“Such words are beneath contempt,” she said. “I was happy with him, and he with me. And now he is dead.”
The hot flare of rage went out like a snuffed candle. Unfamiliar shame bade him drop to his knees and beg her forgiveness.
He could not go so far. But he wet his lips, forced his thoughts past the muffling cloud of lust and bowed his head.
“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I spoke rashly, and stupidly.”
Her silence could have felled an American buffalo. But once again she stayed when she could have gone.
“Lord Charles was a good man,” she said. “Our relationship was one of friendship and mutual support. I did not feel deprived. I still do not.” She sighed. “If you are done with questions regarding my past, we may proceed.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
PROCEED.
Sinjin wanted to laugh, but he’d done enough damage already.
Nuala had as good as admitted that she had not been with a man since she’d married Lord Charles; what she had done in the year and a half following her “service” at Donbridge was anybody’s guess.
But Sinjin knew in his heart that she had been chaste since the first time he’d known her as Nola the chambermaid. Years of celibacy for a woman who was, from all he had experienced of her, fully capable of enjoying the sexual act.
Nevertheless, he must move carefully until he had reawakened the passion within her, and…
She is still your enemy.
The thought came out of nowhere. Yes, they had been enemies. She still regarded him as an opponent; her use of magic against him was proof of that. But after tonight, she would not be his enemy. She would not be a source of needs and hungers he could not master, hungers that robbed him of his manhood.
She would simply be another woman who had been in his bed.
He took great care as he cupped her face in his hands, lowered his head and kissed her. This time her stiffness lasted only a few seconds; abruptly she surrendered, her lips softening, her body relaxing. She had fully accepted her responsibility in meeting her obligation. But she wasn’t helping. She was merely letting him have his way, yielding to his lusts like a whore entertaining yet another rutting male.
Sinjin almost stopped. A whore? For God’s sake, Sin, what’s wrong with you?
Nothing that bedding her wouldn’t cure.
He slipped his tongue between her lips and touched hers. She gave a little, muffled gasp, whether of protest or pleasure he couldn’t determine. He drew her tongue into his own mouth. There was no mistaking her soft moan, and the movement of her lips as they blossomed beneath his.
Sheer discipline prevented him from carrying her to the bed, lifting her skirts and entering her there and then. He was disgusted to find that his hands were shaking as he raised them to her hair and began working at the pins, loosing the flame-colored masses around her face.
Sinjin had learned to find many things attractive about Nuala, but none was so fascinating as her hair. It was a glory of autumnal hues, like a tumble of leaves drifting through his fingers.
“You are lovely,” he whispered, burying his face in the fall of fire and earth.
Her lips parted as if to refute him, but he silenced her with another kiss. He set his fingers to the tiny hooks fastening the high collar of her bodice. He held the kiss, trying to ignore the unbearable pressure of his cock against his trousers as he undid the uppermost hooks to reveal the pale, slender column of her throat.
She held very still, allowing him to kiss the angle of her jaw, the tender skin beneath her ear, the side of her neck. He could feel her rapid pulse beneath his lips. He undid a few more hooks, revealing the lace neckline of her chemise.
He had been right. No corset, only the boning built into the bodice. He trailed kisses from the fluttering hollow at the base of her neck to the uppermost swell of her breasts, and paused to look at her face.
Her eyes were closed, her head slightly thrown back in a pose of abandon. Sinjin fought back the swell of triumph that threatened to overwhelm his senses. He unhooked the remainder of her bodice, exposing the entire upper portion of her chemise. Underneath lay only her naked flesh. Her small, youthfully firm breasts begged for his touch.
Yet he lingered, letting his breath bathe her skin, drawing out the moment when he would unbutton the yoke of her chemise and taste her.
“Sinjin,” she whispered.
“Hmm.”
“Ought we not…Ought we not go to…to the—”
His pleasure in hearing the husky yearning in her voice momentarily confused his understanding. He cursed himself for an idiot, lifted her and carried her to the bed.
