turned away from the window, immediately ashamed of her thoughts. She twisted the scrap that had been her handkerchief into knots. She did love the idea of having a baby—Ivan’s baby. But the thought of raising it alone was too terrible to contemplate. Every child needed a father. Ivan should know that better than anyone. And every wife wanted to share both the joys and the sorrows of being a parent with her husband.
She wanted to share them with Ivan.
But he didn’t want to share them with her. He’d left as fast as he possibly could. Did he plan to go off for another two months, pretending it was on account of business when it was really on account of her?
Lucy stifled a sob. She’d never been so lonely in her entire life. She pressed her hands to her abdomen. “Poor baby,” she whispered. “No father to love you and a hateful great-grandmother—”
But there was a grandmother who was not so hateful, her own mother. And an uncle and aunt, and cousins too.
Though her heart was heavy, Lucy tried to take comfort from the fact that her child would be loved, if not by its father, then by its mother and the rest of her family. Unlike Ivan, this child would be surrounded by love every day—every minute—of its life. And once grown, he or she would know how to love in return, something she feared Ivan would never know how to do.
A knock sounded at the door—too soft to be Ivan, she knew. Besides, he wasn’t likely to knock at the master bedroom door. She wiped her cheeks, lifted her chin, and tried to compose herself. “Come in,” she called, pasting a pleasant expression on her face.
Valerie peered past the door. Her worried face swiftly turned to delight. “Lucy! I’m so happy for you!” She sped across the room and enveloped Lucy in a hug. “A baby! I’m so jealous.”
Lucy tried to smile as Valerie sat down on the footstool at her feet. “Yes. Well, I would rather not have announced it in so … so unflattering a manner.”
Valerie laughed. “I don’t think anyone minds that. All the servants are abuzz with the news.” She stopped abruptly and her expression altered. Lucy knew what she was thinking.
“Are they also abuzz with the news that my husband has once again run off?”
Valerie took Lucy’s hands in her own. “He is only experiencing a bit of shock. I don’t believe he’ll be gone so long this time.”
Lucy could no longer maintain her false smile. She stood and began to pace. “You don’t know Ivan as I do. He cannot bear being forced into doing anything. Especially by a woman. He doesn’t trust women at all, and I can’t say that I blame him. In his eyes his mother betrayed him. His grandmother ignored him and used him. And now I’ve trapped him into marriage—”
“But you didn’t want to marry him—” Valerie broke off, and a frown marred her forehead. “That’s part of the problem, isn’t it?”
Lucy sighed. “I wouldn’t doubt it. In his eyes I rejected him. Or tried to.”
“Then why did he marry you? Just for spite?”
Lucy had never felt so sad. “I suppose so. I don’t know.” She shook her head. “All I know is he never meant to marry, but now he’s married to me. I suspect he never intended to have children either, and now I’ve sprung that on him as well. He’s so angry with me,” she finished in a voice that wavered despite her best efforts to control it.

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