Harlequin Historical February 2013 - Bundle 2 of 2: The Texas Ranger's DaughterHaunted by the Earl's TouchThe Last De Burgh

by Jenna Kernan

He gave a grunt in answer and put her down next to the stallion who was contentedly munching on hay. He pulled the horse away and mounted him with fluid ease. ‘Give me your hands.’

  She hadn’t liked riding the horse the last time and she was sure she wouldn’t like it any better now. She shook her head.

  ‘It is either that or be tied on behind the saddle like luggage.’

  That sounded worse. She approached the horse gingerly.

  ‘Don’t worry, he’s calm after such a good run.’

  She winced and held up her hands to him.

  ‘Put your foot on top of mine,’ he commanded.

  She did so, with some difficulty, and then flew upwards. He somehow caught her under the arms and set her on his lap.

  ‘Ready, Miss Wilding?’ His voice wasn’t offering an option.

  She sighed. ‘I suppose so.’

  He urged the horse out into the night, setting it into a steady canter.

  * * *

  She couldn’t believe how little time it took them to reach the drive up to the Abbey. Minutes. Not the hour or two she had been walking. ‘How did we get here so fast?’

  ‘You were walking in circles,’ he said grimly.

  Something hot rose in her throat. A hard lump of disappointment at her own inadequacy. She should have been miles from the Abbey. She sniffed the tears away.

  She heard him mutter something under his breath that sounded like ‘God save me’, but she couldn’t be sure with the wind rushing in her ears and the sound of hoofbeats. What she was sure of was the band of iron around her waist holding her firmly in place and the hard wall of chest at her back.

  If she hadn’t felt quite so cold, she might have enjoyed the wild ride in the wind and the dark. He rode the horse right into the barn where a sleepy-eyed groom was waiting with a lantern.

  His eyes widened when he saw Mary, but he took the reins the earl threw at him and turned his back while Beresford helped her down.

  ‘See him well rubbed down, if you please, Sol,’ his lordship said. ‘Some warm bran and not too much water. Ranger, with me.’ He grabbed Mary around the shoulders and marched her into the house by the side door. The one by which she had left that very first day. Tonight it was unbarred and unlocked.

  He walked her past the corridor leading to her chamber in the north tower.

  She dug in her heels. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘You’ll see, soon enough.’

  But she knew where they were going. He was heading for his rooms. ‘You can’t...’

  ‘I can do whatever I please in my own home, as you will soon discover.’

  He flung open a door to a chamber and pushed her inside. A room where a large four-poster bed took up most of the room. A fire blazed merrily in the hearth where a pot hung from the crane, and gave off a faint aromatic aroma. In front of a comfortable-looking sofa was a table. The two glasses said he was expecting company.

  Startled, she turned to face him.

  He kicked the door closed with his heel, took off his coat and flung it on a chair. He gave her a tight smile and began attacking the fastenings of her cloak.

  She pushed his hand away. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Getting you out of these clothes before you are chilled to the bone.’

  ‘I can undress in my own room.’

  ‘You are not going anywhere before you and I talk.’ He finally untied the knot at her throat and pulled off her cloak. He spun her around and started on the buttons of her gown.

  ‘I can’t undress in here.’

  ‘You can and you will. Either you do it, or I will do it for you.’

  A shiver ran down her back at the dark notes in his voice, the seductive promise laced with the heat of his anger. He might be completely in control, but she could still sense his anger running hot beneath the surface.

  She folded her arms across her chest. ‘I can’t. Not with you watching.’

  He walked around her, picked up a robe from across the foot of the bed and handed it to her. ‘Put this on.’ He locked the door and pocketed the key. ‘I’ll be right next door.’

  He disappeared into what must be his dressing room.

  ‘Close the door,’ she said.

  ‘My back is turned. I am not some errant schoolboy who needs to peek, Miss Wilding. I can assure you I have seen my share of women in various stages of undress.’

  That was supposed to make her feel better?

