Devil in My Bed (19 page)

She was very careful to do as Uncle Colin said and stay back from the glass, hiding all but her eyes with the drapery. If she didn’t, he wouldn’t let her sit at the window.

Uncle Colin was different from Uncle Aidan. Uncle Colin told wonderful stories of pirates and he was much nicer than Nurse Pruitt, but he didn’t cuddle her like Uncle Aidan did. He sat her on his lap and spoke to her, though, just like a big person.

Perhaps it was because she’d just heard another tale of Dishonor’s Plunder and its fearless and undying crew . . . but she thought she saw a pirate from the window.

He wasn’t wearing an eye patch or a sword, but he had mean eyes, like holes of shadow, and he looked like he would use a sword if he had one.

Melody shrank down small and made sure the drapery was right where it was supposed to be. The man stood across the street, pretending to be looking at people walking by, but she could see that he was really looking at the club. She watched as he moved from his place by the lamppost to lean into a doorway a little farther down. He almost went away in the shadow, but because she’d already been watching she could still see him.

Now he didn’t pretend anymore. He just watched . . . and watched . . .

Melody felt a little bit sick. She climbed down from her chair by the window and climbed into Uncle Colin’s lap. He put down his pen and pulled her up to sit properly, as if he were a chair. It made the desk almost a good height for her.

“Here,” he said, giving her a pencil. “You can write with me.” He slid a paper closer to her and soon she was scribbling away, the bad pirate almost forgotten in the warmth of Uncle Colin’s absentminded affection.

Later that night when she woke from a bad dream, Uncle Colin felt sorry that he’d told her such a scary story before bed. She didn’t tell him that her dream was about the man who watched.

Madeleine held a child in her arms, a beautiful curly-haired infant with large dark brown eyes and chubby hands busily waving. Rocking her body slightly, humming a little nonsense tune, she strolled across a beautiful bedchamber to gaze dreamily from the window out at the elegant grounds of a vast estate. “Do you see, little one? All this is yours.”

Warm arms came about her from behind. Sighing with contentment, she leaned back against a solid manly chest.

“What shall we do today, my love?” she asked languorously. “Shall we take the baby on his first picnic?”

“What baby?” sneered a deep derisive voice behind her.

She whirled to see that the man behind her wasn’t Aidan at all—it was Wilhelm! She backed away, clutching her child protectively.

But the child wasn’t a child any longer. It was nothing more than the moldy bundle of rags she’d once used to conceal the jewels and silver she’d stolen from the house.

Wilhelm snatched the valuables away from her, flinging them out the window to fall clinking and shimmering to the lawn far below.

“You would steal from me?” Possessive hatred flashed in his eyes. “I shall teach you better.”

Fear robbed her of speech and the loss of her dream child ripped her will to fight from her. When she ran to the window to escape through it, iron bars appeared across it, imprisoning her within.

Mocking laughter echoed through the room as it began to burn. She spun in panic, but Wilhelm was not to be seen. She could only hear his voice echoing through the flames and screams and death around her.

“I’ll be watching you, my treasure, my own. I’ll be watching . . .”

Madeleine woke with a start. Shudders wracked her body. Her heart pounded in her dry throat, so dry she could swear she choked on smoke. She couldn’t breathe for a panicked instant.

Then Aidan’s arms came sleepily about her and she knew the dream wasn’t real. She forced herself to breathe deeply and let Aidan’s full-body warmth seep into her nightmare-chilled flesh.

Still, she could not shake that dark familiar emptiness. She remembered now. That feeling was called hopelessness.

It had not been until she had escaped altogether that her true imprisonment became clear. He’d forced her to leave behind her name, her identity, and even her very voice. To breathe a single word of what she’d seen would have meant exposing herself. Therein lay danger of the most serious kind.

So she hid her face and hushed her voice and never revealed herself to anyone.

Except for Aidan.

Foolish as such a risk had been, she could not regret it. To have known pleasure and passion such as that when she’d thought her life drained of it? It was a gift, a revelation, a pearl beyond price.

Yet even then she’d known that something was missing. And now, lying in his arms again at last, she felt that emptiness again. The edges were a little blurred and the ache somewhat softer, but the hole was still there.

