One Wicked Night (30 page)

With one solid push, he thrust deep within her. The walls of her oh-so-tight sheath closed around him, permeating him with liquid fire, ratcheting his desire up another degree higher. He heard Serena’s cry ringing in his ears, felt her fingers digging into his shoulders.

Quickly, he withdrew, then plunged into her again. Then again. He groaned, driving into her with mindless need, feeling her legs raise higher to wrap around his waist. He took one of her nipples between his teeth, then pushed inside her again.

No doubt, she was a beautiful liar, but his beautiful liar. She was meant to be in his bed, to house and harbor him within her heat, to surround him with her fire.

He rocked her in a wild rhythm, lifting her hips from the carpet beneath with each thrust. She moaned, her nails digging into his back. He felt the sharp jabs of pain, smelled the scent of her arousal in the air between them. He drove into her once more, burying himself to the hilt. Faster, harder, higher, he moved within her, filling her with every inch of him.

“Lucien,” she whispered in one hard breath. Then another. “I . . . I need . . . ”

“I know.” He plunged into her moist femininity, straining to take more, give her more. “I can feel you. I’m going to give you what you need. Now!”

“Lucien!” she cried. “Oh, mercy . . . Oh, God!”

During her long, hoarse cry, he filled her with deep, savage thrusts. He felt her pulsate violently around him. Gnashing his teeth, he tried to stave off the climax enveloping him. But he could not. And no longer wanted to.

Spasms of pleasure ripped through his body. A blinding release shattered through him as he moved within her, spilling his energy, his lust—a part of his soul.

Slowly, he halted. His senses took in their perspiration-slick skin, the cadence of her heavy breaths, and his own. He felt dizzy, spent.

A part of his dazed mind realized the implications of what had occurred: They had consummated their marriage, sealed their union. He resisted the illogical part of him that celebrated that fact. Maybe tonight would set the pattern, as he had so often hoped, for the nights to come. But should it, given the fact his desire for her was stronger than his resistance?

“Damn it,” he cursed and pushed himself away. He had lost complete control. Serena’s body, her touch, her female essence, drove him beyond logic, beyond thought.

He should have walked away before this happened, had even meant to. Taking her to his bed had always been his plan, but he had wanted to do so calmly, with purpose, on his terms and in his time. Succumbing to this mind-shattering need, reeling with the fervor of his ascent into earthly heaven, served no purpose but to give her power over him.

Nor could he ignore the fact she’d lied to him and planned to steal his child. But one simple touch, her fingers on his arm, set off shock waves of desire in his veins. Had she recoiled from him? Screamed in protest? No, she had accepted his touch, then ignited in his arms.

He wanted to blame his loss of control on his anger and lengthy abstinence. Those combined with her sultry scent, her lush body, and the sensuality she hid beneath her daily facade. But he could not; the blame was his alone. He had let his arousal guide his actions. He had lost control, like a fool.

Still shaking from the intensity of his climax, Lucien rose to his feet and fastened his breeches. He tore off his cravat, then readjusted his coat on his shoulders.

Serena rolled to her side, away from him, wrapping the rent edges of her nightrail around her like a protective blanket as she curled into a ball and wept.

He told himself not to be concerned about the lovely deceiver. In plotting to conceive and never share the news with him, it became clear that she had never considered his feelings about
his
child. The fact she had not shared her little plot with him sooner told him she still didn’t give a damn.

And probably never would.

Pain ripped through him as he stared at her shaking back. Some logical crevice of his mind recognized that Serena’s betrayal felt different. Ravenna’s had angered and humiliated him. Serena’s perfidy hurt much worse, like a red, festering wound, infected further by a sense of loss and hopelessness.

He closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath. Had Serena bewitched him in some way Ravenna never had? That was the only logical answer, but hardly a comforting one.

“Damn it,” he cursed, his voice cracking.

Lucien crossed the floor to the door adjoining their rooms and opened it. Still Serena said nothing. He watched her back, heaving with sobs, and swore. He had to get away—now. Before he gave into the growing urge to comfort her, soothe her, then take her gently within the white cloud of her bed.

Gripping the door’s handle for support, Lucien crossed through the portal, into his room. He slammed the door between them.

Then he locked it.

****

Serena attempted to sleep, the soft mattress beneath her no lure to the night’s slumber. Through the door adjoining her room to Lucien’s, she could hear the impatient, odd rhythm of his pacing. Did thoughts of their heaven-hellish lovemaking keep him awake, as they did her?

She could no longer hide from the fact a parallel existed between her mother’s wanton behavior and her own. No matter how pure a life she had led until meeting Lucien, how good her intentions, she had failed. She succumbed to pleasures of the flesh, like Mama. In spite of Mama.

She lowered her head to her hands. Then there was her confession of Cyrus’s plot, which had been nothing short of a disaster. To most, using a man to father another’s heir would mean little. Many men, even Cyrus, had fathered children out of wedlock. But to a man who had suffered a child’s death, like Lucien, the plan no doubt ranked as an unthinkable deception.

His anger, his disappointment in her, could not be ignored. She knew Lucien would continue to protect her from Alastair’s evil intentions. She was, after all, the mother of his unborn child . . . and now the person he despised most.

His feelings toward her should not matter. They shared a name, and soon, a child. Nothing more. So why did his sentiments signify? His nights out, most likely spent in the arms of some mistress, should not bother her. Nor should the fact that he must think her a light-skirt after the way she had succumbed to his touch tonight.

