Captive of Sin (22 page)

Odd. Mysterious.
Important.

He settled himself more comfortably. She was overwhelmingly aware of his physical presence. The way the mattress tilted under him. His scent, so familiar now. The regular rise and fall of his chest.

“Gideon…”

As he turned his head on the pillows to stare at her, she caught the glint of his eyes. “Good night, Charis.”

He sounded resentful. He’d hate being manipulated into enforced proximity. She couldn’t blame him.

But he was here. That was all she cared about.

She’d achieved her first victory. Now she had to work out how to ignite his passion so the next time they shared this bed, he touched her as her husband.

How she wished she knew more about men. All she had to work on was instinct and last night’s painful and embarrassing joining. Surely the delicious feelings he aroused in her weren’t meant to end in desolation. There must be pleasure in the act. Else why would people risk so much for passion?

Perhaps one day soon she’d find out.

“Good night, Gideon,” she whispered, linking her hands at her waist to stop them reaching for him.

S
ince Rangapindhi, horror and pain had poisoned Gideon’s dreams. This dream belonged to a different, more benevolent world. Slender arms cradled him. A soft female breast curved under his cheek. A woman’s breath sighed in time with his.

The piercing isolation that scored his every waking moment vanished. In this bewitching fantasy, he rejoined the human race.

Dear heaven, let him not wake.

Not yet.

Convulsively, he tightened the arms he curled around the woman’s waist. He buried his face deeper in the lush bosom. A peppery floral fragrance teased his senses.

A familiar fragrance.

He knew who he dreamt about. He’d known from the first.

“Charis…” he whispered into the frail silk veiling her breast.

His dream wife stroked his hair back from his forehead.
The gesture’s tenderness slashed his heart. Her fingers brushed his face, and he felt the breath stall in her lungs.

The dream’s physical detail was so rich. So real.

Too real.

It was too late. He knew he wasn’t asleep. The brief warmth was cruel mockery. Already he shrank from contact. Charis’s scent became the oversweet stink of putrefying flesh. The touch of her hand, the grip of dead fingers.

His belly churning with nausea, he rolled away. As he sat up, he kept his back to her. He didn’t want her to see the revulsion that he knew darkened his face.

“Hell,” he groaned, burying his head in shaking hands. He tensed his throat against rising nausea.

“Gideon?” One word quivering with distress.

Of course she was distressed. She’d married a damned madman.

Through his agony, he was vaguely aware of how massively aroused he was. Hard as oak. Hot as Hades. It was a spiteful caprice of his affliction that his body continued to react like any virile twenty-five-year-old’s.

“Gideon, are you all right?”

“Yes.” He was lying.

Sunlight burned behind the closed curtains. Bedclothes rustled as she rose onto her knees. Damnably evocative sound. Desire became a hammering demand in his veins, so loud it drowned out the caterwauling in his skull. He wasn’t sure whether desire or demons inflicted worse torture.

“I don’t believe you.” The mattress dipped as she shifted closer. Then—God help him—the insidious warmth of her hand on his tense back.

He went rigid, fighting the urge to wrench away. Fighting the urge to whirl around, fling her onto the sheets, and ravish her.

“Don’t you know not to touch me?” he forced out through clenched teeth. Every breath strained his constricted lungs. His heart pounded so hard, he thought it must burst.

“I know you spent the night lying in my arms,” she said quietly. Without, confound her, taking her hand away.

He’d broken into an icy sweat when he returned to full alertness. Now heat pooled where she touched him, making his blood simmer.

“I was asleep,” he growled, loving her touch, hating her touch.

“I know,” she said patiently, her palm rubbing in tantalizing, tormenting circles. He wore a shirt but the sensation of her touch was so intense, he might as well have been naked.

He was amazed steam didn’t rise from his quivering flesh. His cock throbbed with the demand to be inside her. The memory of thrusting into her was so sharp, he could taste it.

“The difficulty is in your head. It’s not in your body.” She spoke slowly, as if trying to explain a mathematical problem to a dim student. How could she sound so calm when he was on the verge of exploding?

He could bear it no longer. He had to get away before he did something irrevocable, unforgivable. He lurched to his feet, spinning to confront her.

“I know that. It doesn’t mean I’m making it up. God, Charis, if I could…”

He stopped and sucked in a shuddering breath. What use raging against fate? He couldn’t do anything to alter his bleak future.

