His bare legs stretched out from where the robe parted and fell on either side of his knees. A deep V of skin could be seen above the spot where the sides of the robe crossed his chest.
It appeared that he wore nothing beside the robe. That made the implications of what she was doing more stark. She had expected to find him in a frock coat and boots, or already asleep in a darkened room. Not sitting here, with all this light, almost naked.
He looked marvelous, a man of action temporarily at rest. Despite his relaxation, the magnetism beamed off him invisibly, affecting her as it always did, unsettling her and making her more alive than normal. The candlelight sculpted his handsome face into severe planes in which his dark eyes glowed like black stars.
He had not heard her enter. She stood in front of the door, so afraid and nervous that she had to force her voice out.
“What are you reading?”
He barely reacted, but she could tell that she had startled him.
“Poetry.”
He looked up.
Her dressing gown suddenly felt extremely thin and very wicked. It did not seem to cover nearly as much as it had in her chamber.
He gave her a long, slow inspection full of male interest. A tense, reawakened vitality rolled across the chamber to her.
“You look very beautiful. I have not seen your hair down since that day at the school.” He vaguely gestured at the gown. “It is lovely.”
“Jeanette chose it for me in Paris.”
“Did she suggest that you wear it tonight?”
“No. Why would she?”
He smiled that private smile of his. “So, it was your own idea to put that on, let down your hair, and come here. Why?”
Her face burned. She had not expected to announce her intentions verbally. The gown and her presence were supposed to do that.
“Have you come to tempt me, Diane?”
“Yes.”
“If you think to beguile me with your beauty and then leave, I warn you now that it will not happen that way.”
“I know that.”
He forced his gaze away from her and to the low fire. “You do not even understand what you are offering.”
“I am not ignorant. I know what is expected.”
“You do not know what I will expect. Go back to your chamber.”
She almost obeyed.
She walked toward him instead.
“I do not want this duel to happen. I want you to stand down.”
He watched her, not pleased. Despite his annoyance, she noticed him glancing to her legs as they poked through the slit in the gown with each stride.
“If you have come to me like this, you must want him to live very badly. You would prefer his other solution? Marriage to you?”
She stood beside his bare legs and looked down into dark eyes that contained dangerous depths. Those eyes frightened her years ago. Now they entranced her. “I only care that there is no duel.”
His gaze drifted over her, briefly and thoroughly. “It is not only about you.”
“No, it is also about you and your pride.”
“So, you seek to save a dishonorable man by making me more dishonorable than he is.” He tilted the book in his lap and returned his gaze to it. “Permit me some scruples, finally, where you are concerned. Now, please return to your chamber.”
It was a dismissal, and not gently spoken. Her courage shook. Her whole body did. Being close to him caused that more than the rejection did. Embarrassment at being rebuffed was overwhelmed by disappointment that he did not want her enough.
If she had known more about these things she would not have failed. If she were prettier, or more worldly, or more seductive, he would choose differently.
She should retreat with what pride she had left, but she could not. She might never be this close to him again, might never see the candlelight shading his face like this. Once she walked away, his aura would never surround her as it did now, compelling her to stay even as he repudiated her.
He turned a page. “Leave now. I want you to go.”
Trembling, barely keeping her balance, she lowered to her knees beside his legs and sat back on her feet. He still read the book, but he might see her over its edge.
She released the top pearl button at her breast. It took too long because her fingers did not want to work right. Not only nervousness made them clumsy. Being mere inches from him affected her.
She finally managed it. The gown and its lace parted a little. She worked quickly on the next button.
“Slowly, darling. Seduction is not something that one does in haste.”
She looked up.
The book lay on the table beside the candles. The prince of temptation watched.
His attention held her spellbound.
The other buttons went very slowly since she barely noticed what she was doing. It appeared he did not either. Their connected gazes were all that existed, linking them together, creating admissions and anticipations that should have never been acknowledged. She knew that he wanted her, that was obvious. It was less clear that he would accept her bargain.
With the last button near her waist, she tore her gaze away from his and looked down. The satin gaped, barely covering her hard nipples pressing against the shiny fabric.
She looked back at him. He seemed to be waiting for something.
Swallowing hard, she eased the gown farther apart. The satin glossed against her skin. She moved the fabric farther so that her breasts showed.
The sensation of kneeling there, exposing her nakedness, sent an erotic glow through her. Her breasts grew heavy and full. Her nipples hardened more, sensitive now to the air and his gaze and even the light. Tremors of excitement obscured her embarrassment. The satin’s caress on her skin became a little waterfall of sensuality.
His expression hardened. She sensed a battle being waged. The tension of it charged the air between them.
“I should let you strip completely, so there is no mistaking what is happening, and why.”
“There will be no mistaking.”
Averting her gaze, afraid to see his reaction, she raised her hand and watched, astonished with herself, as she laid it on his bare leg and caressed up to his knee.
