Never Romance a Rake (27 page)

“
Coûte que coûte,
” she whispered, cutting her gaze away from his jutting erection.

Whatever the cost.
Her words served only to further frustrate him. “You are just angry,” he snapped. “Angry I stayed out so late. Admit it.”

“I would not lower myself,” she said quietly. “I don't give a damn where you go or what you do—or with whom you do it.”

“Yes, you do, my dear,” he replied. “That's precisely why you're so damned cross with me. And frankly, now that I think on it, I'd rather a nagging bitch for a wife than a frigid one.”

She flicked a derisive glance up at him and half turned, as if to walk away. “Just keep your end of the bargain, Rothewell,” she said. “I want a child.”

He set his hands on her shoulders and jerked her back to face him. “You want a child?” he rasped. “By God, I'll give you a child, Camille. I'll lock you in this bedchamber and ride you till kingdom come. You'll have to beg me to stop.”

“Will you indeed?” she said sweetly. “How charming. But if you dare—”

He cut off her words with his mouth. He wasn't even sure when he made the decision to do it. He knew only that he couldn't bear the accusation in her eyes. Couldn't bear knowing that he wasn't really good enough. That she was settling because of who her father was. That he would never make her happy—and a thousand other regrets. Fleetingly, she twisted beneath him, pushed at him, and then, just as before, she surrendered. More than surrendered.

Rothewell crawled onto the bed—crawled over her—taking her back with the force and strength of his body, his mouth never leaving hers. She exhaled on a shudder, allowing his hands to roam her body at will. He thrust and thrust into her mouth, a sensual promise of what he meant to do.

In response, her eyes softened and closed, her velvety black lashes fanning across her olive skin. His hand caressed her breast, weighing it, lightly thumbing her nipple through the fine lawn of her gown. The sweet nub hardened to his touch, and she gasped into his mouth.

He lifted his lips from hers. “Camille,” he whispered. “I'm sorry. I'm sorry.”

She lay on the bed, passive and silent, her arms outstretched like an avenging angel. And she was. God had sent her, he feared, to teach him an awful lesson. The torture of wanting what he could never fully have. How to survive on dry crust when he yearned to feast.

The muscles of her throat moved up and down, but she did not speak. And he realized that, foolishly, he wanted her to want him. To feel at least a little tenderness in her heart for him.

How vain and hopeless that was. The crust was all she meant him to have, and by God, he would take it.

He reached down and pushed up the hem of her nightgown. Shoved it up and dragged it off, ripping a stitch in the process. He straddled her, kneeling, as his hungry gaze took her in.
Good God in heaven.
The woman was perfect. Small, high breasts. Long legs, beautifully turned. And between them—ah,
that
might as well have been the Holy Grail, for he could not have desired any vessel more.

He dragged her farther up the mattress, then pushed her legs wide with his knee. He let his palms slide up the silken flesh of her inner thighs, and higher still, brushing his thumbs along the plump folds of feminine flesh which guarded her center. Gently, he parted her. She gasped at the intrusion.

“My God, Camille,” he whispered. Rothewell burned with impatience to take her. To claim her once more with his body. She was his wife, and he ached for her.

Somehow, he checked his impatience. He shifted his weight and rolled to his side. He let his hand skim down the flat of her belly, until his fingers threaded through her soft thatch of curls. He lay half atop her now, his face buried against her neck as his fingers returned to stroke her. Deeper. Again and again. Already her breath was roughening. Moisture began to slick his fingers. But he wanted her hungry. Aching. It was inexplicably erotic to touch her that way, to open her, to stroke her until her own juices flooded his fingers whilst she lay open and languid. Waiting. Waiting to be taken.

He lifted his head, and brushed his lips along her collarbone, then lower. When he captured her breast in his mouth, she cried out in French, a weak, thready sound. The sound of a woman who had given up her body to his pleasure—and, he hoped, to hers.

