“You look disgraceful,” she said scathingly.
“I was sleeping when that female started yoo-hooing me. I came out because I thought she was you.”
“I don’t yoo-hoo, you wretched man.”
“You don’t giggle either, thank God. All you do is drive a man to drink.” He was distracted then by her horse wandering toward the back of the stable. “And what are you doing with that mare?”
Her chin rose defensively. “I was exercising her—with Mr. Browne’s permission.”
His head swiveled to the open doors to note the darkness outside. Megan could almost read his mind, especially when those blue-green eyes came back to her, narrowed and starting to fill with heat.
She forestalled him coldly. “I spent most of the day at Tiffany’s, but I had an escort home, so don’t start in on me. I’m not the guilty party here who was cavorting in the hay with the wrong woman.”
It must have been the contempt in her tone that set him off, because suddenly he was quite furious. “The wrong woman? Let me assure you that I have reached such a state of need, thanks to you, that any woman will do!”
“You’re blaming me for your licentious behavior?” she asked incredulously.
“You’re damned right I am!”
Having said it, or more to the point, snarled it, he surprised Megan by turning away. But he must have moved too quickly because he swayed again, and it was no straight line that he walked to the stable entrance.
He’s still foxed, Megan thought smugly. She almost smiled, wondering if she ought to tell him he was going in the wrong direction. But he stopped on his own, and her eyes widened as she watched him close the stable doors and drop the bolt into place.
Amusement fled, replaced by wariness as she remembered what had happened to her the last time he’d been this angry, just last night. There might not have been any lingering evidence this morning that she’d suffered his wrath, but she’d gone to bed with her bottom still smarting. And the man wasn’t himself right now. He’d been drinking a good part of the day, if Mortimer could be believed. He couldn’t be thinking clearly if he’d thought she was Cora. By God, if he spanked her for interrupting his lovemaking, she’d—she’d shoot him.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, backing up as he started in her direction again.
“You should have turned about and gone back to the house without interfering. Should have stayed away from me today altogether. But I suppose I should thank you, since I didn’t really want her, and now that you’ve sent her off, you can bloody well take her place.”
Megan backed into the hayrick, losing her balance against it. She was only lying back on it at a slightly slanted angle, but that allowed Devlin to lean over her, one hand placed on either side of her shoulders. She shook her head wordlessly. He smiled down at her.
“What, you no longer want a lesson in kissing?” he asked lazily. “Or did I dream that, your asking me to teach you how to do it?”
Was that all he was talking about? Suddenly there were new possibilities to this situation, and the mere thought of these sent a warm thrill straight to Megan’s belly.
“You’re willing to teach me now?”
“If you tell me why you want to learn.”
“I don’t want my future husband to be disappointed in me,” she said truthfully.
She thought for a moment he was going to laugh. Instead he leaned closer until his lips were just a hairsbreadth away from hers. She could smell brandy, but mixed with the scent of hay and musk, it wasn’t unpleasant.
“Open your mouth, brat.”
For once she didn’t mind the name he persisted in calling her, because he said it tenderly this time, giving it almost the sound of an endearment. And she really couldn’t think about that now, when his lips were so close to touching hers.
“Do you want to start slow, or do you want to find out what a real kiss is like?”
He had to be teasing her. What had he been doing those other times if not really kissing her?
“I want to know all there is to know about it,” she assured him.
“Remember you said that if this shocks you,” he warned just before his tongue invaded her mouth.
Megan would have gasped if her breath weren’t locked in her throat, not from shock, but from a deluge of unanticipated sensations converging on her all at once. It felt like her blood was soaring, her legs were melting, her insides were coming apart. This was that pleasant feeling she’d felt before, only now it was magnified a hundred times, and she didn’t know if she could withstand so much feeling all at once. Then there was more.
His body pressed slowly into hers and liquid heat spread into her loins. He groaned deep in his throat and her breasts responded by tightening. His hand came to assuage the feeling there and her heart slammed against her chest.
“Don’t hide your tongue from me,” he said against her lips. “Give it to me, Megan. Taste me.”
It seemed like she no longer had a will of her own, she obeyed him with such eagerness. But then she wanted to taste him. She simply hadn’t known that she could until he ordered it. But if she could copy him in the kissing, could she also copy him in the touching? Because that was another overwhelming urge she had, and this time she didn’t wait to be directed.
When her hand slipped between them as his had done, he moved slightly to the side to give her access, which gave him more access as well, which he took swift advantage of. Suddenly there was no cloth between his hand and her breasts. He’d somehow worked her blouse open and got beneath her camisole, and she discovered fire. Good God, his hand couldn’t be that warm, but it was. His chest under her own palm couldn’t be that hot either, but it was. He’d talked of burning to a cinder last night. Was it possible?
Megan didn’t care at the moment, not one little bit. She felt as if she were falling, falling…Good God, they were falling!
Devlin tore his mouth away from hers to say, “Bloody hell, we’re—” He landed with a grunt, mostly because Megan landed on top of him. “—Falling,” he finished after the fact.