  She let her sodden gown slip to the floor, and stripped off her stays. She put her arms in his silk robe, so smooth and slightly cool against her skin. It was embroidered with dragons. It seemed very fanciful for such a dark man.

  ‘Are you done?’ he asked.

  She picked up her gown and looked around for somewhere to hang it. He strode in without waiting for an answer. He took the garment from her hand and tossed it over a wooden chair.

  ‘Now,’ he said, with a hard smile. ‘Sit there, Miss Wilding, on that sofa beside the hearth, and tell me what the devil you think you were doing tonight. Perhaps you can give me one reason why I should not punish you for setting the house in an uproar?’

  Chapter Twelve

  He was unbelievable. One minute he was kissing her with a passion that curled her toes inside her boots. The next he was treating her as if she was a child.

  ‘I do not appreciate your tone of voice, my lord,’ she said stiffly. ‘Or your threats. Indeed, I find myself heartily irritated by them. And by you. I am not your ward. I am not anyone’s ward. And what I do is my own concern. Now, if you will excuse me, I will return to my room.’ She held out her hand for the key.

  It was somewhat difficult to be haughty in a red robe covered in green and yellow dragons, but she thought she’d pulled it off tolerably well.

  ‘Sit!’ he snarled.

  She jumped.

  He spun away, raking his fingers through the hair at his temples. Clearly he was very close to losing his temper. It was the first time she’d seen him so close to losing control of his emotions. She eyed him just as warily as she had eyed his stallion earlier that evening, but she wasn’t going to let him scare her. She was finished with being terrified.

  ‘The key, if you please, my lord.’

  Slowly he turned to face her. His eyes blazed fury. His fists opened and closed at his sides and he took a deep shuddering breath.

  ‘We cannot go on like this,’ he said with soft menace. ‘I learned young that losing my temper only makes a bad situation worse, but you drive me to the brink of madness, to the point where I have no control.’ He took another deep breath. ‘So here it is, one last time. Please, Miss Wilding. Would you do me the very great honour of sitting down so we can talk like reasonable adults?’

  What woman could resist a plea like that from such a man? Not Mary, even if she ought to. While his words were cool, his eyes were hot. The same heat she felt in her belly.

  Slowly she sank to sit on the sofa, the heat from the fire warming one side of her body and face.

  He bent over the flames and ladled out two mugs of the steaming aromatic liquid, the scent of cinnamon, cloves and oranges intensifying.

  ‘Drink this,’ he said, handing her one of the cups. ‘It will warm you.’

  He brought his own cup and sat beside her on the sofa. She had not expected that. She sipped at the steaming brew. It was delicious. ‘What is it?’

  ‘A hot toddy. A favourite with miners after a day in the damp and the cold. It is also known as punch.’

  His words reminded her of the damp and the cold in the tin mine. She shivered.

  He reached over and brought the cup to her lips again. ‘Drink it all.’

  She took another sip and another and soon it was all gone and her head felt a little muzzy.

/>   He took the cup from her hand. ‘How is that?’ he asked.

  He was right, she did feel warmer, inside and out. Relaxed. Her teeth were no longer clamped together to stop their chattering and her shoulders were not tight. ‘Much better, thank you.’

  He set the mug on the floor, then he reached out and touched her jaw with the tips of his fingers, urging her with that gentle touch to turn her face towards him. She did not resist, but she kept her gaze on her hands now lightly clasped in her lap.

  ‘Look at me, Mary,’ he whispered.

  She forced her gaze up to his face. He dipped his head and took her mouth, sweetly, gently, his tightly controlled passion vibrating in the inch of air between their bodies.

  He tasted of cinnamon and sweet oranges and night-time snow. A heady combination, when she was already feeling a little dizzy. His hand linked with hers in her lap, a strangely intrusive sensation, his wide fingers pushing hers apart, touching the sensitive skin in between her fingers. It made her breathe faster. It made her feel languid. Or was it the drink?

  Did she care?