Rothewell suckled her greedily, drawing the whole of her nipple into his mouth, teasing the hard nub with the very tip of his tongue, then biting ever so gently. She arched up, crying out. And then to his shock, she began to tremble in earnest. Her hands raked into the bedcovers, her nails digging deep. It was a moment suspended in time. Crystalline. Perfect. He watched, awestruck, as the pleasure took her, her hips arching to his touch.

When she lay still on the bed, her breath hitching and her eyes still closed, he kissed her deeply, then mounted her. With one hand, he guided himself gently into the warmth. The heat of her surrounded him. He drew back, waited for her to relax, then deepened the thrust.

He had thought he would feel impatient; that he would spill himself like some virgin schoolboy up to the hilt in his first woman. But it was worse than that. He could not rush. He felt…right. Perfect. And perfectly unhurried—as if he were slowly drowning in her beauty. Camille's somnolent eyes watched him as he thrust, luring him onto the shoals like a silent siren. He prayed for the strength to survive it—this, her, all of it. Already she was driving him mad. Breaking his heart—and he'd scarcely known he had one.

Camille's eyes were lazy with spent passion. Her face was smooth now, her mouth relaxed. Her body called to him—drew him like the pull of the ocean—as if she meant to coax the essence of life from his loins. His arms set wide above her shoulders, he bent his head to kiss her. Her cheeks, her eyebrows; he let his lips move over her face. Suddenly, he sensed a shift in her. Camille's breath came faster. Her knees drew up, one foot sliding sinuously along his inner calf. Her hips arched to his, and her hands left his back to roam restlessly over his buttocks.

“Mon Dieu,”
she whispered. “Ahh—”

Just as they had done with the bedcovers, her fingers dug into the muscle of his hips as he rode her. She cried out again beneath him, a soft, sweet sound of triumph. They drove one another over the edge, tumbling and falling into the brilliant abyss as one. And fleetingly, he felt at peace.

When he came back to his conscious self, his arms were shaking. “There,” he said, touching his forehead to hers. “There, Camille. I have done it.”

Her serious brown eyes searched his face. “What,
chéri
?” she whispered. “What have you done?”

“I have given you what you needed,” he rasped. “And I hope I have given you our child. If not, well, we must simply try again. And again. Until I get it right.”

A faint, drowsy smile played at her lips, but she said no more. He rolled onto his side and drew her to him, her back against his chest. He felt joyous, yet oddly shaken, as if something he had known with a certainty seemed suddenly unfathomable. His own mind, perhaps. Or his heart.

Rothewell curled his body protectively about hers and closed his eyes. When Camille shivered in his embrace, he reached down and drew the counterpane up to cover them. They lay together, perhaps even dozed, for a time. Each moment with her in his arms felt precious, but the candle she'd lit was much shorter now, and daylight was not far away. The house would be stirring.

Rothewell allowed himself to roll up onto his elbow, just for the pleasure of looking down at her. Her beauty was breathtaking. And it would be eternal, he thought. It had been a long time since he had looked at a woman so. Perhaps he never had? A strand of her hair had slipped from behind her ear, dark as ink against the perfection of her cheek. Gently, he tucked it back again.

She turned her head slightly on the pillow, like a flower turning to the sun, and gave a lethargic
umm
of pleasure.

She was happy, he realized, at least in this moment. It was an amazing if simple thing to muse upon. He doubted if he had ever made any woman happy. Merely satisfied, which was not the same thing, he now realized. Oh, the emotion would not last; happiness was ever fleeting. But at least for now—yes, in this moment—he did not feel as if he had ruined her life. Perhaps he could avoid doing so. He did not want her to love him, or grow attached to him. Did he? Surely he was not so selfish. Perhaps, if he could avoid acting the cad, she would someday have fond memories of their time together.

