Tempt the Devil (21 page)

“Oh, yes,” he crooned, still in that gravelly tone. “Do that again.”

“This?” She clenched, deliberately this time, and felt reaction shudder through him.

“More.” He gasped the command as if his breath failed.

He changed the angle of penetration, going in harder and higher. She juddered under the power and shifted her hands to his shoulders, her only anchor in a dissolving world.

What was happening to her? She'd never felt anything like this before. Every thrust of Erith's body took her further toward some unknown, mysterious crest.

He was shaking as he approached his own crisis. The rhythm changed, became faster, more urgent, harder. In. Out. In. Out. She feared the universe would end if he stopped.

The pressure inside her mounted and mounted. Her muscles contracted even as his thrusts became choppy, wild, uncontrolled. Her spine bowed and she pushed up toward him.

He withdrew then drove back in with a thrust firmer, surer, than any before.

She sobbed aloud, abandoned in the open sea. She'd drown before she reached land. She knew it. The icy waters would suck her down to oblivion and she'd be lost forever.

One boundless moment of waiting.
Then the black wave broke and crashed down upon her.

As darkness overwhelmed her, she screamed.

Vaguely through her shattering peak, she heard him groan on a low, drawn-out note. Then she felt a hot liquid sensation deep within as his seed flooded her womb.

The darkness was blinding, frightening, obliterating. She kept her eyes shut as force blasted her, flinging her away from reality.

It was dark, so dark.

Then behind her closed eyes it wasn't dark at all. The midnight sky exploded into a conflagration of a million stars. A million suns that illuminated a new world.

This new world was beautiful. More beautiful than anything she'd ever seen.

For an eternity she hung suspended among those blazing stars. Earth had no meaning. She left mortality behind. Instead she was a being of star fire and passion.

Shaking with reaction, Erith collapsed against her. Slowly the stars winked out and Olivia drifted back from the outer limits of the sky. Sight and hearing gradually returned.

For a long time neither of them moved.

Erith lay spent and exhausted in her arms. He'd given her such joy. Joy beyond anything she'd ever imagined.

Poignant tenderness filled her. Her hands began to play upon his sweat-sheened back.

He made a sound deep in his throat, like a lion's satisfied growl. When he buried his head in her shoulder, his damp hair pleasantly tickled the side of her neck.

With every second she became more aware of a reality that had faded to nothing in her rapture. The room reeked of sweat and sex. Wind rattled the windowpanes. The fire crackled in the grate. Wrapping her arms more tightly around Erith, she drew him hard against her. They were still joined.

He lifted his head. For a long time she stared into his face, cataloguing his features. The straight forehead, the long nose, the slashing black brows.

His beautiful mouth was relaxed and tender. The gray eyes were clear as she'd never seen them. She felt she saw his soul.

He leaned down and placed a lingering kiss on her brow. A kiss shocking in its sweet innocence after what they'd just shared.

Except what they'd just shared had held a trace of innocence too.

His regard was impossibly somber. “What becomes of us now?”

“N
othing can become of us,” she said with a wrenching sadness she couldn't hide.

Her voice sounded scratchy and unused. As if she'd just screamed loud and hard. With blind ecstasy.

Gently, Erith withdrew from her body. His absence brought a pang of loss. He settled on his back with a long, satisfied sigh and angled his head to watch her out of gleaming silver eyes.

“After that?” He gave a grunt of scornful amusement and shook his head. “Good God, woman, what poppycock you talk.”

How foolish she was to hear an echo of her own awe at what she'd discovered in his arms. Confronting the bleak reality of their liaison stung when those glorious moments still sang in her blood.

She strove to rebuild her scattered defenses, to be sensible, practical, unemotional. Impossible when she was wet with Erith's seed and slow waves of pleasure continually rolled through her.

“It doesn't change anything,” she said in a flat tone.

What a blatant lie. He'd changed her utterly.

Wary, lonely, proud Olivia Raines, glamorous center of the demimonde, was no more. That ice-hard creature had shattered on a peak of sexual ecstasy beyond anything she could have imagined.

In her place, Erith had left a woman whose muscles were slack with repletion and whose heart was tragically open to hurt.

She dreaded the awkward discussion that surely was coming. Erith would want to gloat now that he'd achieved the goal he set on their first night. He had every right to crow about his victory, but after such transcendence, smugness would make her vulnerable soul cringe.

She didn't want to talk about what had just happened between them. What could she say? Words failed her.

As his body had thrust fully into hers, she'd felt complete for the first time in her life. More, she'd felt that together they soared onto a fiery plane beyond the reach of this world.

Illusion?

Perhaps.

But a stubborn illusion that refused to budge from her dazed mind.

Words would only sully the wonder she'd experienced.

But he didn't boast of his ascendancy over her. Instead his face was grave and unguarded as he stared at her through the vibrant silence. His eyes held no trace of triumph. Rather, she read amazement, appreciation,
peace
in the gray depths.