Although she must know his anger wasn’t targeted at her, she paled under his onslaught. She knelt on the tumbled sheets in that sinful white nightdress. Gideon fought not to notice the provocative jut of her breasts against the transparent silk. He lost the battle. His eyes feasted on those luscious curves, and the moisture evaporated from his mouth. At his sides, his hands opened and closed as he struggled not to grab her.

“Don’t you see what that means?” she asked earnestly, not seeming to register his seething restlessness.

Her voice was faint over the deafening crash of his heart. Had he missed something she said while he ogled her like a randy adolescent?

“Gideon?”

She clearly expected him to make coherent conversation. Didn’t she realize the state he was in? But her eyes remained focused on his face with a sweet determination that only made him want her more.

He turned and snatched the armoire behind him open. He squeezed his eyes shut in an agony of desire as faint floral scent filled his nostrils.

Now that she wasn’t touching him, hunger threatened to overpower him. Only the humiliating knowledge that touching her would unman him kept him from leaping on her.

Blindly, he fumbled in the dark cupboard until his hand fell on what he wanted. He turned and flung the yellow pelisse at Charis. “You’re cold.”

And I’m on fire.

She caught the coat and sent him a speculative look. To his frustration, she didn’t cover her body.

Curse her, it was February. Didn’t the woman have an ounce of sense? Through the buzzing in his ears, he tried to concentrate on what she said.

“…and then you’re free.”

He shook his head to clear the fog from his eyes. “Free?”

Her soft pink mouth took on the tiniest of curves. “Are you listening?”

Itchy heat crawled up the back of his neck. He forced himself to stare at the undistinguished landscape on the wall behind her head. But the image of her perched on the bed, disheveled from sleep, was etched into his eyeballs.

“Of course I am.”

She made a doubtful sound deep in her throat. He couldn’t resist looking at her. Then he wished he hadn’t surrendered to temptation. On her knees in front of him, she seemed all too available.

“It’s important,” she said.

“What?”

The hint of a smile faded, and her voice lowered into seriousness. “When you forget yourself, you’re free.”

He frowned. “I never forget myself.”

“Yes, you do. You forget yourself in violence. You forget yourself in sleep. Perhaps if you wanted it enough, you could forget yourself in…”

“A good swiving?” he finished on a sarcastic note. Frustration sparked. “Every damned doctor in London poked and pried at me. None suggested the sex cure. Perhaps they should have. Even if the remedy doesn’t work, their patients won’t care.” His voice roughened into urgency. “Will you bloody well cover yourself?”

She lifted the pelisse, inspected it with an unreadable expression. And deliberately tossed it to the floor.

“No.” With a languor that in a more experienced woman he’d attribute to purposeful enticement, she leaned to one side and uncurled her legs.

He wouldn’t look. He wouldn’t look.

He looked.

The nightdress hiked up, revealing neat ankles and gracefully curved calves. The night before last, he’d slid between those slender legs and he’d…

His mind slammed shut on the memory. He’d hurt her and disgraced himself. He couldn’t go through that again for all the gold in Guinea.

She slid her feet to the floor and stood. Still with that eye-catching slowness. To his regret, he watched her hem slither down to her bare feet. God help him, just the sight of her toes, rosy and perfect, made him think of bedsport.

Even during his wild early days in India, no woman had stirred him to this pitch of arousal. He swallowed the constriction in his throat and forced himself to say what he must. “Charis, we’ve been through this before. There’s nothing to be done.”

He strove to sound calm, sensible, resigned. Difficult
when his heart raced at triple time, and he couldn’t rip his gaze from the girl standing only a few feet away. One step in her direction, and he’d be close enough to grab her.

What a damned disaster that would be.

“So you say,” she said softly.

Was her voice always so husky? Or did his ears play tricks? He fisted his gloved hands by his sides and prayed for strength.

“What happened…changed me. I’m not a whole man.”

Those sinfully thick eyelashes veiled her eyes. He couldn’t remember seeing anyone in such minute detail before. It was like all the light in the world shone just on her.

“You looked whole the other night,” she said evenly, although color rose in her cheeks.

Oh, dear merciful God in heaven. How could she remind him of that? It was meant to be the one time. It must be the one time.

His aching cock twitched as if to deny that assertion.

“You know what I mean,” he snarled, nearly frantic with the painful heat sizzling through him. Heat that found no outlet. “You know…
What the devil are you doing?
”

“Unbinding my hair.” She sounded unconcerned. Her deft fingers undid the long plait that curved sinuously across one shoulder.

“Don’t.” The command emerged as a croak.

