Between the Devil and Ian Eversea (19 page)

“There’s the bow undone,” he whispered.

And then he wound the ribbon in his fist and tugged her gently forward, until she stood just shy of touching his chest.

And for a space the shock of being close silenced both of them.

And then:

“I’m not a mule to be tugged about by reins,” she whispered against his chin. With unconvincing indignation.

“True enough. A mule would have bolted away before I could have captured it. That is, unless the mule
wanted
to be captured.”

She gave a short, nervous laugh. Her breath was uneven now. Excitement, or fear, or both.

He waited.

Anticipation. The seducer’s best friend.

Or so he told himself.

He released the ribbon, and slowly, gently, pushed aside the folds of her robe.

He suppressed a groan of delight. She was nude beneath that robe, and he’d known she would be.

He slid his palms around her waist, took his fingertips on a leisurely slide along her rib cage, felt her belly leap. She was trembling. Her breath was hot and ragged on the vee of skin exposed by his open collar. Her skin was a silky miracle. He glided his hands across her belly, heard her softly breathed, helpless, “Oh,” as delicious sensation coursed over and through her, and savored the decadent pleasure of knowing he was likely the first man to touch her like this.

He should stop. He should stop. This was madness.

He could feel the blood in his veins heat and thicken as if she was a drug, a powerful liquor. He filled his hands with her breasts. The full, silky give of them made him groan softly. He could hear his own breath now, a soft roar in his ears. And the tiny catch and stutter of her breath, and then the ragged intake of air as he caressed them.

Her head went back at the pleasure of it.

He drew his thumbs leisurely over her nipples. They were already ruched into hard knots.

She arched into his touch as though lightning struck.

He did it again. Harder. He wanted to take one into his mouth.

How quickly this had escalated.

“Ian,” she whispered. Half afraid, half drugged with yearning, half plea. “It’s . . .”

“I know,” he said. “I know so many things, Tansy. So very, very many things about you, and how you feel, and what you want . . .”

He ducked and gently, just a little, flicked his tongue over her nipple.

He realized then he was playing roulette with his own desire. It was time to back away before he was too deep in. Just this taste of pleasure for her now, and then he could leave. He was always the one to leave women, anyway; like an actor who followed an excellent script, he’d always known precisely when to do it. Self-preservation was an instinct.

Why then, did he say: “I can make you see stars, Tansy.” On a whisper.

She looked up into his face as if he were the universe.

He
had
to kiss her then.

Her mouth was as yielding as a feather bed; he sank into it with a sigh, a moan, that made him realize what a relief kissing her again was. That every moment he’d spent up until now not kissing her had been a shameful waste. And it began just that way, languid and wondering, a slow exploration, each of them taking unguarded pleasure in the textures and taste and perfect fit of each other. She gave and took in that kiss with a sensual grace and abandon that made him want to shout hallelujah, that nearly dropped him to his knees.

But he only took that kiss deeper, and his tongue dove and stroked, her hands clutched as they slid up over his chest and latched around his neck for balance, and she opened herself to him.

His fingers trailed her bare thighs, up to delicate, sheltered skin between them, up to the silky vee of curls. She ducked her head and buried it against his chest; her breath gusted hot and rapid on his collarbone.

The want of her shook him; his limbs felt stiff and clumsy. He could taste lust, peculiarly electric, in the back of his throat. His cock strained against his trouser buttons.

He skated his fingers between her thighs and found her slick and hot. Wet. So ready for the taking.

Her breath caught on the word
“Oh.”

He did it again. A tease, a feathery slide of one finger, and she jerked. “Ian . . .”

He did it again, harder.

She arched into it on a choked gasp, circled her hips against him, her hands clutching his shirt. How he wanted her hands on his skin. Her breath had begun to come in shallow little gusts against his throat.

He did it again slowly, tantalizingly.

He stopped. Testing.

“No,” she begged softly on a whisper. “No, please don’t stop . . .”

“Keep your eyes on my face, Tansy.”

He wanted to witness her pleasure.

And so he was able to watch her eyes go heavy-lidded, and her head tip backward, and the cords of her throat go taut, and her head thrash forward again, and the air come shredded between her parted lips as he played with her desire like an orchestra conductor. And this was how he knew when to stroke harder, when to circle and tease, when to slide a finger deeper into her so that she moaned softly, gutturally, against his chest. A sound that nearly made him come right there and then.

