Lady of Seduction (15 page)

Caroline reached out to push his coat away from his shoulders and tossed it to the floor to join her gown and chemise. He
went very still, watching her with narrowed eyes. She set her trembling fingers to his cravat. The loops of starched muslin
were simply tied, but she kept getting distracted by the heat of his skin, the roughness of the whiskers along his jaw, and
the way his breath stirred her hair as he leaned close.

At last, she tugged it free and dropped it onto the rumpled bed. He still did not move; he just let her do what she would.
Whatever she wanted. It was a heady feeling.

She unlaced his shirt and drew it over his head. His bare chest gleamed with a light sheen of sweat, hot and damp under her
exploring touch. She traced the looping patterns of his tattoo and lightly scraped the edge of her nail over his flat nipple.
It puckered into a hard disc, and his breath sucked in hard, but he still didn’t move.

Caroline bent her head to kiss him. The tip of her tongue tasted the tiny, salty drop of sweat at the base of his neck. She
inhaled deeply of his scent, the clean greenness of his soap, the dark hint of male desire, and it made her feel even more
lost. She kissed the hard angle of his shoulder and drew that nipple between her lips to bite and taste it.

“Mollaght!”
he shouted, and his rigid control snapped. His arms swept around her, and he bore her down to the bed. His mouth claimed
hers in a hard, merciless kiss.

Caroline kissed him back and let herself tumble entirely into that new, topsy-turvy world she found only in his embrace. Nothing
else mattered now but the two of them together.

She traced her caress down his hard-muscled chest until she reached the band of his breeches. She quickly unfastened them
and touched the hot velvet of his erect penis.

“You’ll be the death of me, Caroline Blacknall,” he muttered against her lips. His kiss slid along her jaw to the soft spot
just below her ear, and he lightly bit at it.

“And you of me,” she gasped. “But it’s not a terrible way to go.”

He laughed and kissed her lips again, deep and possessive, until she moaned and could think no more. She could only feel.
He eased his breeches over his hips and gently spread her legs until he was cradled against her body.

She felt the press of him as he slid inside, all hot, damp friction. She knew the feeling of him now, knew their rhythm and
how they fit together so perfectly. She wrapped her legs around his waist and arched up to meet him. He pushed forward until
he was sheathed completely, and it was the most perfect feeling Caroline had ever known.

He drew back and plunged forward again, and she met him with every movement, faster and faster. She caught his groans with
her kiss and echoed them with her own. Outside her window, thunder exploded, but she was sure it was her own shouts as pressure
built up inside her. It
sparkled and sizzled, just beyond her reach—the ultimate pleasure.

Suddenly that pressure exploded into a million shining pieces. Everything seemed bigger, grander, every sound and sensation
amplified. His touch, his kiss, the soft sheets at her back, the rain outside, it was all more vivid and intense than she
could ever have imagined.

She felt as if she had leaped off the cliffs and gone soaring into the sky.

“Caro!” Grant shouted above her. Within her arms, she felt his whole body stiffen and tighten, his head thrown back.
“Mac an donais.”

Then he collapsed to the bed next to her. She closed her eyes and tried to breathe slowly, to bring herself back down from
the stars into her own body. His harsh breath blended with the sound of the rain and the pounding surf far below.

She felt him bury his face in her shoulder, and she held on to him to try to pull herself up. She had lost herself completely
there for a moment, and it was a frightening sensation. Would she ever really find herself and be whole again without him?

C
aroline sat up against the pillows as she watched Grant sleeping beside her. There in the silent shelter of the bed, in the
still aftermath of the storm of passion, he should be at peace. But the lines of his face were strained and his fists tightly
furled as if he fought demons even in his dreams.

“Why can you not tell me what torments you so?” she whispered. She traced a soft caress over the scars on his face, the hard
line of his jaw, and smoothed back a strand of hair from his brow. Once he had confided in her, and she had felt close to
him for that one fleeting moment. She had felt that she glimpsed the real man behind all the glitter and beauty.

But that was long ago, and so much had changed. What if the bitterness of losing his fine Dublin life had hardened that last
little bit of his soul and driven him to something terrible? To treason?

Caroline wanted to know what he was doing and why this French group was really here. Yet what would she do if she knew? What
could
she do?

She suddenly felt terribly alone. She knew she had to dig deep and find her own strength, the strength of the Blacknalls,
and help herself. Perhaps she could help Grant, too, if he would let her. The man she had glimpsed so long ago, the loving,
protective, strong,
Irish
man, had to be in there somewhere.

Grant stirred in his sleep, and her hand fell away from his hair. His eyes opened to stare up at her, and for an instant,
his fist tightened as if he didn’t recognize her. But then he relaxed and smiled.

“So you
are
here,” he said. His hand lazily drifted through a loose lock of her hair, twisting it around one of his fingers.

“Of course I am,” Caroline answered. “This is
my
bed. I wouldn’t go anywhere.”

“It was just a dream, then.” Grant tugged at her hair and brought her down to meet his kiss. Unlike the hard desperation of
last night, this kiss was gentle, questioning.

Caroline kissed him back. She laid her hands on his chest, feeling the leashed power of his body under her touch. He was calm
now, lazy, sensual, but she remembered the wild strength when he made love to her. The memory made her draw in a sharp breath
and lean back from him before her own lust could overtake her again. She needed a cooler head now if she was to gain his confidence.

“What did you dream?” she said.

He trailed his fingertips in a whisper-soft caress over her shoulder and along the sensitive inside of her arm. His gaze followed
his touch, growing more heated as he saw her bare breast. Caroline drew the rumpled sheet around herself.

