The Wicked One (2 page)

The way he said the words — caressingly, almost invitingly, a velvet command — sent an unexpected arrow of heat through her blood that found its mark at the junction of her thighs.  Her mouth went dry.  Her pulse quickened.  She had come here steal the aphrodisiac, to humiliate this man . . . but the idea of seducing him, and best of all, mastering him, was a heady thought indeed.  For a moment, her calculating eyes settled on the bare oval of skin at his throat, then roved down his torso, assessing him as men had assessed women throughout the ages and finding him blessed in form as well as face.  But no.  She would not respond to her body's carnal demands.  She would not give Blackheath the satisfaction; let him want her, let him covet her, let him hate her, even — but he would never have her . . . not on his terms.

It was obvious he had other ideas.  In the mirror, she could see his hands at his throat now, unbuttoning the collar of his shirt, chin raised and his eyes — black, compelling, heavy-lidded eyes — still watching her.  There were promises in those eyes.  A dangerous heat that made her own body respond in kind.  And now, as casually as if he were undressing before a wife instead of the one person in the world poised and more than willing to shoot him, he pulled his shirt free of his waistband, bunched its tails in his fists, and dragged the garment up and over his head.

Muscles in his back rippled, glowing tawny in the faint candlelight, skating over powerful shoulders.  Lord, he was gorgeous.

He stood watching her in the mirror, the shirt hooked over his forefinger.

"And now, my dear?"

"Face me and drop the breeches," she snapped, wanting to humiliate him.  "Let's see if the rest of you measures up to what you've already bared."

He merely smiled.

She shifted forward on the bed.  "I
said
, drop the breeches.  Like it or not, Blackheath, you will imbibe this potion, and your body will prove whether or not it is the
real
aphrodisiac before I try it on someone far more important than you."

He gave an overly dramatic sigh.  "In that case, I fear I don't quite see the point of this little . . . exercise," he murmured, releasing the shirt.  It whispered down over the chair, hung there a moment, and then slid to the floor in a pool of fine white lawn.  Blackheath did not stoop to retrieve it.  Nor did he bother to turn around, as though he did not respect the danger she presented.  His studied nonchalance stoked Eva's fury — even as it filled her with desire.  What infuriating arrogance!  What unbelievable egotism!  What . . . beautiful arms, hard and strong and slightly bulging where they met those handsome shoulders —

"For you see," he continued, with maddening logic, "arriving home to find a strange and beautiful woman waiting in his bed is fantasy incarnate for any man.  The mere sight of you, madam, and the knowledge that I will soon have you, is more than enough to arouse me.  I ask you, what good is a love potion, and what does taking it prove, when a man already wants a woman?"  At her look of stony wrath, he merely gave a chiding smile.  "Really, if it's a reaction you're looking for, I daresay you would be far better advised giving it to one of the statues downstairs."

Eva's smile faded.  Her face went flat and hard.  She began to swing her legs off the bed.

"Or," continued Blackheath, in that same calculatedly mocking tone, "taking a dose of it yourself.  After all, you seem far less willing than I to indulge in a night of bedplay . . . though I can certainly remedy that particular reluctance —
without
benefit of an aphrodisiac."

That did it.  Eva slid off the bed, came up behind him, and put the pistol to the base of his skull, her mouth two inches from the warm, deadly metal as she raised herself on tiptoe to hiss into his ear, "Are you ready to get down to business?"

"I am more than ready.  It is
your
readiness, madam, that is in question."

Snarling, Eva shoved the pistol hard against his head.  In the next instant, she found herself flat on her back and gasping for breath as she stared up at the hangings of his bed, her body crushed beneath the splendid weight of his, her arms pinned flat to the mattress over which he'd shoved her in that one lightning-fast movement that had knocked the wind from her lungs.

Stunned, she glared up at him, her heart pounding.  He had bested her.

Imagine!

He smiled down at her, but his eyes were not amused; they were glittering now, cold, deadly . . . and reflecting the desire she, too, felt — but refused to fully acknowledge.  His mouth lowered, and she flung her head to one side to avoid the sudden, seductive whisper of his lips against her cheek.