She lay back almost limp, as if, having decided to let down her defenses, she had gone too far in the other direction. That would change soon enough. He tossed his smoking jacket across a chair and knelt beside her, hearing the familiar sound of the mattress creak under his weight. One by one he removed her shoes, leaving her stockings in place. The erotic effect was nearly overwhelming.
“Is there anything you would like me to do?” he asked, each word torn away from his impatience.
She shook her head against the pillow, locks of her hair catching on her moistened lips. He brushed them away, leaned over her and began a second descent from her mouth to her breasts. He paused just long enough to help her remove the bodice, leaving her pale, slightly freckled skin covered only by a thin layer of fine cambric. Her brown nipples were erect, pushing boldly against the fabric.
The blood throbbed in Sinjin’s cock. He bent to Nuala’s right breast and covered it with his mouth, drawing her nipple in along with the cloth. She shuddered. He flicked his tongue over the tip of her breast, sucking gently until the lawn seemed to dissolve.
He paused, looking up to gauge Nuala’s reaction. Her breath came in little, excited puffs. She would be begging him to take her once he had made a thorough exploration of the body he was finally permitted to touch.
With painstaking thoroughness he gave her left breast the same attention as he had the right. There might as well have been no barrier at all between his lips and her flesh. Unbuttoning the delicate pearl buttons of the chemise, he eased the yoke down until he could slip her breasts free.
They were like delicate fruits in his hands. He cupped them and massaged her nipples with his thumbs, then circled his tongue around each aureole. Nuala moaned.
Gratified that his skill had not deserted him, Sinjin pressed her breasts together and dipped his tongue into the valley between as he continued to rub his thumbs around her nipples. She arched her back as if she were demanding even more. He gave it to her, taking as much of her breast into his mouth as he could hold, suckling first gently and then with greater force.
It was still not enough. Not for either one of them. Sinjin reached beneath her waist, searching for the hooks that fastened her skirt. Her lack of a bustle and voluminous underskirts and petticoats made the removal easy. In a matter of moments he had discarded the overskirts, let them fall to the floor and was crouched atop a marvelously slender yet very womanly figure clad only in the chemise and a pair of simple drawers.
Her body was as he had imagined in his waking dreams, and yet far more arousing than he had anticipated. He had in the past preferred women of more prominent attributes, but her slenderness was no less stimulating. It revealed no signs of over-delicacy or fragility; there was strength beneath the pliant softness of her skin.
“Beautiful,” Sinjin murmured, running his palm over her ribs and stomach, stopping only inches above the heat between her thighs. He lifted the chemise above her waist and higher still, exposing her torso.
For just a moment Nuala raised her hands to touch the hem of the chemise, as if she might pull it down again. But she gave up the attempt as soon as she had begun, gathering folds of the sheets between her fingers.
“Yes,” Sinjin purred. “Give yourself over to me, Nuala.”
Her lips parted, her tongue darting out between them in unconsci
ous provocation. Sinjin caught her tongue in his mouth before she could withdraw it and sucked it gently, muffling her low cries. He trailed his hand over her breasts and down again, cupped her hips and slid his hand beneath to her lovely round bottom. Then he released her mouth and followed the trail his hands had laid, kissing her nipples, the underside of her breasts, the hollow under her ribs, the slight rise of her belly.
A few inches lower and he would taste the arousal he smelled so keenly. He could already feel her juices burning on his tongue.
But he knew she wasn’t ready. Perhaps no man had ever kissed her so intimately. He must bring her to such a state that she would be unable to object to anything he chose to do. Her pleasure, her helplessness in the face of his lovemaking, gave him power that he would savor.
“Shall I stop?” he asked, squeezing her bottom gently.
The short jerk of her head was answer enough. He let his hand drift lower, across the little mound of downy hair, still shielded by her drawers. Lower yet, until he found the open hem that gave him perfect access.