More dangerous illusion.

His lips tilted into a brief smile that made her ache with longing for what she could never have. She wanted to lie beside him like this forever. She wanted to be his without shame or compulsion. She wanted to be the innocent girl who had grown up on her father's estate, dreaming of one day marrying a man like the Earl of Erith. She wanted a life different from the one she'd been forced to lead.

None of her wishes could ever come true. It was too late for her.

She closed her eyes under a weight of crushing regret.

Dear Lord, she must combat this weakness. She had to fight Erith. But first, and much more difficult, she had to fight herself.

“Come here, Olivia.” He shifted to draw her into his chest. His voice, soft as thick velvet, wrapped around her like a warm cloak on a snowy day. “Argue with me in the morning.”

It had been a long, fraught night brimming with tumultuous, astonishing emotion, and she was tired and terrifyingly defenseless. His sweet care of her just carved a deeper rift inside her soul.

“I don't want to argue,” she said almost tearfully.

“Yes, you do.” He ignored her stiffness and curved his big, warm body around hers. “But you won't win.”

“I will.” Even in her ears, her insistence sounded frail and meaningless.

Cowardly relief filled her when he didn't reply. He tucked her head under his chin, his heat and musky scent surrounding her.

She was fatally stupid to feel so safe when he held her. Erith threatened everything she'd built in her life. But still she shut her eyes and imprinted each detail of this moment on her memory for when he was gone.

As she relaxed, he released his breath in a deep sigh. He brushed her tangled hair back from her face and shifted so they lay more naturally against each other. Such small, commonplace gestures, and each one cut through her barriers to leave her open to destruction.

She buried her nose in the curling black hair on his chest and let his evocative essence seep into her bones. Her eyes fluttered shut before she remembered she had something to tell him.

“It's Perry's birthday ball tomorrow night.”

“Mmm,” he said sleepily, nuzzling the hair at her crown.

She tried to tell her sentimental self she was far too sophisticated to find the action's gentle affection moving. But her sentimental self refused to listen.

Oh, she was in huge trouble.

The sluggish contentment weighting her limbs made it impossible to deny the urge to stay where she was. She forced her wayward mind back to what she tried to say. “So I won't be here.”

“Neither will I.”

“You have a family obligation?”

“No, I'll be at Montjoy's. With you.”

The certainty in his drowsy voice filled her with dark pleasure. “Lord Erith, you should curb this urge always to be in charge.”

He settled her more closely. Under the hands she folded on his bare chest, his heart thudded steadily. “My name's Julian.”

In a last ditch effort to save a fortress that had surrendered, she ignored the request. “We've never been out in public before.”

He laughed softly and his breath tickled the top of her head. Her toes curled with unwilling delight. “Ashamed to be seen with me, Olivia?”

“Not if you mind your manners.”

“No guarantee of that.” His voice fell lower as he slid toward sleep. “And my name is Julian.”

What did this small concession matter when tonight she'd made so many much larger concessions? “Julian.”

“My love,” he whispered into her hair on a breath of sound so quiet, she pretended she didn't hear.

But she had heard. The two soft words battered at her heart until, powerless to resist, she let them in.

 

Erith stood on the pavement and let Olivia precede him into the brightly lit town house where Lord Peregrine Montjoy
celebrated his thirtieth birthday. From inside, he heard distant but strangely discordant music and loud waves of conversation that rose and fell like stray gusts of wind. It was most definitely a crush.

He remembered the last time he'd entered this house. So much had happened since that night when Olivia exhibited herself dressed as a man. He hoped she'd wear men's clothes again for his pleasure. He hoped she'd wear no clothes for his pleasure. And for hers.

Her uninhibited scream as she'd come last night had resounded like music in his heart all day. The pitch of response she'd attained had been unmistakable. He'd remember that sound until the day he died. And never without a smile.

Just as he would smile to recall her slick heat when he'd taken her. And her tight passage closing hard on him as she embraced him from inside.

Olivia was flickering magic in his arms. Lightning. Flame. An opening flower releasing its perfume to the night air. She'd given him explosive joy and coruscating pleasure. She'd made him feel alive as he hadn't felt in sixteen years.

And the greatest satisfaction of all? Her complete and headlong yielding to the attraction that had simmered between them from the first.

He'd guessed that she hid great wells of passion beneath her cool exterior. But the depth and power of the response he'd drawn from her astonished him. Humbled him. Moved him more than anything he could remember. Volcanic, reckless, unfettered passion.
Thank God.

He dearly wanted to tempt her into his arms again. Soon. Now.

He hoped she didn't plan to stay long at Montjoy's.

As she climbed the steps to the open front door, he watched the sway of her hips under the voluminous midnight blue cloak. Concealed in the enveloping folds, she was a supremely enticing woman. Tall. Willowy. Mysterious.
Erith's eyelids lowered as he relived what it felt like to have her under him, to have those hips rising in desperate need to meet his.

