by Kate Bateman
His gaze flicked down her body, and Emmy sucked in a breath as she grasped his implication. Her skin heated with anger and embarrassment. “I wouldn’t sleep with a man just to save my neck!”
He seemed amused by her outrage. “No? You won’t offer me your body in exchange for your release?”
Heat rose at the thought of them together in that way. If he’d been desperate and dishonorable, easily swayed from his goal, she might have stood a chance with a tactic like that, but Harland was irritatingly upright. Getting him horizontal and trying to persuade him to free her would have no effect whatsoever. He was immune.
Emmy sent him her haughtiest glare. “If you think for one moment, Lord Melton, that I would stoop to such a level, then you are gravely mistaken. And besides,” she added for good measure, “even if I were the sort of woman who would do that, I know perfectly well that nothing could sway you.”
His low laugh made her stomach coil even tighter. “Are you sure? Why not try it anyway? What have you got to lose?”
What did she have to lose, indeed? Only her virginity. Only her pride, her honor, her personal integrity. Everything she had left.
“You never know,” he said softly, and his voice was a wicked serpent tightening its coils around her heart. “Maybe I’ll buckle under the onslaught of your ardor.” His gaze bored into hers. “Convince me, Emmy.”
“No!”
He raised his brows. “Why not? It worked last night, did it not? I congratulate you. If that was feigned passion, it was extremely convincing. You certainly had my body persuaded, if not my mind.”
Her eyes widened at his unexpected admission. He smiled.
“Let’s try something new, shall we? I call it ‘honesty.’ It’s where you say things that are true. I’ll start, if you like. I’m hard as a rock for you right now.”
Her mouth dropped open.
He casually lowered his hand to his lap and readjusted the bulge that had appeared in the front of his breeches. It reached almost to his waistband. He made no effort to hide it; he simply looked down and laughed.
Emmy couldn’t drag her eyes away. A terrifying wave of desire sizzled through her. He wasn’t lying. He wanted her. And she wanted him too. Not because she thought she could persuade him to release her, but because for the very first time in her life, here was a man who knew the truth—the complete truth about her—and he still wanted her. Wanted her despite it. Maybe even because of it.
Her senses reeled. That, paradoxically, was freedom.
He stood abruptly, and she did the same, instantly alert. He prowled around the desk and she sidestepped the opposite way, retreating until her bottom bumped the table that held the lamp. He sent her a mocking, triumphant look that said, Where do you think you’re going? He was blocking the path to the door and the only other choice was his bedroom.
Not an option.
She leaned back as he stopped in front of her and closed the distance until they were almost nose to nose. His breath warmed the skin of her cheek and something dangerous and ungovernable crackled in the air between them.
“Here’s another truth,” he growled, and this time she had no trouble reading the anger in his glare. His nostrils flared and his eyes grew impossibly dark. “You’re mine now, Emmy Danvers. I will never release you. Not even if you begged me on your knees. Not even if you fucked me all night.”
The coarse declaration dropped between them like an incendiary device. His storm-dark eyes dropped to her throat, to the dip of her clavicle exposed by her shirt, then travelled back up to her mouth. They were both breathing hard, as if there wasn’t enough air in the room, and Emmy couldn’t remember when she’d been so aroused. Every cell in her body burned.
“Damn you,” he murmured.
Emmy licked her lips. There were times when stealing something wasn’t so bad. Stealing a kiss, for example. “I—”
“Shut up,” he groaned. “I can’t trust a single word that comes out of your mouth.”
Chapter 24.
Alex couldn’t remember a time when he’d been so angry, so aroused, so full of contradictory emotions. He wanted to strangle the deceitful little wretch for proving his suspicions correct, to punish her for doing something so utterly foolish as to get herself caught like this, by him.
