Alec stared at them, at all of Pearl’s voluptuous beauty, and was dismayed to find himself totally unmoved. Then, unbidden, came the thought of breasts small enough to fit into his cupped palm, of delicious strawberry nipples and a slim, lithe body, and eyes the size of saucers and the soft color of a pigeon’s wing. Alec gritted his teeth, and banished the image with a curse.
“What’re you swearin’ about?”
To his chagrin, Alec realized that he had muttered the curse aloud. Now Pearl was staring at him, a frown gathering on her brow. To soothe her, he ruffled a hand through her curls, and forced a smile.
“Nothing. ’Tis just that I’ve been feeling a trifle out of sorts lately. My temper’s not of the sweetest, as you may have noticed.”
“ ’Ave I ever!” Pearl giggled, and reached up to run a hand across his bristly cheek. “Darlin’, I know just the cure.”
Alec remembered another hand, smaller and much more hesitant, that had touched his face in just such a way not an hour earlier, and before he could stop himself, he jerked his head back beyond her reach.
“My, you are grumpy!” Pearl pouted at him. As much because he was genuinely fond of her as because he wanted to distract her—whatever else she was, Pearl was nobody’s fool—he leaned over and planted a quick kiss on her mouth. Then he grabbed her hand and hauled her from his bed.
“Alec!” she protested, swaying slightly as he pulled her to her feet.
“Now, you know I’d never get anything done with you in my bed distracting me. Go to your own room and go back to sleep, Pearl. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“But I don’t want to sleep. Not now.” She was smiling at him, a wicked little curve of her lips, and reached out to thread provocative fingers through the hair on his chest. She tugged, meaning to bring him closer. He frowned at her, and removed her hand from his chest.
“Alec!”
“I’m no fit company for man or beast tonight,” he said, a little apologetically because it was rather beyond the line to turn her out of his bed in the middle of the night when she’d done nothing to give offense, and he knew it. But there was no way he was going to be able to sleep with Pearl when what he really wanted to do was go back in that bedroom and ring the little countess’s bloody soft neck.
“Well!” Pearl stared at him, eyes narrowing. Most of the sleepy softness had fled her face. “If you don’t want me, Alec Tyron, there’s plenty who do! And maybe I’ll just go find one of ’em!”
“Aw, Pearl …” Now Alec felt like the cad he’d so recently (and unjustly) been called. But even as he tried to think of a way to take the edge off his dismissal of her, Pearl stomped off in a huff. Her rounded hips swayed enticingly beneath the clinging silk, but Alec was in no mood to be enticed.
“Good-night,” Pearl said with immense dignity, and jerked open the door to the bedroom. It was only as she walked through it that Alec realized that in order to leave the room, she would have to pass through Isabella’s bedroom. He rushed to the door after Pearl, holding his breath as she stalked across the bedroom to the door that led to the hallway and beyond, Isabella, a small mound completely hidden by covers, was motionless. Alec thanked heaven for small mercies.
Pearl reached the bedroom door and, without so much as a backward look in his direction, let herself out. Alec listened with relief combined with a healthy dose of guilt as her footsteps disappeared along the hall.
Then, when he was sure he was alone with the real object of his ire, he turned his attention to the lump in the bed.
It took only three strides to reach the foot of the bed.
She was totally hidden beneath the piled bedcoverings. Not so much as an eyelash or the tip of a toe showed. How she was breathing under there was a mystery, but one which Alec had no patience for solving at the moment.
“Wake up, Countess!” he growled, and brutally pulled the covers from her recumbent form.
She gasped, and jacknifed into a sitting position. There were tear-streaks on her cheeks, which would have made him feel like a bastard had there not been a regular forest fire of fury spitting from her eyes.
“How dare you!” she hissed. Her fists were clenched as they rested against the mattress on either side of her, and those soft blue eyes shot sparks of pure rage as she glared at him. Her hair was still confined in that childish plait that fell forward over her shoulder to end in her lap. Although a lavender ribbon confined the end of it, soft tendrils of hair escaped to wave around her face, making her look very young.
Some of Alec’s anger died as he looked her over. In that transparent excuse for a nightdress that all the bawds except Pearl wore at the Carousel, she seemed very small and fragile. He’d seen the nightdress or its like before, of course, on many occasions, but never had it had the impact on him that this one did. And under the circumstances, his involuntary reaction did a great deal to revive his failing anger.
“Oh, I dare,” he said grimly, tossing the covers to the floor in a deliberate gesture and coming around the side of the bed to stand, fists on hips, glaring down at her. By rights she should have been frightened to death of him, not just because his size and strength were many times greater than hers, but because he was the Tiger, and she’d put him into a flaming temper, and because she was, after all, completely in his power. But the snippy little miss scowled right back at him for all the world as if she was the lady of the manor and he was nothing more than a peasant born to grovel at her feet.
The comparison infuriated him, and the perfectly reasonable explanation he’d meant to offer her (in the heat of passion, he’d completely forgotten that Pearl was even in his bed) was lost as his temper flamed.
