"Nothing."
The saloon was in near darkness, lit only by glowing embers in the grate. Hawke pushed Alexandra inside and kicked the door shut with his boot, the sound cracking ominously through the silent rooms. Morland was obviously a lover of art, for paintings and oriental curiosities flooded every corner. The fire's red glow bounced back from the walls, every inch of which was hung with an eclectic mix of travel scenes, architectural drawings, and botanical prints.
Wordlessly, Hawke strode across the room to stir up the coals, for the night had turned cold. Under his probing the flames jumped to life, bathing his face in red light and giving his eyes a coppery glow. When he turned around Alexandra was jerking off her mantelet. Hawke studied her coolly, his eyebrows raised to mocking points.
"Let's get this over with, shall we? You've toyed with me long enough." Angrily, she flung her mantelet onto the floor and dragged off her gloves.
Hawke's brow furrowed as she threw her gloves onto a nearby leather wing chair, then sat down to rip at her sandals. His eyes flashed crimson in the firelight as he shrugged off his own black coat and untied his neckcloth. His lips curled slightly when Alexandra's dainty sandals went flying past him, followed by her reticule.
A moment later, she ripped his diamond pin from her bodice and threw it blindly at him, her fingers trembling with anger. "Don't forget your damned jewel!" she said shrilly. "I wouldn't want you to think I was trying to rob you."
Her eyes were huge and stormy as she jumped to her feet and furiously began to strip off her gown. The jagged hole ripped farther, exposing ivory skin from her neck to her navel, but in her fury she did not notice. "Maybe you want the dress back as well!" She suited her actions to her words, yanking the dress down and kicking it toward a grim-faced Hawke. "And I mustn't forget the chemise. You can always use it for your next mistress."
"Stop it, Alexandra!" he growled, low and threatening.
"Stop now? Just when we're getting started?" she said mockingly. "Isn't that how you phrased it once before? Well, what's stopping you now? Or have you changed your mind again?" Her voice rose in brittle laughter. "And they call women fickle!"
His iron fingers snaked across her wrists as she struggled to pull her chemise from her shoulders. "Stop it!" he ordered.
Alexandra only threw back her head and laughed wildly. "I believe that was supposed to be my line, Your Grace! Well, you won't hear it from my lips, do you hear? Because I'm sick of this game. Let's just get the whole filthy business over with, shall we?"
With a fierce snarl, Hawke grabbed her shoulders and held her motionless. "You don't call the shots here, witch! Tonight it's my game, and I'll give the orders." His lips pulled back to reveal clenched white teeth. "Unless you mean to turn your back on your father."
A tiny shiver fled down Alexandra's body. Then she set her mouth in a mocking smile and looked up to study him beneath lazy, half-closed eyelids. "No, our bargain still holds."
When he did not move, she launched her sharpest arrow. "Come, Hawke, you can do it. You're a fine specimen of a man," she hissed. "You must remember how. Or is it that you're unable? Yes, maybe you need a woman's pain and fear to stir your blood. In that case, of course —"
His eyes snapping with deadly fury, Hawke hauled her against his chest until their faces were only inches apart. "Oh, I'm bloody well able, Alexandra. If Isobel couldn't emasculate me, did you think you could? Yes, you can feel how able I am right there against your belly." He forced her thighs against his rampant manhood, smiling cruelly when she flinched. "The question," he continued viciously, "is whether you're worth the effort. And whether I want you after another man's had his hands all over you."
Alexandra's breath came and went in explosive little bursts. "You vile, detestable scorpion!"
"And you so eager to know my sting," he jeered.
"You're poison!" she rasped. "Everything you touch turns to poison! Your wife, your son —"
"Leave Robbie out of it, damn you! I warned you once before not to drag the boy between us. Isobel couldn't do it. Neither can you!" Without warning his hands loosened, and he flung her away from him.
Alexandra stumbled and barely managed to catch her balance before she struck the carved rosewood arms of a settee. With a ragged sob she sank to her knees, feeling the room spin crazily.