The world spun. In a startling, dizzying move, he pulled her forward, into his arms and lap, and took her mouth in a savage kiss.
The satin offered little protection from the warm roughness of his embrace. His mouth demanded a yielding more complete than his kisses ever had before. The hard ridge of his arousal, pressing against her thigh, proved she was a better seductress than she had thought.
His kisses coaxed her passion to rise to the level of his. It began doing so as she responded to his hot, possessive demands. The power of the sensations sliding and prickling through her body frightened her.
“I told you to leave. Do not say you weren’t warned.” His head turned. His soft hair brushed her face. His mouth moved down her neck. Her breasts swelled and tingled as a maddening desire for him to move lower filled her head. She instinctively arched, to encourage that.
He kissed the side of her breast in response. “I am glad that you want this, so it is not too much a sacrifice.”
“I also want you to stop this duel.” She hardly got the words out, barely remembered to demand the promise.
“Do you really think that you could leave now if I refused?”
It sounded like a threat, but he slid his thumb against her nipple to make it clear that she could not leave because she did not want to. Her whole body flexed. Her breaths shortened.
“I give you his life, and you give me yourself. It is a devil’s bargain that you demand, Diane, and we will both soon regret it, I think.” His dark eyes looked right into hers. “Right now, however, I don’t give a damn. You have seen to that.”
He rose with her in his arms. He strode to the bed and dropped her on it. Grabbing the shoulders of her gown, he pulled it down her body and cast it aside, leaving her naked.
Looking down at her, he began untying the sash of his robe.
She almost changed her mind then. The moments beat by, too sharp and real. The sensual frankness of his gaze made what was going to happen undeniable. Lying naked and vulnerable on the bed, covered with nothing but the male power pouring out of him, she knew he had been right. She had not fully understood what she was offering.
She looked away when the robe fell from his shoulders. It was cowardly and he said nothing, but seconds later the room darkened as the candlelight disappeared.
She heard him approach the bed and her heart pounded with a flurry of panic. She almost jumped when she felt his naked body suddenly warming her side. Her eyes grew accustomed to the dark and she snuck a glance.
Propped on one straight arm, he looked down at her. The dark made the bed a small, mysterious place, full of a shadowed intimacy. Not a dream, though, even if the night obscured the world. Dreams were never this tangible and defined. She felt more awake than ever before in her life. The soulful liveliness he always inspired became a physical alertness.
Lowering, he pulled her into an embrace. He caressed her body as if he could see better than she could. She embraced him back, clumsy and unsure and too aware that her surprise at feeling his skin and touch all over her could be heard in her catching breaths.
Kissing her hard, as if impatient with her fear, he caressed more intimately. Her inner thighs. The swells and cleft of her bottom. The free way he handled her body insinuated ownership. His boldness kept shocking her, but that only increased the thrill of the new sensations, and her reactions startled her even more.
He circled his fingertips over her breast. This pleasure she knew. He had already taught her this and she had no defense. The slow caress might have been internal, so directly did the teasing strokes send tremors to her lower body. A fullness grew until a deep, insistent palpitation in her pelvis echoed deep between her thighs.
He kissed her other breast. His tongue flicked, making her tense. His mouth made her nipple so sensitive she could hardly bear it. The combination of caress on one breast and his teeth and lips on the other sent her reeling. She grasped his shoulders and tried to hold on to her trembling, cracking control.
She couldn’t. The fear fell away, and the shock, and the strangeness of being here and doing this. Her mind grew foggy and focused. The lower pulse built and built, intensified by the sensations on her skin and in her body, sensations that began to own her.
The itching, moist throb between her legs became uncomfortable. What he was doing only made it worse. Her hips rocked, to relieve the odd hunger building there. She bit back little whimpers of frustration.
His hand left her breast and caressed down to her stomach. It rested there as her body involuntarily raised and lowered, seeking something.
“This is you wanting me,” he said, gently pressing against the rhythm, guessing her dismay and embarrassment. “But I need you to want me even more.”
His hand stroked lower, to her thighs and their wetness.
To the private place that tortured her.
The shock returned, forcefully. She pressed her thighs together, to stop him.
“You will let me,” he said. “You are mine tonight, and I want this. You want it too.”
He lightly squeezed her thigh in a wordless command and pushed her legs apart.
His caress stunned her. She held him tighter and sought his kiss so she would not cry out. The sensations possessed her, making her want more. She tried to contain what they did to her, but she could not. The pleasure was too concentrated, too direct, almost painful in its intensity. Her physical reaction confused her. The primitive demands in her head frightened her.
He moved on top of her, a strong dark shadow full of physical warmth, part stranger but all male. He continued touching her, coaxing her abandon, forcing her to want him even though doing so terrified her.
“Part your legs more. Bend your knees.”
