Temptation and Surrender (33 page)

H
er day was as busy, if not busier, than ever. Those from the outlying farms came in to hear the story of the treasure. Even though it was locked away and not on show, there were many in the common room, male and female alike, who had seen it the previous day and were happy to describe its fabulousness to their less fortunate neighbors.

“It’s inevitable,” Jonas said when, later that night, with the inn quiet about them, he followed her up the stairs. “This is the country—the news will spread far and wide. However, said news will also include where the treasure presently is, and the fact that the cells below the inn are impregnable.”

“There is that, I suppose.” Reaching the top of the stairs, Em turned to the door to her parlor; she sent it swinging wide—and recoiled on a gasp.

“What?” Jonas was instantly behind her, his hands closing protectively about her shoulders as he looked over her head.

At the devastation inside.

Shock held them immobile for a full minute, their gazes taking in the upended furniture, the cushions flung this way and that, the dresser with drawers hanging open, their contents strewn over the floor—bare boards with the rug flung aside.

“What the hell?” Grim-faced, Jonas set Em gently aside and moved into the room. Nothing seemed broken; this was not wanton destruction.

He scanned the room, then stalked to the bedroom door. It swung wide at his touch; inside the scene was a repetition of that in the parlor—the bedcovers dragged off the bed, the mattress upended, the armoire doors open, every drawer pulled out and emptied on the floor. Even the thick curtains had been pushed aside.

“They were searching for the key.” Em spoke from just behind him.

He glanced down into her pale face. Nodded. “It looks like it.”

Leaving the doorway, he picked his way across the room. The bathing chamber had fewer places to search, but it, too, had been thoroughly ransacked.

The door beyond, leading to the back stairs, stood ajar.

Lips thinning, he walked to the door, examined the latch. “No lock.” There wasn’t even a bolt Em could slide to secure the door. He turned to find her staring at her disarranged towels. “If you’re agreeable, I’ll have Thompson around here tomorrow to put bolts on this door.”

His voice seemed to draw her from her shock. She looked at him; it took a moment for her to work through his words, then she nodded. Wrapping her arms about herself, she shivered. “Yes, please do. Otherwise I’ll never be able to sleep here alone again.”

She’d never be sleeping alone again, here or anywhere else, but he bit back the words; now was not the time to push.

She suddenly looked up, horror in her eyes. “The twins. Issy.”

She hurried toward him; he opened the door and stood aside, then followed her up the back stairs to the upper floor.

Em rushed straight to the twins’ room, but they lay asleep in the moonlight, innocent and undisturbed. Hugely relieved, she waved Jonas back. She stuck her head around Issy’s door, and Henry’s, but all her siblings were safe and sleeping in rooms showing no signs of pillage.

Heaving a huge sigh, she met Jonas’s eyes, flashed him a relieved smile. Silently they made their way back to her rooms.

She halted in the bathing chamber, picked up a towel and started folding it. “Thank goodness whoever it was didn’t think to search up there.”

Or knew better than to bother. Jonas didn’t voice his suspicions, but tucked them away for later examination. He pointed through the bedroom to the parlor. “I’ll get started in there.”

Em nodded. “I’ll get these things tidied away, then come and help.”

He left her to sort through her more personal belongings; returning to the parlor, he righted the furniture and set it back in place. When she joined him, he left her putting back the smaller things dumped out of the drawers, and went into the bedroom. After reassembling the bed, he returned drawers and furniture to their proper place, then set about untangling the covers.

Em came in, saw him, and smiled.

Flicking out the sheet as he’d seen Gladys do countless times, he grunted. “I can manage here. You do the other stuff.”

Her smile widened briefly—he wasn’t at all averse to having her laugh at him, just as long as she laughed—then she turned to the mess the intruder had made of her clothes.

By the time she’d finished tidying and closed the last drawer with a sigh, he’d made a passable job of the bed. There was no point in it being picture perfect; they’d be disarranging it almost immediately.

She came to him, put her arms around him, and laid her head on his chest. “Someone’s after the treasure.”

