Seven Nights in a Rogue's Bed (11 page)

“This is the first time she’s done anything like this.” Sidonie had long come to terms with her anger at Roberta. She merely needed to remember the way her sister concealed her bruises with a shame that wasn’t her shame at all. She remembered William’s unchecked rages. She remembered Roberta’s two young sons. Sidonie had no choice about offering herself in exchange for Roberta. But Merrick was right; she was lucky. If he’d been the villain her sister described, the torments would be intolerable.

He smiled at her as though she were precious. Lying, lying smile. “You said it yourself—if
you
kiss
me
. Note the wording.”

Nervousness made her stammer. “I won’t. I can’t. I… I don’t know how.”

More of that dangerous tenderness before a downward sweep of long black lashes veiled his expression. “You had several thorough lessons yesterday. I can’t imagine the girl who sent me to the devil quailing at a little kiss.”

She’d survived his kisses before. Scoffing laughter echoed in the recesses of her mind. Survived? Yesterday she’d positively thrived on his kisses. Meeting his gleaming silvery eyes, she shifted close enough for her leg to brush his flank. “All right.”

It was just a kiss.

I
t was just a kiss…

Jonas struggled to maintain his careless air while his heart performed a Highland fling. However much he ached to grab Sidonie, he kept his hands by his sides as he stretched before her. If she guessed the pitch of his hunger, she’d flee the room. Hell, he wouldn’t catch her before she reached Sidmouth. Deliberately he avoided dwelling upon that deplorable moment when she stared with unabashed curiosity at his nightmare of a face.

Her expression turned assessing. What the devil would she do? When she shifted again, he caught her haunting scent. She reached out and smoothed her palm down his arm. Under her tentative exploration, his muscles tightened to rock.

“You’re so warm,” she murmured, as if speaking to herself. “Like a furnace.”

He tried to summon a reply but when she ran her hand
under his shirt and glanced across a nipple, words jammed in his throat.

“How interesting a man’s body is.” She combed her fingers through the hair on his chest. The friction spurred his heart to a wild gallop. “You’re not at all like pictures I’ve seen of statues.”

In spite of his extremity, a strangled laugh escaped. “Not at all.”

She cast him a disapproving glance. “Pictures don’t convey the size and power.”

He restrained the urge to tell her about the size and power of one particular part of him. His hands clawed the sheets beneath him. “Damn you, Sidonie, put me out of my misery.”

She studied him as if he presented a mathematical problem. Obscurely her calmness annoyed him. Blast her, she should be flustered. She should be all a-flutter to kiss him. “I think you should sit up,” she said thoughtfully.

“At your command, my lady.” He rose, piling pillows behind him.

After an infinitesimal hesitation, she pressed her hands to his cheeks. Automatically he flinched. He loathed anyone touching his scars. Hell, for her, he wished he wasn’t scarred. He wished he was young and pure, gallant and worthy. When he was none of that.

She lurched forward and he drowned in womanly scent, warm and sweet with early morning. Then soft arms encircled his neck, velvet-covered breasts nudged his chest, breath drifted across his face.

Her lips met his.

Sidonie’s brief confidence shriveled. Merrick’s arms lay at his sides and the mouth beneath hers remained sealed.
She waited for him to seize control and sweep her into fiery heaven.

Nothing.

Trembling uncertainty built. Long enough for her to notice the smoothness of his lips. The soft hiss of his breathing. The heat of his body against her thigh. Tentatively she moved her lips, then started away at the tingling rush of pleasure. His mouth twitched at her skittishness.

“Don’t you dare laugh at me,” she said grimly.

“Never.”

His morning beard rasped beneath her palms. She had access to a secret Merrick that the world never saw. More unwelcome intimacy. Somewhere since accepting his challenge, she’d abandoned all pretense that she did this for any reason other than the desire to kiss him.

Wicked, wicked girl.

“Blushing, Miss Forysthe?”