With hands clumsy and shaking he unbuttoned his trousers, and his cock, thick and erect, sprang free, and he lifted her thigh with one hand, as high as his waist, and slid his cock against her wetness, tormenting himself, tormenting her. Once . . . twice. Three times. A dangerous, dangerous game, the most dangerous he’d ever played, when in one thrust he could be inside her and chasing his own pleasure, his own release, and he knew it would be explosive. His every cell cried out for it.

And yet the two of them did seem to seek risk. They would take it too far, he knew that now. It was inevitable. Perhaps not now, perhaps not tonight.

“Ian . . . I’m . . .
help me . . .
I’m . . .

He pressed his palm hard against her and circled, and she choked a sound of bliss, and her body bucked.

He pressed her head into his chest just in time to muffle her scream. And he held her close and felt triumph as he felt her body shake like a rag, over and over with what was likely her first ever release.

Silence apart from the ragged tide of breathing. Cool air over heated skin.

She shuddered.

He pulled her night rail around her, wrapped her in his arms and pulled her close. A little closer than his erection would have preferred. He felt quite martyred, in a way, and blessed in another.

He waited for her breathing to regain normal rhythm.

“
Shooting
stars.” The words were muffled against his chest.

He gave a short, almost pained laugh. “I’m a man of my word.”

He was afraid now. In a way he’d never before been. He didn’t know how to extricate himself from this. Because he knew another woman couldn’t possibly be the answer; nor was avoiding Tansy altogether. For this was a different kind of want. It wasn’t mere sensual hunger. He knew how to sate that kind of hunger. He suspected the correct word for it was “need.” There was a first taste of opium, or gin, for every addict, after all. This strange, wild, reckless, beautiful girl could very well be the end of him. He might as well throw himself off the balcony now.

How very ironic. The duke would finally have his revenge then.

He could feel her heart beating.

He savored it, as if the heartbeats ticked off the minutes they had left together.

She tipped her head back and looked up at him. For a long time, in silence. “Are you going to lecture me now? About how very dangerous all of this is, and so forth?”

How strangely fragile she felt now in his arms. His arms went over her shoulder blades. Suddenly it seemed to him that it did feel as though wings could sprout there.

“No,” he said softly. “I think you know. This can’t happen again, Tansy.”

Her head jerked back and she looked up at him. He heard her breath catch.

And so the words had landed hard.

He’d meant it to sound like an order. It was difficult to shake the habit of issuing orders.

Knowing her, he suspected she’d interpreted it as a dare.

God help him if she did.

And it really was a prayer to God for help. If she dared him again, it would be all or nothing.

He looked down at her, and traced her lips with a single finger the way he had traced her name on the wall of Lilymont.

He dropped his hands abruptly from her.

“Go inside before you take a chill.”

He suspected his tone had already gotten the chill started, which was just as well.

He backed away from her and didn’t turn around until he was in his room again, the door closed behind him, the window firmly locked, and yet he knew he was hardly safe.

S
HE DIDN’T EXPECT
to sleep, but she finally tumbled over the edge into a deep, black dreamless one.

She was disappointed about the dreamless part. Her senses had just been thoroughly, properly used for the first time ever, and until she slept they’d reverberated like a thoroughly strummed instrument. She’d lain there and felt her body humming a hallelujah chorus. She wouldn’t have minded reliving the evening again and again and again in her sleep.

For, as he’d said, it couldn’t happen again. Not in waking life.

So that’s what bodies were for, she’d thought, drifting back into the house from the balcony, realizing her feet were chilled. And that’s what lips, and fingertips, and breasts, and nipples, and skin, and arms, and cocks, were for. And that’s what men were for, and women were for. Suddenly, as bliss echoed all through her, everything else humans were capable of seemed superfluous.

I know so many, many things.

He
would
say that and then go on to say it couldn’t happen again.

He was right, of course.

And when she awoke in the daylight, she had the sense to feel a certain reprieve. As though she’d escaped something. Daylight was slightly less conducive to madness, and she did not intend to be among the legion of women Ian Eversea had seduced and abandoned. A woman ruined because of a weakness for a beautiful man with a legendary way about him, and therefore useless to anyone, and a disgrace to the duke and his family, not to mention her own family.