At which point he started to laugh, deep laughter of the like she’d never heard from him. It was infectious, especially in light of what had happened. This was not precisely the best time to slip off a hayrick. Fortunately, they’d fallen onto a bed of hay, the remainder of what had been pitched earlier in the day. Still, it wasn’t how she would have imagined a lesson in kissing to end.
She was laughing as hard as he was, then harder when the shaking of his chest caused her to slip off him as well. She rolled onto her back, holding her belly until her humor finally wound down. But her eyes had watered, and she tried to find the pocket of her jacket to get a kerchief when she noticed one dangling in front of her.
She made quick use of it, then lowered it to see that Devlin had rolled onto his side and was leaning on one elbow, grinning at her.
“That fall was not part of the lesson.”
She grinned back at him. “Thank you for telling me. I wasn’t quite sure.”
He chuckled, but then his eyes lit on her open blouse and they seemed to kindle with heat again instantly. “Actually,” he said in the most sensuous tone, “we’re in a much better position now for kissing. Do you want to learn more?”
“There’s more?” she replied in wonder.
“Most definitely.”
“Show me.”
He bent toward her, but then he stopped and shook his head as if to clear it, and suddenly he was frowning. “No, I—good God, I must be mad. Go home, Megan, and do it now. This lesson is over.”
Her disappointment was almost too keen to bear. “Why?” she whispered.
“Because I lost myself in that last kiss. I forgot for a moment that you’re an innocent miss with too much curiosity for her own good.”
“Are you saying you would have made love to me?” she ventured.
“Yes, damn it.”
She hoped that was all that was bothering him. “But I wouldn
’t have let you. I would have stopped you. You would stop if I told you to, wouldn’t you?”
“Certainly,” he said indignantly.
“Then I don’t see a problem.”
“Don’t you? I’m not exactly sober, you know,” he said, as if she hadn’t noticed.
“I don’t mind.” She leaned toward him then and implored softly, “Show me.”
He groaned and gathered her close. “Give me your tongue again.” She did, but this time he didn’t let her explore with it, but gently sucked on it instead for a while, then said, “There are other places to do that.”
“Where?”
He moved to draw her earlobe between his lips for the same tantalizing treatment. She shivered deliciously, gasping. “Where else?”
She tried to concentrate on the path his mouth was taking so she could anticipate his destination, but she was enjoying the sensations that he was evoking on the way too much. And then she sucked in her breath as one nipple was drawn deeply into the heat of his mouth. She was incredulous and a little shocked that this could be part of kissing, but she didn’t stop him. God, no, she wasn’t about to stop him—not yet.
When she later felt a coolness on her legs, it didn’t register that her skirt was being raised. When she felt a tugging on her drawers, that didn’t make much sense either, but she finally asked, “What are you doing now?”
His mouth came back to hers for a deeply stirring kiss before he said, “Showing you everything. Isn’t that what you wanted? Or are you afraid now?”
“A little.”
“You should be.”
It was the wrong thing to say, or the right thing, challenging her stubbornness and curiosity at once. “Don’t stop, Devlin, not yet.”
He kissed her again, so that she barely noticed her drawers coming off completely. But she couldn’t miss warm fingers slipping between her legs. She shrieked in surprise, but the sound was muffled by his mouth. Then she was moaning, and gripping him to her, and reveling in the most startling sensations yet. Her legs parted of their own accord, her body and its responses were taking over, and she didn’t care.
“Is—is this part of kissing?” she gasped out when his mouth returned to her neck, then her breasts.
“Yes,” he lied without the least qualm.
“Then I have to do that to you?”
“No,” he croaked, knowing he’d never survive it.
“But I want to.”
“I’m going to die.”
She thought she was, too, especially when he moved on top of her, placing his hips between hers, and that hard part of his body was pressing into the place he’d heated with his fingers, giving her the same pleasure as before.
But then a sharp pain swiftly pierced her and there was nothing pleasurable in that. Her eyes flew open in shock. How? No, maybe not. Maybe that pain and fullness inside her now wasn’t him, but still his fingers. Yet she could feel his hands, both hands, beneath her back, holding her tightly to him. She felt shock again. This wasn’t supposed to happen.
“Tell me you aren’t making love to me,” she demanded in rising panic.
He became very still, suffering some shock of his own. “I’m afraid it’s too late to tell you that.”
“But you can’t be!”
“I’m sorry, Megan, truly, but the damage is done.”
Her shock turned rapidly to resentment as all the repercussions bombarded her. “I won’t marry you.”
That wasn’t the wisest thing to say to a man who’d just broken every scruple he possessed. “I bloody well wasn’t going to ask you to—”
“Good!”
“—but now I have to.”
“Well, aren’t you fortunate that you already have my answer,” she retorted acidly. “Now get off me!”
His face dropped into the curve of her neck with a groan. “I can’t, Megan.”
She wasn’t interested in his problem. “Of course you can. You said you would.”
“That was when I could. Now—oh, God.” He thrust once, twice, then was still again.