She refused to answer. Instead she studied his mouth. That mouth betrayed so much. Passion. Humor. A vulnerability he’d go to the gallows before admitting. She licked her lips as she remembered that mouth claiming hers yesterday.

Ah…

“You look like the cat that got the cream.”

She delighted in his wary tone. “Do I?”

Without lingering on the scars, she caressed his face, then kissed each corner of his lips. He released a muffled groan. At last she seemed to be getting somewhere. Taking a lesson from him, she bit gently on his lower lip and sucked it into her mouth.

He tasted wonderful. Salty. Hot. Desperate. She traced his lips with her tongue, then lifted away to meet his silver gaze. “Damn you, Merrick, stop fighting me.”

“You’re not trying hard enough.” He struggled for nonchalance, but his husky voice betrayed how her clumsy wooing stirred him.

“I’m just starting,” she said softly.

Jonas braced for more tantalizing kisses. Containing himself when she tasted his lower lip had required every ounce of control. Blast and confound it, he’d promised to take the kiss no further. He needed to have his head examined.

She nibbled an excruciatingly pleasurable line down his neck.

“I think you’re avoiding the business.” Not even threat of damnation could stop his voice shaking.

She kissed his jaw. “Just preparing the ground.”

This time when her mouth met his, he was incapable of denial. His lips parted and her tongue darted in to taste him. He groaned low in his throat. She tensed and withdrew. As if seeking assurance that he was a better man than she thought, she stared at him. Tragically he could offer no such confirmation. Even more tragically he wanted her so badly, he almost promised to change, to prove himself worthy.

This had started as a morning’s game. Now all urge to tease vanished. And still the wordless conversation continued.

I want you.

You can’t have me.

I need you.

You’re not worthy of me.

That’s true. Still you desire me.

Yes, still I desire you.

He heard her sharply indrawn breath. Then, slowly, oh, so slowly, she leaned in to place her mouth on his, soft as the brush of air across an angel’s wing.

Jonas wasn’t by nature a gentle man. Since violence had shattered his childhood, tenderness was unknown. Building his business empire had only fortified his ruthlessness. Since his father’s death, he hadn’t cared for anyone. He’d believed the carapace around his kinder emotions so thick, he never would. Sidonie’s kiss stabbed straight to the heart he’d considered impregnable.

She flicked her tongue along his lips and this time, he let her in. On a sigh, she kissed him with unfettered pleasure. Sidonie was a quick learner. Damn him if she wasn’t. Groaning, he yielded. His arms wound around her, dragging her down to sprawl across him. Until now, for all his seductive maneuvering, he’d been careful about scaring her. But she’d pushed him beyond restraint. She moaned and met his passion. He rolled her under him and hauled the covers off with a shaking hand. He couldn’t remember the last time a woman had made him shake. Sidonie made him shake.

Smoothly he slid between her legs, the robe rucking up. Ruthlessly he shoved the silk nightgown aside until his hand met her thigh. He wasn’t the only one shaking. In his embrace, she trembled like a leaf in a gale.

Very slowly so he didn’t alarm her, he trailed his hand upward. The prospect of touching her center made him burn. His fingers curved over her mound and tangled in damp curls. He slid his hand into slippery heat, bathing his fingers in her desire. She gasped with shock and wrenched away, panting.

Damn it, too fast, too hard, too much.

“No… wait.” Her voice was broken as he’d never heard it. She placed one hand against his chest. Under her palm, his heart flipped like a landed trout.

He placed his hand over hers. His voice was rough. “Are you content to stop there?”

She raised a troubled gaze to his face. Whatever she saw offered no consolation, he immediately recognized. His arm still encircled her. He’d need mere seconds to bring her against him. “Sidonie, give me your consent,” he prompted when she stared at him as though he constituted her greatest fear—and greatest desire.

The uncertainty in her eyes intensified. “I can’t.”

“You want to.”

A faint line appeared between her brows. “You’re the voice of temptation.”