She found the notion of that unbearable.

And yet . . . he kissed her as though he . . .
needed
her.

Only
her.

As though he was searching for something and finding it . . . some solace, some ease, some answer. She’d felt his kiss in the soles of her feet, the palms of her hands, from the top of her head on down. Through every part of her. He’d trembled when he kissed her, and his hands had been skilled and reverent, and she knew he’d been . . . lost.

Seducer. Seduction. She knew he was known for this, and the words implied calculation, process. It might have begun a bit like a chess game, but it had taken on its own momentum, and owned both of them.

It made her want to give and give. She had never thought of herself as an inherently generous person. But it worried her that she wanted to give him anything he wanted when he kissed her.

She would not believe he kissed every woman that way. He would have been worn to a nub by now.

Then again, how ever would she know? Perhaps it was all part of his magic.

And what if . . . well, he certainly wasn’t a duke. He didn’t even have a title. What would it be like to be married to Ian Eversea? Surely there was no harm in imagining it . . . surely a man like him would take a wife
one
day . . . She woke in time to find the stripe of light leading to the window. How would he look this morning? Any different than he had? How did she look?

She followed the little light road and peeked out.

But he wasn’t there.

She waited a bit, the speed of her heartbeat ratcheting up a bit.

And he didn’t appear.

And when the light was finally high enough, she knew he wasn’t going to, which, she supposed, was all for the best.

Deflated, resigned, feeling quite martyred and mature, she flung the braided rope of her hair over her shoulder and settled in at her desk. She smoothed out the foolscap, and decided she would need to write smaller if she wanted to confine her list to a single page. She reached for her quill and wrote:

Kisses me as though his very life depends
upon it.

Chapter 19

“W
E SET SAIL IN
a little less than a month, Captain Eversea. Will you be on board? We could use a man like you. Pirates, you know. Le Chat is still sailing, or so rumor has it.”

“I thought I was embarking on a pleasure jaunt, and you intend to put me to work?”

“Men like yourself live for it,” the captain said dryly.

Ian couldn’t argue with that.

He inhaled deeply. They were so close and yet so far from the sea in Sussex, and here the smell of it was primordial and thrilling. A heaving glassine green-blue stretching for as far as the eye could see. The ship seemed a behemoth at the dock but would be a speck on the chest of the sea. They would be at its mercy. He found the notion peculiarly soothing.

“I’ll be aboard.”

He thought of Tansy Danforth standing on deck, her bright eyes reflecting the seas and skies. She’d probably enjoyed that voyage, the risk, the danger, the newness. And how fun it would be to banter with her, to share the sights, to protect her from the goggling men on board and to watch her attempt to rein in those flirtatious urges.

And at night . . . in a narrow little bunk . . .

Something tightened in his gut again. He wanted her with a ferocity that bordered on fury. And it was this he needed to outrun, too.

He remembered the archery competition, and he thought sometimes he was like that: ever since the war he was like a bowstring pulled too far back for the arrow to do anything but overshoot every target. What he wanted and needed was to keep moving, until somehow his restlessness had run its course.

He watched the ship and dock activity idly a moment. The crew was working ceaselessly, repairing sails, scrubbing and sanding decks, bringing on cargo and supplies, checking the manifests as they grew person by person.

He’d apologized to his cousin Adam and begged leave for a day or two in London so he could put a deposit down to hold his place on this particular ship. It would sail as far as Africa, but he could step off in any port he chose along the way, or take another ship bound for anywhere. Anywhere at all. As long as his money lasted. And he’d saved enough money to keep moving for years, if he so chose.

“Eversea!”

A delighted voice spun him around.

“Caldwell!”

It was Major Caldwell who had suggested him for the East India Company promotion.

“A pity you won’t be working for the company here in London, Eversea. Not only would we have a splendid time, we could use a clever sort.”

“I’m flattered you’ll miss me, sir, but this is something I’ve long wanted to do. Before I’m too decrepit to do it, mind you.”

“Well, make your fortune and gather a few stories and bed a few brown maidens and return to us full of enviable stories, if you must.”

“I must.”

He said.