But her heart caught, clenched when she thought of Lucien. His feelings did matter. What he did, who he spent his time with—all of that made a difference. He was in her life now; he was her future. But her feelings extended quite beyond that. Lucien made her feel.

Tonight, seeing the fury and scorn in his eyes, hearing him lock the door between them—it all hurt. Because she had hurt him.

Why? She did not love him or anything so foolish. Yet she had the irrational urge to stop fighting with him, to make everything right between them. To give in to his touch again.

****

Alastair flew out of the hack the minute it stopped on Butcher Row. Drawing the folds of his cloak around him to stave off the night’s chill, he stalked toward the flash house ahead.

As usual, Dirty Ed sat atop the stairs, bottle in hand. His whore Wanda sat beside him. They both smelled of unwashed bodies and gin.

“Where are Rollins and McCoy?” Alastair demanded.

The ruddy-faced man took a swill of gin, then said, “Ain’t here.”

Snatching the bottle from Dirty Ed’s hand, Alastair smashed it against the railing. The shattering of glass filled the silence left after Wanda’s gasp and Dirty Ed’s curse.

With a predatory snarl, Alastair lunged forward, grabbing Ed’s neck in one hand, and held the jagged edges of the bottle next to his cheek with the other. Ed stuttered nervously as he watched the shards of glass glitter dangerously in the moonlight.

Alastair grinned and proceeded inside. He paused, letting his eyes adjust to the dim lighting of a single candle. He saw the torn sofa and the table missing a leg; he smelled the stale odor of alcohol and vomit. Stalking from the door he had entered, he found Rollins and McCoy stretched out on the floor, asleep in the squalor of vermin-filled blankets.

Refusing to touch their covers, Alastair instead kicked Rollins in the ribs. The man raised his head, his dark, greasy hair falling into his drink-reddened face.

“Guv,” he said in surprise. “What be ye doin’ here?”

“I might ask the same of you.”

“Dicky and I needed a quick bottle o’ gin and some sleep. We was just going to stop for a sip and nap, and be off, honest. No one was going to find us.”

Alastair’s eyes narrowed. “Have you talked to a man named Clayborne? He’s the Marquess of Daneridge.”

Rollins sat up, rubbing red, dilated eyes. “No. We ain’t talked to no one. We kept quiet, just like ye told us.”

“That’s not what I hear,” Alastair rebutted. “In fact, it’s my understanding you’ve been bragging about finishing off a wealthy duke.”

“That’s a lie!” Rollins tipped his bottle upward and swallowed nervously. “I . . . I think Wanda out there might’ve heard Dickey and me talkin’, but by the saints, I didn’t tell no one.”

“And McCoy? Who has he been telling?” Alastair asked, his tone almost conversational.

Rollins glanced nervously at his sleeping companion. “You know Dickey. I think the bleedin’ fool told his brother. But no one else,” he assured hastily.

Alastair smiled politely. “Unfortunately, Dickey’s brother likes to talk. What a shame for both of you,” he said.

From his boot, Alastair withdrew a knife.

****

In the solitude of his study, Lucien spread out the
Times
before him. He attempted to read it, as he did each morning. Today, concentration was impossible.

Serena filled his thoughts. The way she clung to him last night, groaned his name. Her scent haunted him with remembrances of her soft skin and trembling response.

Damn it, how could a woman who had planned to steal his child affect him so?

With resolve, he turned his mind away from his deceiving wife. He shouldn’t waste his thoughts on a woman who’d plotted to rob him of another chance at fatherhood. Yet knowing her dirty secret didn’t diminish his desire for her. If anything, the memory of her tight sex clenching around him in ardor as she accepted each and every one of his furious thrusts only made him want her more deeply than ever.

He doubted indulging that desire would be a sound notion. Tasting her again wouldn’t eradicate his ache for her. He knew that. If anything, he would only fall deeper under her spell.

He had to avoid that at all costs—until he could find a way to enjoy fucking her without completely losing his head. And eventually, his heart.

Lucien withdrew his pocket watch and noted it was well past nine in the morning. Serena was usually up and dressed by this hour. Was she ill? Had she left him?

Lucien hesitated, then rose from the sofa. He would check on her. Briefly, of course. She was his responsibility, after all. And although he had posted new guards at her door since this morning’s wee hours, the added precaution would not be remiss.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Ravenna here? That wasn’t possible. She lived in Italy with his former friend, Lord Wayland.

A moment later, she appeared beside Holford, as if to prove the impossible real. The quirk of her jet brow matched her mocking, ruby-lipped smile. “Hello, Lucien. You look surprised to see me.”

Holford shut the study door, leaving them alone.

Lucien closed his gaping mouth, and eyed his ex-wife with rising anger. As always, Ravenna looked earthy and ethereal at once, the combination of knowing ebony eyes and angelic cream-smooth skin creating the illusion. She was dressed to perfection in a rose-colored muslin that enhanced her beauty and the carefully applied rogue on her cheeks.

She was as beautiful now as she had been at the end of their marriage, perhaps more so. Age had helped her to grow into the curves of her body and the elegant angles of her face. She looked perfectly comfortable displaying most of her soft bosom at this early hour.

Once, the mere sight of her had incited lust, a need to bed her until they were both satiated and exhausted. He felt none of that desire now.

What the hell did she want?

“Ravenna,” he greeted shortly.

Her smile turned kittenish. Lucien knew better than to trust it. “I shall have to work on your greeting. It was hardly warm, darling.”