The Raider’s Bride

by Kimberly Cates

  "Ah," Ian said with a nasty smile. "But have you ever been a man's lover? Tell me, Emily Rose, did your husband know how to seduce you? Entice you? Did he know how to draw out the ribbon of your pleasure until it was so taut you were crying out for release?"

  Emily's whole body quivered at his words. It was as if she were some instrument he was stroking with the fingers of a master. She battled to keep her voice steady. "I've heard enough," she managed. "You're drunk, Ian, and—"

  "Not nearly drunk enough." Ian gave a harsh laugh. "If I were drunk enough, I wouldn't ache for you like this. If I were drunk enough, I could pretend I didn't want you. If I were drunk enough, I could satisfy myself with some other woman, Emily. I could close my eyes and imagine she was you."

  A sound caught in her throat, and she started to dart past him.

  His arm shot out, a steely length of muscle blocking her way. "Tell me, Emily, did Alexander d'Autrecourt ever strip away your clothes and leave the candles lit so that he could just look at you? I would, by Jove. I would spread you out across the coverlets like some pagan goddess, and I would taste you. Everywhere. Anywhere."

  "What happened between my husband and me is none of your concern. Now, move your arm and let me leave at once."

  "Oh, yes, I remember now," Ian sneered. "Your husband was a good man. Sensitive. Kind. I wager he barely raised up the edge of your nightgown when he bedded you and apologized afterward for the hunger he had for your beautiful body."

  The words were so close to the truth that they lashed Emily like a whipcord. She spun away from him, but her vision filled with the image of Cupid seducing his wife. The wife who would destroy their love because she refused to trust him.

  Emily looked at the eyes that had been captured by the artist. She saw the secrets he had stroked into that fathomless blue. And she sensed that every word Ian Blackheath had just spoken was like the brushstrokes of that artist, carried out with consummate skill, for the most devastating effect.

  To keep her away from him. To keep everyone away.

  She met his gaze with her own unwavering one. "I won't be intimidated, Ian," she said. "I know exactly what kind of man you are."

  One satanically dark brow arched, the corner of his mouth ticking up in a tigerish smile that sizzled with sexuality. "How refreshing." He closed the space between them. "We can dispense with the tedious preliminaries and get on to more important matters."

  "Important matters?" Emily took a step back, and bumped against the strange piece of furniture, its elegant gilt and damask bulk blocking all escape.

  "Yes." The affirmation was a throaty growl. Something frightening shivered to life in those eyes—eyes of blue fire.

  "Important matters such as whether you prefer diamonds or emeralds to adorn you, though I think I would prefer amethysts to be pillowed upon your breasts. Such pretty white breasts, soft as the petals of a rose."

  Hot fire spilled onto Emily's cheeks, but she met his gaze without flinching. "Do you know what I think, Ian?"

  "I've just asked for your opinion, haven't I? Purchasing gifts for mistresses and finding they don't suit can be so annoying."

  "I think you are a fraud."

  There was the slightest whitening about his lips, and something unreadable stole into his eyes. "What in the devil's name do you mean by that?"

  "You are not what you seem. A master of disguise."

  For a heartbeat she was frightened by what she saw in his face.

  "I see. And how did you come to this conclusion? By searching through my house in the dark of night?"

  "I didn't have to look into anything but your eyes. I didn't have to see anything except the way you behaved with Lucy yesterday. The way you were so gentle with me the night the storm came. And tonight... when you came into the salon—"

  "I was a perfect bastard when I came into the salon!” He seemed almost affronted.

  "Yes, you were," she flung back at him. "Perfect. Far too perfect for a man with eyes that were so beautiful, so... so filled with..."

  "With what, pray tell?"

  "With pain," she said softly. "With loneliness."

  His eyes widened, his sneer faltering. "I fear you've given way to wild romantic fancies, Emily Rose. I'm no lost hero, I assure you."

  "For a while you nearly had me convinced that you were all the things you wanted me to believe, but now I realize that you are every bit as accomplished a liar as Lucy is."

  "I'm burning to hear how you came to that conclusion."

