Lord of Scoundrels

  “Naturally, you are master of your own household,” she said. “I have never met a man more adept at managing everything and everybody. But even you can’t think of everything, or look for what you’ve never experienced. I daresay there are benefits you’ve never imagined to having a wife.”

  “There’s only one,” he said, his eyes narrowing, “and I assure you, my lady, I’ve thought of it. Often. Because it’s the only damned thing—”

  “I devised a remedy for your indisposition this morning,” she said, stifling a surge of irritation…and anxiety. “You thought there was no cure. You have just discovered Byron, thanks to me. And that put you into a better humor.”

  He kicked the footstool away. “I see. So that’s what you’ve been about—humoring me. Softening me up—or trying to.”

  Jessica closed the book and set it aside.

  She had resolved to be patient, to do her duty by him, to look after him because he badly needed it, whether he realized it or not. Now she wondered why she bothered. After last night—after this morning—after exiling her to the foot of a mile-long dining table—the blockhead had the effrontery to reduce her superhuman efforts to manipulation. Her patience snapped.

  “Trying…to…soften…you.” She dragged the words out, and they slammed inside her, making her heart pump with outrage. “You cocksure, clodpated ingrate.”

  “I’m not blind,” he said. “I know what you’re about, and if you think—”

  “If you think that I could not do it,” she said tightly, “that I could not make you eat out of my hand, if that’s what I wanted, I recommend you think again, Beelzebub.”

  There was a short, thundering silence.

  “Out of your hand,” he repeated very, very quietly.

  She recognized the quiet tone and what it boded, and a part of her brain screamed, Run! But the rest of her mind was a red mass of anger. Slowly, deliberately, she laid her left hand, palm up, upon her knee. With her right index finger she traced a small circle in the center.

  “There,” she said, her own voice just as quiet as his, her own mouth curved in a taunting smile. “Like that, Dain. In the palm of my hand. And then,” she went on, still stroking the center of her palm, “I would make you crawl. And beg.”

  Another silence thundered through the room and made her wonder why the books didn’t topple from their shelves.

  Then it came, velvet-soft, the one answer she hadn’t expected, and the one, she knew in an instant, she should have predicted.

  “I should like to see you try,” he said.

  His brain was trying to tell him something, but Dain couldn’t hear it past the clanging in his ears: crawl…and beg. He couldn’t think past the mockery he heard in her soft tones and the fury twisting his gut.

  And so he locked himself in frigid rage, knowing he was safe there, impervious to hurt. He had not crawled and begged when his eight-year-old world shattered to pieces, when the only thing like love he’d ever known had fled from him and his father had thrust him away. The world had thrust him into privies, taunted and mocked and beat him. The world had recoiled from him and made him pay for every pretty deceit that passed for happiness. The world had tried to beat him down into submission, but he would not submit, and the world had had to learn to live with him on his terms.

  As she must. And he would endure whatever he must, to teach her so.

  He thought of the great rocks he’d pointed out to her hours ago, which centuries of drumming rain and beating wind and bitter cold could not wear down or break down. He made himself a mass of stone like them, and, as he felt her move beside him, he told himself she would never find a foothold; she could no more scale him than she could melt him or wear him down.

  She came onto her knees beside him, and he waited through the long moment she remained motionless. She was hesitating, he knew, because she wasn’t blind. She knew stone when she saw it, and maybe, already, she saw her mistake…and very soon, she’d give it up.

  She lifted her hand and touched his neck—and snatched her hand away almost in the same instant, as though she felt it, too, as he did: the crackling shock darting under the skin to shriek along his nerve endings.

  Though he kept his gaze fixed straight ahead, Dain saw her puzzled reaction in the periphery of his vision, caught her frown as she studied her hand, discerned her thoughtful glance moving to his neck.

  Then, his heart sinking, he perceived the slow upturn of her mouth. She edged nearer, and her right knee slid behind him against his buttock, while her left pressed against his thigh. Then she slipped her right arm round his shoulders and draped her left over his upper chest, and leaned in closer. Her sweetly rounded bosom pressed against his arm while she touched her lips to the too sensitive skin at the corner of his eye.