Meaning it.

H
E RETURNED LATE
enough that the entire house was asleep, and so he stripped off his clothes and flung himself, smelling of horse and the sea, into his bed, and fell too quickly asleep.

And in moments, it seemed, he could feel Jeremiah Cutler’s little body tucked beneath his arm, plump and squirmy, vibrating with sobs. But he couldn’t hear him over the screams of horses, the ceaseless roar of artillery, the guttural cries of men cut down. He handed Jeremiah back into the safety of his father’s arms. He turned and lunged, dodging through chaos. He had only seconds to get to—

Ian broke through to consciousness with a gasp and a hoarse inarticulate cry.

He sat bolt upright, breathing as though he’d actually been running. He dropped his face into his hands and breathed through them.

The dream was potent; it was as if he’d lived it all over again.

He lifted his head at last.

Tansy was sitting at the foot of his bed, knees tucked under her chin, arms wrapped tightly around them, watching him.

He nearly yelped.

“What the bloody . . .
how
did you . . .”

“I think you were having a terrible dream,” she said somberly.

“Am I
still
dreaming?” he asked wildly. “This isn’t usually part of it. But if it is, I should warn you, it never ends very well for women.”

He fell back against the pillow, hard.

Bloody hell. He threw a beleaguered arm over his eyes and sighed a sigh of despair.

Tansy slid from the bed, walked across his room to his bureau and sniffed the pitcher suspiciously. She poured some water into a glass, brought it back and held it out to him.

Ian reflexively took it and gulped it down. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and clunked the glass down on his night table.

“How did you know I was home?”

“I saw your light.”

A horrible suspicion struck.

“Wait . . . How did you get in here, Tansy?”

“Your window was open. Just a little.”

“My wind— Oh God. Tell me you didn’t climb from your balcony onto mine.
Tell me you didn’t climb from your balcony onto mine!”

“It was easier to do than I thought.”

He opened his mouth. Only a dry squeak emerged. He tried again. “You can’t
do
that. Mother of God. Do you want to die? You’re going to marry a title and a fortune, remember? And live happily ever after.” His words were still frayed. “Finding your broken body on the ground below my balcony would ruin my morning view.”

“Shhhh,” she said soothingly.

He closed his eyes. His breathing seemed deafening in the room, now that he had an audience.

He felt the mattress sink next to him and opened one eye.

She’d stretched out along the length of the bed, dangerously close to him but not touching, close enough that he could smell the sweetness of her, and now she was nestling her head into his other pillow.

Then she reached over and gently lifted his hand from his chest. Slowly, gently, carefully, as if stealing a bird egg from a nest.

“What are you doing, Tansy?”

“Comforting you.”

He snorted softly.

She took the hand back with her to her side of the bed and held it companionably.

And because he couldn’t think of a reason to pull away, he allowed it.

And it
was
comforting, strangely enough. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d held anyone’s hand.

They lay side by side, flat on their backs, in silence.

“I couldn’t sleep, either,” she said, after what seemed a long time.

He gave another short humorless laugh. “Bad dreams?”

“Sometimes. And very disturbing good dreams, too, about the man in the room next to mine.”

He half smiled. “Tansy.” A drowsy warning.

He could almost
hear
her smile.

They were silent again.

“Ian?”

“Mmm?”

“What was your dream about?”

He stiffened.

The thing was, he’d never told a soul. Oh, he’d told the story behind the dreams. It was part of the war stories men shared with each other. But he’d never confessed to being haunted by it at night.

And while he waited and said nothing, the fire said quite a bit. It popped and crackled and a log flopped over.

“Did you hear me say anything in my sleep?”

He’d always wondered. He dreaded the answer.

“It sounded like ‘Justine.’ ”

Ah, bloody hell.

He sighed a long sigh of resignation and swiped his free hand over his face. “I wish you hadn’t heard that.”

“I’ve heard worse. I heard you break wind the other day on the balcony. Just a little.”

“You
what
?” He was
not
going to blush.

And now she was laughing.

“Leave. Leave now. Or I’ll do it again.” But now he was laughing, too, and bit his lip to stop it. “Lower your voice, for God’s sake.”

But he didn’t let go of her hand so she
could
leave.

“Have you been
spying
on me, Tansy?”

