Lady Love (13 page)

T
he cocktail party was small and elegant. Fortunately for Merlyn, only one person there recognized her. The elderly gentleman who monopolized her at the buffet was a friend of her father, and she’d known him since childhood.

“Why don’t you want anyone to know who you really are?” James Dunfey asked in confusion. “I don’t understand, Merlyn.”

“Because I’m doing some fascinating research on social mores,” she lied. “You can’t give me away, Dunnie.”

He sighed into his martini glass. “Oh, very well,” he said, noticing the way Cameron was watching them. “But your friend there is suspicious. Cameron Thorpe, isn’t he? I’ve done business with his bank. Shrewd businessman, Thorpe. I expect he’ll boost the bank’s assets more than adequately when he’s had a few more years to work on it. Bad luck about his father borrowing himself out of his fortune. Idiot. Should have made his holdings over to Thorpe years ago, instead of overreaching on a gamble and holding out for immortality.”

“Is the bank very badly in debt?” she asked.

“Not the bank. Thorpe. I understand he’s already paid off a quarter of a million in debts, though. He’s got a good head, he’ll make it.”

She sighed. She had known there were reasons for him to marry Delle. Good reasons. She felt empty all the way to her toes.

Cameron asked her about Dunfey as soon as they found a moment alone.

“Friend of yours?” he probed.

She avoided his hawklike stare. “Why? Jealous?” she murmured, peeking up at him with a smile. He looked devastating in his gray suit with a red tie and white silk shirt. The colors contrasted nicely with his darkness. “He is quite dashing.”

He smiled. “Yes, I did notice that. But does he have the stamina?”

Her lips curled. “I don’t know.” She glanced at him. “Do you?”

His eyes began to burn, and his chest rose and fell heavily. “Is that an invitation, Miss Forrest?”

“I wouldn’t dream of it! After all, there’s my reputation to think of!”

He toyed with his drink as he studied her. “I am thinking of your reputation.…It needs a few spots on it.” A corner of his mouth curved upwards.

She laughed breathlessly and found that her hands were shaking as she lifted her wineglass to her lips. She gulped down a swallow of wine and almost choked on it.

He smiled faintly. “What’s wrong, Merlyn?”

“As if you didn’t know, you big furry wolf,” she accused.

“You seemed to like the fur well enough this afternoon,” he reminded her with a slow grin.

“Can I help it if you have a sexy chest?” she murmured, glancing up at him wickedly. “I never liked hairy men before.”

His nostrils flared as he searched her eyes. “I’m like that all over,” he murmured softly.

Her lips parted. “Are you?”

His eyes narrowed. He fingered his whiskey glass thoughtfully. “You seem to be torn between seducing me and keeping me half a state away.”

“Self-defense,” she said honestly. Her eyes searched his face quietly, and she saw her whole world in it. A flash of lightning suddenly burst outside the window, and it was no more jolting than what she was feeling as she stared up into Cameron’s dark eyes. She tried to breathe steadily.

He caught a strand of her long, clean hair and ran it between his dark fingers. “I keep an apartment here in the city,” he said after a minute, seemingly out of the blue. “Just for business. I’ve never taken a woman there.” It seemed important to him that she understand that.

Her lips parted under his steady appraisal. She wanted him. She loved him. Would it be so very wrong? Her eyes wandered slowly over him, savoring the sheer size of him, the barely contained muscles of his body. This was the twentieth century, as her friends kept telling her. Perhaps it would show him that marrying Delle was not the answer. Perhaps it would convince him that it was better to marry for love.…

He laughed at his own folly. “My God, do you hear what I’m saying? I’m standing in the middle of a roomful of people trying to get a virgin into bed with me.” He drained his glass.

“You don’t want me, then?” she asked slowly, staring into her half-full wineglass.

He seemed to stop breathing. His chest was still. And then it wasn’t. It lifted and fell abruptly.

She glanced up. His broad, dark face was rigid with some violent emotion, and there was an unnatural whiteness around his compressed mouth.

“Yes, I want you,” he said. Then he actually smiled. “Just for the record, what would you do if you were in that apartment alone with me? Would you be afraid?”

“We aren’t, so there’s very little point in speculating, is there?” she hedged. “Now shouldn’t we circulate? After all,” she added venomously, “Delle would be aghast at what you’ve been saying to me.”