  He kept himself rigid, concentrated hard on breathing steadily, to keep himself from howling.

  She was warm and so soft, and the faint apple scent of chamomile swirled like a net about him…as though the slenderly curved body enveloping his weren’t snare enough. She trailed her parted lips down, over his cheek, along his unyielding jaw to the corner of this mouth.

  And Fool! he silently berated himself, for daring her, when he knew she could not back away from a challenge and he had never come away unscathed after issuing one.

  He had walked into a trap, again, for the hundredth time, and this time it was worse. He could not turn to drink in her sweetness, because that would be yielding, and he would not. He must sit like a granite monolith, while her soft bosom rose and fell against his arm, and while her warm breath, her soft mouth, teased over his skin in brushstroke kisses.

  Like a block of stone he remained, while she sighed softly against his ear, and the sigh hissed through his blood. And so he continued, immovable outwardly, wretched inwardly, while she slowly worked loose the knot of his neckcloth and drew it away.

  He saw it drop from her fingers and tried to keep his attention on the tangled white fabric at his feet, but she was kissing the back of his neck, and sliding her hand under his shirt at the same time. He couldn’t focus his eyes or concentrate his mind because she was everywhere, a fever coiling over him and throbbing inside him.

  “You’re so smooth,” her murmuring voice came from behind him, her breath warm on the nape of his neck while she stroked his shoulder. “Smooth as polished marble, but so warm.”

  He was on fire, and her low, foggy tones were oil drizzled upon the flames.

  “And strong,” she went on, while her serpent hands went on, too, sliding over taut muscles that tightened and quivered under her touch.

  He was weak, a great, stupid ox, sinking into the mire of a virgin’s seduction.

  “You can pick me up with one hand,” the throaty voice continued. “I love your big hands. I want them all over me, Dain. Everywhere.” She flicked her tongue over his ear, and he trembled. “On my skin. Like this.” Under his fine cambric shirt, her fingers stroked over his pounding heart. She brushed her thumb over the taut nipple, and his breath hissed out between clenched teeth.

  “I want you to do that,” she said, “to me.”

  He wanted to, sweet Mother of Jesus, how he wanted to. The knuckles of his tightly fisted hand were white, and his clenched jaw was aching, and those sensations were pure delight compared to the vicious throbbing in his loins.

  “Do what?” he asked, willing the syllables past his thickened tongue. “Was I…supposed…to feel something?”

  “You bastard.” She pulled her hand away, and he felt one coursing thrill of relief, but before he could draw the next breath, she was scrambling onto his lap, drawing up her skirts as she straddled him.

  “You want me,” she said. “I can feel it, Dain.”

  She could hardly fail to. There was nothing between hot, aroused male and warm female but a layer of wool and a scrap of silk. His trousers. Her drawers…soft thighs pressing against his. God help him.

  He knew what was there, beneath the drawers: a few inches of stoc
king above her knee, the knot of a garter, the silken skin above. Even the fingers of his crippled left hand twitched.

  As though she could read his mind, she lifted that useless hand and dragged it over the rumpled silk of her skirt.

  Under, he wanted to cry. The stocking, the garter, the sweet, silken skin…please.

  He clamped his mouth shut.

  He wouldn’t beg, wouldn’t crawl.

  She pushed him back against the sofa cushions and he went down easily. All his strength was focused on keeping the cry from escaping.

  He saw her hand move to the ties of her bodice.

  “Marriage requires adjustments,” she said. “If it’s a tart you want, I must act like one.”

  He tried to close his eyes, but he hadn’t the strength even for that. He was riveted upon her slim, graceful fingers and their wicked work…the tapes and hooks giving way, the fabric slipping down…the swell of creamy flesh spilling from the lace and sagging silk.

  “I know my…charms…aren’t as immense as what you’re used to,” she said, pushing the bodice down to her waist.

  He saw twin moons, alabaster smooth and white.

