Foolish dreams. When had she lost her firm grip on reality and fallen into wistfulness?
Sliding out of bed, she padded on bare feet toward the fireplace. If she had to be awake, she wanted the cheer and warmth of a crackling fire.
Kneeling on the hearth, she tossed on a few sticks of kindling, then placed enough logs to last her through the rest of this interminable night. Staring into the red and yellow flames, she wondered if Mr. Knight would ever return. Perhaps she would live her life alone, a virgin, married and abandoned.
If the look on his face today was any indication, she would be lucky to live long at all. She didn’t know him. No one did. The questions Lord Fanthorpe had asked returned to haunt her. Who was Mr. Knight? Who were his people?
She thought she detected traces of kindness in Mr. Knight…but that was before. Before she had betrayed him.
The merest drift of air brought the scent of tobacco, of cards, of old leather. The skin on her neck prickled in warning. Lifting her head, she looked to the chair on her right.
There, darkness outlined by darkness, lounged Mr. Knight. He still wore the suit he’d worn to be married, but he’d discarded his jacket, and his satin waistcoat was unbuttoned. His shirt was open at the throat, and the slice of skin was tanned and dusted with hair. His features were the same, austere and still, but his chin was unshaven. The careful image he had cultivated, of a gentleman of leisure, disintegrated into a more honest and less civilized image—that of a master of the streets and alleys.
He was silence personified. As he observed her, his eyes reflected the fire’s golden flame.
Rising, she faced him.
Still indolently sprawled in the chair, he said, “I used to think you did those things in all innocence.”
He was here. He was speaking to her. The tightness of her throat eased. “What things?”
He gestured up and down her figure, using his long, blunt fingers in emphasis. “Like that. Standing in front of the fire so I can see the outline of your body through your clothes.”
At once she started to walk away.
His voice halted her in her tracks. “No. Stay where you are. I didn’t say I didn’t like it.”
“I won’t stand here while you ogle and insult me.”
“Yes. You will. I’m your husband, and I will see that for which I paid so dearly.” His pale eyes glowed and seemed almost feral in their intensity. “You should be proud of your body. Your breasts are perfect, rounded and firm.” His gaze feasted on her. “And I love to watch you from the back.”
Her hands itched to cover herself, but which part? The fire heated the silk over her back, and his gaze heated the silk at her front.
“Your thighs…I love your thighs the best. They’re slender, yet strong, and when you ride, so smoothly, so gracefully, all I can think is how you would move beneath me.”
“Mr….Knight!” Such an inadequate response. So ineffectual.
Taking a glass half-full of golden liquid from the table beside him, he lifted it to his lips, sipped, and put it back. “There’s a quaint American custom in which I’d like you to indulge me. I’m your husband. For the rest of your life, we’re going to share the same bed. Call me Remington.”
She could do that easily enough. “There’s no need to be sarcastic…Remington.” To her surprise, the sound of his name on her lips made her shiver, as if she allowed him an intimacy so great she would never recover the pieces of herself.
As the logs caught fire, she could see his face more clearly. His brows were black and straight. Flames were reflected in the frozen blue of his eyes. Deep grooves were etched into his skin between his nose and his mouth. He looked diabolical, and he looked hungry.
Again she started to step away.
In a tone so deep he sounded like the voice of darkness, he said, “Stay. I insist. I like the way the material clings to your hips and the little puckers your nipples make in the silk.”
He spoke softly, as if he were talking to himself, but each word seduced her as surely as a touch. It didn’t matter who he was or who his people were. It wasn’t hostility that gripped him tonight, but lust. Ladies should not respond to anything quite so vulgar as lust. Certainly they shouldn’t lust in return. But the place between Eleanor’s legs grew damp, and her nipples ached. She ached. She wanted to move. Not away, but toward, and with.
She found herself standing like a wanton: hip out, shoulders back, her spine a graceful curve. He still wanted her, and instinct told her that making him her mate would bind him as nothing else could. “Please, let me explain why I did what I did.”
“What you did? What do you mean? Married me?” He laughed without humor. “No need to explain. I do understand. I’ve been married for my money.”
Shocked that anyone could think that of her, she protested, “I didn’t marry you for your money!”
“Please. Don’t tell me Banbury tales in addition to your other sins. What other reason could there be for marrying me? It certainly wasn’t for love. Love wouldn’t have made a sacrifice of my needs.”
At his scorn, she shriveled a little inside. But the habit of frankness had been easy to adopt, and she answered, “No one needs to marry a duchess, and I didn’t need to marry a wealthy man. You’ve heard my story. Had I chosen, I could have married an old and moneyed man when I was sixteen. I would even now be a rich and merry widow.”
“At sixteen, one always expects another man will come along. How old are you, my dear?”
Abominable man! “Twenty-four.”
“Firmly on the shelf with the other old maids. You were more desperate now, and what an opportunity you had with me! Well, my darling”—taking her hand, he stroked it—“if you have plans to kill me for my fortune, be warned. I’ve escaped death at the hands of your family before, and now I’m warned. I shall watch my back.”
“Kill you?” She yanked her hand free. “Are you mad?”
