Each Time We Love (9 page)

He was also, Betsey reflected bitterly as she sat on the side
of the bed amid the rumpled sheets, undoubtedly the most enraging, the
most horrid, the most fascinating, the most irresistible male she had
ever met in all her years! And it was palpably the unfairest thing in
nature that even as furious as she was with him, she couldn't help but
respond to his flagrant masculinity.

Her eyes glistening with sudden hunger, she leaned forward and
said with a calculatingly winsome smile, "Oh, Adam! Let's not fight!"
Her eyes caressing him, she breathed huskily, "Not now. Not when we
have so little time together…"

A frankly carnal smile tugged at his lips. "Is that a hint, my
dear?"

A shiver of anticipation ran down Betsey's spine at the
explicit promise in his deep voice. No matter how many times he made
love to her, no matter how limp and satiated she lay in his arms
afterward, she never seemed to get enough of Adam's addicting
lovemaking. She hungered for him as she had hungered for nothing else
in her life and as she stared fixedly at the growing bulge beneath the
sheets at the apex of his lean thighs, her breath caught in her throat.
A catlike smile of satisfaction on her full pink mouth, she reached
over and, pulling the sheet down to where it rested across his thighs,
lasciviously caressed the burgeoning flesh she had exposed, her fingers
marveling at his size. "Is
this
a hint?" she
asked demurely.

Adam's hands closed around her slim shoulders and with
tormenting languidness he pulled her slowly up his long body. His mouth
sliding warmly down her cheek to nibble at her lips, he muttered, "Now
what do you think?"

His mouth found hers and he kissed her with such blunt passion
that she couldn't think at all, not when his lips were pressing
demandingly against hers, not when her breasts were crushed against his
chest, nor when her soft body was so aware of the warm, hard flesh
beneath hers. Her arms closed around his neck and hungrily she met the
teasing thrust of his tongue as he deepened the kiss, her senses
spinning out of control.

Deftly sliding her off him and onto the mattress beside him,
Adam let his mouth travel down to her breasts, one hand expertly
seeking the moist heat between her legs. Betsey moaned when he parted
the soft flesh that ached for his touch and as he suckled at her breast
and his knowing fingers brought her effortlessly to the brink of
ecstasy, she was convinced that she had never had another lover as
sinfully exciting as Adam St. Clair.

Only when she was writhing wildly beneath his caresses did
Adam lean back against the pillows and lift her up over him. Smoothly
he positioned her willing body above him, his rigid shaft protruding
aggressively upward. With one swift, sure thrust, he impaled her, and
his mouth finding hers, his hands on her hips guiding her frantic
movements, they both soon found the scalding pleasure they sought.

Collapsed against him, her body still tingling from the
feverish delight he had given her, she murmured, "Wouldn't this be
wonderful to share every night? If we were married, instead of having
to meet only when I can sneak away from Susan and Charles, we could
indulge our pleasures whenever we wanted."

Adam groaned and, almost dumping her off him, sat up and swung
his legs over the side of the bed. Running a hand through his tousled
black hair, he glanced back at her and muttered, "Betsey, I don't mean
to be ungentlemanly, but I did warn you— quite candidly, if I remember
correctly—that even if we became lovers, I had no intention of marrying
you! I told you emphatically that I was not, nor have I ever been, in
the market for a wife! Now, if you can't accept that fact, I suggest we
stop meeting each other."

Swallowing back the black rage that surged through her, Betsey
composed her features into a look of utter woe. Forcing tears to her
eyes, she sobbed pathetically, "Oh, Adam! How can you be so heartless?
I know you love me! Why
won't
you marry me?"

"What you don't understand or will
not
understand is that I don't love you! I've never said I love you or any
other woman and I've
never
given you any cause to
believe that there is anything between us but the pleasure our bodies
give each other! I won't marry you," Adam enunciated carefully, barely
holding onto his formidable temper, "because I goddamn well don't want
to, and if I ever were to be mad enough
to
marry,
I would want to know that I was the only man in my wife's bed!"

Ignoring Betsey's enraged shriek, he sprang up from the bed,
stalked across the room and swiftly pulled on a pair of buckskin
breeches. Finding a white cotton shirt, he jerked it over his head. His
handsome face hard, he turned to face the woman on the bed. "I don't
want us to end this way, but if marriage is what you're after, I
suggest that we don't see each other anymore. As a matter of fact, I
think it would be wise if we didn't see each other for a while anyway."

Fearful that she had pushed him too far, frantically wondering
how he had learned about her other lovers, she made a desperate attempt
to regain lost ground. "Oh, Adam!" she wailed mournfully. "What are you
talking about? You know that you are the only man I love!" And gambling
that he didn't really know anything, she added with commendable
innocence, "I just don't understand what you're talking about! Other
men in my bed! Why, the very idea!"