The hole where she herself ought to be. Wilhelm had stolen that from her . . . was still stealing it from her.

Shutting her eyes against that thought, she rolled into the heat of his big body and pressed her forehead to his chest.

Of course it’s not real. Wilhelm? What nonsense. Wilhelm can’t get to you any longer.

Rolling into the encircling protection of Aidan’s big body, she released the fretful dream and slipped back into a sheltered sleep.

As dawn brightened the bedchamber, Aidan woke to find his arms full of warm, naked woman. Better yet, warm, naked Madeleine.

Perhaps this was his favorite Madeleine.

He closed his eyes briefly in thanks and then pulled her gently closer. She rolled bonelessly into him and stretched sleepily, pressing all those fascinating soft places into his hard ones.

Nuzzling her neck, he decided to investigate the possibility of an early morning lovemaking. Gently nibbling, he found her ear. She slapped grumpily at him, then chuckled. “Some things never change,”

she said throatily.

Encouraged, he pressed his hardening cock into the soft swell of her belly. “My lady, may I have my way with you?”

She grumbled. “I want toast.”

He moved his nibbling lips from her ear to the tops of her breasts. “If I feed you breakfast, may I have my way with you?” He took a warm, soft nipple into his mouth and sucked it.

She hissed in startlement but shivered as well. Her nipple hardened on his tongue.

“Don’t think this is going to get you out of fetching breakfast,” she warned, but she was already becoming liquid heat in his hands. “And I’ll want a nap later,” she demanded breathlessly.

He murmured assent to her conditions—God, he would have agreed to anything!—and moved his hands down to cup her bottom and lift her more tightly to press against his aching erection.

“Get that thing away from me,” she ordered without any great emphasis. “You could put your eye out with that.”

He laughed as he took her other nipple into his mouth to coax it to equal diamond hardness. She pushed him onto his back and rolled with him, ending up sprawled on top of him with her thighs straddling his hips.

“Oops,” she said mildly. “Now I’ve done it.”

Her long dark hair cascaded about their faces as she slid down to kiss him. He closed his eyes in pleasure as the movement wrapped the head of his cock in wet, hot, compliant female flesh. “I was just thinking about this place,” he moaned.

“What place?” She wriggled playfully, sending his pulse from fast to faster in less than a second. He felt his cock swell further. She felt it, too. “Oh, that place,” she sighed.

He was careful, allowing her to set the pace. She was gingerly at first, sliding down upon him so slowly that his eyes nearly crossed from the effort of restraining himself. When she was fully impaled upon him, she bent to kiss him as she leisurely moved up and down, never altering her unhurried rhythm.

The kiss and the torturous pleasure went on and on, stretching time, luring him into losing himself to it, to the taste of her, to the feel of her mouth on his, to her hot wetness wrapped about him, to the firm weight of her breasts in his hands, to her nipples hardening, digging into his palms. Her hair fell about them, silken, sweet smelling and dark, curtaining them in with the pleasure and the slow, mind-stealing pace . . .

Until he abruptly orgasmed. He cried out in surprise and tightened his hands about her hips, pinning her down onto him hard as he thrust deeply up into her, pouring himself into her, lost in the ripping surprise of his pleasure.

She squirmed in his hands, her fingers digging into his chest as she shivered in her own orgasm, caught as she was upon him like a fish on a hook, forced to feel every pumping inch of him deep within her very sensitive flesh.

Afterward, she fell upon him gasping.

“Sleep,” she begged. He breathed an assent and wrapped his arms gently about her, holding her there upon him. The dim room faded away as he rode his exhaustion into sleep.

Then she said, very softly, just before they were both lost to dreams . . .

“Toast?”

A few hours later, in the morning light wandering into the room, Aidan lay on his stomach, braced upon his elbows as he gazed into Madeleine’s sleepy, satiated eyes. “You rejected my first proposal.” And his second. And his humiliating, pleading third.

She pulled one hand from beneath the covers and held up a finger. “I rejected marriage in general, actually, not you in particular.”

He digested that for a moment. “Was your marriage so very bad?”

