by Claudia Dain
“Take off those damned pearls,” Ashdon snarled softly.
Apparently things were not going to return to the way they had been. And perhaps that, she decided with a snarl of her own, was for the best.
“Will you kindly stop snarling commands at me? You cannot tell me what to do.”
“Those pearls give me the right,” he said, pulling her nearer to him. That wouldn’t do at all; she was quite close enough to the snarling, wolfish face of Lord Ashdon and his impossibly blue eyes.
“Yes, about these pearls,” she said, yanking her arm from his grasp and taking a step backward. Unfortunately, though the dressing room was large, it was still only a dressing room. They were uncomfortably closeted, wrapped up in silken damask within the greater boundaries of an assemblie in full force. It was only a matter of minutes before the tide of the crowd would force its way into the dressing room, and she had so much to say to Ashdon. “Where did you get them? You couldn’t have purchased them, not honestly. You’re completely without funds.”
“But not without friends,” he clipped out. “You enjoy saying that, don’t you?”
“Saying what?”
“That I’m without funds, without blunt.”
“Isn’t it true?”
“There is much that is true that doesn’t need endless repeating.”
“Oh, endless repeating? Aren’t you being a bit childish? I don’t endlessly repeat—”
“You sold yourself for pearls, Caro,” he whispered. “Sold for pearls. Pearls are the price and the price has been met.”
“How vulgar you are!”
He shrugged. “I am merely stating the truth. Repeating the truth.” He grinned. It was not a pleasant sight. “Now, as to our bargain. Take off Blakesley’s pearls. Now.”
“This was not part of our bargain,” she said, ignoring the fact that her stomach lurched against her spine. Ashdon was rather good at getting stomachs to do unwelcome things, with a blow or without one.
“It is now,” he said, and by his look, he was not going to tolerate argument.
Blast to what he would tolerate.
“I will not be ordered about. You have no right, Lord Ashdon. I am my own person and I—”
“You will be ordered about. I have the right, the pearls you took from me gave me every right I need. And you are not your own person anymore, Caro. You are mine.”
Her stomach completely disappeared, dropping past her hips, her knees, and then she lost track of it. Her breath, caged and caught within her throat, was soon to follow.
“Take off Blakesley’s pearls,” he said softly, but there was nothing soft in his expression. He looked prepared to kill.
Without taking her eyes from him, she removed Blakesley’s pearls. Ashdon held his hand out for them and, without a word, she placed them there. Her hand trembled. His did not. But his eyes burned blue and hot.
It was oddly erotic. She knew nothing about anything, but she knew that they were engaged in a very serious sensual duel and that, unless she fumbled badly, in obeying Ashdon’s commands, she could get him to do almost anything. It was completely contrary to logic, of course, but it was suddenly as clear to her as if someone had shouted it into her face.
Perhaps she was her mother’s daughter, after all.
Ashdon put the Blakesley pearls into his pocket and then said, “Now the Dutton pearls.”
“But whose pearls am I wearing, Ash? ” she said, her voice husky with tension as she lifted the Dutton pearls over her head. “These pearls you gave me, they cannot be truly yours. Do I not then belong to the owner of these pearls? Must I not, by the rules of the game, give myself to . . . the Duke of Calbourne?”
It was a guess, but, again, led by some strange instinct, she knew it was the right guess. And it was exactly the right thing to say.
She held out the Dutton pearls, tangling them in her fingers. Ashdon took a step nearer, his hand covering hers, peeling the pearls from her fingertips, his hand hot, hers chilled; erotic, there was no other word. Ashdon towered over her, his scent enveloping her, his eyes burning her.
“They are mine now,” he said. “As you are mine.”
His hand tangled in her hair at the nape, pulling her into him, holding her hip in one large hand as his mouth opened upon hers. He was hot, everywhere. Heat rolling off him, igniting her, pooling heat in her loins, gathering fire in her breasts, inflaming her heart.
As she flamed, she took him with her, setting fire to the ice that was Ashdon. Ashdon, who only burned when he burned in anger. Ashdon, who wanted nothing to do with her, yet couldn’t leave her alone. Ashdon, who mocked her and scolded her when he wasn’t pretending to ignore her, when he wasn’t burning for her.
She could see that now, now that she was burning for him as he was burning for her. It was all so clear, the smoke of desire outlining everything in charcoal. He hated her because he wanted her. He hated that Sophia had bought him. He hated that she had rejected him to become anything other than his wife. There was no room for love when hate protected him so well.
But passion could turn hate to ash. Passion blazed and everything fell away, destroyed and then forgotten.
Passion, she thought, reaching for thought through the thrum of desire, the rhythm of need, trying to think when his mouth swept thought from her, passion . . . passion . . .