His sapphire-blue eyes cold, Adam bit out acidly, "Betsey,
that horse won't run! I know about Reginald and Matthew and even poor,
silly Edward. I've known about them for weeks, and while it doesn't
bother me if you feel the need for other lovers, it
does
bother me when you try to pretend that I am the only man in your life
and that my bed is the only one in which you have gamboled!"

Incensed that she had been found out, Betsey surged up from
the bed, and forgetting the urgent necessity to find a wealthy husband,
she angrily grabbed up her gown and hissed, "Why, you damned gypsy
bastard! Who the hell do you think you are?"

Adam froze and something dangerous entered his hard blue eyes.
In one swift stride he reached the bed, and grasping her upper arm, he
shook her urgently, "just remember," he snarled softly, "that I am the
same gypsy bastard who only moments ago you were professing to love and
pleading with so sweetly to marry! And I think you should get the tale
correct—I was kidnapped by the gypsies, not sired by one, and as for
being a bastard…" A thought struck him, such as the knowledge that,
through a trick of fate, he really was the bastard son of Guy Savage
and not the legitimate issue of a man long-dead, as was commonly
believed. Suddenly realizing that Betsey's remark hadn't been
entirely
untrue, he dropped her arm and grinned. "You may be right about my
being a bastard," he said lightly, "but that fact certainly doesn't
speak well for your taste in men, sweetheart!"

"How dare you!" Betsey breathed furiously, her cheeks
unbecomingly flushed from the force of her anger.

Blue eyes gleaming now with mocking laughter, Adam drawled
coolly, "My dear, there isn't much that I
wouldn't
dare! So you shouldn't be surprised at what I may or may not do!"

Deliberately working herself into one of her tantrums of
magnificent proportions, Betsey fumbled angrily with her pale green
gown of fine India muslin. "You are rude, arrogant and vile! I never
want to lay eyes on you again as long as I live! Get out of my sight!"
she spat wrathfully.

"Well, I'd like to indulge you," Adam said dryly, "but unless
you plan on walking the five miles to your sister's home, I'm afraid
you'll have to put up with my vile presence a little while longer!"

There was a silence fraught with tension and rage on Betsey's
part during most of the time it took Adam to escort her in his gig to
the garden gate through which she had slipped out several hours ago. It
was only as they were traveling over the last quarter mile before they
would reach her sister's house, Magnolia Hills, that it occurred to
Betsey that Adam really was going to take her at her word and never see
her again.

The notion of a man finishing with
her
was appalling, but almost worse was the growing notion that never again
would she know the pleasure of his masterful lovemaking, and
that
simply was not to be contemplated! She wanted Adam St. Clair and she
was going to have him and
nothing
was going to
stop her! Peeping over at the remote expression on his face, she
nibbled at her lips nervously, her mind racing for a way to retrieve
the ground that she had so foolishly lost.

Reaching the wrought-iron gate which opened onto the extensive
gardens of her sister's home, Adam pulled his horse to a stop. Leaping
down from the gig, he walked around it and silently lifted down
Betsey's slight form.

Shrouded in a black silk cape, with the hood shadowing her
small face and concealing the fairness of her hair, Betsey was nearly
unrecognizable. Standing there at the side of the road, she glanced up
at him, and frantically trying her last trick,, one that had never
failed her before, she let her eyes fill with tears. "Oh, Adam!" she
breathed in low, not-entirely-mendacious tones of heartbreak. "I can't
believe that we are actually parting this way!"

Taking her arm politely but guiding her inexorably toward the
gate, he said coolly, "We agreed in the beginning that it would happen
someday. It just happened perhaps sooner than either of us intended."
Quietly opening the gate and thrusting her through it before she had
time to prevent him, he added dryly, "You made your feelings quite
clear and I don't believe that there is anything to be gained by
discussing it further. I never argue with a lady."

"Oh, but, Adam, you don't understand," Betsey murmured softly,
not quite able to believe that this was really happening to her. "You
made me so angry and I just lost my temper. I didn't
mean
what I said."

Adam glanced down at her, his face shadowed in the darkness.
"It doesn't matter, Betsey," he said wearily. "It's over. You want
marriage and I don't; there is no middle ground for us, and since I am
unlikely to change my mind about that fact, I think it would be wise if
we use this opportunity to part as amicably as possible. Good night!"

Spinning on his heel, he swiftly crossed the short distance to
his gig and, before Betsey's stunned gaze, leaped into the vehicle and
began urging the horse in the direction of Belle Vista. He's actually
leaving me! she thought incredulously. Stamping her foot with rage,
forgetting the need for silence, she called sharply, "Adam St. Clair,
don't you dare do this to me! Come back here this instant or I'll make
you sorry."

"I already am, sweetheart!" Adam threw over his shoulder with
a mocking laugh.

An instant later the horse picked up speed. Her bosom heaving
with baffled fury, she watched in chagrined wrath as the gig slowly
became swallowed up in darkness. That Adam St. Clair! He was a devil!