Engaged in Sin (2 page)

“Ashton had no right to engage your services, my dear.”

She froze. “P-pardon, Your Grace?”

“Ashton thinks a good fuck is all I need. He’s wrong.”

Wrong? Raw panic flared. Then she remembered what she’d overheard the Earl of Ashton tell Kat when he had pleaded with her friend to come and service the duke. “Lord Ashton worries because you are … hiding here, Your Grace. That was how he put it. He thought you should have some pleasure. That it would make you … feel better,” she ended lamely.

“Angel, I can’t even see you. You could be the most voluptuous beauty in England for all I know. Not seeing you is only frustrating me.”

Unfortunately, she was not the most voluptuous woman in the country. Fear was coursing through her, making her ice cold. She had known she was not the courtesan Lord Ashton wished to hire, but she’d thought the duke at least
wanted
a courtesan. She hadn’t anticipated he would be as unwilling now as he’d been outside the theatre. She didn’t know what to do. At Madame Sin’s, she’d never had to work to coax a man into bed. She hadn’t had many clients. Madame had kept her exclusively for valued customers, had charged the earth for her. The men had willingly paid the exorbitant price, because they wanted her.

“He’s very concerned for you, Your Grace.” Her nerves jangled like bells, but she managed to drop her voice to a purr. “He only wanted you to be pleased. I’m very good.” She stroked her fingers along his arm. Along the largest bulge of muscle she’d ever touched. He was correct: If he wanted to, he could hurt her badly. Once more, fear rippled through her veins, but she forced herself to speak. “We could do it in the dark. Then it wouldn’t matter that you can’t see me.”

“It will always matter that I can’t see, angel.”

He grasped her hand, gently this time, and lifted her fingers from his skin. He didn’t even want her to touch him. Groaning, he leaned back, his broad shoulders falling against the side of a chair. There was such a look of emptiness on his face. “You’ve wasted your journey.”

“Please.” She had to become this man’s mistress.
That
would not happen if she did not get into his bed. She scuttled across the floor until her breasts pressed against his muscular arm and her words brushed across his ear, which was mostly hidden under his long, unkempt black hair. “Won’t you let me pleasure you?”

He took a harsh breath. “God … you do have a lovely voice, angel. I grant you that.”

Her voice was tempting him. He could not see her, but he could hear her. That and touch were the only weapons she had. She lowered her voice to a husky whisper. “Thank you.”

“But it’s not enough.” He moved away from her so they no longer touched.

She refused to let hope sputter out, but why wouldn’t he yield? A man didn’t need sight to make love. Any number of gentlemen preferred the dark.

“You can travel in my carriage to the staging inn at Welby, my dear. My man will purchase your ticket to London and see you safely onto the coach.”

Harsh laughter fell from her lips before she could stop it.

Safety and London did not belong in the same thought for her. She could not go. Instead, she had to take desperate action. Even if she had to leap upon him. Or take him into her mouth and drive him so mad with desire he couldn’t resist. Surely once they were joined, he would forget his lack of sight and think only about pleasure—

Abruptly, he grasped the side of the chair, hoisted his long, powerful body with one swift motion, and landed gracefully on his bare feet.

He towered above her. Gazing upward, she felt her jaw drop. Despite spending the last five years first as a viscount’s mistress and then a lowly prostitute, she hadn’t seen many men completely naked. Certainly none with broad chests and abdomens formed solidly of muscle. None as lean, roughly hewn, and beautiful as the duke.

A strange, long-forgotten yearning fluttered deep inside her.

Fool
. This was business. Best dealt with unemotionally.

The duke went to take a step but swayed slightly on his feet. He let out a ripe curse and clapped his hands to his temples. “Bloody head. I should hack it off with an ax for all the use it is to me now.”

Anne supposed he meant he was suffering the aftereffects of too much brandy, but there was so much bitterness in his voice. The Duke of March was troubled and angry. She understood why the Earl of Ashton had pleaded with Kat to help his friend. Good sense told her to agree with the duke—how could sex make up for being injured in battle and losing his sight? But she had to believe in it and convince him of it, or she would have to return to London with nothing and probably end up hanged.

She needed a different approach.

She clambered awkwardly to her feet, but at least the duke could not see that. Hesitantly, she touched his elbow. Perhaps because she did it lightly, it didn’t disturb him. He didn’t move away.

“I came all the way to make love to you, and that is exactly what I intend to do, Your Grace. The earl said you hadn’t been with a woman for ages. Months. Why deny yourself the release you must need?”

Her dress was one of Kat’s old ones, but still too fashionable for her to reach the fastenings herself. A few tugs and she managed to push the bodice down. Gathering courage, Anne clasped his hand and placed his palm over the upper curve of her left breast.

She gasped at the contact. At a sudden, surprising jolt that made her breasts ache. It must be the fear roiling through her that made the simple touch so intense—she had never felt anything like that before. A shock of sensation rushed through her as his hand slipped under her bodice and shift, and the calluses on his palm scratched across her bare nipple.

“It is just sex,” she whispered. “Surely you must want to have sex.”

But instead of cupping her breast, he dragged his hand away, then raked it through his hair. He looked as though he’d accidentally stuck his fingers in the fire.

She had to try harder.

His lips parted, and she knew he was about to command that she go. She surged forward and did the one thing she hadn’t done for years and years. Arching up on tiptoe, she kissed him.

She hooked her arms around his neck. She felt the strong, corded muscles of his throat, unyielding against her arms. He tasted tart—of brandy. His lips were hot and firm and stayed closed against her assault. She pressed her tongue to the tight seam of them, but he wouldn’t let her inside. Instead, he moved his face back, breaking their kiss.