Behind her she heard his angry footsteps as he stalked toward the door. For a wild moment she thought he was leaving, but the sharp clink of crystal sent her heart plummeting again: he'd merely gone to fortify himself with Morland's liquor. Tears pressed behind her eyelids, but she blinked them away, refusing to declare defeat before this loathsome creature.
"Don't worry, witch, I'll limit myself to one glass," he snarled. "It would be unforgivable if I disappointed you after you've gone to such trouble to arouse me." The glass in his hand crashed back onto the lacquered cabinet.
Alexandra sank down onto the floor. Her mouth flattened into a stony line as she forced herself to look at her captor. "Everything about you is already unforgivable. From the very beginning all you've done to me has been unforgivable. Why make this night any exception?" she demanded bitterly.
Flames flickered across Hawke's face, transforming his hard features into a gleaming red mask. He suddenly remembered how she'd fought him during the storm until he'd turned her frenzy into passion.
With a low curse he pushed away regret. One woman was much like another, after all. Why this obsession with an intractable, inexperienced, and damnably provoking female from the wilds of India?
But Hawke knew the answer even before he asked. From the first she had stirred his blood with her pride and her spirit, arousing a host of discordant emotions. Nothing would ever be simple between him and this woman, he realized.
With the fire at his back Hawke's eyes were fathomless and unreadable. "It doesn't have to be this way, you know." He was halfway across the room before Alexandra quite realized it, and he mesmerized her with the strange hunger in his voice. "You saved my life, Alexandra, when I was on the point of dying at the hands of Telford's hired thugs. Can't you save me again? Just one night — that's all I ask. We'll let the future take care of itself."
Alexandra's hand slipped to her throat, which was suddenly cold. Her skin stood in goose bumps all over her motionless body. Her mouth was dry. She tried to swallow the lump in her throat, unable to speak.
"I won't force you. After all, our bargain was that you come to me willingly."
He was standing over her now, and his fingers dipped to trace the faint shadows at her cheek bones. How beautiful she was! Hawke thought. His fingers trembled as he touched the curve of her cheek, blushing in the fire's glow. Gently, he traced her swollen mouth, ignoring the wild drumming of his heart. "It's up to you. I don't want to hurt you. I never wanted that. And whatever happens, I owe you my thanks, for you've taught me a great deal about myself." His fingers settled at her chin. "Even though not all of it was good."
She did not move, studying him, paralyzed, from the floor. A stricken look in his eyes, Hawke slowly turned toward the fire.
He was whipped and beaten, Alexandra realized dimly. All his wildness was gone. So why wasn't she gloating?
Pride had been her father's sin. Would it be hers too?
Without a sound she slipped to her feet, driven by a force she did not herself understand. Her fingers twisted and untwisted at her waist as she studied the weary slant of Hawke's shoulders. She lifted one hand — and the room started to swim wildly.
"Hawke —"
He caught her as she began to fall, lifting her fiercely and searching her white face with ruthless intensity. A vein throbbed at his temple as he strode with her into the adjoining room, where a single silver candelabrum cast its pale light over a bed hung with a crimson velvet canopy and curtains.
She hardly noticed that he went out and returned; then he raised her shoulders and lifted her against the corded muscles of his arms and the hard line of his thighs. A cold ridge of glass met her
lips. "Drink this. A little only. My God, you're as white as a ghost!"
Maybe it was a ghost Alexandra saw then. All too clearly she knew what pride could drive a person to do. She remembered her last angry argument with her father, just hours before he shot himself. As usual, they had quarreled about her future. Why didn't she marry that nice energetic fellow just out from England? her father had asked. He was head over heels in love with her, after all. She could start a family, leave something to be remembered by.
And as usual, Alexandra had merely snorted and flatly refused. Only that time there had been an odd look on her father's face, a special plea that she had been too naive — or too selfish — to recognize.
Yes, looking at Hawke's face and the weary set to his shoulders was almost like seeing her father's ghost.
"I'll never forget the way you looked when I first saw you," Hawke said softly, interrupting her painful reverie. "An apparition in the fog —
... a Phantom of delight
When first she gleamed upon my sight,
A lovely Apparition, sent
To be a moment's ornament ...