She did. Her thighs flanked his hips and her arms clung to his shoulders. He pressed against her, slightly filling the throbbing void and relieving the craving. For a few wonderful, perfect seconds she knew a lovely bliss of having him closely bound to her, in her arms and close to her heart. His passion seemed to retreat a little, overwhelming her less, so that she could bask in the intimacy.
It did not last. A raw pain ripped as he pressed farther. A sense of being violated obliterated the tenderness. She grit her teeth and clung to him viciously so that she would not cry.
He stopped and did not move. The pain lessened but was still there. She accepted his kiss, but could not escape the fear that she had just given a part of herself that she could never reclaim. She could run to the ends of the earth, but something of her would always be his.
She thought it was over, but it wasn’t. He moved, and she realized that the initial joining was the least of it. Rising over her, dominating her, his body commanded hers with every reentry.
Pressing one hand against the bedboard for leverage, he took her in a rhythmic, rocking possession. Whatever else this act meant, she could tell that it was a primitive claim of rights. Worse, his moves lured her and demanded that she surrender to that claim.
He moved harder, taking everything, giving meaning to every intense look he had given and every unsettled reaction she had experienced. She tried to block herself from the power, from the aura it created and the emotions it evoked. She concentrated on the pain, to protect herself. It affected her anyway, astonishing her, reminding her again of his warning that she did not know what she offered, or what he would expect.
His head angled back. A hard, deep thrust penetrated her. He stayed deep inside her, frozen for a second. The coiling danger that defined his persona tightened. Tension hardened his muscles beneath her hands. Then suddenly both spun away, into the air.
He moved no more. He looked down at her too long, breathing deeply. She could not see his eyes, and wondered if they contained intense attention or the distracted coolness that she knew too well.
He rolled away, separating their bodies completely. He sank onto the bed, beside her.
Humiliation wanted to slide through her. It could not make any headway. She was beyond embarrassment. Her emotions had been pummeled. Everything still felt too real, but also irrevocably changed.
She experienced neither regret nor triumph, only a sharp sense of the present. It would take time to absorb and understand what was in her heart now.
The silence became strained and awkward. She guessed that he did not speak because there was nothing to say. Well, she had known what she was going to do when she came. She would not pretend it had been other than it had been, or expect him to either.
Leaving the bed, she groped on the floor for her gown. She pulled it on and fumbled with a few buttons as she walked away.
“Was it worth it?”
She turned. He had not moved. He did not even appear to be looking in her direction.
“Was it worth it, Diane? You must care more than I realized, to do such a thing.”
It surprised her that he broached this. The physical intimacy probably demanded that something be said.
“It was worth it. It was a small price to pay to save the man I love.” She found it amazingly easy to say that word, to be honest about her feelings, even if she knew he did not share them. What had happened in that bed had stripped her of more than clothes and innocence. It had also peeled away all of the reasons people guard the truths in their hearts.
“He was not worthy of your sacrifice.” He rose on an elbow and looked at her. “I can’t let him have you, even if you think you love him. Especially not now. You must know that.”
He?
She walked to the door. “You misunderstand. I did not do this to save Andrew Tyndale.”
He watched the door close on the column of rose satin, then sank back on the bed.
He saw her again, kneeling by his chair, so beautiful his heart had stopped beating. Wi
th that first button he had known she would not back down. He had known he had lost.
And he had been glad for it, and so hungry for her that nothing else had mattered. Nothing.
He swung his legs off the bed and reached for the robe. He tied the sash and went over to the window.
He had compromised everything tonight. Her. Him. His whole life.
He opened the window to the silent, sleeping city. He knew the view from this spot very well. Many nights he had stood here, his mind planning, waiting. He had strategized a little war at this window, infiltrating the enemy camp, picking off the guards, watching his back while getting closer to the goal.
Tonight, a woman had lured him to complete defeat without even knowing it.
It was worth it—
She had done it to save a man.
Not Tyndale.
He should have known that. Maybe he had. But if he had admitted it, he could not have accepted her bargain. He could not have carried her to that bed and ravished her. He needed to be angry with her to do that.
And all through this last day it had been essential he not accept that if this duel occurred, it might not be Tyndale who would die, who needed saving.
It was worth it—
He fixed his gaze on the street. One of the lamps had a shorter post than the others. He had never noticed that before. He had looked down from this window for years and never really seen those posts.
His gaze darted around, seeing other oddities he had missed. One of the roofs had an odd bulge in its cornice, and the lower side window of another house appeared to be boarded over. Tonight all these details jumped at him, distinctions long invisible but now demanding attention.
Better to focus on them than face the more critical matters at hand, such as how this bargain that Diane had bought with her body would tie his hands with Tyndale.
Such as how the old memories had swarmed in on him as he lay on that bed beside her, making him disgusted with himself and furious with her.
The Seducer Page 19