Refusing to give up, she wriggled against him until there wasn’t a breath of air between them. Then she felt it—felt his shaft lift and stiffen against her skirts. It was hard and long, pressing against her belly. A surge of victory took her. She had done it. She’d made him want her.

Breathless, she slid her hand from his shoulder, across the curls of hair on his chest, following the line of the soft downy hair to his navel, then lower. To take him in her hand and caress him.

“Stop,” he growled.

She did. But she kept her fingertips against the firm, warm skin of his lower abdomen. He didn’t move her hand. It must mean his resolve to send her away was weakening.

Suddenly, idiotically, she felt
guilty
. It seemed wrong, this calculated seduction she must carry out. Normally, her encounters were straightforward. Madame’s brothel had rules, of course. Any gentleman who purchased her knew exactly what she was willing—and allowed—to
do. If he desired something different, he must go to another girl. She’d never had to be a seductress and entice a man to do what
he
didn’t want.

The duke hadn’t wanted her five years ago either. But she had to win now: Her life depended on her success.

She teasingly stroked the hard ridge of his nude hip. “I want to pleasure you. Nothing more than that.”

“And payment,” he pointed out drily.

“Of course I have to earn a living,” she said simply. “But you must need sex, after so long.”

“I attacked you, you damned stupid girl. Didn’t that frighten you, or don’t you have the wit to understand what I am?”

“You are a wounded man—”

“Hell.” The duke grasped her arms and pushed her away. He took a brisk step back. His hip banged the arm of the settee, but he did not even flinch. “Do you know what wounded animals do, or haven’t you encountered a beast like me in Town? We bite. We just might kill.”

“You didn’t really hurt me, though.” No, she knew what it was like to be truly beaten and wounded. If she clamped her teeth together, pain still shot through her bruised jaw. Her face was still sore from her madam’s slaps. Her chest and back bore faded purplish-yellow bruises from the punches inflicted by Madame Sin’s brute of a bodyguard. Her only saving grace was that the duke could not see how battered she was.

Every twinge of pain from those bruises was a reminder she was facing death. Whether it came at his hands, the hands of the law, or from starvation, what difference did it make? He was, in fact, her best hope for survival.

She forced her voice to lower an octave. “How would you like to have sex, Your Grace? Perhaps hard and fast, with a big explosive climax at the end? Or slow and
sensual? You could spend an hour or two lazily thrusting your hard cock into me.”

“Damn … damn. Damn.” His breathing was ragged. It was obvious, when she let her gaze slide below his waist, what her suggestions and his imagination were doing to him.

“All right.” He bit the words off.

She couldn’t quite believe her ears. “You want to do it?”

“Yes. I suspect it’s the only way I will get rid of you.” His mouth quirked up for an instant, then dropped into a grim line.

Anne steeled herself for the next step. She licked her dry lips and pushed her gown lower to expose her breasts, which sat high, perched on the shelf of her stays. She tugged down her filmy shift to completely uncover them. Feigning bold confidence, she asked, “How would you prefer it, Your Grace? You can have anything you want.”

HE DUKE RAKED
his hand through his hair, snagging on knots that looked as if they had not been combed for days. “Love, I have no idea what I want. As Ashton told you, it’s been a long time.”

Anne sashayed up to him. She lowered her lashes, trying to look tempting, then remembered such tricks wouldn’t work on the duke. She had to use her voice and touch. Being half naked made her feel more awkward, even though he was completely nude and very unconcerned about it. She pressed close, pushing her bare breasts to his chest. His hands settled on her waist. But before she could let out a practiced moan, his hands moved. He cupped her right breast, then gently pinched her nipple, rolling it between his thumb and forefinger.

Anne gasped. Normally she felt pain when her nipples were toyed with. She turned off her feelings when a man’s hands went there. But she could not fall into her usual pattern, where she went somewhere else in her mind. Not this time. She must focus on the duke. Watch his every move and sense what he wanted. She had to perform so well for him that he would want to keep her.

“Would—would you want to go to your bedroom?”
she suggested. She sounded so nervous. She had to quell that. After all, she knew he did not desire inexperienced women.

The pressure on her nipple lightened. It became a soft caress. It became almost … pleasing.

“Here will do, angel. We are in my study, aren’t we?”

She frowned at the odd question. Surely, even without sight, he would know that. “Yes.”

“Good. For a moment, I worried I’d passed out in the hallway and I was now fondling your breast in full view of my staff.”

She jumped at the thought. “You truly did not know where you were?”

“I was just making certain. There wouldn’t have been a chair in the corridor, would there? Unless I’d thrown one out into the hall.”

Thrown
one into the hall?

“The truth is, angel, the world is nothing but a blue-gray void to me.” He pinched her nipple suddenly, harder.

She whimpered.

“You don’t like that? I’m sorry.” His voice was harsh. “Perhaps you don’t want a blind man fucking you.”

He was angry, bitter, vulnerable, and he was lashing out because of it. Men frightened her when they did that. But from the duke, with his wounds and his blindness, she understood it. His sightlessness didn’t bother or frighten her, as it did some people. Her grandfather had gone blind. “Your Grace,” she said firmly, “you lost your sight because of battle. I would never consider your blindness an affliction.”

“You wouldn’t?” He bent and his lips brushed her upper chest. “Yet I cannot find your nipple without a lot of clumsy licking.” His tongue washed over her skin. She shivered at the warmth, at the tingling sensations rushing down into her belly. Usually she didn’t feel such things.

“I’m enjoying your search,” she whispered.

His tongue stroked across her nipple, pushing it in. It popped out after the hot, wet sweep of pressure, and it was plumper, harder, and almost throbbing with sensation. Her knees were rapidly turning to jelly. Anne clasped the prominent bones of the duke’s hips to stay on her feet.