He drew in a slow, harsh breath. “Delle is aghast at the thought of anything remotely sexual, and you know it, don’t you?” he asked with a cold smile.

“Yes,” she said honestly. “I have a very clear picture of her. You may mold her into a sensible and practical wife, but she’ll never satisfy you in bed.” Her chest rose and fell quickly, and the words boiled out of her. “You’re a passionate man. You’ll hate living with an ice cube.”

“At least I won’t be vulnerable with her,” he cut back.

“Vulnerable?” Her green eyes darkened. “You won’t even be alive.” She turned and walked away from him. She hated him. She hated Delle. She hated the whole situation. And the more she hated it, the more she drank. She sensed his eyes on her as she moved from group to group. She knew he was angry at what she’d said. Well, it was only the truth. He’d marry his precious Delle and spend the rest of his life regretting it.

She finished her fourth glass of wine and set the glass gently on the table. Stupid man, she thought viciously. Stupid, stupid man! She loved him, she ached for him, and she was ten times richer than damned Delle! If he wanted money, why didn’t he marry her? She was about to start on her fifth glass when Cameron appeared at her side and caught her arm.

“You’ve had enough,” he said curtly. “Let’s go.”

“I’m only getting started,” she muttered.

“Don’t make a scene, darling,” he cautioned with blazing eyes.

“And embarrass you?” She laughed and tossed back her long, black hair. “How exciting.”

“You forget, I’m used to embarrassment,” he said with a cold smile. “My late wife was matchless at causing public scandals.”

That sobered her as nothing else could have. She remembered what he’d confided to her about Amanda’s mother, about the way she’d teased him. It was a measure of his trust that he’d told her even that much. She was sure he’d never mentioned it to anyone else. She felt ashamed. She could never tease him the way his wife had, regardless of the provocation. She cared too much to hurt him deliberately.

“I’m sorry, Cameron,” she said. Her eyes searched his. “I’m…just a little tipsy, I think.”

“No harm done. Come on.” He caught her arm, propelling her toward the door.

In what was a blur of motion to Merlyn, they said good-night to their host and hostess. Merlyn rushed out the door without pausing to remember the storm and found herself quickly drenched by the driving rain. The suddenness of the soaking made her cry out, but she was already wet from head to toe.

“Good God, I forgot the rain,” Cameron growled. He hesitated under the arch of the door, but when he saw her dress being plastered to her body, he joined her. “Oh, what the hell!” Reaching down, he swung her up into his powerful arms and carried her down the sidewalk to the curb where the car was parked.

He looked down at her, his black hair flattened against his broad forehead, his dark eyes glittering. “Well, we have no choice about going to the apartment now, do we?” he asked with a hard laugh. “We can’t very well drive fifty-odd miles like this.”

“No,” she agreed quietly. “We can’t.”

He slid her onto the plush seat and closed the door before he went around and got in behind the wheel.

He drove just two blocks and turned the car into a parking garage under a fabulously expensive-looking condominium. A moment later he herded her into the elevator.

“The only regret I have is ruining your dress,” he said on the way up. “I’ll buy you another one, just like it.”

She gaped at him, her wet hair plastered against her face, her dress clinging to every slender line of her body. And she felt beautiful. Reckless.

He opened the door to his apartment and guided her into the blue-tiled bathroom, with its wall-length mirror and gold-fixtured whirlpool and vanity. He turned to her, his eyes quiet, wary, as they wandered over her drenched garment. “I very much doubt that the clothes dryer’s best efforts are going to do that any good,” he said, frowning. “Mother has some jeans and a sweatshirt around here somewhere. You’re just a little smaller than she is. Want to try them?”

“Yes, please.” She was trying to sound sophisticated and worldly, but her voice betrayed her nervousness.

Cameron’s clothes were plastered to him, too, emphasizing the sheer size of him, the straining of muscle against fabric. Her eyes sketched him, and she could almost picture him without clothes at all, his hair-roughened body bare to her eyes.

He noticed that quiet scrutiny, and his chest rose and fell roughly. “You can towel dry first,” he said finally. “I’ll wait.”