“I can’t remember,” he said, toying with her hair again.
He wrapped it around his wrist like a rope and drew her down to lie across his chest. “It’s fading away. It seems as if I
was searching for you, that there was some terribly important reason I had to find you, but you were gone.”

Caroline closed her eyes and listened to his heartbeat against her ear. It was strong and true, as elemental and full of life
as the rain outside. “I am here,” she said.

She heard the rumble of his laughter deep in his chest. “In your own bed. But there is an ancient law on Muirin Inish that
says everything on the island belongs to the lord of the castle. Every stone of every house, every morsel of food, every stick
of furniture…”

“Every person who sits on that furniture?” Caroline suddenly sat up and shook free of his hold. He grinned up at her and stretched
his arms lazily above his head, the very picture of the arrogant lord he once was. That old Grant did indeed seem to think
that everything in sight belonged to him, his for the taking. Seats in Parliament, houses, carriages, estates in the possession
of his cousin—and women, too.

Was that the way of the new Grant as well?

“It would not be so bad to belong to me, would it, Caro?” he said, still so deceptively lazy and teasing. He reached out one
hand to touch the soft underside of her breast, caressing it as if he knew just where she liked to be touched—and he
did
know, damn him. His caress drifted over her ribcage, along her waist, lower and lower…

“You seemed to like it last night,” he whispered. “If this were a hundred years ago, you would be on your knees swearing fealty
to your lord right about now.”

“How dare you?” Caroline burst out, and he laughed. Her Blacknall temper fully roused up now, she threw
aside his hand and straddled him. “A Blacknall woman belongs to no man.”

“They belong to her, is that it?” he said. He still smiled at her, teasing, goading. He seemed as if he looked forward to
what she might do next.

Caroline herself had no idea what she would do. She had never felt as she did now as she looked down at Grant lying beneath
her. It was like a growing sense of power and freedom, and she liked it.

But she
didn’t
like him, not just then. He played some dangerous game here on this island, and with her, and she wanted to know what it
was.

She seized his wrists in her hands and pressed his arms to the bed above his head. Holding him as her captive, she bent her
head and kissed first one corner of his lips then the other. She flicked her tongue against the dimple in his cheek and felt
his smile fade.

As she slid her kiss over his cheek and bit at his earlobe, she felt the side of her hand brush against something soft—her
discarded silk stocking. Still kissing him, she leaned forward, her hair falling around them in a curtain, and looped the
stocking around his wrists. She pulled it into a tight knot.

Grant stiffened, and his head tilted back from her. “What are you doing?”

Caroline smiled at him sweetly. “It would not be so bad to belong to me, would it, Grant?” she echoed his words. “It might
even be—fun.”

She found her other stocking and used it to tie his bound hands to the bedpost. He watched her warily, his body tense, but
he didn’t pull away from her. And she saw his erection growing beneath the sheet.

She pulled the cloth away to leave him naked beneath her. In the rush and heat of their passion, she hadn’t been able to fully
appreciate him, but now she saw he was quite magnificent. His muscles were lean and strong beneath the satin of his skin,
his torso sculpted into hard planes like one of the classical statues at Killinan Castle. His arms strained against her bonds,
powerfully defined, circled by the tattooed band of knot work. His long, bronze-brown hair fell over his shoulder.

She traced her fingertips over the pattern of scars on his left side. They were faded now to a pale pink on the smooth olive
of his skin, but they only seemed to increase his allure. They made him more human, more warrior-like. They reminded her of
their complicated past—and even more complicated present.

She carefully kissed his scars, one after the other, feeling their roughness under her lips. She forgot her anger as she wished
she could take away all that pain. If only they could begin all over again, fresh and clean, only Caroline and Grant.

But that was impossible. The past was always there, a wisp of shadowy darkness hanging close to them.

She slid down his body, kissing, tasting, exploring. She had never seen or felt a man like this before, and it was a wondrous
thing. Her teeth lightly scraped over his hipbone, the taut line that traced along his upper thigh, and her tongue circled
his navel.

“Caroline!” he said tightly, his body twisting under her caress.

She pressed him back down. She knew he could break his bonds at any moment and seize control from her, but she didn’t want
to give him up just yet. She had so very much to learn about him.

Her touch drifted over his erect penis, light as a feather and then harder, a little rougher, testing her power. She felt
the tracery of veins straining against the velvety skin and the strength of his desire. A tiny drop of pearly liquid formed
at its tip, and she caught it on her palm.

“Caro, I don’t think this is a good idea,” he growled.

She smiled. “Do I need to tie you tighter?”

And she closed her lips around him, drawing him into her mouth. She had read of such things in racy French pamphlets hidden
in the back rooms of bookshops, yet she’d never been able to imagine actually doing it. Here, now, with Grant, it felt like
the most natural of acts.

He tasted salty and sweet at the same time, and she could smell the maleness of him. She slid her kiss along his steely length
and back up again, her hand braced on his rigid thigh.

His body was taut under her touch, and he held his breath. He moaned, and a heady sense of power and pleasure grew within
her.

“No more,” he said, and she released him from her kiss. She moved up his body, rubbing her skin against every inch of him
in a delicious, damp, sweaty friction.

“Untie me,” he said. His eyes were very dark as he watched her. “I want to touch you.”

“Not yet,” she panted. “I want to see something…”

She pressed her palms on the carved headboard and spread her legs wider over him. Slowly, carefully, she positioned herself
over his erection and slid down onto him. She had never tried
this
before, either—poor Hartley had been strictly an under-the-blankets, man-on-top sort, and she had never dared suggest anything
else. This felt strange and awkward—and wonderful.