He was honor bound to turn her in—she was a criminal, one who’d stolen thousands of pounds’ worth of property that wasn’t hers. So why in God’s name was he feeling guilty for tricking her? For winning? Why this ridiculous urge to protect her from the obvious outcome of her capture—death by hanging, or at the very least banishment to the colonies, which was tantamount to the same thing, only slower?
And where had the suggestion that she use her body to influence him come from? The words had been out of his mouth before his brain had even been consulted. Had he been testing her? He told himself it had been to shock her, to goad a reaction, because he’d never be swayed in that way. Except he wanted her so badly, he might actually have been tempted to break his own strict moral code and let her escape. Christ, what was the matter with him?
He would have been furious if she’d even looked like she was considering it, but maybe it would have been better if she had. If she’d tried to seduce him, his disillusionment would have been complete. He could have been disgusted with her, instead of grudgingly impressed by her integrity, even now, when she’d proved a liar and a thief.
Bloody hell.
Alex glared down at her. How could someone look both guilty and innocent at the same time?
He touched his thumb to her lower lip and a savage feeling swept over him, a primitive need to vanquish, to conquer. He wanted to devour her, to possess all that spirit and defiance, to burn her up in the force of his desire. Bloody woman. She drew him against his will. Against his better judgment. What the hell was he going to do with her?
He kissed her.
Heat sparked the moment his lips touched hers. He hadn’t meant to do it—he was sure he hadn’t—but kissing her suddenly seemed like the most sensible thing in the world. The most necessary thing. He’d caught her. He couldn’t let her escape. Kissing her senseless was the perfect way to stop that from happening. There. He could still think logically.
Alex closed his eyes and embraced the darkness. Her lips opened under his—so soft, so sweet—and he swept his tongue inside her mouth with a groan of bliss. Deprived of sight, he savored every other sensation: the softness of her skin, the addictive scent of her, the little gasp she made against his mouth.
Bloody woman.
* * *
Emmy could barely make sense of what was happening. Why was Harland kissing her? Was this punishment? It didn’t feel like punishment. It felt wonderful—which in itself was so wrong as to be laughable. His tongue delved into her mouth and tangled with her own, and she grasped the edge of the table to stop herself from throwing her arms around his neck and pulling him closer.
He murmured her name between kisses and a quiver started deep inside. Heat bloomed and spread. This was a mistake. A dreadful, glorious mistake.
A fatalistic recklessness swept over her. She was about to lose her freedom, maybe even her life. This was her last chance to grasp a moment of happiness. If she told Harland to stop, he would. He was enough of a gentleman that he would listen if she made an objection. But she didn’t want to object. For once she was going to reach for something—someone—she desired for herself. Even if he was the author of her downfall, Alexander Harland could give her one of the highlights of her life.
“Wait!” she gasped.
He stilled, instantly suspicious, and pulled back.
Emmy leaned sideways and extinguished the lamp.
He cursed the sudden darkness and made a grab for her, presumably thinking she was about to try to escape. He caught her upper arms in a fierce grip, and Emmy laughed in sheer elation.
Oh, yes.
She threw herself against him, full-length, flinging her arms around his shoulders and tugging his head down. He stagge
red backward, caught by surprise, then grunted as she pressed her lips to his. For a moment, he stilled, and she thought he would push her away—then with a growl deep in his throat, he picked her up, anchoring her to him with his hands at the back of her thighs.
The room spun in the darkness. Emmy wrapped her breeches-clad legs around his hips and clung to him, crossing her ankles behind his back. He crushed her into his chest as their lips met in a kiss that burned right down to her toes.
She was Icarus, flying too close to the sun, Persephone being dragged down into the underworld. She didn’t care. This might be a disaster, but it was a glorious, glittering, incendiary disaster. A crazy blur of seeking limbs and hot mouths in the dark.
“You’re a liar,” he panted against her lips. “And a thief.”
She couldn’t deny it. She tightened her fingers in his hair.
His teeth caught her lower lip and tugged. “I want you more than anyone I’ve ever met.”
Emmy rewarded his admission with another long, desperate kiss.