  "It was simple enough. I realized that any man who was really as wicked as you say you are wouldn't have to spend so much time and effort trying to convince people that it was so. Any man as depraved as you say you are..."

  Her words were like acid on old wounds. She could see it in the way his whole body stiffened, as if she'd touched places inside him that were raw, so raw.

  "My debauchery should be easy enough to convince you of, at least." Velvet-soft menace laced his voice. "Tell me, Emily Rose, do you know what you are leaning against?"

  Emily's brow creased in confusion. "A settee of some sort."

  He laughed. "It would be an interesting tea party that you served upon this settee. No, it is fitted for a feast of a far different kind than mere tea cakes, though one three times as sweet."

  He ran one hand caressingly over the rich damask. "This is called a siege d'amour—a chair designed for lovemaking." He drew out the words in a way that made Emily's softest places tingle.

  She swallowed hard, attempting to hide her reaction. "It looks patently uncomfortable to me."

  "Au contraire. Not for particular purposes. It is designed so that one gentleman can... entertain several ladies at once. In the most elemental way possible."

  Emily couldn't help stealing a glance at the piece of furniture. "I don't believe a word of it. It would be—be anatomically impossible."

  "That would depend on the attributes of a person's anatomy, wouldn't it?" She flinched as those big hands shot out to span her waist, her blood racing in her veins beneath the heat of his fingers. "Here, my sweet, my angel love. Let me demonstrate."

  She stifled a cry as he swept her up and placed her on the top tier of the siege.

  It was astonishingly soft, like a mattress. But then, if what Ian claimed were true, wouldn't it need to be? She felt a sharp sting of something like jealousy as she imagined him here with other women, playing the irredeemable sinner with mistresses who didn't bother to look beneath the hooded expression in his eyes, didn't feel in him the almost desperate self-loathing, the sense that he deserved to be abandoned, held in contempt.

  Why? Who had made him feel this way? Who had put those shadows into his eyes? Shadows that were as cunningly hidden as those in his little niece's face?

  "No, Ian. You're not going to frighten me," she said steadily. "No matter what you do."

  "Frighten you? Ah, no, my sweet. I'm not trying to frighten you. I'm anticipating touching all those soft, hidden places I've been dreaming of since the first time I saw you. I'm thinking of unlocking secrets for you, so many secrets."

  His eyes were on fire as he stood on the lower tier, cascades of apple-green satin and ruffled petticoat swallowing the long-muscled hardness of his legs. Emily had to force herself to breathe as he leaned over her, overpowering her with just the breadth of his shoulders, the glitter in his eyes.

  He was large, so large, so strong. She knew in that instant that he could do anything to her he wished, that she could do nothing to stop him. And yet, a part of her was certain he would never hurt her, no matter how much he might want her to believe he would.

  He forced her to recline on the sloping damask. One hand manacled her two wrists, stretching them above her head, until she felt as if she were laid out before him like some sensual banquet before a heathen king.

  He eased his body atop hers, his weight a heady wonder, his iron-honed muscles imprinting themselves in her flesh even through the layers of her clothing. She could feel his ches
t crushing her breasts, his legs tangling with her own. She could feel the steely hard lance that made him a man pressing insistently against her thigh.

  And his mouth... it started at the gentle curve of her collarbone, spreading tiny nipping kisses up the sensitive cords of her throat. Emily felt as if she were slowly melting, sinking deeper and deeper into the silk damask of the siege, sinking deeper and deeper into the sensations of Ian's velvety lips toying with her, treasuring her.

  With a subtle circling movement of his hips he made her excruciatingly aware of the effect this game was having on him, made her feel the power of him, the length of him. "Do you know how deep inside you I want to bury myself, Emily? Can you even guess where I want to kiss you? Taste you?"

  Emily knew that she should struggle, but she felt bewitched by his touch. By the whisperings of pain in his eyes.

  "You're beautiful. You're so... beautiful," he groaned. "Ah, Emily Rose, you should never have come here. Angels should never stray this close to hell. The devil will drag you in."