Ashdon’s mouth trailed a moist path across her cheek and down her neck, his lips caressing her throat, kissing her, biting her gently. His teeth scraped pearls, moving them over her neck, causing the strand to slide between her breasts in sensuous curls. Her skin shivered and then flushed, her breath dragged in and gasped out, and she watched it all from passion’s cage, a willing prisoner, an eager accomplice to passion’s assault.
“Meet our bargain,” he whispered against her skin, his hands poised under her breasts, her nipples tingling with the hope that he would touch her. He spoke in command, but it was a plea. He was desperate, scorched, and he begged to be burned even brighter. “Give me,” he said, his voice cracked, “give me to the fall of the pearls. That much and no more. That was our bargain.”
She did not know where the words came from, certainly not from her inexperienced heart. She knew next to nothing, nothing beyond what her mother had told her. Then again, that was more than most girls knew.
“You promise to take no more than the fall of your pearls?” she said on a gasp.
“I promise,” he said, his hands sliding around to her back, pulling her to him, crushing her breasts against his chest. She groaned in need and he tipped her head back by pulling on her hair and kissed her deeply, groaning his own need into her mouth.
The sounds of the party were as nothing, the sound of the wind high in the trees, the sound of wheels clattering over the cobbles, the sound of the surf after a day at the shore. Nothing. Background. Purged of meaning eons ago. The only meaning left to the world was the passion and the need between them.
And the knowledge her mother had given her.
She turned her head slightly and broke the kiss, pushing him back with a gentle hand to his chest. He obeyed her wordless instruction. How had she known he would?
“You are many things, Ash,” she said, shocked to hear the smoky longing in her voice, pleased at the flare of desire in Ashdon’s eyes when he heard it, “but I never knew, until now, that you were a liar.”
And with those words, passion broke into pieces.
“Is this a game to you, Caro?” he said hoarsely, his eyes glittering like sapphires.
She stepped back another step, her shoulders brushing against the silk-lined walls, the sounds from outside their sheltered box coming louder to her now as the spell they had made between them fell in wisps of anger and disillusionment to the floor at their feet.
“Isn’t it?” she said softly, her chin up.
“And if a game, then you want to win it?”
“Of course. Don’t you want to win? Hasn’t this all been about what you shall do and what I shall d
o and who can come out the victor? ”
Ashdon nodded and swallowed, crossing his arms over his chest, considering her.
“Then let us finish,” he said slowly. “I have met your price, but you have yet to meet mine. Take down your bodice. I want to see what I’ve paid for.”
“You don’t mean,” she said, startled, “but you can’t mean now !”
“I do mean now,” he said calmly.
“But we are hardly . . . alone. There are people all around us, ready to—”
“I do not care what they are ready to do, or what they will see. Being alone was never part of our negotiation. You should be more careful in the future. A successful courtesan lays out all the terms beforehand. Consider this a lesson you needed to learn. Someday, you might even thank me.”
“You’re a lout! A brutish, ill-mannered monster,” she shrieked softly. It was so difficult to be enraged when one had to keep one’s voice down.
“So?” he said, sitting down on the single chair in the dressing room and crossing his legs at the ankles, his very posture screaming that he had not a care in the world and would not care if the whole world saw her with her breasts bobbing about in the open with nothing but a string of pearls to shield them. “I am a lout. Slip down your bodice.”
“I won’t!”
Ashdon raised an eyebrow. “Are you ashamed of your breasts? ”
“I am not! My breasts are perfectly lovely.”
Ashdon smiled and said, “I’ll agree with you, or not, when I’ve seen them. I’ll let you know my opinion.”
“What? You can’t mean to . . . grade my breasts?” she gasped, clutching her bodice to her.
“Why not? A courtesan must have the proper equipment. You want to earn the highest price, don’t you?”
“Listen to me, you horrible man,” she said between clenched teeth, “I . . . I’ve changed my mind about being a courtesan. This is all ridiculous and completely pointless.”
“Not to me,” he said evenly. “There is a debt to be paid, and you will pay it, Caro.”
“I won’t.”
“You will, if I have to strip you naked to see it done,” he said. One look at his set face and cold eyes and she believed him. “I have lost far too many wagers of late, as you are so fond of reminding me, to see this one lost for want of will on your part.”
“You can’t expect me to want to do this!” she said, crossing her arms over her breasts to stop their tingling. She was dismally afraid that some wicked part of her found this exciting.
This was no time to realize yet again that she was her mother’s daughter in the most embarrassing of ways.
“Why not? You agreed to do it. No one forced you to make our bargain. Actually, in the efforts of honesty, you seemed eager enough just a few moments ago. Perhaps if I kissed you again? Fondled you? Perhaps then you could be led down the well-trod path of wanting to bare your breasts for me?”