Though he was aware any indignation was hypocritical, given that he’d essentially spied on her, too.

“I wasn’t
certain
it was you, until only recently. I just thought it was a man with a beautiful torso.”

The words ambushed him. Beautiful torso?

He’d truthfully never been so disarmed by a woman in his entire life. She was one of a kind.

Don’t leave yourself so open to hurt, Tansy,
he wanted to tell her.
You shouldn’t say those sorts of things to me.
He knew the power of words and flattery, because he’d used them strategically. And so did she, for that matter. But she was so
sincere
.

What was the matter with him when sincerity unnerved him completely?

He could tell her that he thought she was beautiful, too. That her lips were paradise. That her hair was a symphony of color. That her skin . . . oh, her skin.

But he wouldn’t, because words like that bound another to you. Everyone wants to know how much they matter. He never used them lightly.

And in the wake of those words, he considered it might be sensible to drop her hand.

Perhaps . . . perhaps not just yet.

“Who is Justine?” she wanted to know.

“A bit of the war that won’t let me leave it behind, I’m afraid. That’s all.”

“Were you in love with her?”

He made an exasperated sound. “God. Women and
that word
. They bandy it about so freely and I doubt half of them know what it means.”

“In other words . . . no?”

He sighed, pretending extreme exasperation, which made her smile again. “Very well. Since you’re relentless. Justine was . . . she was someone for whom I felt responsible, and she died in the war. I was too late to stop it. And I suppose I regret it every day.”

He glanced over to find her clear eyes not on him but on the ceiling.

He smiled. She always seemed to be looking up.

His smile faded when he remembered she looked up for her mother.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly, at last. As if she’d pictured the entire episode and genuinely mourned it along with him.

She knew what it was to mourn, too.

And strangely, there was a sudden easing in him, as if someone had finally played a note that harmonized with the one he sounded every day.

So as the words came for the first time, he aimed them at the ceiling, too, his voice abstracted.

“She was the wife of my commanding officer. Pretty, vivacious, very kind. I was close to both of them. We tried as best we could to keep women away from the battlefield but she traveled with our regiment and she wanted to be near her husband. She was intrepid as well as foolish, I suppose. But none of that matters. I was able to get to her child in time, but I couldn’t get back to her—I took a bayonet in the gut, which rather slowed me down—and she got caught in cannon fire. I saw it. I never knew whether he would have preferred to have his wife or child alive because I spent the rest of the war recovering in a farmhouse in Flanders.”

Her grip on his hand grew tighter and tighter as he talked. As if she walked the whole thing through with him.

“Oh, yes. I’ve medals and the like,” he said dryly. “I’m brave as brave can be, so they said. I just wasn’t fast enough to get back to her without getting myself skewered. And so I saved her child, but watched her die. And I get to watch her die in my dreams on occasion, too.”

Tansy was quiet for a long while, taking this in.

“Well, as long as you have medals,” she said thoughtfully.

He threw back his head and laughed, and had to bite his lip to stifle it.

And she laughed, too.

It was the
perfect
thing to say.
Well, you did your best,
or
It wasn’t your fault
—it didn’t matter how true those things were. It didn’t matter how you tried to rationalize it away. The dreams would come anyway.

She knew it.

“Do you know . . . what’s coincidental about that, Ian? My parents wished
I’d
died, instead of my brother.”

It was such a ghastly thing to hear, his mind blanked for a moment. It was almost as though she’d confessed to murder.

He almost stammered. “Surely you’re mistaken—”

“I heard them say it.” She said this matter-of-factly, but he heard the steeled nerve in her voice. “Overheard them, I should say. My mother said, right after my brother died, ‘If only it had been the girl.’ ”

It was like someone had punched him in the heart.

He was shocked by how literally painful the words were.

And a sort of furious flailing helplessness followed. As if he’d been once again one second too late to prevent someone from being cut in two by cannon fire.

“People say terrible, misguided things when they’re in pain, Tansy. Things they don’t mean.”

“But sometimes you just know, don’t you?
You
have so many siblings.
You
must know. They loved me but they loved my brother more. He was their pride and hope and the heir and so forth. And I was just a girl. I loved him, too, you know. I suppose I’ve always wanted to matter more than I did.”