"You know what they say about women who play with fire," he murmured.

"I am not playing."

"How unfortunate.  I am."

"This is
not
a game, Blackheath," she gritted from between clenched teeth, glaring toward the window where her canvas bag sat ready by her escape route. 
Escape.
  She quivered as his lips, so warm, so demanding, brushed over the curve of her jaw, igniting unwelcome fires, threatening her resolve.

"Ah, but it is . . . and I can assure you, my dear, that I will win it.  As the outcome is inevitable, why don't you relax and enjoy yourself?"

"I cannot enjoy the attentions of a scoundrel who nearly ruined my life.  Why don't you just admit you switched that potion, Blackheath?"

"Ah, but with pleasure.  It was necessary to keep it safe, you see.  My brother Andrew is a bit of a . . . hotspur.  I could not entrust something as valuable as the world's first proven aphrodisiac into his keeping — even if he
did
invent it.  My intentions were only to fool him into thinking he was carrying home the genuine article.  The fact that you were fooled as well, and your own no doubt treasonous plans sabotaged by my actions, was merely an unforseen boon."

"I am an American," Eva hissed.  "Though you pompous Englishmen may consider my intentions
treasonous
, my countrymen would call them patriotic."

"My dear girl.  When are you Yankees ever going to acknowledge that America is not a
country
, but a series of colonies?"

Eva trembled with fury.  But he was crushing her, pinning her helplessly to the sheets, the mattress.  She felt him pull the bottle from her fingers and place it on the bedside stand — out of reach, out of harm's way.  She could not move.  Could not even get her knee up to crush his groin and destroy any and all chances of his ever siring the sixth duke.  And now he had pulled back to gaze down at her, triumphant, the hunter admiring his kill before devouring it, one palm cupping the side of her face and forcing her to look up and into those magnetic black eyes.

Her breasts fired in response.  She could feel the nipples, tight and hard, against her chemise, her stays, her gown.  And she could feel his arousal pressing against her pelvis, even though breeches and skirts separated them.

Think, Eva . . . fast!

The pistol.

She tried to raise her arm, but no, he was still one step ahead of her and had anticipated her movement.  His fingers closed over her hand, gently forcing it back down to the sheets, the thumb teasing the sensitive inside of her wrist, rubbing gently, stroking, drawing little circles there until she was no longer trying to turn away, until the pistol, and her desire to empty it into him, were the furthest things from her mind.

Her fingers relaxed.  The pistol slid from her grasp.

"So, madam," he murmured, dragging her hand up to his mouth and kissing each knuckle, one by one, as his dark gaze held hers from over the top of each.  "Shall we get on with this . . . seduction, or shall I send you home like a good little girl and leave us both wondering what might have been?"

He was dipping his tongue between the base of each finger now, causing involuntary tremors to rake her body, causing her nipples to pucker and ache for wanting him . . . causing her senses to grow thick, vitreous, and dulled.  Eva desperately sought the fury that would protect her — and found only helplessness.

Panic.

She glared up at him.  Up into those black, black eyes.  It was said that the eyes were the mirror of the soul, but Blackheath's soul was a well whose bottom was miles down.  She could read nothing in those eyes.  Nothing.  And then he brought her hand to his lips, pressed his mouth to her palm, and touched the point of his tongue to it.

Eva caught her breath.  And what remained of her resolve. 
Don't break eye contact with him!  Don't let him know how your body is responding, and for God's sake, don't let him know how frightened that response is making you!

But he knew.  And she knew he knew, because now he was smiling in triumph, touching his fingers to the curve of her bottom lip, rubbing it, massaging it, and coaxing the response he wanted from her with a skill that had her very skin burning the clothes that lay, damply now, against it.  He was the master.  He was the wolf.  And this was a game of seduction, all right, but
she
was the one being seduced.  The one who had been rendered helpless.  She fought for control, but it fled her as he touched two fingertips to his tongue and brought them, wet now, back to her mouth, tracing the proud bow of her upper lip until Eva's gaze went glassy with desire.

His lashes lowered, and bending his head, he kissed her.