“I need to brush it out and put it up for the day.”

“Blast you, that’s not why you’re doing this.”

He couldn’t help but watch those busy fingers. Nor could he turn away when she buried her hands in the bronze mane and combed it loose so it fell like a shining curtain. Desire knotted every muscle in his body.

He lifted his hands to touch the glorious mass. Then hesitated midair. Feeling like the greatest fool in Christendom.

“Why do you think I’m doing it?” She shook her head so her hair slid around her in dark gold splendor.

“Your purpose is…seduction.”

He stumbled over the last word like a prim spinster. Decadent images of that silky hair flowing about him as he pounded into her body fired his brain.

“You say you’re impervious to the lure of the flesh.”

“I never said that.”

“Then what’s stopping you?” She raised one hand and tugged at the ribbon holding her plunging neckline closed.

“Don’t damn well do that.” He should walk out the door right now.

“Why?”

He couldn’t immediately think of an answer. All he could think of was how he would hurt her with his vile clumsiness if this scene reached the end she clearly wanted.

Why in Hades didn’t she avoid him after that rough coupling? What was wrong with the chit?

His lips parted on a groan as her bodice gaped to reveal the valley between her breasts. He forced himself to concentrate on her face instead of her bosom. His heart slammed to a stop. The silent determination in her eyes shook him.

If he intended to retain a shred of honor, he needed to get out of here. Now. She didn’t know what she invited. She couldn’t.

“I’ll wait outside while you dress.”

“Coward,” she said softly but distinctly.

“Charis, it’s for the best.” He tried to remember why he couldn’t just jump on her and take what he wanted. His mind was a black, impenetrable jungle.

“Is the Hero of Rangapindhi running for cover?”

“I’m no hero,” he snarled, cut to the quick. He
abhorred
the name the press bestowed on him. He turned to escape, unable any longer to bear the sight of what he wanted most in the world. Displayed for his delectation like a banquet. As unreachable as the stars. “I’ll order breakfast.”

He waited for argument, plea, protest. But she was silent. Clearly, she’d recognized her quest to seduce her oaf of a husband was futile.

He told himself that what trickled through his veins like
acid was relief. She must at last see he was no use to her. It was tragic but irrefutable.

He reached for the door. Through unfocused eyes, he noticed his hand was unsteady.

There was a sudden flurry of footsteps behind him. Then a blinding, exquisite moment when she hurled herself, every lovely inch, against his back.

The shock stopped his breath. His heart hitched, then crashed against his ribs. Her heat made him dizzy. The softness of her breasts and belly pressed into him. Her arms snaked around his waist.

“Don’t go,” she said in a broken voice.

She leaned her cheek upon his back. The fragrances of carnations and warm female flesh filled his senses like smoke. He closed his eyes and groaned. Swearing under his breath, he banged his head on the door. The sharp pain did nothing to clear his mind.

His skin prickled at the contact, but sexual hunger drowned out his screaming demons. He could touch her now, all right. But in this state, he wasn’t safe with any woman, let alone this exquisite girl.

He sucked in more air. Speech was torture when every sense concentrated on Charis. “Please step away.”

Her grip around his waist tightened, and he felt desperation in the clawing fingers. She strained so close, he felt her every breath. And her trembling. “You’ll leave.”

“I must.” His voice cracked, and he clutched the doorknob so hard, his hand spasmed. “For God’s sake, Charis, do as I ask.”

For a long moment, she didn’t budge. Then, with tangible reluctance, she slid her arms away and straightened.

His animal hunger spiked, insisted he seize her, toss her on her back. Grinding his teeth, he beat back the raging demands.

He released the doorknob. His hand ached with stiffness. Slowly, against his will, he turned to face her.

She stood a couple of feet away. Her chest heaved as she
fought for breath. He’d been terrified he’d made her cry. But for all her palpable, quaking misery, she remained dry-eyed. In a defiant gesture he recognized, she lifted her chin as if she stared down death itself.

Swiftly, she tugged the nightdress over her head and flung it into the corner.

“Damn you, Charis,” he breathed, stepping toward her before he recalled he couldn’t touch her. “Don’t do this.”

Unclothed, she was…heavenly. Slender neck, straight shoulders, long graceful arms, high breasts with whorled pink crests. Flat belly punctuated by the sweet hollow of her navel.

Last, helplessly, his gaze focused on the delta between her legs. Blazing arousal flared. He swallowed and forced himself to breathe. He drank in the sight of her as he’d drink from an oasis after crossing a desert.