She looked back over her shoulder to find him loitering. “My lord?”

One sizzling glance so she'd know where his thoughts turned. She had the hood of the cape up, covering her hair, and the torchlight only gave him a shadowy view of her remarkable face. But he'd wager a pile of gold she blushed.

He hid a smile. He got her measure. And her measure fitted him perfectly.

He mounted the steps, took her arm and swept her into the crowded foyer. There was a moment of bustling attention while they removed their outer garments. Erith turned away from the footman to look for Olivia.

And stopped dead.

Any words died on his lips. His heart gave a great lurch against his ribs. His hands clenched into tight fists at his sides. The turbulent ocean of festive noise that surrounded them receded to resonant silence.

He couldn't take his eyes off her.

“By God, I never thought you'd wear it.” His voice sounded rusty.

“Neither did I.”

She nervously lifted her slender hand with its long, aristocratic fingers. To touch the elaborate ruby collar he'd offered as tribute and that she summarily rejected. Because she wore no man's brand of ownership.

Until now.

The message was plain.

His heart began to pound in great deep beats. She was his. And she'd stay his, whatever the world flung at him.

He strode forward and grabbed her up to press a kiss to her lips. It was quick and hard and a mark of possession. He knew when he lifted his head and stared into her startled tawny eyes that she read it as exactly that.

“My lord…” she stammered, and his arm around her slender waist tested her unsteadiness.

Good. He wanted to affect her the way she affected him. After last night, they were equals. He wanted to keep that balance.
He wanted to keep her.

He tucked the shocking idea away for later consideration.

Vaguely, he became aware that an appalled silence had descended upon the room. He forced his gaze away from her beautiful, astonished, astonishing face.

Everyone in the entrance hall stared aghast at him and Olivia. Montjoy's guests weren't made up purely of the highest in society. There were demimondaines and actors and artists and musicians as well as the ton's wilder element.

Briefly he caught Carrington's devastated expression. The man looked as though every dream had shattered.

She was always meant for me.

Erith saw his boyhood friend acknowledge and accept the wordless message. Then he turned back to his spectacular mistress, slender and graceful in his hold.

“You can let me go now.” Olivia's whisper held a delicious tinge of laughter. “We've caused enough scandal.”

“I only kissed you,” he muttered, even as he took in the incredulity, disapproval, and prurient interest surrounding them.

“I don't kiss,” she said gently.

Then very deliberately she stretched up and brushed her mouth over his. He jerked when he felt the hot, taunting sweep of her tongue across the seam of his lips.

A blatant invitation to pleasure or his name wasn't Julian Southwood. He fought the wild surge of passion that heated his blood. He was perilously close to snatching her away from this crowded and ostentatious pile to some private place where he could tumble her unhindered.

Wouldn't that make the damned gossips sit up and pay attention?

The taunting kiss was over before he could respond. She
laughed softly and glided across to the foot of the stairs. In a daze, he followed.

By tomorrow all London would know how utterly in thrall the Earl of Erith was to this alluring witch. And the tragic but unavoidable fact was that all London would be right.

He took her arm again, curling his fingers around the long black silk glove that reached almost to her armpit. The material was warm from her flesh. Another wave of desire slammed through him. He needed to claw back some control or the world would talk about him not only as totally besotted but shamelessly flaunting it.

“You approve of my ensemble?” she asked teasingly as they mounted the marble staircase with its gilt railings and wall of smirking plaster cupids.

“How could I not? You are stunning.”

Her silk dress was monastic in its simplicity. Black as night with no distracting adornments of lace or ribbon or embroidery. It was slashed low and square over her bosom, leaving a sweep of creamy skin up to her long neck. Where the ruby collar sparkled like some barbaric badge of slavery.

Then he remembered her guttural, unrestrained cry in his arms last night and realized she wore it as celebration of freedom as much as mark of bewitchment.

When he bought the extravagant and unusual bauble, he'd known it would suit her. He'd had no idea how perfectly.

She wore no other jewelry. With her hair swept up in a severe Grecian style, the savage red glitter of the collar captured all attention.

Unless one noticed the woman wearing it, and how could one not? She was breathtaking. She was a burning flame of enticement. She was love in human form. The flashing rubies and diamonds in the collar were no more brilliant than her tiger eyes.

“Olivia…” he began, but they'd reached the top of the stairs and Montjoy rushed out of the ballroom to greet her.

When the fop kissed Olivia on the cheek and embraced
her, there were no gasps of surprise or frowns of censure. But then, Erith suspected most people here knew of the man's proclivities.

It was a louche crowd, cynical, sophisticated, jaded. Prepared to witness anything but a display of genuine passion. How amusing that a simple kiss between a man and woman should shock them to the soles of their dancing pumps.

He stood back and let Olivia and Montjoy enjoy their meeting. Now that he knew how Montjoy had supported Olivia through her darkest days, Erith couldn't resent the fellow.