I think even then I knew you weren't Isobel. You turned out to be far more than a moment's ornament. So much more."
Hawke's fingers tightened, and somewhere deep in his being, in a part of him he had thought long dead, a strange, raw sensitivity leaped into being. In Spain he had heard of men who lost a leg in battle yet continued to feel sensation where the limb had been cut away.
That was what he felt now, in that still, quiet part of him that he had cast away so long ago. Perhaps it was his soul that gathered itself so, or maybe the dreams of his youth. But this feeling of burning awareness, of restless seeking, quickened and grew until it surpassed any emotion he had ever known.
Hungrily, Hawke's silver eyes swept Alexandra's face, devouring her etched beauty so that he could keep the memory with him always. The stormy blue-green eyes flashed, more lustrous than jewels, and desire gnawed at his groin.
He did not trust himself to bring her closer, for her body was already intoxicating him. The scent of jasmine rose on a cloud from her warm skin, while a tendril of red-gold hair stirred in the gentle currents from the window. Unaware that he moved, Hawke reached out and captured the long strand.
His eyes grazed her face and fixed themselves upon her lips with a desperate hunger.
Helplessly, Alexandra felt the force of his desire break over her, carrying her before it. She closed her eyes, arching her neck and shivering slightly as her own longing welled up in answer.
She wanted the mark of his hands upon her skin, the taste of his tongue on hers. She longed to sweep the weariness and pain from his eyes.
As if in a dream, Hawkesworth watched bright color stain her face, and his heart tightened with a wild reckless hope. "Is it yes then, my love?" he breathed, taking her chin in his hand and tilting her face up to him. He memorized her features, missing neither the graceful stain across her cheeks nor the dazed look in her haunted aquamarine eyes. With unsteady fingers he stroked her cheeks, and his large hands were very deliberate, as if he feared hurting her. "Tell me, Alexandra," he muttered, his voice harsh with emotion.
But Alexandra could not speak — not, at least, with her mouth. It was her body that answered, speaking a language older and more primitive than words. A wild tension gripped her and snaked down to her stomach and thighs as she leaned closer against his chest.
Suddenly, she understood this man very well. Fate had made them enemies, and yet they were much alike, right down to the disastrous mistakes they had made in the name of honor and self-respect.
Silence enveloped them as Hawke cupped her face, and his breath caught when her tongue came out to moisten suddenly dry lips.
"Alexandra!" he groaned, her name torn from his throat. "Sweet swan, I must have you. Once more — let me love you tonight! Give me your fire one last time. I shall know how to make it last forever."
Hawke's voice washed over her like rich sweet wine, and she heard the slight tremor, wondering that he made no effort at concealment. Perhaps it was her discovery of his vulnerability that made her heart twist and disappear into the depths of those bottomless silver eyes.
She swayed before the desolation she saw there, finding suddenly that she could deny him nothing. Not tonight. Her mouth began to shape an answer, but Hawke could wait no longer to taste her sweetness.
The curtains at the window fluttered gently as he brought his lips down, demanding her flavor and giving his own in return. An instant later, her breath checked as a moan escaped their joined mouths.
Whether it came from her or from him, Hawke could not say. Desire knifed through him, twisting in his groin. He found it hard to breathe when her tongue slid gently between his lips to trace the soft contours of his mouth.
Pleasure swept over him in dizzying waves. With rigid control he held himself back and allowed Alexandra to continue her exploration in her own way, reveling in the tentative strokes that became bolder as she touched his tongue. When he heard her half-sob, he drew her tongue deep in his mouth and closed his lips fiercely about her.
I am drowning, Alexandra thought. Drowning in this man, in this sea of molten silver he flings me into. Her body was languid and inflamed, bathed in liquid fire. She felt herself flower, opening to his driving need.
"Yes, my sweet love, give me all!" His silver eyes never left her face as he lowered the straps of her chemise. "Alexandra, I learned to live only when I met you that night in the fog. Everything before was a dream."
A muscle flashed at Hawke's jaw as his fingers pushed the thin chemise from her shoulders. With a gentle whisper, the fine batiste dropped away, and a cool wind touched her sensitized skin. Hawke's lips followed, searing a path over her neck and shoulders.