“I dare,” he said again, and reached down to seize her by her upper arms and haul her out of that bed to stand in front of him. She fought, of course, kicking and squirming to be free, but her puny efforts in the face of his strength were laughable.
“Unhand me, you conscienceless libertine!” she spat.
The utter inadequacy of the insult would have amused him at any other time, but he was beyond being amused at the moment. Furious or not, her nearness was having a definite effect on him, and he didn’t like it one bit. Firelight made that damnable nightgown so transparent it might as well not even have been between them, and his body responded instinctively despite the best efforts of his mind.
“Make me,” he said through his teeth, his hands tightening fractionally over her arms to draw her up on her toes and thus demonstrate the totality of his power over her.
He was looming over her, holding her so that they were practically nose to nose, his hands powerful enough to snap her fragile bones like twigs.
“You disgust me,” she hissed at him.
“Do I now?” he growled, yanking her even closer so that her body was brushing against his. Feeling the softness of her breasts pressing into his chest, the bloody nightgown more provocation than barrier as they stood practically skin to skin, made his blood heat. And that made him madder than ever.
“Yes!”
“I didn’t disgust you earlier. ‘You’re gorgeous,’ you said, and ‘That feels wonderful’ when I put my hand on your—”
“Stop it!”
“Oh, no! I’ve not the slightest intention of stopping until I’m bloody good and ready!”
“Let me go!”
Alec smiled evilly into her eyes. Then, holding her gaze just to demonstrate how extremely helpless she was against him, he bent his head and put his mouth to hers.
Her mouth was soft, and warm, and tasted as honey-sweet as he knew her to be. As he kissed her he forgot everything but the rising passion that made him ache, God, he wanted her.…
And she wanted him too. She quivered in his arms, and her lips parted to let his tongue in.
Alec groaned, and released his grip on her to slide his arms around her, tilting her practically off her feet as he crushed her to him and drank his fill of her mouth.
His right hand slid around to her breast.<
br />
She made an inarticulate sound into his mouth and squirmed against him. The friction against that part of him that was already badly swollen for want of her made his passion blaze.
The hand that supported her back slid down to catch her buttocks and press her more fully against him. The hand that held her breast ever so gently squeezed.…
She shoved against his shoulders, violently, taking advantage of his loosened hold as she managed to jerk herself out of his arms. Then, incredibly, a fist exploded into his unsuspecting face just below his right eye.
“Damn it to bloody ’ell!” he yelped, staggering back a pace, a hand flying to his eye. The whole area surrounding it felt numb, but he’d been on the receiving end of enough punches to know that this one would leave its mark in the guise of a fourteen-carat shiner.
“You ’ell-born little bitch!” he gritted, the streets surfacing to color his voice as he took his hand from his eye to glare at her with equal amounts fury and awe. No female but Pearl had ever dared to hit him, and even she of the truly volcanic temper had never landed more than the occasional ringing (and usually well-deserved) slap. Now this little scrap of freckle-faced femininity had actually dared to plant him a facer! “I ought to paddle you until you can’t sit!”
“Just you try it!” she panted at him, leaping with the agility of a cat from the floor straight to the center of the bed and standing there, fists clenched, daring him to come after her.
Alec eyed her, lips compressed into a tight, straight line. Never in his wildest dreams would he have suspected her capable of landing the kind of blow she’d dealt him. The little countess had a wealth of unsuspected depths, it seemed.
“Pray accept my congratulations, Countess.” He had his voice with its hard-earned accent well under control again. “You punch almost as well as you rut.”
It was a low blow, and he knew it, but he was too incensed to care. She gasped, and her cheeks flamed.
“Get out of here, you cretin!” There was true venom in the words.
Alec laughed, the sound grating.
“Such a vocabulary as you possess, love,” he jeered.
“Don’t you dare call me that! Get out! Get out, I said!”
“Oh, I’m going, you may be sure. Now that we’ve had a good tumble and I’ve found out for myself what lies beneath that strumpet’s garment, I’ve no more reason at all to stay.”
“Get out!” It was practically a screech.
With one more sizzling stare at her, Alec turned on his heel and stalked back into the dressing room. This time he closed the door very, very carefully behind him. Not for anything would he give her the satisfaction of seeing him succumb to the temptation to give it another vicious slam.
The candle was still burning in the dressing room. Alec threw himself in the chair Paddy had occupied that night that Isabella had tried to brain him—thus showing her true colors, if only he’d had the sense to see!—and felt for the bottle of brandy that was kept hidden under the skirt.
He meant to get good and drunk.
It was only later, much later, when the bottle was nearly three-quarters gone and the candle had melted down to a guttering nub, that Alec felt it.
He was so jug-bitten that at first he didn’t recognize it for what it was.
When at last he did, he frowned, trying to clear his head of the awful sensation.
But it stubbornly refused to leave. He was experiencing that omniscient tingle of danger again.