On that thought, Rothewell set his lips to the turn of her shoulder, tucked the bedcovers up higher, then rolled onto his back. He stared up at the frieze of acanthus leaves which ran around his ceiling. He had been wrong to leave her yesterday, and he was not fool enough to think himself forgiven. He had distracted her with pleasure, no more.

The truth was, Camille had a right to ask questions. He could refuse most of them, yes—with a modicum of diplomacy. Instead, he had snapped at her. Diplomacy was not his strong suit. In Barbados, he needed only to please Xanthia, who always overlooked his harshness and never punished him with the past. Well, save for once. The time he had quarreled so openly with Martinique over marrying her husband. Then—in private—Xanthia had thrown his cruel words in his face like a vial of boiling acid.

Rothewell thanked God his niece was gone and out of his hands—for her sake. He had done the girl no good whatsoever, and a great deal of harm. And oftentimes, he had known it even as he had done it. He had been a bastard, unable to stop himself—much as he had been with Camille yesterday.

If he could not look past his own wounds in order to care for a child—a child Luke had loved and entrusted to his care—what manner of ill did that bode for his new wife?

He stirred, a little restless, and propped one arm behind his head. It was odd, but in the past few months, thinking of Martinique no longer meant thinking of her mother in the same breath. It did not mean an instant resurrection of that memory of Annemarie wrapped in his brother's bedsheets the morning after her wedding, looking past him with regret in her eyes. Or the vision of Annemarie wrapped in the shroud in which they had carried her, dead, from the cane fields.

He shifted restlessly on the bed. Annemarie was his past. This woman—this vibrant, beautiful woman who perhaps resembled Annemarie but was in reality nothing like her—was his future, so far as he had one. They were going to make a child together. A child who would, he hoped, be a better, happier person on this earth than he had ever been. Perhaps that's what all this was about. Perhaps he was trying to expiate his sins.

Just then, there was a faint scratching at the connecting door. Rothewell slipped from the covers and opened it a crack. A shadowy form streaked past his ankles and bounded onto the bed. A faint sense of relief struck him, but he crushed it.

“Aye, you'd best enjoy it,” he whispered to the dog. “It's back to Tweedale at cockcrow, old boy.”

The dog just snorted, and flopped down across Camille's ankles. Rothewell slid back into bed and tucked himself close to her. But just as he settled into the perfect position, his stomach growled loudly. Camille, whom he had believed asleep, turned to look at him solemnly.

“Sounds like I swallowed a bad-tempered alley cat, doesn't it?” he said, rolling toward her. He nibbled lightly at her neck.

“
Oui,
and you are talking to the dog, too,” she said. “Chin-Chin is not leaving, you know.”

“You think not, eh?” he answered. “Don't get attached to him.”

When Camille spoke again, her tone was grave. “When did you last have a proper meal,
s'il vous plaît
?”

He stroked one hand down the length of her arm, considered it. “I cannot perfectly recall,” he admitted.

For a long, expectant moment, she said nothing. Then she sighed, and said, “I wish to ask you something.”

Rothewell bit back his instinctive refusal. Perhaps he was getting old. “Very well.”

“I shall ask just this once.” She was still lying on her side, staring into the banked coals of the hearth. She did not crane her head back to look at him again—deliberately, he sensed. “If you cannot—or will not—answer, I shan't nag,” she went on. “Indeed, I shan't even ask again.”

“I find brevity an admirable quality in a wife,” he said.

He watched over her shoulder as she toyed with a bit of fringe on the counterpane, wrapping it round and round her finger, then releasing it. For a moment, he thought she had changed her mind. When she did speak, it was abrupt. “You are sick,
n'est-ce pas
?”

When he did not respond, Camille turned her head on the pillow to look at him, her eyes wide and searching.

For an instant, he held her gaze. Then, unable to bear it, he looked away.

She exhaled slowly. “How bad?”

Rothewell looked at the ceiling and struggled for an answer. “I've lived a hard life, Camille,” he finally said. “And it hasn't killed me yet.”