"Perfection itself," he whispered against her heated skin, feasting upon the iridescent curve of her shoulders and the proud swell of her breasts. "Fuller. More beautiful even than I remembered. Ripe. Impudent — here," he rasped, his lips grazing the dusky buds already swollen with desire. With a groan he cupped her fullness and drew one perfect taut peak into his mouth. His lips tightened around her, suddenly demanding. "Open your eyes!" he said urgently. "Let me see your passion. It gives me unimaginable pleasure."
Alexandra's eyes fluttered open and she moaned, sliding her fingers deep within his dark hair. "My fierce and stubborn hawk. Ask and I must give you anything tonight."
"Where were you so long, my heart?" he whispered. "Why could I not have met you six years ago?" His voice was ragged with desire. "Yes," he growled against her skin as he slowly lowered himself along her body, tracing a moist path across her ribs and lingering over the taut concave of her belly.
Alexandra sighed and took his head within her fingers, giving herself up to the fierce singing in her blood, dizzy with this raw pleasure that was exquisite pain.
His eyes were bottomless. "Stop me now, Alexandra, if stop me you would! For soon there'll be no turning back."
She watched him, paralyzed, unable at first to speak, so that his fingers bit into the tender silk of her belly.
"Do you understand?" Hawke demanded, his voice thick with the passion he fought to hold in check.
Alexandra could only nod mutely. Their eyes locked, blue-green sparks kindling silver flames. A moment later, the starched length of his linen neckcloth went flying onto the carpet. What he said next was muffled in the tangle of white fabric pulled over his head.
And then the wide muscled beauty of his chest drove the breath from Alexandra's lungs. She had forgotten how powerful he was, how perfect his body. With trembling fingers she touched the mat of wiry sable hair. Fascinated, she kissed his flat male nipples.
Hawke tensed abruptly, and Alexandra drew back, unsure of herself.
Deep within Hawke's eyes, some emotion flashed and disappeared. "Oh God, don't stop now!" he said hoarsely. His fingers dipped into her hair and tightened.
With a tiny smile Alexandra slid
closer and touched the dark sensitive circles, delighting in the salty taste of his skin.
Suddenly, Hawke's hands tightened in her hair and pulled her head away. "No more," he growled threateningly, "or I throw aside all my good intentions and take you here and now!"
Sweet wantonness curved her lips. "Would that be so terrible, Your Grace?"
Hawke groaned and pushed her back against the bed. "This time, yes. For I mean to drive you wild before I take you, little hellcat. I only hope I can," he muttered darkly, catching Alexandra's hand and nipping the sensitive skin at the base of her thumb. Abruptly, he surged to his feet, worked his breeches free, and kicked them away.
The lean bronze sweep of his thighs made Alexandra gasp. She had a dizzy impression of taut skin covered with a mat of mahogany hair before her startled eyes returned to his amused face.
The quirk of Hawke's lips told her he had missed none of her discomfiture. "Come, love," he whispered softly, "it's far too late for missishness. You were made for love — made for my loving," he corrected. "Let me prove it to you now."
With tantalizing slowness he slanted his hard body over her. Nowhere did he touch her, and yet it was as if she were everywhere branded by his fire — frozen and aflame at the same time.
"Hawke?" she asked in a strangled voice, twisting restlessly.
But his only answer was the harsh rasp of his breath and the play of muscles held agonizing inches away from her.
Suddenly, she felt the stirrings begin, as woman's emptiness sought hard male, and liquid softness reached for a rigid mate.
Her breath echoed harshly, and her hips shifted beneath him.
"Yes, love, it will be heaven between us, I promise you."
Just when she thought she could wait no longer, his open mouth found her straining breast, and she cried out with the savage pleasure of his touch. He suckled her fiercely, hard teeth against yearning flesh. And then his powerful body engulfed her, scorching her from neck to ankle.
Moaning, Alexandra turned her burning cheeks into his neck, drowning in the exquisite pleasure of his hard weight crushing her, searing her with the heat of his passion.
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