XXI
If nothing else, that last dreadful exchange with Alec left her too angry to cry.
For a long time Isabella sat huddled in the center of the bed, calling him every vile name she could think of under her breath and waiting with a belligerent kind of trepidation for him to emerge from the dressing room again.
An hour passed, and more, and he didn’t come out. Gradually she began to realize that he didn’t mean to come out. That he meant to brood or sleep or fume or whatever he was doing in there all alone.
Until morning, she hoped.
That gave her the rest of the night to figure out what to do.
She could not stay here under his protection any longer. She would not. Whether or not he needed her presence as cover for his own, he could not force her to stay. Not after what they had done. If he tried, she would … she would … She didn’t know what she would do, but she would think of something.
But then, the lowering thought occurred to her, he probably would not have the least objection to her removing herself from his vicinity. After all, as he had tauntingly pointed out, now that he had got what he wanted from her, what reason had he to want to keep her around?
None, that she could see. She would be just one more in his line of discarded mistresses. An embarrassment perhaps. Or, more likely, an object of complete indifference.
She was glad she had punched him.
She would insist on going home at first light.
Home—where someone wanted her dead. Isabella’s determination faltered, remembering that. How could she go home if someone there wanted her dead? If, indeed, someone truly did. Bernard had been wearing mourning—according to Paddy. But Paddy was Alec’s right hand; could she believe him? After all, she only had Alec’s word for it that anyone other than the original kidnappers had been involved in the plan to kill her. The question that occurred to her now that she had discovered the truth about his lecherous, untrustworthy nature was: Could she believe what Alec told her? Or had he said what he had for his own ends?
It was incredible to believe that Bernard or, for that matter, anyone else in her family was willing to pay to have her killed.
The only reasonable conclusion to be reached was that Alec was wrong. Either he was genuinely mistaken, or he had an ulterior motive in keeping her with him.
Perhaps he had meant to seduce her all along.
Isabella shuddered at the thought. Had she succumbed to the wiles of an experienced debaucher of women? She very much feared so.
True, she was not beautiful, but she was a lady, and as such, very much outside Alec Tyron’s normal ken. He seemed to have a hankering for the outward signs of gentility. He had worked hard to raise himself out of the gutter, and on the way had acquired many of the trappings of a gentleman: a well-bred manner of speaking, usually; a modicum of good manners (which she guessed could vanish as quickly as the upper-class accent); and wealth.
Did it not make sense that he might wish to secure for himself that ultimate proof of gentility, a titled mistress?
The gutter boy had bedded the countess.
How could she have allowed such a thing to happen?
Although her marriage with Bernard was far from a love match, it was a legal marriage, binding in the eyes of God and man. As her husband, Bernard was the only man who had the right to come into her bed, and join his flesh with hers.
No matter how she tried to wrap it up in clean linen, what she had done was no more or less than adultery. She had lain with a man not her husband of her own free will. She had not been forced, nor coerced in any way.
If she really cared to face the truth, what she had done made her no better than the girls who worked for Pearl. No better than Pearl herself.
She was a light-skirt, a strumpet, a woman of loose morals.
An adulteress.
And the worst part about it was that, if Pearl had not been sleeping in the dressing room to expose the full extent of Alec’s depravity, she would have revelled in the things he had done. She would have rejoiced in the feel of his lips on hers, his hands on her body, and even in the marriage act, which had seemed so disgusting when Bernard did it and so marvelous when the man moving over her was Alec.…
Never in her life had she thought to experience the blinding pleasure that she had experienced with him. Never had she even dreamed that such physical ecstasy existed.
Isabella took a deep, calming breath. She would force that incendiary enchantment from her mind, banish the memory of it as surely as she
would remove herself from this world of harlotry and dissipation.
She would go home, back to Blakely Park and the quietly happy life she had made for herself there. Soon last night—indeed, all that had happened over the past fortnight—would be no more than an unpleasant memory.
She would never so much as think of Alec Tyron again.
Clinging to that determination like a drowning man to a lifeline, Isabella put her head down on the pillow and surrendered to the welcoming lure of sleep.
Until something reached down into her troubled dreams at last and pulled her back to wakefulness.
She did not know how long she had slept, but she did know, almost immediately, what it was that woke her.
A man stood beside her bed, looking down at her.
The fire had died down, leaving the room alive with dense charcoal shadows. But the fact that she couldn’t see anything more than his outline didn’t matter. Even if she hadn’t bothered to open her eyes, she would have known he was there.
Alec, come to her bed again for the Lord only knew what. To continue their argument—or her debauchery?
“Go away,” she said fiercely, sitting up and glaring at the menacing figure. And then, to her amazement, without any warning at all, the tall shadow detached itself from the darkness and leaped on top of her, wrapping its hands around her throat.
Isabella screamed once before the hands tightened, cutting off her breath.
XXII
Alec nearly choked on his brandy. He spluttered, dribbling the fiery liquid down his chin, where it dripped onto his chest.
Tiger's Eye Page 13