His fingers tightened on the back of her thighs. “I want to be inside you. I want to fuck you all night.”
Delicious filthy words in her ear. This was the Harland she’d wanted to find, lawless, uncivilized. Free. “Yes,” she said fiercely.
He stilled and raised his head. She could barely see him, just the faintest outline, but she knew she’d surprised him.
“Yes,” she repeated, more forcefully. “And not to make you release me. This has nothing to do with that. This is just you and me.”
She had no hope of clemency. No expectation of anything but pleasure. It was just that she’d finally found someone she could trust with her body, if not her secrets. Harland wouldn’t hurt her, however much she teased and tormented him. If this truly was her last night of freedom, then she would spend it well. She would burn up in the brightness. She’d go out in a ball of flame.
His arms tightened, squeezing her ribs. She could feel his labored breathing, the rapid rise and fall of his chest against hers. He seemed to be waging an internal war; no doubt his sense of what was proper police procedure was battling with the iron-hard arousal she could feel pressing against her stomach.
She wanted desire to win. Needed it to win. Her entire body was glowing, fizzing with anticipation.
“Take off your clothes,” she said.
Chapter 25.
Her hoarse command seemed to free him of the last vestiges of control. In a flurry of movement, he turned and carried her through the doorway and into his bedroom. A rush of air, a falling sensation that made her stomach pitch, and Emmy was flat on her back with Harland’s delicious weight pressing her down into a soft mattress.
It was even darker in here. She experienced a flash of disappointment that she couldn’t see him, his expressions, that glorious body of his. But, oh, she could feel. His hands sliding over her, molding, squeezing, stroking. In a sudden move he rolled over onto his back, taking her with him, and she was on top, straddling him.
“Shirt,” he rasped, and she grabbed the hem of hers and tugged it over her head. She wasn’t entirely clear which one of them was in control now, but that hardly mattered when they both wanted the same thing.
The darkness gave her confidence. She was beautiful, invincible. Shameless.
His hand caught her hip, then slid up her side, and she sucked in a breath as he traced the edge of her short stays. She struggled to release the ribbon tie at the front. He pushed her hands aside, caught the top of the corset, and tugged. The cotton gave way with a deafening rip. Emmy wriggled her shoulders and managed to get the thing off her arms, then gasped as his warm palms covered her naked breasts.
He hissed out a breath, the sound indicative of pure, unadulterated pleasure.
“Emmy,” he groaned, and the way he said her name, almost as if it were a benediction, made her glow. “So soft.”
He squeezed, and she threw her head back, savoring the abrasion against her peaked nipples. His stomach muscles tensed beneath her as he sat up. She caught a flash of white as he tugged his own shirt over his head and sent it sailing aside, and then there was only the extraordinary sensation of his hot, hard body against hers.
She was still sitting in his lap, her knees on either side of his hips, pressing him into the bed. She could hardly believe that she was skin-on-skin with a man. This man. The heat was incredible, the contours of his muscles even more amazing as she stroked her palms over his shoulders, down his biceps, across the front of his chest. He shuddered beneath her touch, and she shifted in his lap, trying to get closer to the intriguingly hard part of him that throbbed and burned between her legs.
“Wicked girl.”
He bent his head and caught one of her nipples in his mouth, using one hand to push her breast up toward him. Emmy arched, offering herself as his tongue swirled and laved and his mouth provided a tantalizing suction. Yes! This was what he’d done in the conservatory. And this time, there would be no interruptions. She would give herself to him completely; no reservations, no regrets. She wanted this, needed this, with every fiber of her being.
He grasped her hips and moved her off his lap, to the side. The mattress dipped beside her, and she realized he was removing his breeches with brisk efficiency. She lay down next to him and did the same, wiggling her hips, less proficient than he was. Her elbow bumped his ribs and he grunted, half pain, half amusement.
“Wretch.”