Her eyes didn’t leave his as she reached behind her for the zipper and slowly, gracefully, slid the ruins of her dress down to her waist, over her hips, and to the floor. She hadn’t worn anything under it except briefs, and her long, slender legs were bare of hosiery. She eased off the briefs and her shoes, her heart beating wildly as she saw the astonishment in his dark face.

“Did you know,” she managed breathless, moving slowly toward him, “that virgins sometimes seduce men?”

Her trembling fingers went to his jacket. Before her nerve failed, she started methodically removing it. Then his tie. His drenched white silk shirt. But her hands faltered at the belt.

His chest lifted and fell roughly. Without a single word, with a kind of fatalism, he held her eyes as he removed the rest of his clothes.

She went to him without fear, without reservation, her heart beating wildly, her body hungry for him. “Cameron,” she whispered achingly. She pressed herself against him with the last tiny bit of courage she possessed. If he pushed her away, she’d die of rejection. “Cameron!” she breathed as she felt hair and muscle and bare flesh in a tremulous joining, and it was all of heaven.

His warm hands held her shoulders and he went rigid, as if he couldn’t quite decide what to do. Against her, his powerful muscles clenched and she felt the bristly hair on his chest and stomach and thighs moving against her soft, bare skin.

“You’re not quite sober,” he reminded her in a voice taut with control.

“That…will help, won’t it?” she asked shakily. Slowly, she lifted her eyes to his and gathered all her nerve. Her hands went to his thick, wet hair, and coaxed his face down to hers.

Her mouth assaulted his, and it was like fireworks going off. He began to tremble as her mouth opened. Her tongue teased him, her body lifted and fell with the suddenness of desire as she registered his masculinity, the rich scent of cologne, the smooth tautness of muscle.

His hands skimmed her waist, her thighs, and then moved up her back in a long sweep. His mouth began to answer hers slowly.

She drew back, sure of her ground, sure of her own power. Delle wasn’t going to get him without a fight. In her dazed mind, this was the only sure way to fight back.

She caught his big fingers in hers and tugged, drawing him toward the bedroom. He sat down on the big, king-sized bed, and she pushed him back against the pillows in a reclining position.

With more enthusiasm and love than skill, she eased herself down beside him and began to kiss him. She loved the taste of him, the magic of being intimate with him, seeing him as she knew Delle never had. And the incredible thing was that he let her. He lay quietly, his eyes open and dark with desire and frank astonishment, while she learned him with her hands and eyes. She bent her head and drew her mouth slowly, lovingly, across his hair-roughened chest, down to the clenched muscles of his stomach. He jerked convulsively.

“Merlyn!” he ground out, arching.

“It’s all right.” She laughed with a last surge of humor as she slid up the length of his body and kissed his hard mouth softly. “I won’t hurt you, Cam,” she promised in a loving whisper.

“Oh, God, honey, but I’ll hurt you!” he murmured harshly, even as his hands found her waist and lifted her, guided her. “Merlyn…!”

“You won’t have to. I will. Let me,” she whispered. He was sitting now, with her body easing down over him. With reckless hunger, she put her mouth to his as her hips moved. She gasped, hesitated, moved again, and her breath sighed out raggedly into his mouth. “It’s all right now,” she whispered then, and moved his hands to her hips. “Help me, Cam.”

“You’ll hate me,” he breathed, but the fever was burning him. It was in his eyes, in the involuntary movements of his body, in the pressure of his fingers as they dug in and demanded.

“No. I love you,” she whispered back, fervently, urgently. She felt him shudder as she put her mouth back on his. With innocent, unknowing ardor, she kissed him in a way that shattered his strained control. “Cam…?”

His face held her fascinated gaze, and then it began to contort. His eyes closed. The powerful corded muscles of his neck strained. His chest rose and fell with wild movements, and harsh, groaning sounds burst from his lips. “Merlyn,” he whispered, trembling. His body moved, his big hands bruising her hips as they contracted suddenly. “Merlyn!” he cried out, arching, his muscles locked, his head thrown back against the pillows in an agony of completion.

She realized that she’d been holding her breath, and she let it out all at once, astonished at how easy it had been, at how wild his reaction was. She leaned down on his wildly shaking chest and took his damp face into her hands, gently kissing him. Her mouth brushed softly over his closed eyes, his cheeks, his nose, his chin, anywhere she could reach, while she gloried in the pleasure, the peace she’d given him.