Although neither spoke the name, both knew who had to be classed as the principal suspect. He dropped a kiss on her brow. “We can think about that tomorrow.” With one hand, he tipped up her chin, looked into her eyes. “For tonight…” He searched her eyes, then bent his head and kissed her.

Covered her lips with his and sensed for the first time that while she was willing, she was distracted. Thinking too much about, worrying too much about, the intruder who had searched her rooms.

“He’s gone,” he murmured against her lips. “He won’t be back.” He supped lightly, tantalizingly. “Not tonight. Not tomorrow. Not again.”

He nipped her lower lip—caught her attention. And with ruthless devotion seized her senses and hauled her, not resisting but for once passive, into a landscape of sensation powerful enough to suspend her thoughts, to circumvent them, to hold her mind in thrall, to take her from the disturbing present and later, he hoped, allow sleep to soothe her.

That was his aim as he kissed her voraciously and with unwavering determination waltzed her into the welcoming heat of their mutual, consuming passion.

That one look into her eyes had been enough to confirm that she was already fretting, concerned, worried—all those weighty cares that came to her by habit. That habitually she’d shouldered alone, by herself. Until now.

Now he was there, to take the weight from her, metaphorically and practically; he’d already claimed that role. And there was nothing to be done until morning.

Until then, she needed to stop thinking, stop worrying.

Yet she hovered on the threshold of the moment; even as his lips parted hers and he plundered her mouth, she was still not fully engaged.

There was only one thing he could imagine strong enough to drag her thoughts from her cares.

So he gave it to her.

Lavished it on her.

Unleashed all he felt for her and purely through their kiss pressed his desire, passion, and need upon her—until she couldn’t resist, couldn’t hold back, until she, the adventurous woman who ruled her heart and soul, had to seize with both hands and plunge into the whirlpool of their passions.

Hands rising to clasp his face, Em gasped, struggling to ride the fiery tide he’d so recklessly let loose, trying to find mental feet she’d already lost in the tumult now raging between them.

This—
this
—was something else. Stronger, more powerful, than she’d yet experienced, the sheer intensity of feeling—of driving relentless need—rocked her, would have shocked her had her Colyton soul not stepped forward and, in awe, metaphorical eyes sparkling, murmured
Yes
.

His arms held her trapped, then his hands were on her, not in gentle persuasion, but in blatant demand. His lips, his kiss, held her wits captive, disengaged, flown, leaving her a prisoner of her senses—senses he suborned. That he made his, his tools, his weapons as, palms hard, his touch almost rough, he closed his hands about her breasts.

Weighed, squeezed, then through the thin fabric of her gown he captured her nipples and rolled, tweaked them to hard, tight buds. His strong fingers played, sending lancing sensation spearing through her, down nerves and veins to pool hotly between her thighs.

He gave her no time to think, no opportunity for her head to clear, for her wits to break free. Releasing her breasts, he skated his hands down her body, over her waist, openly, possessively over her hips, to grasp her bottom, to fill his hands and flagrantly, evocatively grip and knead.

Pressing his hips to her, holding her against his rigid erection, he steered her back until she met the side of the bed.

For one long instant, he held her there, trapped between the bed and him—making her feel what she did to him, impressing every last facet of his arousal on her. Throughout he ravenously kissed her, feasted on her mouth until she felt giddy, weak.

Then he lifted his head, stepped back, spun her around, then stepped in again, so she was trapped facing the bed, with him behind her.

She felt his fingers on the laces of her gown. Felt his gaze—on her breasts.

“Look into the mirror.”

His gravelly command—it was that and no request—had her lifting her gaze. Directly across the bed, against the far wall, sat her dressing table with its wide mirror. The window beside it allowed moonlight to flood in; it was a clear, crisp night—there was more than enough illumination for her to see her own reflection—and see him, a large, dark shadow looming behind her.

She couldn’t make out his eyes, his expression, but his face seemed hard, graven, passion etched.

The sight sent a frisson of lustful expectation sliding down her spine.

An expectation more reckless than any she’d entertained before.