There was no help for it.  No help for her.  Her arms wound around his neck, her mouth parting beneath the insistent pressure of his in sweet defeat.  And sweet, it was.  Sweet, the feel of his tongue tracing her lips, teasing them more fully apart, now slipping between them to taste the inside of her mouth.  Sweet, the sensation of melting straight down into the bed while her body evaporated into steam.  Sweet, the languid heat that consumed her, until her hips tilted up, pressing against his arousal, and her legs drifted apart in unspoken invitation.

Take me.

He dragged his mouth from hers, began kissing a trail down her neck.  His hand was on her breast, cupping it, smoothing it, the thumb grazing the nipple through fabric that stood no chance against his attentions.  She felt his fingers slip beneath the bodice, beneath the chemise, popping the hardening nipple free to caress and tease it.  Long, masterful fingers that knew exactly what they were doing.  Oh, dear God.  Oh, Lord, help her!  No man should have this sort of control over her!  Fear mingled with desire.  She twisted away, her breath coming hard.

"I've changed my mind.  Let me up now, Blackheath, or you will regret it."

"If I let you up now, we will both regret it."

"I'm warning you, Blackheath."

"Of course you are, my dear."  But he ignored the narrowing of her eyes, the mixture of fear and desperation that lent them a cold emerald glitter in the faint light.  He was too focused on conquest.  On mastery.  And on her nipple, around which he was tracing little circles of fire with his finger.

"Blackheath —"

He lifted his head then and smiled.  "But since we are on the subject of warnings, I think it's time I issued one of my own."

"What," she scoffed, reclaiming some of her bravado, "to stay out of the bedchamber of the big, bad ducal wolf?"

His eyes were the cobra's again, black, dangerous, ruthless — and without soul.  "If you ever again lay a hand against any member of my family, I will find you — and I will ruin you more thoroughly than you can even begin to imagine."

His words iced her spine.  She stared at him, her pulse thudding in her ears as she tried to find something to say.

"While I admire ingenuity, I despise the means by which you carried out your little robbery of the aphrodisiac," he continued.  "You may think highly of your own cleverness, your ruse of a disabled carriage to lure my brothers into stopping to help you, but how did you repay their kindness?  By striking Charles down and leaving him unconscious in the road in the manner of the crudest highwayman.  You might have killed him."  The black eyes grew savage.  "You might have killed Andrew as well, had he not acted with such a cool head.  Perhaps you do not know me very well, madam, but I can assure you that I do not take kindly to anyone who threatens or inflicts harm upon my family."

She seized his hand, shoving it away from her breast and gripping it ruthlessly hard.  "If your family lacks the good sense to be off the roads after dark, then they got what they deserved."

"And if you, my dear, lack the good sense to stay out of a man's bedchamber, then you will get what
you
deserve . . ." — his gaze flickered to her nipples, which were standing tautly beneath the fabric of her gown — "and, I might add, now seem to want."

Incensed, Eva reached blindly for the pistol, but it was gone, swallowed in a tangle of sheets, a hard lump separated from her questing fingers by soft linen and too many bunches and folds.

"Now shall we dispense with words and carry on with . . . physical contact?"

She smiled.  "What a divine idea."

And managed to get her knee up.

It did not catch him in the groin as she had intended, but at the V of his ribs in a solid blow that doubled him up and punched the breath from his lungs in pained surprise.  It was all Eva needed.  She shot out from under him, shoved him mightily onto his back, and, straddling him with her body, pressed her thumbs down hard into the base of his windpipe.

He blinked up at her in disbelieving astonishment.

"I can turn the tables as easily as that," she snarled, glaring triumphantly down into his eyes.  "And don't you forget it."

He swallowed — or tried to.

"My late husband
le Comte
spent two years in the Orient as governor of a French outpost," she added in a low, menacing voice.  "When I wasn't covering for his incompetence by performing his political duties for him, I was learning all I could from the natives — including the best ways to disable a man and defend myself if the need ever arose.  Cross me again and I'll kill you."

"My dear lady, if that is your intention, I implore you to use the pistol," he managed with rueful sarcasm.  "Strangulation is a most . . . ignoble . . . way to die."