  His mouth was dry, his head thick, filled with cotton wool.

  “But if I come very close, maybe you’ll notice.” She lifted herself up and bent over him…very near, too near.

  One taut rosebud…inches from his parched lips…woman-scent, rich, coiling in his nostrils, swirling in his head.

  “Jess.” His voice was cracked and harsh, parched.

  His mind was a desert. No thought. No pride. He was mere sand, whirling in a windstorm.

  With a choked cry, he pulled her down, and captured her mouth…sweet oasis…oh, yes, please…and she parted to his frantic plea. He raked her sweetness thirstily. He was dry, burning, and she cooled him and inflamed him at once. She was the rain, and she was hot brandy, too.

  He dragged his hand down over her smooth, supple back, and she shivered, and sighed against his mouth. “I love your hands.” Low, the caressing whisper of her voice.

  “Sei bella,” he answered roughly, his fingers curling and tightening at her waist. So firm and supple, but oh, so small under his big hand.

  There was so little of her, but he wanted it all, and wanted it desperately. He raked his famished mouth over her face, her shoulder, her throat. He rubbed his cheek against the velvety slopes of her breasts and nuzzled the fragrant valley between. He made a winding path with his tongue to the rosy nipple that had teased him moments ago, and captured it. He caressed it with his lips, his tongue, and held her shuddering body fast while he suckled.

  From above him came a soft, startled cry. But her fingers were tangling in his hair, moving restlessly over his scalp, and he knew the cry was not pain, but excitement.

  The tormenting she-devil liked it.

  Then, heated and maddened as he was, he knew he wasn’t powerless.

  He could make her beg, too.

  His heart was racing at a gallop and his mind was thick and drunk, but somehow he summoned a fragment of control and, instead of hurrying on, he laid siege to her other breast, more slowly and deliberately…

  She went to pieces.

  “Oh. Oh, Dain. Please.” Her fingers moved spasmodically, over his neck, his shoulders.

  Yes, beg. He took the quivering nipple lightly between his teeth, and gently tugged.

  “Dear God. Please…don’t. Yes. Oh.” She was squirming helplessly, arching toward him one instant and trying to twist away in the next.

  He slid his hand up under the rumpled, tangled skirt and stroked over the silken drawers. She moaned.

  He released her breast and she sank down and dragged her parted lips over his until he answered, and welcomed her in, and let jolts of pleasure shake his frame while she ravished his mouth.

  And while he drank in the hot liquor of her kiss, he was pushing up the flimsy silk leg of her drawers, stroking over stocking and upward, to the knot of her garter. He swiftly untied it and pushed it away, and drew the stocking down, and slid his fingers over her thigh and up, over the bunched up silken drawers, to grasp her sweetly rounded buttock.

  She came away from his mouth, her breathing shallow, uneven.

  Still grasping her bottom, he shifted position, moving her with him, so that she lay on her side, trapped between his big frame and the sofa back. He kissed her again, deeply, while he moved his hand to the fastenings of her drawers, and untied them, and eased them down. He felt her body tense, but he held her mouth captive, distracting her with a slow, tender kiss, and all the while his fingers were moving over her thigh, stroking, caressing, stealing toward her innocence.

  She squirmed, pulling away from his mouth, but he would not let her escape, and he could not keep from touching her…the fine, taut skin at the juncture of her thigh…a wanton tangle of silky curls…and sweet womanliness, warm, butter-soft…and butter-slick…the delicious evidence of desire.

  He had stirred her, roused her. She wanted him.

  He began to stroke the tender feminine folds, and she went very, very still.

  Then, “Oh.” Her voice was soft with surprise. “Oh. That’s…wicked. I did not—” The rest was lost in a smothered cry, and the sweet warmth pressed against his finger. Her slender body twisted and turned restlessly, toward him, away. “Oh, Lord. Please.”

  He scarcely heard the plea. He was beyond hearing. His blood pounded in his veins, thundered in his ears.

  He found the tender bud and the narrow parting beneath, but it was so small, so tight against his great, intruding finger.