  His fingers tightened around her wrists, his other hand grasping her chin, raising her mouth to his. His lips were hot and wild, capturing her with ferocious passion, devouring the fragile curves of her soft lips, taking them with such savagery that they burned.

  Emily's lips parted on a tiny cry, and he ground his mouth down tighter on hers, sealing the kiss more ruthlessly, as his tongue swept out, plunged deep. It was a kiss of absolute domination. A kiss designed to show her exactly how powerless she was against him, not because he held her pinned beneath him but because he had made her a slave to the almost drunken pleasure of being in Ian Blackheath's arms.

  Emily stirred against him, and Ian deepened the kiss, the kiss that had already pierced so far into the core of her that she knew she would never be free of it. When she was an old woman she would remember the devastation and the glittering wonder that had been left in its wake.

  Ian's tongue, hot and sweet and flavored with wine, delved into her mouth, sweeping it with heady fervor, skimming the fragile skin, the ridges of her teeth, tangling with her own tongue in a primal rhythm that matched the slow, sensual circling of his hips against her soft belly.

  It was as if he were mating with her, here in this outlandish room, separated by layers of clothing. As if in this kiss, he was already immersing himself in her body in a way that Alexander never had, despite the intimate meeting of their flesh in their marriage bed.

  "Do you like this, sweeting?" he growled against her mouth. "Open wider, Emily. Let me take your mouth the way I will soon take your lovely body."

  He caught her lower lip between his teeth, tugged at it ardently then kissed her again, with almost savage passion.

  He brushed his lips down her throat, and Emily ached to feel them skim her breasts, the vulnerable flesh seeming to sizzle with some unseen current of desire that the man in him sensed without words. With unerring skill, Ian pressed his moist, hungry lips against each simmering point, setting it ablaze. He nipped and soothed with his tongue, sucked gently at the pale white skin, then blew against it, deepening the wild sensations that centered in the dusky-soft down between her thighs.

  He was kissing her as if she were a whore—hotly, with no hint of tenderness. Demandingly, with no sign of gentleness. Yet somehow, as his lips pillaged Emily's, she imagined what it would be like if Ian Blackheath took her mouth with love.

  His hand slid up to claim her breast, tantalizing her hardened nipple through the cloth. She felt him shudder against her at her response, felt his hot flood of passion.

  "You shouldn't have come here, Emily," he ground out. "You shouldn't have come here."

  She didn't know what he expected from her, but as he broke the kiss, intending to strip her bodice away, Emily raised her hand to that savagely carnal face. Ever so gently she trailed the tips of her fingers against that rigid jaw and down to those half-bruised lips that had been devouring her own.

  "Ian, who did this to you?" she asked in a voice that was soft, aching.

  "Did what?"

  "Who made you hurt so much that you can almost convince yourself that you want to hurt me." Her lips were throbbing, and she lifted her fingertips to touch them.

  "I don't—"

  "Oh, Ian." She raised her head, and with agonizing tenderness smoothed her own kiss over the hard line of his mouth.

  If she had taken a dagger and driven it into his chest he could have seemed no more stunned. And Emily's heart twisted as she remembered Lucy's face when the bee sting had been healed with a kiss.

  Tenderness...

  Had he ever known what it was? Or did it mystify him just as certainly as it had the little girl?

  She cupped her palms over the hard square of his jaw, stroking him gently with her thumbs.

  "Stop it, damn it!" Ian groaned. "Don't look at me like that! Son of a bitch, I just kissed you as if you were a harlot, all but bruised your lips, and still you look at me with those damned angel eyes, touch me with those hands. Sweet God, Emily Rose, can't you see I'm trying to save you!"

  She tipped her face up to his once more, kissing the tiny cut on his chin as she had Lucy's sting, wishing she could heal him as easily.

  With an oath, he flung himself off the siege and grasped her arm, hauling her with him. He led her out of the east wing, his face dark, immovable. Outside the door he turned to lock it. But as Emily stared at the image of Pandora's box, she knew that it had already been opened.

  She and Ian Blackheath had released something that, like Pandora's demons, could not be called back.