An expectation that only heightened as, with ruthless efficiency, he stripped her gown, petticoats, and chemise from her.

Dropping her clothes to the floor, he brought his hands back to her body, closed them about her breasts once again—and made her gasp as, his hands darker against her pale skin, she watched him possess her sensitive flesh anew.

Releasing one breast, he skated that hand slowly down the front of her body, pausing to splay his fingers over her taut belly and press in as he moved in even closer, and she felt the wool of his trousers lightly abrade the backs of her bare thighs, the already damp curves of her bottom.

Felt his erection, hard and rigid, in the small of her back.

His wandering hand continued assessingly down; his fingers brushed her curls—in the mirror a dark triangle at the apex of her thighs—then his hand moved on, over and around, to fondle her bottom.

Then, from behind, he pressed two long fingers between her thighs, stroked the slick, already swollen flesh, then parted her folds and thrust slowly in.

In…

With a gasp she rose on her toes. Eyes wide, she felt his hand flex; his fingers retreated, only to return an instant later, more forcefully, more definitely.

Her senses tightened, teetered; her skin came alive as he stroked again and again, pushing her on, but before she climbed too high, he withdrew his hand. Released her breast.

“Don’t move.”

His voice was so low, so rough, she only just made out the words, but, her skin tingling in the cool moonlight, ultrasensitive and aroused, she waited, expecting him to dispense with his clothes—instead he went down on one knee and divested her of her stockings and shoes.

She stepped out of the latter, then went to swing around; she was now totally naked, but he was still fully clothed. But before she could turn and set her hands to his coat, he grasped her hips, held her as she was, still facing the bed, as he rose once more behind her.

She looked at him in the mirror. This was not her gentle, persuasive lover, but someone else. This man wanted her, and had stripped his need bare, let it loose, revealing the reality behind his façade.

Looking over her shoulder at the beauty he’d revealed—his for the taking—Jonas barely recognized himself. He hadn’t intended this, much less what, some part of him knew, would follow; his script was already, ineradicably, set in stone. He’d had no idea that dropping his emotional guard and simply letting what he felt for her—his love, if he were honest—free would result in this—this unwavering, unrelenting need to possess.

To possess her, far more deeply than he yet had.

To make her his—incontrovertibly, beyond question, thought, or reason. To impress on her the reality not just of his need for her, but of the rightness of it, the rightness and inevitability of her place beside him.

Beneath him.

Some more primitive side of himself had taken charge, taken absolute control, and now drove him.

Drove him to, while locking his gaze on hers in the mirror, close his hands about her waist and lift her; setting her on her knees on the edge of the bed, he stepped between her spread calves.

Sent one hand to claim her breast once more, possessively enough to make her catch her breath; the other palm he set skating over the ripe globes of her bottom, down and around, then with his fingers he delved into the scalding slickness between her thighs. Thrusting one finger into her heated sheath, with another he found the tight nubbin that testified to her arousal, and caressed. Stroked as his other finger repetitively penetrated.

He heard her breath hitch, tangling in her throat. Saw her lids lower as she desperately tried to draw in a tight breath. Lips parted, skin flushed, she held still, letting him do as he wished, a sensual, sensory captive as he had his way with her—as he prepared her body and her senses for the possession to come.

In the mirror his gaze roamed her body, then he raised his eyes to her face.

“Open your eyes. Watch what I’m doing to you.”

Em heard the guttural order—very clearly an order—and, even though it was an effort to lift her weighted lids, complied without hesitation. She looked at herself, naked in the moonlight, realized she, her hips, were undulating, riding his fingers, searching for relief.

Her whole body felt taut, alive and burning, passion’s heat very real beneath her skin. Never had she felt so…stretched, her senses so racked, so drawn…so expectant. So poised on the cusp of some far greater stimulation.

A sensory explosion that would overwhelm her, that would sweep her away, rip her from this world…

A sensation she couldn’t wait to experience, but…she knew she had to wait. Wait until he judged the moment right, when he would give her…what she truly wanted.