Christ, it was his fault. Every bit of it. He could have left her alone. He could have taken the hundred thousand pounds and marched her off to the nearest ship for Virginia. Even today, he could have sent her to her father’s home, at least until he could be assured of her safety.
But he was a selfish fucking bastard. And he had wanted her from the moment he’d first seen her. He had seen her innocence, her brightness, her intelligence and beauty and daring, and he’d wanted to possess it all for himself.
He’d wanted to possess her.
Hell, yes. Everything could change. For now he knew that he needed to let her go. To rid her of him. To send her back to safety. Let her go to Virginia. By God, let her go anywhere else in the goddamn world, so long as she was away from him and safe. He couldn’t bear to be the cause of her death. To be the reason she was in grave danger. Until tonight, he’d thought he couldn’t bear to set her free.
Tonight, he’d realized his capacity to love hadn’t withered away entirely from his black soul. He loved Clara. Loved her more than he’d ever experienced. It terrified him. Terrified him as much as the notion of being responsible for her death did.
Because of his love for her, he knew he could no longer keep her tied to him. The danger surrounding them aside, she was too good for him. He’d been too caught up in his own needs to acknowledge it before, but he could damn well see the truth for what it was now. He didn’t deserve a woman like her.
And she didn’t deserve a man like him, a jaded bastard who’d manipulated her, seduced her, deceived her, and all because he had wanted her for himself. Because the good and the innocence in him had died the day he’d accepted Lady Esterly’s proposition. He’d become what he hated most, and if Clara remained his wife, he would only ruin her as surely as he had been ruined. The binds between them needed to be severed for her safety as much as for her own good.
And so, he would send her back to her papa by any means necessary. Anything to secure her safety, to give her the sort of future he could never provide. She was a stubborn woman, his little dove, and he knew she would not go easily. But go she would, for he loved her enough to make certain there would never be another day she suffered because of him.
For the moment, however, he couldn’t bear to push her away. He needed this precious time, needed the feeling of her wrapped around him, the luxurious strands of her hair beneath his palm, her even breathing, her lush breast pressed against him. He needed to drink in this one last night they would have together before he said goodbye to her forever.
“Thank you for chasing him away,” she said quietly into the stillness that had descended between them, disrupting the bleak turn of his thoughts at last.
He’d supposed she’d fallen asleep, worn out as she must be from the horrors of the attack she’d endured. He swallowed against a sudden thickness in his throat. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you sooner. I wish to God I’d been there before…”
He couldn’t bring himself to give voice to what had happened to her. That bastard’s hands on her throat. The purple fingerprints on her otherwise flawless skin. The angry bruise on her cheek. His fists clenched.
Her hand traveled over his chest in a tentative caress, almost soothing. “You came for me just when I needed you, Julian.”
Jesus, could it be that she was reassuring him? How utterly ridiculous. How thoroughly Clara. He trapped her wandering hand in his, stilling it. “Don’t fancy me a hero, little dove. I’m a man, weak-willed, selfish, and more flawed than you can imagine.”
His biggest flaw of all was being incapable of protecting the woman he loved. How helpless he’d felt, attempting to slam his way through the door, hearing the muffled sounds of the breath being choked from her. To think someone in the world felt such malice toward him that he’d intended to kill not only Julian but his wife as well was jarring indeed.
Even more jarring when one considered the pathetic fact that he hadn’t an inkling as to who would wish him such ill or why. He’d been of half a mind to suspect Whitney of hiring someone to remove him, blight that he was, from the earth. But Jesse Whitney loved his daughter, and he would never have consented to her being injured, which left Julian hopelessly adrift.
She pressed a kiss to his chest, sending a fresh arrow of heat to his groin and effectively cutting through the morose bent of his mind. “You are a good man, Julian, for all that you choose to believe you’re not. Besides, I wouldn’t be here now if it weren’t for you.”