She shook her head, smiling slightly. “It really doesn’t bear describing.”

He looked into her eyes, and she gazed evenly back at him. She wasn’t lying, but as always, she wasn’t clarifying either.

Could he open himself up to her again, knowing that her secrets still lay between them? Could he trust her with Melody, knowing she’d abandoned the child once before?

With the rising tide of his emotions overwhelming his misgivings, could he do anything else?

“I want you as my wife,” he said softly. “I will have Melody recognized as my daughter. I want a family—

this family.”

She continued to gaze at him, her eyes traveling over his face as if she was trying to read him.

He knew the feeling. “I still want you, Maddie. We still have this.” He dropped his head to kiss the spot between her breasts. “You say you love me. If that’s true, then you must agree to be mine.”

Madeleine gazed into those night blue eyes she loved so dearly and realized that if she did not marry him, he would keep Melody and send her away.

Isn’t that the plan?

Ah yes, the plan. It was difficult to remember the plan and the danger she’d felt with Critchley hovering about. That problem seemed distant and faint, like the sound of rough seas when one stood safely inland.

Was this real and that life of fear only a nightmare? Or was she dreaming even now? Here, in his arms, with his need and his question still hovering in the air, his cobalt gaze careful but traced with hope—was this merely a fantasy brought on by solitude and destitute starvation?

She swallowed. “May I . . . may I think on it a while?”

He gazed at her intently. “You do not refuse me outright?”

She shook her head a little. “I truly wish to think a bit. I have . . . I have changed a little over the years, I hope, that I would not so cruelly act out of hand again. I do love you . . .” She waited, but he did not respond in kind. Stroking one hand over his cheek in silent forgiveness, she smiled softly. “I love you and I believe that Melody deserves a true family. It is only that I must . . . think.” Trying to lessen his intensity, she wriggled. “And I cannot think while you lie between my thighs like this.”

For a long moment he did not smile. His eyes took in every detail of her expression before he relaxed.

With a small quick nod, he assented. “I have waited so long, I suppose I can wait another day.”

She started to wriggle away from him but he caught her to him once more. “Maddie, I do not intend to accept a refusal. I think you ought to realize that.”

He looked so serious she didn’t dare smile. If he only knew . . .

Oh, Aidan, your anger doesn’t frighten me. What frightens me is your honor. That was what would be the death of her.

“Yes, my lord,” she responded seriously.

Satisfied, he allowed her to roll away from him. When she ran naked across the bedchamber to the washbasin, he laughed at the way she minced away from the floor’s chill.

She glared at him. “Turn around.”

He rolled his eyes. “Always with the ‘turn around.’ It isn’t as though I don’t know what you’re about over there.”

She pursed her lips. “Nonetheless, turn around. I don’t care to put on a show.”

Laughing, he covered his face with a pillow. “Satisfied?”

He didn’t hear anything for a long moment. Just when he was tempted to peek despite his gentlemanly sense of honor, he felt her climb onto the mattress near him. He raised the pillow to see her sitting facing him clad in her chemise and his smoking jacket, her feet tucked up away from the floor. She looked adorable.

“You promised breakfast,” she pointed out.

She looked so adorably rumpled that he was tempted to drag her back into bed—God, would he never get enough of her?—but he’d given his word. “Breakfast it is.” Rising, he strode naked across the room for his turn at the basin.

Madeleine chewed her lower lip as she eyed this enticing view. That muscled back and that granite-hard bottom—now those she could definitely commit the rest of her life to! Her gaze slid sensuously over his wide shoulders and the way his biceps bulged when he briskly scrubbed water over his face. He ran wet hands through his hair in a careless attempt to tame it and the droplets fell to twine down over the hills and dales of his form. Heat began to gather between her thighs.

Lucky droplets.

“That’s hardly fair.” He was looking at her in the washstand mirror. “I didn’t get to watch.”

Heavens, if watching aroused him as much as it did her, she might just let him peek in the future! “That point might be negotiable,” she admitted.

His brows rose. “Really?” He flexed his buttocks.

Her gaze was riveted. “Gurgle—mph!”