She’d never been completely naked with a man before. In spite of the darkness, she could feel her entire body suffusing with a blush. And then there was no time to think. Harland turned on his side to face her, and his greater weight made her roll toward him. Their bodies touched all the way down. His arousal pressed insistently against her stomach, and her heart leapt in mingled anticipation and fear. She was almost glad she couldn’t see him.
Oh, God. She really was doing this.
His hand found her hip, and he uttered a hiss of satisfaction as he stroked up over her waist, her ribs, her shoulder and neck. And then he threaded his fingers in her hair and pulled her in for a scorching kiss.
“Mine,” he murmured against her throat, and Emmy could only give a wordless moan in answer.
He pushed her onto her back and moved partly over her, stroking up her arms, coaxing them up over her head. He caught her wrists, but no sooner had he taken her prisoner than he released her to trace the sensitive skin of her inner arms down to her breasts and then lower still. His palm flattened over her belly, and Emmy bucked her hips, desperate for him to move lower, to put his hand where she throbbed and ached. There was a restlessness in her that only he could quell.
“Nothing but trouble,” he groaned, and she wasn’t sure if that was a complaint or praise.
His hand slipped between her legs, and the ache turned to sweet fire. The moisture from her body coated his fingers, and Emmy squirmed as he circled and teased. He gave a dark chuckle, as if he knew how much he was torturing her, and took her lips in a deep, openmouthed kiss.
Emmy gasped in delight and arched her back as he pushed his finger inside her, amazed by the intensity of the pleasure. Her body clenched around him as he teased; long, luscious slides that built a coiling, knotted tension in her belly. Soon she teetered on the edge of something momentous, something she needed, but couldn’t quite catch. She lifted her hips, begging him with incoherent sounds to resolve the glorious confusion he’d created.
“Harland!”
He pressed the heel of his hand against her. “Now,” he growled.
His order pushed her over the edge of some invisible abyss. Her entire body tensed, then shattered, as pleasure radiated over her in waves.
She was still shuddering when he rose up and covered her with his body, supporting the weight of his torso on his arms. The lower half of him pressed against her, a delicious, unfamiliar weight, and Emmy opened her legs to allow him to fit more snugly between her thighs. He enveloped her, overwhelmed her in the best possible way, and
the musky scent of him, of them, increased her arousal even more.
Here in the dark, they were equals, both as blind as each other. She couldn’t see him, but she could hear his throaty growl; it resonated in his chest and down into her limbs.
“I want to be inside you. Is that what you want?”
“Yes,” she panted.
He caught her hand and drew it down between them. Emmy sucked in a breath as he curled her fingers around his shaft and covered them with his own. He let out an impassioned groan and his fist gave an involuntary squeeze.
“Trouble,” he muttered thickly.
Emmy widened her eyes at the feel of him. Velvet soft and truncheon hard. With him guiding their joined hands, he positioned himself at the entrance of her body, sliding against her slick folds, and she shivered in anticipation.
* * *
Alex was shaking with the need to join his body with Emmy’s, but there was one thing he needed to know.
“Am I your first?” he breathed raggedly. “Are you a virgin?”
He heard her surprised exhale. “Yes, I—”
“I’ll go slowly,” he heard himself promise, then could have bitten off his own tongue. Despite his words, he hadn’t meant to go this far. He’d planned to make her climax with his hand and then let her do the same for him. A satisfactory quenching of this ridiculous, inconvenient desire. But suddenly, being inside Emmy Danvers seemed vital to his continued survival.
The fact that she was a virgin should have cooled his ardor—she’d only confirmed what he’d already suspected—but the thought that he would be the first to show her pleasure this way gave him an unreasonable rush of satisfaction.
He told himself this wasn’t making love. It was just sex. Lust. Fucking in its purest form. But that didn’t explain the tendrils of affection that had become entwined with the attraction. He wanted to both conquer her and protect her. To capture her and keep her safe. He didn’t even begin to understand it.