A flood of moisture spilled from her engorged lips even before he began his exploration. He slid his finger over her folds, dipping it into the quivering valley where her body wept with joy. She gasped a word, whether protest or encouragement he couldn’t tell and didn’t care. He stroked her tiny nub with his fingertip; the moment he touched it she heaved against him as if her body could no longer be confined by the forces of gravity that chained it to the earth.
Sinjin smiled in spite of his own considerable pain and rubbed ever so gently, circling round with his thumb. Nuala’s breath came fast now, her excitement a living presence in the room. When he felt her swollen lips begin to quiver, he withdrew his thumb, slipped his finger between her folds again and teased his way into her delightfully tight entrance. Her wetness made the movement easy, but he was slow and careful in his work, making certain that she would not come before he was ready. Before he was inside her.
“My sweet Nuala,” he said, sliding his finger a little deeper, “has no one ever give you such pleasure before?”
Sinjin’s question was a distant ringing in Nuala’s ears, almost lost beneath the drumming of her pulse. All her attention, all sensation was centered on the part of her no man had touched for a century…and it might as well have been as if no man had touched it in the whole of her life.
Unable to maintain even a modicum of modesty, she let her thighs open to his persuasive caresses. That part of her still capable of rational thought knew that there was little time remaining before her bargain with Sinjin was sealed.
And she wanted it sealed. If she had desired him in Mr. Saunterton’s library, that desire had been a pale imitation of her feelings now. His finger had penetrated her, but it could never satisfy the aching emptiness where his hands had touched.
So she held back. She didn’t allow her body to let go completely, though it fought for sweet release. She was almost relieved when he drew back and began to unbutton his trousers. She sensed that he had meant to continue slowly, compelling her to experience the unparalleled skill and breadth of his lovemaking. But his impatient lust seemed to seep into her very flesh, a hunger that left him as vulnerable and needy as she.
Nuala was not entirely certain when the warmth of his fingers was replaced by the weight of his hips between her thighs. First there was only heat, and then the head of his shaft grazed her inner thigh, probing, seeking its way home.
Everything they had said and done, all the angry words and recriminations, had led inevitably to this moment of joining.
The end of the war. The beginning of something else, something Nuala didn’t dare define lest it slip away like a gambler’s luck.
She reached up to clutch the bunched muscles of Sinjin’s shoulders, standing out in sharp relief through the fine linen of his shirt. He bent his head over her, kissed her almost roughly, eased himself closer so that his shaft nestled against her, awaiting its final office.
“I have you at last,” he growled in her ear, his voice almost unfamiliar. “All these years I’ve waited to get you under me, witch. Now there will be no escape.”
His words made no sense. The haze of pleasure clouding her mind began to clear. All these years? Did he mean since their last meeting at Donbridge? But he had not desired her then. He hadn’t even really known her, and when they had met again in London he had hated her.
Witch. It was as if he hated her still. As if this were a long-anticipated revenge, and he intended to take more than what she was willing to give.
Instinctively she began to press her legs together, all to no avail. He would not be moved. Something was very wrong. There was no gentleness in him now, no effort to secure her ease and pleasure. His teeth grazed the lobe of her ear, nipping with too much force. He pinned her wrists to the bed, stretching her arms out to the sides as if he would bind her with iron manacles.
“Do you remember?” he whispered, running his tongue from her chin to her cheek. “You ignored me. You reviled me because of my father, though I was innocent.”
“Your fa—” She tried to speak, but he smothered her with his mouth.
“I know how to stop you,” he said when he let her breathe again. “I know how to drain you of everything you possess, all the evil that lies within you.”
He moved his hips, and the head of his penis slid to the hot, wet mouth of her entrance. Panic blinded her, numbed her to all sensation but terror.