  And she was certain the stormy-eyed man knew that truth, too, as he stalked away from her as if hell itself were at his heels.

  Chapter 13

  The green salon was washed in sunshine, the windows that had been dark two nights before were now glistening with late afternoon sun. For two days Emily had managed to avoid Ian altogether—a task that had proved surprisingly easy, since Ian had only rarely darkened the door of Blackheath Hall.

  From servants' gossip, she had learned that business kept him away from the plantation most of the day, and during those rare times when he was about, she had allowed Lucy to go see him but had kept herself as far away as possible, retreating either to the gardens or to this room she had grown familiar with on the night she had wandered into Ian's private domain.

  She had filled up the days exploring the plantation grounds with Lucy, the child having no idea that Emily was really searching for the doll. But in spite of all of her efforts, she hadn't found so much as a clue to where the plaything and its precious contents might be.

  She wanted more than anything to escape Ian, escape Lucy, escape the feelings that were warring inside herself. She wanted to find the message so that the man and the child she had grown to care for would be safe.

  But even her fear on their behalf and her desperate search for the doll couldn't drive the unwelcome feelings away from her mind, from her heart.

  And today even the chatter of the loquacious Lucy, who had exchanged stitching buttons for sketching, couldn't seem to drive the shadows of Ian from the room.

  Emily shivered. Even though she had not seen Ian for two days, he had been with her. A presence so strong that Emily almost felt as if she could touch him, feel him haunting her. Every time she drew pen across paper, it was his face she saw, and while she struggled to produce her own drawing—one that Queen Lucy had commanded her to create—Emily's thoughts kept wandering to the man who had tried so hard to drive her away from him, yet had succeeded only in making her more enchanted than ever by the fires in his hands, the secrets in his eyes, and that hopeless longing that had been on his lips when they took hers.

  Savaged hers, he would have claimed. But beneath the harshness of his kiss she had sensed emotions that Ian couldn't hide. Beneath the rough passion in his callused hands she had felt hints of a love so potent that she had lain awake all night, remembering.

  Remembering the painting that graced the walls of
the chambre d'amour. Remembering Ian making love to her with that look of almost anguished devotion in his eyes.

  "You are not drawing again, lady." Lucy's voice made Emily start, and her cheeks flamed as if the child could see the most un-governess like thoughts that filled Emily's mind.

  "I... I'm sorry. I was a bit distracted."

  "Everybody is distracted today. Cook was distracted when I went to the kitchen. You are distracted. But Uncle Ian is the very most distracted of all, I think."

  Emily looked away, wishing to high heaven the child hadn't begun chattering about Ian. "If your uncle snapped at you, I'm sure he didn't mean it. He is a—a very busy man. I'm sure he has a good deal of business to attend to."

  Lucy licked the point of her charcoal pencil and stared meditatively at her composition. "Oh, he wasn't thinking about any business. I'm sure of that. He was thinking about other things. I saw him early this morning when I was sliding down that wonderful curvy rail on the stairway. He had that look on his face, so I knew."

  The child was making no sense at all, or was it that any time Ian Blackheath's name was mentioned, Emily's own senses became addled? "That's nice," she said, attempting to guide the child away from the unnerving subject of her uncle. "Are you able to slide down the banister very fast?"

  "Uh-huh. 'Specially after I put butter on it." Lucy looked up from her work and eyed Emily with frank appraisal. "You know, I lied when I said you weren't pretty. You make me think about a flower in a garden. My mama was pretty, too. But she made me think of a flower with a bee inside waiting to sting me."

  Emily felt that familiar tug of empathy for the intrepid little girl. She smoothed her hand over Lucy's curls. "Thank you for the compliment, your ladyship."

  "I am not going to be a ladyship when I grow up. I am going to be a pirate. But I'm not going to use cannons to take other ships. I am going to play on my pianoforte, and all the sailors will listen like 'Dysseus listened to the sirens, and when they're all staring in a trance, my men will board their ships and make them walk the plank if they don't say it's the most wonderfulest music they ever heard."