“Perhaps. A little, tonight.” His fingers twitched, as if he wanted to pounce, to grip her and hold her still for his possession. “I sent for my man who had been watching you two, you and your cousin, the future duchess.”
“Spying on us, you mean.”
“Spying on you,” Remington concurred amiably. “We agreed you must have made the switch at Mr. Rumbelow’s house party. That is where the duchess remains, is it not?”
“I think so, but she was supposed to be here by now. I’m actually very worried about her.”
“So worried you married her fiancé.”
Eleanor could be cruel, too. “She didn’t want you.”
“Now that, I believe.” He tensed like a beast about to spring. “You’re saying she would approve of your ingenuity. I imagine she would. I imagine any woman would. I suppose you were supposed to give me a message telling me she’d be late.”
“No. This is her scheme that I should portray her!” Eleanor drew a frustrated breath. “You commanded with such vigor that she appear promptly, we feared you would take some terrible vengeance if she didn’t obey.”
“I’m not so spiteful.”
“A man who seeks a wife at the piquet table is likely to be quite insane.”
“Hm.” He stroked his chin. “Yes. Perhaps I gave too much weight to my commands.”
“Logic at last.” Then, because she couldn’t bear not knowing for another minute, she asked, “Where have you been?”
“Spoken like a true wife.” His lids drooped as if he were amused. At her, or at himself. “And like a true English husband, I’ve been at my club, gambling and thinking. Do you know what thought I came up with?”
She didn’t know, but she suspected she wasn’t going to like it. “No.”
“I’m married to you. We have spoken our vows in front of God and witnesses, and we are as surely wed as any old married couple in London. Divorce would take years, a fortune, and an act of Parliament. There’s no grounds for an annulment. So there’s no escape. We’re married.”
“I know. I’m??
?”
“Don’t.” He slashed the air with the knife of his hand. “Don’t insult me by saying you’re sorry. You manipulated me every inch of the way, with your artless blushes and shy adoration. I thought I had won all…a duchess I could love and sweet revenge at the same time. Instead”—he crumpled his imaginary winnings in his hand—“I have nothing.”
She wasn’t nothing. She was a de Lacy. Straightening, she said, “You have everything. You have more than most people ever dream of.”
“Enlighten me, dear girl. What do I have?”
With his cynical gaze on her, her mind went blank. “Well…you have your health.”
He laughed, short and sharp.
“That’s important.” She thought frantically. “Your fortune is intact, is it not?”
“Very much so, to your relief, I’m sure.”
“You’re young, you’re handsome, you’re intelligent”—taking a breath, she dared as she had never dared before—“and you have me.”
He plucked off his shoes and, one by one, threw them at the door.
Eleanor jumped each time the leather smacked the wood and rattled the lock.
“Ah, yes. My dear wife, who has made me the laughingstock of London. Did I say of London? Of England. Do you know what they were saying in the club tonight?”
Beneath his insults and his seductions, she hadn’t been able to detect his feelings before, but he was angry. Of course.
“At the club, everyone was saying that all it took was the whiff of English pussy to entice an American cock to follow.”
She was shocked. Even in her travels, she had not heard such vulgarity. “How horrible. How dare they speak so about us? Use such language?”
“They’re men. That is how men talk.” He was more than angry, she realized. He was furious. She could almost see the shimmer of heat as waves of rage rolled off him.
Heat…she could warm herself by that much heat. “What did you reply?”
“I laughed. I said they were right. I said I was so anxious to get under your skirts that I would have wed you no matter who you were.”
She wiped her suddenly damp palms along the silk on her hips. This warmth she felt was more than embarrassment. More than the heat from the fire. “You were saving face.”
“I was telling the truth.” His lips, his magical, wonderful lips, eased into a self-mocking smile. “Ever since I met you, all I can think about is your breasts, your thighs, your…pussy.”
Her pussy quivered as if he had stroked it.
“Worse, I’ve been worried about your moods, your happiness, your pleasure. No wonder I let you lead me down the aisle without another thought in my head.”
Her mouth dried. He made his intentions clear. He would take her, make her his whether she willed it or not.
He had the right; he was her husband. But rights meant little when it was her body, her self who faced the beast with the untamed eyes. “You said you thought you had a duchess you could love. You were talking to me. You were looking at me. You can still love me.”
“No. I can only love a duchess.”
His answer stuck at her heart, and finally she made the move to leap away.
His hand shot out and caught her arm. “But I want you. Furthermore, you’re my wife.” He held her gaze. “I can have you.”
Chapter 24
Eleanor’s heart began a slow, strong thumping. Her chest rose and fell as she tried to get her breath. Remington wanted her. He had every right to take her, to use her as he pleased, and she had no doubt that if she ran, he would chase her down.
But her knees felt too weak to move, for…she wanted him, too. If only she didn’t feel this cowardly uncertainty about joining with this man. He was dangerous in a way she didn’t yet understand. Dangerous to her.
“Come here.”
Two nights ago, she had heard his voice caress smoothly, but he didn’t bother with such subtleties now. “Come here,” he repeated, pulling her toward him, “and pay the price for your deceit.”