Terror gave her the power. Terror shaped the spell before she could think of the proper incantation, the gray magic that robbed him of his potency within a few brief seconds. Fear gave her the very strength his confusion stole from him. She bucked, snapping her legs together as he rolled away. She tugged her chemise over her body and jumped from the bed.
Sinjin lay on his back, his face pale and stunned. He made no attempt to rise and stop her as she dragged her skirts up over her hips and fastened them at her waist. He didn’t even look at her when she snatched up her bodice, shrugged it on and somehow managed the tiny hooks.
The door seemed a hundred miles away. She reached it safely, yanked it open and half turned, bewildered and breathless, bracing herself to see a man she didn’t recognize.
But she did. Sinjin hadn’t changed. He lifted himself to his elbows, shook his head sharply, stared at her with an expression of utter bafflement.
“Nuala?”
His voice was groggy, as if he’d just awakened from a deep sleep plagued with nightmares. Nuala hesitated. She almost returned to him, to ask if he were ill or suffering some mental impediment.
She could not. She stepped through the door, nearly ran down the stairs and fled through the entrance hall with no thought as to how she might return to Belgravia. She had asked Bremner to return at half three, estimating that three hours would be sufficient time to…
The thought of what she and Sinjin had almost done was suddenly unbearable. Unbearable because of what she had seen and heard. Unbearable because of what she had lost.
She continued to walk at a fast pace, striding for the gate to the cottage grounds. Circus Road was empty save for a single carriage in the distance, the light of its lamps nearly lost in the mist. Half a mile on, she recognized the lanky figure hunched over the reins of the brougham. She stopped to catch her breath as Bremner pulled up to meet her.
“Your ladyship?” he said, his ordinarily sleepy eyes widening in surprise. “Have I come late?”
“No, Bremner. Let us go home.” She said nothing more as he leaped down from his perch and handed her into the carriage, offering her a blanket to cover her knees. She settled back in the seat as the strength drained out of her legs.
Her thoughts racing, she barely noticed the ride home. In what seemed like mere moments Bremner was at the carriage door again, ready to help her down.
She rushed into the house, grateful that she had made clear that none of the servants were to wait up for her return. Deborah must be safely in her bed; only the
ticking of the long case clock in the drawing room gave a sense that the house was inhabited at all.
The climb to her bedroom seemed to require every last ounce of effort Nuala could muster. She undressed and lay down, though the cotton sheets seemed to rub her skin raw.
He wasn’t himself. Could there be any doubt of that? His voice, the way he had spoken…
Just as he had spoken at Donbridge. Witch. Such hatred. Such gloating satisfaction.
He was ill. Some trouble was weighing on him too heavily, driving him to speak and behave as he never would if he were in his right mind.
I should have stayed. I might have helped him.
At the cost of accepting him into her body without pleasure, without tenderness, without…
She captured the half-formed word in her fist before it could escape her mouth. Attempting to analyze what had happened would be a useless exercise now, when she was so weary and discouraged and afraid. Best to sleep on it. The morning always brought clarity. The world would look very different then, and she could sort out her tangled memories.
Nuala closed her eyes.
The fire.
It seemed to be everywhere, consuming the trees, the people, the world.
Hands bound behind him and collared with a coil of rope, Christian gazed down from the gallows at those who had sentenced him. Not many men were among those condemned for heresy and witchcraft, but he had been denounced by a woman whose deathly ill infant he had failed to cure with his healing powers.
The child had been too far advanced in its disease. The woman had waited too long. But she must have someone to blame…and who better than a witch?
Nuala watched from the alley, her empty stomach clenched with horror. No matter her own modest powers, she could not escape Uncle Turner’s iron grip. He would not let her go to Christian, share his fate.
If she had only returned sooner, she would be beside her husband. Where she ought to be.
Let me go, she begged silently. The words went unspoken. Uncle had cast a spell to silence her lest she cry out and call attention to herself and the three witches with her.
Lord of Sin Page 16