That hadn’t hurt, but she was too furious to notice. “I’m getting hysterical, Devlin. If you don’t want a crying, screaming woman on your hands, then—”
“In all fairness, I owe you a climax. You’ve come this far, you might as well—”
“I didn’t mean to come this far and you know it!” she hissed.
He rose until he was leaning over her and she was able to see at last his own upset. Guilt was tearing into him much more sharply than her verbal abuse, and in his present inebriated state, he couldn’t handle either too well.
“Then you should have left when I warned you to!”
“That’s right,” she bit out. “Absolve yourself of guilt, why don’t you?”
“If I was doing that, I wouldn’t have offered to marry you.”
“You know very well I can’t marry a horse breeder! My father would never allow it, either.”
“On the contrary,” he said with a full measure of his arrogance. “Once the circumstances are explained, your father will give his wholehearted approval, I do assure you, so don’t use that as an excuse for refusing me.”
“Don’t you dare tell him what you did to me! Don’t you dare tell anyone. This did not happen.”
“Megan, you can’t pretend—”
“I can do anything I please, and if I please to go on with my life as if this didn’t happen, I damn well will.”
“Fine! You do that!”
He rolled over and got to his feet without swaying. Megan scrambled to her feet just as quickly, then spent a few moments gasping over each proof of his crime that she could see—and feel. She had been made love to and she was still fully clothed—well, almost. She swiped up her drawers and marched to the doors, throwing back the bolt. Devlin she didn’t spare a glance for, but he was watching her with brooding eyes.
“When you come to your senses, brat,” he said to her back, “you know where I’ll be.”
“You’ll be in hell before I come to you again for anything,” was her final retort before she stomped out, still without looking back.
Devlin turned and, with a growl, smashed his fist through the nearest wall, then went back to his room and smashed his remaining stock of brandy.
Chapter 25
Megan stayed in her room for three days brooding, though the word went out in the household that she was merely under the weather. But there was only so much brooding someone of her exuberant nature could tolerate. So she’d made a mistake. It wasn’t the end of the world, at least not yet. And the fates couldn’t be so cruel as to visit upon her clear evidence of her one and only fall from grace. She believed that wholeheartedly—but she’d wait until she had actual proof of that before celebrating.
In the meantime, she got back to her daily routine, with one major exception. She gave up riding for a while, or anything else that would cause her to send to the stable for anything. That, of course, kept her housebound, and there was only so much of that that she could stomach, too.
Finally, she packed a trunk and went for an extended stay with Tiffany, giving her father the excuse that they had innumerable plans to make for the upcoming trip to London, and that could be done more easily if they were together—which was nothing out of the ordinary. They had frequently, through the years, spent weeks at a time at each other’s houses. It was nothing to cause comment about, nor did it imply she was running away from something. Only an arrogant horse breeder might get the latter impression, and she wasn’t the least bit concerned about what he thought.
At least she wasn’t until he showed up at Tiffany’s house her second day there, requesting to speak with her. Apparently her absence from the stable hadn’t bothered him as long as she had been at home and accessible, but now that she’d left home, he had something to say about it.
Of course, she refused to see him. And he went away—what else could he do?—without leaving a message, which told her it couldn’t have been any
thing serious that he wanted. But he came back the next day, and the next, and that told her something else. The man wasn’t going to give up until he’d said his piece. But Megan was nothing if not stubborn. She wasn’t going to hear it.
The trouble with that was that this new, uncommunicative war they were having couldn’t be fought privately. Tiffany’s servants were beginning to talk, Tiffany was dying of curiosity herself, and Tiffany’s butler, male that he was, was taking sides and starting to give Megan reproving looks.
But she could withstand all that easily enough. Obstinacy had its uses, and she had plenty to spare. It was her own urges that she was having trouble dealing with, for ironically, despite what had happened, she was beginning to miss Devlin. She missed their fights. She missed the sight of him, which was always, no matter how angry she might be with him, a pleasure to her senses.
But she still wouldn’t receive him at Tiffany’s. And she wasn’t going to go home, where he had access to her house and could search her out, until she could tell him, truthfully, that he had nothing to worry about, that there would be no unwelcome results from their indiscretion.
She didn’t even blame him anymore for what had happened. She blamed her curiosity. She blamed her body for liking too much what he’d been doing to it. And she blamed that part of her that had talked her into letting him teach her about kissing, when her common sense had been against the idea from the start.
“Are you ever going to say why you’re so mad at him?” Tiffany asked one day over lunch, after Megan had given the order, for the ninth time, to tell Devlin she wasn’t available.
“Do I look mad?”
“Well, no—but you must be. Why else don’t you want to talk to him?”
Megan tried to shrug the matter off. “You advised me to stay away from him, remember?”
“And how often do you follow my advice?” Tiffany countered. “Now come on, why are you hiding here?”
“I’m not hiding.”
“This is your best friend you’re talking to.”
Megan sighed. She was amazed that Tiffany had held her tongue this long. But at least she had two shameful experiences to choose from for this confession, and the first was no longer as shocking as the second one.
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