  He caressed the sensitive peak, and it swelled. She was clutching his coat, making soft, breathless sounds, trying to burrow into his hard body. Like a frightened kitten. But she wasn’t frightened. She trusted him. His own trusting kitten. Innocent. So fragile.

  “Oh, Jess, you’re so tiny,” he murmured, despairing.

  He stroked gently inside her, but slick and hot as she was, the way was too small, too tight for him.

  His lust-swollen rod strained furiously against his trousers, a great, monstrous invader that would tear her to pieces. He wanted to weep, to howl.

  “So tight,” he said, his voice raw with misery, because he couldn’t stop touching her, couldn’t stop caressing what he couldn’t, dare not, have.

  She didn’t hear him. She was lost in the fever he was feeding. She was touching him, kissing him.

  So restless her hands, her innocently wanton mouth. She was smoldering in the fire he’d built to conquer her, and he could not stop adding fuel to the blaze.

  “Oh, don’t…yes…please.”

  He heard her gasp, then a sob…and her body shuddered, and the tight flesh clenched against his fingers…and eased…and clenched again, as another climax shook her slender frame.

  He drew his hand away and found it was shaking. Every muscle in his body was taut with strain, aching with the effort it had cost him to keep from ripping her apart. His groin felt as though it had been clamped in Satan’s own vise.

  He drew a ragged breath. And another. And another, waiting for her to come back to the world, and hoping his loins would calm before then, before he had to move.

  He waited, but nothing happened. He knew she wasn’t dead. He could hear, feel, her breathing…slow, steady, peaceful…too peaceful.

  He stared at her incredulously. “Jess?”

  She murmured and burrowed in, nestling her head in the cradle of his shoulder.

  For another full minute he gazed, slack-jawed, into her beautiful tranquil, slumbering face.

  Just like a damned man, he thought exasperatedly. She got what she wanted, then curled up and went to sleep.

  That was what he was supposed to do, blast and confound her bloody impudence. And now—curse her for a selfish ingrate—he would have to figure out how—with only one arm working—to get her to bed without waking her.

  Chapter 13

  Jessica wasn’t sure when exactly she’d become aware she was being
carried up the stairs. It all seemed part of a dream or part of long ago, when she was a sleepy little girl, so tiny that even Uncle Frederick, who was the smallest of her uncles, could easily scoop her up in one arm and carry her up the stairs to the nursery. An uncle’s arm made a hard seat, true, and the ride was bumpy, but she was perfectly safe, snugly braced against a big male body, her head nestled upon a broad shoulder.

  Gradually the fog of sleep cleared, and even before she opened her heavy eyes, Jessica knew who was carrying her.

  She also remembered what had happened. Or most of it. A great deal was lost in the delirious whirlpool Dain had pulled her into.

  “I’m awake,” she said, her voice heavy with sleep. She was still weary, and her mind was thick as pudding. “I can walk the rest of the way.”

  “You’ll tumble down the stairs,” Dain said gruffly. “At any rate, we’re nearly there.”

  There, it turned out, was Her Ladyship’s Apartments. The Grand Catacombs, she silently renamed them, as Dain carried her into the dimly lit cavern of her bedchamber.

  He set her down very carefully upon the bed.

  Then he rang for her maid…and left. Without another word, and in rather a hurry.

  Jessica sat gazing at the empty doorway, listening to his carpet-muffled footsteps as he strode down the long hallway, until she heard the faint thud of his door closing.

  Sighing, she bent to remove the stocking he’d loosened, which had slid down to her ankle.

  She had known from the minute she’d agreed to marry him that it wouldn’t be easy, she reminded herself. She had known he was in an exceedingly prickly humor this evening—all day, in fact. She could not expect him to behave rationally…and bed her properly…and sleep with her.

  Bridget appeared then, and without appearing to notice her mistress’s disordered state of dress or distracted state of mind, quietly and efficiently prepared Her Ladyship for bed.

  Once tucked in, the maid gone, Jessica decided there was no point in fretting about Dain’s failure to deflower her.