He looked into her beautiful face, the heavy-lidded dark eyes, the flushed cheeks, the reddened lips he’d tasted so thoroughly. A plea surged up from his soul. “Relent,
tesoro.
Relent. And save us both from insanity.”

She stiffened against his attempt to draw her closer and her stare was uncompromising. “You gave me your word the decision was mine.”

He cupped her jaw. Those unwavering eyes continued to study him.
Oh, hell and damnation.
He surrendered with a sigh. “If you leave this house untouched,
amore mio,
we’ll both be sorry.”

The tension drained from her face and she softened in his hold until she was again the fluid, responsive woman who had kissed him within an inch of his life. This time he knew better than to restrain her when she slipped from the bed. He bit back an appeal for her to stay with him. If
his life depended on it, he couldn’t say whether he wanted her to stay an hour, a day, or forever.

Sidonie wandered along the beach, gazing out to the horizon. How could she have been so foolhardy with Merrick that morning? She was lucky he’d kept his promise and let her go. A man of his worldly experience must have guessed how close she came to yielding, good sense be hanged.

In spite of the sun, the wind was sharp. The sea was a vista of white caps. Brisk afternoon breeze whipped her hair around her face. Her half-boots crunched on the sand as she marched away from Castle Craven. And its enigmatic owner.

Merrick hadn’t joined her on her walk. In every way that counted, he’d been absent from her all day. Since their passionate interlude in the bedroom, he’d withdrawn, playing again the charming host, the interesting raconteur. Superficially his urbane manner remained unchanged between today and yesterday in the library. But she knew—
she knew—
he deliberately widened the gulf between them. Briefly this morning, they’d shared more than desire. Something breathtaking. Something of soul as well as body. He’d since recoiled from all emotional intimacy.

Discontentedly she bent to scoop up a smooth black stone and toss it into the waves. The sea’s ceaseless movement echoed her restlessness. Cursing her susceptibility to a rake’s stratagems, she collected a handful of pebbles and pitched them one by one into the water. A stupid, futile activity.

No more stupid and futile than knowing the damage a
man could do a woman, yet still finding herself lured to destruction.

With unwonted fervor, she hurled a silvery piece of quartz. It splashed sullenly beyond the breakers. She sighed and chewed on her lip. Her hand opened and the remaining pebbles cascaded to the yellow sand.

She had nothing to gain and everything to lose if she became Merrick’s lover. Away from him, she knew that.

When she was with him…

The more he touched her, the more she wanted his touch.

Curse Merrick, he undermined everything she knew. Blinded by Roberta’s tales of profligacy and ruthlessness, she’d expected Jonas Merrick to be a villain from a fairy story. Instead the man she discovered was more enchanted prince than ogre. Her heart ached for him. Even as every moment she spent with him set her conscience kicking like an angry mule.

Because with every moment, she lied. If only by omission. And the lie was a heinous one that if never exposed would shadow the rest of his life.

Sidonie could prove Jonas Merrick was the rightful Lord Hillbrook.

Cataloguing Barstowe Hall’s library a few weeks ago, she’d discovered the lost marriage lines for Anthony Charles Wentworth Merrick, fifth Viscount Hillbrook, and Consuela Maria Albertina Alvarez y Diego. The document had been hidden inside a battered volume of
Don Quixote.
As Jonas’s father had claimed, a traveling English clergyman attached to an Oxfordshire parish had performed the ceremony at Fuentedivallejo in Spain in 1791. The officiating parson had died before returning home. When the French sacked Fuentedivallejo in 1813,
its archives burned. Sidonie had found the only proof of the wedding still extant.

Sidonie’s hands fisted at her sides as she stared unseeing at the turbulent ocean. Heaven save her, she couldn’t tell Merrick what she’d found. Not without abandoning any hope of rescuing Roberta from the violent hell of her life. William legally owned Roberta like he owned the sheep and cattle on his estate. If he didn’t surrender his hold over his property, willingly or unwillingly, his wife was trapped forever.