Her drawl remained more pronounced than usual, and her voice felt like honey sliding slowly over him. He didn’t want to think about how near she’d come to death. Didn’t want to entertain for one more moment the knowledge that if anything had happened differently earlier, she would be forever gone. Gone from him he could bear because he loved her too much, but gone from the earth he could not.
She pressed another kiss to his skin, her tongue flicking out to taste him, and he wasn’t sure which urge was stronger, the one to catch her in his arms and flip her on her back or the one to fling her from him for her own good. His fingers tightened over hers, twining with them.
“Damn it, don’t you see? You wouldn’t have been in danger at all, wouldn’t be in this very house like a lamb ripe for slaughter, if it weren’t for me.” His voice was rougher than he’d intended, but there was the truth of it.
“Nothing that happened was your fault.” She seemed to read his mind in that canny way she had. She kissed higher, her hot mouth roaming to his neck. “You mustn’t blame yourself.”
“Ah, but I must, for that is where the blame lies.” And to do penance, he would see her safe and far, far away from him. An ocean away if he had anything to say about it. “I’m so very sorry for all the pain I’ve caused you. How is your cheek, love?”
He’d wanted to summon her a doctor but she’d been adamant in her refusal. With the fight drained from his body, he’d made her promise to agree to an examination in the morning. She had acquiesced with extreme reluctance.
“Sore, but it will heal,” she assured him, and by now her enterprising lips had kissed their way up the cord of his throat, lingering over his Adam’s apple, before finding the solid angle of his jaw. She disentangled her fingers from his grasp, her hand flitting to his shoulder. “What of you? It must have hurt when you broke down the door.”
In truth, he hadn’t felt a damn thing. Fear and determination had pumped through him, washing out any other sensation. He’d never been so frenzied, so terrified. All that had mattered was getting to Clara. Now she fretted over him, as though ramming his shoulder into a piece of wood was the equivalent to even a bloody twentieth of the pain she’d endured. His brave, sweet little dove. How he would miss her when he set her free from her gilded cage on the morrow. But it needed to be done. He was no bloody good for her. No good for anyone.
“Do not concern yourself over my worthless hide.” He couldn’t resist slipping his hand beneath the soft curtain of her hair and stroking up her spine.
She framed his face in both her palms then, her face so near to his that he could distinguish each fleck of navy in her vividly blue eyes. After what had happened earlier, neither of them had been willing to extinguish the lights entirely, and he was glad for it now.
The warm glow of the lowered lamps bathed her ethereal beauty. He studied her, attempting to memorize her features: the rosebud mouth, wayward eyebrow, the freckles, tipped chin, retroussé nose. Perfection. Every inch of her was lovely. Jesus, he would more than miss her. Losing her would be akin to losing a part of himself. The best part of himself. How had she gotten beneath his skin, into his very blood, in such a short span of time?
“I never want to hear you call yourself worthless again,” she told him then, her tone passionate. Dictatorial, almost. “You are anything but. You’ve proven yourself kind and true and brave more times than I care to count. I won’t stand for you to speak ill of yourself ever again. Am I understood, Lord Ravenscroft?”
A wry smile
tugged at his lips. “You are understood, Lady Ravenscroft.” If only he—or anyone else in England, for that matter—esteemed him as highly as the plucky, nude American woman draped over his chest and issuing him orders did. But that was part of why he loved her, wasn’t it? She saw beneath him, saw past the ugliness of his past, saw him better than anyone ever had. And she had chosen him. Against all odds, against logic and reason and goddamn it, even common sense, she had chosen him.
For tonight, at least, she was still his. Before he could say anything else, she kissed him. It wasn’t a skilled kiss. It wasn’t even a sensual kiss. Rather, it was a sudden setting of her mouth upon his, hard and fast. But it was borne from the emotions arcing between them in the night with the force of electricity.
Tonight only, they were man and woman, two people who had nearly lost each other in the darkness. For the time being at least, there was light. There was warmth and there was pleasure, and there was something else that was far more defining and powerful.