Stumbling forward, she looked down at him. Why should she struggle? The first time she’d seen him, he’d caught her in his web. She had never wanted to escape. Yet to take this man into herself would involve a surrender of being, and she might never get herself back.
“You little fool.” He pulled her into his lap, tugged her gown up, arranged her to face him, bare legs tucked on either side of his hips. “It’s too late to have second thoughts now.”
He was right about that. Beneath her strained a man enraged by his fate, driven by lust, and it was up to her to tame him.
Yet he was dressed. She was not. She was vulnerable. He was not. The material of his breeches rasped against the tender tissues between her legs. With his hands on her hips, he fitted himself into the notch between her thighs. Beneath his breeches she could feel the stiffness of his manhood, and when he moved her back and forth, the throbbing she had experienced from his mouth on her began again.
Placing her hands on his shoulders, she steadied herself. His face was right before her, and his eyes watched her unceasingly. She tried to hide her expression; she didn’t want him to think he could arouse her with a touch.
But it seemed that he could, for that constant, back-and-forth movement made her hands grip him more tightly.
“Do you remember the things you said to me the other night?” he asked.
It was tempting to lie, to say no, but she couldn’t concentrate. Not while he rocked her back and forth. “I remember.”
“You said you wanted to take out my cock and bathe it in your mouth.”
Her desire was growing. Breathing was difficult, thinking worse. She was moving on her own, now.
He shifted one hand to cup her bottom, to encourage her hips, while the other traveled over her skin to her breast. “I didn’t let you do that.”
“No.” He used his fingertips to circle her breast, defining the shape with his touch.
“I bathed you with my mouth, instead.”
“Yes.” The memory of that pleasure contributed and combined with this pleasure until she could scarcely tell where one left off and the other began.
“I put my finger inside you.” He laughed a little.
“Inside your pussy.” His hand slid beneath the silk of her gown, along the warm, dark cleft of her bottom. He circled the entrance to her body. “You were damp then, too.”
She tried to press her knees together, but he was between them and she accomplished nothing. Nothing, except the effort further inflamed her senses.
His finger slipped inside, exploring deeply, rasping the tissues in a slow and steady motion. “You’re so tight. When I push my cock inside, you’re going to let me in slowly. Then I’ll settle in, and nothing you can do will dislodge me.”
She had trouble forming the words. “Will I want to?”
“I think so. You’re a strong woman, and I’ll be in you, making you mine.”
A strong woman. He thought she was a strong woman.
“Will you like to have me control you, set the pace, teach you delight?”
She didn’t want to think. She wanted to float along on a flood of passion.
“Tell me,” he commanded. “Do you want my possession? Do you want to know that no other man will ever have you? Do you want me every night, inside you, reinforcing my claim until you live in a world bounded by bliss, and all you can think of is me?”
The way he said it—it sounded like a threat, not seduction.
Yet at the same time, his hand caressed her breast, while the other moved inside her.
He observed her every expression, capturing her thoughts like an eagle captures its prey. “Tell me.”
“I want you. That was why—” Before she could finish, to explain why she had married him, he pulled his finger out.
Disappointment took her, and she whimpered.
Then slowly, he worked his finger back in. But this time she shuddered. The sense of intrusion increased. The pressure increased, an
d she froze, afraid to move—for pain threatened.
“Two fingers. I’m making a place for myself.” He smiled, baring all his teeth. “But it seems as if I’m doing all the work. Why don’t you…”
She held her breath, wondering what he would require.
“Kiss me.”
Kiss him? So insignificant an intimacy, yet so important. Face to face, mouth to mouth, exchanging breath…
“You kiss very well,” he murmured. “You kiss like a woman in love.”
She sucked in a startled breath. He didn’t know that. He couldn’t. He’d accused her of marrying him for his money, and to her surprise, she preferred that to the truth—that she wanted him, loved him with all her silly heart.
No, she didn’t want him to realize that, for that would make her vulnerable to every torment he chose to dole out.
She could tell—he was thinking. Maybe he was realizing he had touched on the truth. That wouldn’t do.
So, taking handfuls of his shirt in her fists, she leaned forward. At the last minute, he closed his eyes, giving himself over to passion. She pressed her lips to his. His unshaven chin scraped at her tender skin. She probed with her tongue. He tasted of mint and brandy, manly and delicious, and as she kissed him, she showed him the love she dared not confess.
Again he tucked his hand under her bottom and lifted her. His lips moved on hers, his words were a breath in her mouth. “Move on me.”
“But your fingers…” He scattered little kisses across her face, but not even that could distract her. “It might hurt.”
He pulled away enough to smile mockingly. “And it might be ecstasy. Move.”
Carefully, she lifted herself, lowered herself. The motion was right, somehow, the ache of fullness easing.
She lifted herself again, aware that excitement worked its way along her nerves—
And he said, “That’s enough. There’s no more time.” Abruptly, he took his hands away, clutched her against him, and stood.
She caught a glimpse of his face before he turned away from the light, and his expression frightened her. All the time they’d spent together had been a lie. He wasn’t a civilized savage. He was simply a savage, and he would feast on her now.