  She was tired of running. Tired of being pulled hither and yon by her desires warring with her mind. Just once she wanted to experience the delights between a man and a woman.

  It didn’t mean anything, she knew it in her heart. He was simply seducing her into staying. He wanted to use her for his own purposes. Why should she not do the same? She had no doubt as to his experience as a lover. His touch told her he knew exactly how to make a woman’s body hum with delight. She would never marry. So what did it really matter, this virtue, this strict adherence to the rules?

  And if she was going to die, perish the thought, should she not have experienced something of the delights between a man and a woman? Discover for herself the joys lauded by poets and romance novels. Not that there was love involved on his part, but there could be great pleasure, according to Sally. He had given her pleasure, already. And she knew, instinctively, there had to be more.

  She turned her body, to enable her better access to his mouth, to return his kiss, to twine her free hand around his neck, and kissed him back with all the art she had learned these past few days. The warm slide of tongue against tongue. The movement of lips that stirred her blood and tightened her core and made a rumble of approval rise up from deep in his chest. She liked that she had the power to move him as he moved her, that he was not completely unaffected by her touch. When she speared her fingers through his silky hair, he hissed in a breath. When she withdrew her tongue from his mouth and he followed with his, she captured it with her teeth and he groaned in the back of his throat.

  She was also aware of his hand leaving hers and trailing a path up her arm to her shoulder. Aware of its stealthy path to the edge of the robe. Aware of the way he slowly eased it off her shoulder.

  Aware with a sense of heart-pounding anticipation.

  Each velvet stroke of his fingertips set a new inch of skin on fire. It felt delicious. Wicked. Wanton. And right. So very right. And when he pushed her back into the corner of the sofa, his chest pressing down on hers, his fingers teasing the rise of her breast, she closed her eyes and let the thrills ripple through her body.

  Slowly, he broke their kiss, but his mouth didn’t stop working its magic. He blazed a path of hot wet kisses across her cheek. His moist warm breath in her ear sent prickles of pleasure racing across her skin. Painful and delightful at one and the same time. She gasped.

  He swirled his tongue around the edge of her ear, then nibbled her earlobe. When had her ear become such a centre of delight? Dazed by the sheer unexpectedness of the sensations searing through her body with each touch of his tongue, she lay immobile, breathing hard, waiting for what would come next.

  He kissed his way down her throat, lingering to trace the hollow of her throat before moving on to the flesh at the edge of her robe, the swell of her breast.

  Shocked to her very soul, she put up a hand to cover herself. He caught her fingers with his and kissed them one by one, until he reached her middle finger and closed his mouth around it, sucking on it.

  Darkness edged her vision as something pulled tight inside her. An ache of unbearable sweetness.

  ‘Bane,’ she gasped, terrified and fascinated all at once.

  Releasing her finger from its hot wet prison, he looked up at her, his eyes alight with fire and a sort of softness she didn’t understand. His eyelids looked heavy. His mouth full and sensuous. He looked beautiful.

  ‘Mary,’ he whispered. ‘Sweetling.’ The word made her heart swell too large for her chest.

  As he gazed at her, he gently rubbed her fingertip against the peak of her breast, inside the robe, where only the linen of her chemise protected her. The nipple hardened and furled into a tight little nub. It stood at attention. Not with cold, but with longing to be touched.

  More thrills chased their way down to her belly. She felt that strange little pulse between her thighs and the jolt of pleasure it caused.

  She moaned.

  He pressed his lips to the place her finger had touched, kissing and nipping and laving with his tongue. The ache at her core intensified and she writhed beneath him, opening her thighs to cradle his body, seeking the pressure that would relieve the terrible unbearable need.

  He unlaced the ribbon at the neck of her chemise and pulled down first one side, then the other to expose her breasts to his gaze. She could only see the top of his head, but she knew what he’d done by the feel of the air and his breath on her skin. By the tightness across her ribs. She tried to cover herself with her hands, but he grasped them in one of his and held them over her head, lifting his upper body to look down into her face.