“You are horrible, and wicked, and . . . horrible !” she choked out. Because, actually, there was some wicked truth to what he’d said. There was nothing for her but that she must hate him for it. “And what do you mean by ‘well-trod path’? I can assure you that I have never done, have never even contemplated . . . that no one has ever—”
“Yes,” he interrupted, showing every sign of colossal boredom, “I am quite sure that all this is new to you. Your innocence, one might even say your naïve behavior, assuredly speaks volumes on your behalf.”
Caro reared back as if slapped. It was an insult and nothing less. Only Ashdon could make inexperience in debauchery sound like an insult.
She would be her mother’s daughter, blast him. After all, they were to have been married, almost. In fact, she could have him for a husband at any time; one needed only to have him collected and deposited upon her doorstep, like a very bruised plum.
“Why thank you, Lord Ashdon,” she said stiffly, “but I daresay your kisses wouldn’t help at all.” She had the exquisite joy of seeing him snap forward in his chair, his eyes gleaming like knives. “I’ll certainly keep to our bargain,” she continued. “How could I do otherwise? ”
“This from the woman who broke the marriage contract arranged by her mother?” he said with a sly smile. “Now who is lying? ”
“That was different.”
“Yes, certainly. That would have required that you keep your clothes on until you were married. This is without doubt the better path.”
“I choose my own path. That is the entire point.”
“I was under the impression that the entire point was to get you bare-breasted, a feast for my eyes and hands and mouth. We can’t seem to agree on anything, can we, Caro?”
Her nipples tingled in response to his words and to his gaze upon her, so stern and yet so sad. He was an odd man, this Earl of Ashdon, odd in that he either seemed to be fighting some demon within himself or fighting her. She quite decided that she preferred not to share him with any demon. From now on, Ashdon would fight her, if she could manage it. She was quite certain she could.
She was her mother’s daughter, and she was not going to let Ashdon forget it.
“I can think of one thing we’ll agree on,” she said.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“In a few minutes, we’re both going to agree that I have exceptionally lovely breasts.”
She didn’t have any idea at all of how to describe the look in his eyes, except to say that she liked it very much, even if it was a bit frightening. Still, although he looked rather fierce, it was a fierceness that made her smile deep inside. Very deep inside. It wouldn’t do at all if Ashdon realized that she was winning.
What would her mother do in such a situation? She wouldn’t act nervous or shy, and she wouldn’t show any fear, that was certain. What was it about her mother that made men go limp and women try to emulate her, for she was copied, after a fashion. There was that time years ago when her mother had worn red and blue parrot feathers in her artfully arranged hair and for the next two months, every woman in town had worn parrot feathers. None of them, according to her father, had ever achieved Sophia’s casual élan, but as her daughter, Caro fully expected to have a leg up in that regard. As to the parrot feathers, she remembered it so well because she had asked her mother about it when the price of parrot feathers had risen to unheard of heights, and she still remembered very clearly what her mother had said.
It must appear effortless.
Effortless. She had to loosen her bodice and display her breasts to a man, and it must appear effortless.
She could do that.
“The disturbance is rising on the other side of that door,” Ashdon said. “If you still contend that you’re going to actually honor our agreement, you’d best get on with it.”
Caro cleared her throat softly and said, “Let them wait. I shall do this in my own time and in my own fashion.”
Ashdon raised his eyebrows and held his tongue. It was a promising beginning. She didn’t want Ashdon’s voice in her ears, having his eyes upon her and his long legs stretched out toward her was quite enough. What she needed was to hear Sophia’s voice in her head. What would her mother do? What would she say? After a lifetime of exposure, and after interrupting countless minor seductions between her mother and father, she had a solid notion.
Caro reached up with her left hand and slowly peeled off her elbow-length white glove. Ashdon watched her avidly, his clear blue eyes going smoky.
“I shall need to remove these, I’m afraid,” she said softly, keeping her eyes on her arms. “I shall want my hands free when I untie my bodice and loosen it. Do you not agree, Lord Ashdon? ”
“Uh, yes,” he said. His voice sounded scratched and worn. She took that as a good sign.
She slowly slipped the other glove off and then slid both gloves through her hands, caressing them like a silky cat, before handing them out to Lord Ashdon, saying, “Would you be so good as to hold these for me, Lord Ashdon?”
Ashdon leaned f
orward and took the gloves, laying them carefully over one of his knees. He never took his eyes from her and they glowed like blue embers. She took that as a good sign as well.
“I may have a bit of trouble with this cord,” she said, fingering the long silk cord that was tied under her breasts and trailed down the front of her gown to her knees. “My maid had to tie it very tight. I might require your assistance, my lord, as the pearls you gave me tonight hang a bit lower than the cord. Do you mind?”