There was his love for her, impossible yet true, and that was all that mattered.
* * *
Her attempt at seduction was rather clumsy, even she had to admit. She’d meant to give him a soft, languorous kiss, a kiss that enticed and hinted at greater pleasures in store. Instead, she’d been so overwhelmed by love for him, a fierce surge of protectiveness rippling through her, that she’d mashed their lips together as though she could confess the depth of her emotions with aggression. She doubted he’d ever suffered such awkward inexperience.
Her cheeks heated with mortification and she made to pull away from him, but he caught her shoulders and held her still when she would have retreated. His lips firmed over hers, taking control of the kiss, teasing her mouth open for his exploration. His tongue delved inside, claiming and coaxing. He tasted of whisky and desire, and her fingers sank into his hair as she gave in to him, telling him without words what she most longed to say.
She slid her leg over his thigh so that she straddled him, bringing their lower bodies into full, torturous contact. Take me. He was hard and hot, the tip of him brushing her slick folds in a maddening precursor of what was to come. I’m yours. A low growl of pleasure rumbled from him. She arched into him, wanting his possession so badly she ached with it.
I love you.
Clara kissed him back with all the fiery sensations burning though her: relief, fear, hope, desire. If only she could tell him how she felt. But it was too soon, her emotions too new. And her body clamored for revelations of a different sort entirely. She rubbed the sensitive bud of her sex on his cock. He pumped against her, nipping her lip. His hands came between them to cup her breasts, his thumbs drawing quick, delicious circles over her nipples.
Yes. This was what she needed so desperately after what had happened. She needed to become one with him, for the joining to be frenzied and intense. To lose herself, lose every memory of evil and terror and replace it with the wonder of Julian’s body against hers, on hers, inside hers. She inhaled deeply, savoring the scent of him, cologne and hot-blooded man.
He broke the kiss at last and worked his way down her throat, lingering with sweet tenderness where her skin was sore and bruised. He rained kisses on her, erasing the violence and pain inflicted upon her with each brush of his lips.
“I’m so sorry for this,” he crooned. “I’m so very sorry, my love.”
“It will heal,” she promised, continuing to torment herself by gliding her slick folds over him again and again. “Take away the pain for me, Julian. Replace it with pleasure.”
His tongue flicked over her neck, tasting and licking and banishing every trace of the brigand who’d dared to assault her in her own bed. “I’d take it for you, darling. I’d bear it all for you if I could. That’s how much I—goddamn it, Clara, I will hunt the bastard responsible for this down. I’ll hunt him down and I’ll choke the life from him, and I’ll watch him die.”
His words sent pinpricks of ice through the sensual haze enveloping her. Her husband was not a violent man. But he meant what he’d just said. She had no doubt of that. His deep voice vibrated with a complex blend of rage and passion. This beautiful, enigmatic man she’d married would kill to avenge what had happened to her. The realization left her shaken. Humbled.
“The police will find him,” she said with far more confidence than she felt. The inspector who’d been sent to conduct interviews with the household had seemed rather green and overwhelmed. “The law will see him punished.”
“I’ll see him punished,” Julian vowed before bestowing another series of quick, devoted kisses to her neck. “That’s my promise to you. You’ll never know another moment of fear if I bloody well have a say in it.”
Here was the rattler in him re-emerging. She hadn’t been wrong about that part of him. With everything in her, she believed that if there was indeed a way for him to hunt down the villain who’d attempted to kill them both, he would. And he would extract his own vengeance. But she didn’t want to think any more about vengeance or murders or evil men who attacked in the darkness of the night.
No, she most certainly did not. What she wanted now was her husband. The man she loved. The notorious Earl of Ravenscroft, a man who seemed to regard the entire world around him—even his own life—as some sort of private joke, the man who had married her without ever intending to uphold his half of the bargain, the man who cared for his trying sisters and had committed all manner of sins in the name of providing for them, the man who tried so hard to never allow anyone to see the real him. That was the man she loved. Complicated, baffling, more handsome than any man had a right to be, protective and wild and strong.