  ‘Would you deny me such bounteous beauty, my dearest?’ he breathed and his expression held such a look of awe as he gazed down at her exposed flesh, at the mounds of her full bosom and at the tightly furled rosy peaks at their tips, she could deny him nothing.

  She managed to shake her head and he gave a rough sort of laugh.

  ‘Oh, Mary. You are every bit as delicious as my imagination said you were.’

  ‘And wicked,’ she mumbled as her face turned scarlet.

  ‘How can anything so good be wicked?’ he said, but his raspy voice was full of wicked seduction and passion. But it was his eyes that gave her pause. They were alive with something more than lust. There was tenderness and...affection. A warmth she had given up hoping to see in anyone’s eyes.

  She expected her girls to respect her, but she knew she could not command their affection.

  But if her heart felt something stronger towards him, a deeper emotion she could not seem to freeze out of existence, there was no reason for him to know. Tonight was just about desire.

  She pulled her hands free of his grip and flung her arms around his neck. She kissed his chin, his nose, his cheekbone with a rush of joy. He welcomed her kisses with a smile of such unusual sweetness it made her heart lurch. She had never felt quite so happy. And tears burned the backs of her eyes. His face wobbled out of focus.

  His smile fled. ‘Crying, sweetling?’

  ‘Happy tears,’ she said.

  His laugh sounded a little startled.

  Too much emotion for a man of his iron control, no doubt. ‘It is nothing. Kiss me, Bane. Make me warm.’

  His lips met hers and they sank into the heat of passion, his hands wandering her body, the silk of the robe sliding over her skin in a sensual dance. He undid the tie around her waist and it fell open, revealing her skin through her chemise, bathed in firelight.

  And when he slid off the sofa to kneel beside her, this time she let him look his fill. Like a wanton woman. She watched his expression as his gaze roved over her from head to heel. A searing glance full of carnal longings. It sent her blood scorching through her veins.

  Her thighs fell open at t
he gentle pressure of his hand. He stroked and kissed the inner bend of her knee, the delicate flesh high on the inside of her thigh and she closed her eyes and let the marvellous feelings wash away all thoughts from her mind. Thought had no place in this miracle of physical delight.

  His touch left her. She forced her heavy-lidded eyes open and watched him strip off his shirt. She gaped at the magnificent breadth of him. The wide shoulders, the defined muscles of his chest with a dusting of crisp black curls around his nipples. The ridge of muscles across his abdomen.

  So many muscles. So much unforgiving strength.

  It would not matter how hard she fought physically, she could never overcome such power. If she wanted to win, she would have to use her wits.

  Right now, she had no thought of their struggle. Just the enjoyment of watching this virile male display his beauty. His hands went to the waistband of his pantaloons where they clung to firm, narrow hips and flanks. He paused.

  She looked up at his face and realised he was awaiting her permission. Heat rushed through her body. She gave a quick nod and looked away. Looked at the back of the sofa, at the curtains covering the window, listening to the sound of him stripping off every stitch of clothing.

  He gave a soft laugh. ‘Coward.’

  He picked her up and lay her down in front of the hearth. At her look of surprise, he smiled. ‘I don’t want you getting cold and that bed seems to sit in a draught.’

  She glanced over at the bed and realised that beside the headboard was a sconce similar to the one in her room. Did it also open into a tunnel? For a moment, she tried to recall the map in the book, but when he lay down beside her, one heavy thigh across hers, his mouth plying her with kisses, the thought drifted away. Later. She would think about it later. For now, it was his hands and his mouth and the feel of his warm skin against hers that had all her attention.

  The man was a master at seduction. He knew where to touch her, how to make her squirm and gasp. In moments, she was lost in a haze of desire, arching her hips into the thigh pressing down on her mons, moaning at the way his tongue toyed with her breast, making them tingle and ache. And all the while, inside her, there was a growing tension. At first it was an ache. Then it felt like the sweetest pain.