And most importantly of all, hers.
She guided his head back to her for another kiss, and this time she took great care not to bungle it as she had before. She angled her mouth over his, kissing him slowly, running her tongue over the seam of his lips until he parted for her, letting her inside. She plundered him, taking and tasting, nipping at him, teasing him, leaving them both breathless. And then she undulated her hips against him, not stopping until the head of him rested at her slick entrance.
“Make love to me, Julian,” she ordered against his mouth.
In one swift motion, he rolled them both so that she was pinned beneath him on his bed. Her thighs opened, welcoming him. His fingers dipped into her folds, working the nub that was so greedy for his touch. She jerked against him, crying out. He kissed her again, deep and voracious, before taking the tip of her breast in his mouth and sucking.
A mewling noise split the air, and she realized dimly that it had come from her. He caught her nipple between his teeth and tugged. Her hands went to his broad back, her nails sinking into his warm, muscled flesh. He played with her, working her fast and hard and bringing her perilously close to release. Then his fingers brushed lower, parting her, sinking inside her body. She twisted and moaned, still unaccustomed to the invasion but knowing now what it meant. Wanting more. She arched into his hand, bringing him deeper inside her, crying out with need.
Her nipple popped from his mouth with a wet sound and he stilled, his gaze meeting hers. “Are you sore, my love? I don’t wish to give you any more pain tonight.”
The discomfort from earlier had gone, and in its place was only a wild, ravaging hunger. A need to have him inside her again. “I’m fine. Please, Julian. I want you.”
Her reassurance was all he needed, for in the next moment, he withdrew his finger and his cock was once more at her entrance, poised. “Are you certain, little dove?” His voice was strained, his expression tense.
She moved against him, bringing the tip of him inside her. “Yes,” the lone word left her lips as a hiss. “Oh yes. I need you inside me.”
“Fuck, Clara. Tell me again.”
His guttural demand was as wicked as it was enticing. He liked when she said sinful things to him, she realized, things she would never have before dared to say aloud or even known existed.
She met his ga
ze, unwavering. “I need you inside me. Now.”
The breath left his lungs in a hot rush, billowing over her bare breasts like a kiss. In one long thrust, he was fully sheathed inside her, deep and rigid and wonderful. Every part of her—her skin, her breasts and limbs and mercy, her entire body—hummed with pleasure. His mouth took hers again as his touch traveled everywhere, stroking her nipples, her back, dipping between where their bodies joined to tease her hungry flesh.
She was wet, so very wet, and he slid in and out of her more easily this time than the last, her body stretching to welcome him, tightening to bring him deeper. It was a beautiful rhythm, and it didn’t take long for her to shatter, clenching around him as waves of bliss licked over her. He continued to thrust inside her, absorbing the ripples of her pleasure.
With another growled curse, he withdrew suddenly from her body and she felt the warm wetness of his seed on her belly. He kissed her again, a possessive claiming as powerful as their coupling had been, and then rolled to his side, his chest heaving, head upon the pillow.
“My God, little dove,” he said, his voice hoarse. “My God.”
* * *
The next morning dawned grim and bleak. Julian woke with Clara pressed trustingly to his side, the scent of sunshine and citrus and some indefinable note that was simply her—lush and effervescent and gorgeous—enveloping him. He ached with everything inside him, every instinct and nerve and raw, pulsating emotion, to keep her forever there. To never let her go.
For the first time, he understood what had been missing from his life. She had been. A complex and determined woman with a keen mind and a sound dose of daring, who’d been bold enough to make him want her and steadfast enough to make him love her. It was the sight of the purple bruises circling her neck like some sort of sick necklace that broke the spell she cast upon him, a reminder that he dared not linger or stray from his course.
Heart’s Temptation Series Books 4-6 Page 48
