Seven Nights in a Rogue's Bed (15 page)

He bit back the admission that if he had a soul, it had migrated into Sidonie’s keeping. Tomorrow surely, with Lucifer’s blessing, he’d return to his cynical, selfish, solitary self. He gave her hand a more determined tug and she rose, trembling. “Such pretty lips to say such nasty things.”

Before she mustered a reply, he kissed her.

She stood stiffly in his arms, beautiful, slender, discouraging. Except in the last days he’d learned to read her responses. She’d tasted delight and the experience left her dangerously open to his caresses.

“Give yourself up, Sidonie,” he crooned against her lips.

Still she stood silent and cold under his kisses. He stroked her hair, neck, shoulders, arms, deliberately avoiding her breasts. At last a soft whimper escaped. She shuddered deeply as the stiffness leached from her body. He’d prepared for more of a fight, but her arms circled his neck and she sagged against him with a sigh.

Triumph surged. Without giving her chance to protest, he swung her up and carried her the few steps to the bed. Carefully he laid her on the silk covers and came down over her, his legs bracketing hers.

Sidonie plucked discontentedly at his robe and he slid it off as he kept kissing her. Lips, cheeks, nose, breasts, neck. She made a sensual sound deep in her throat as
her hands encountered bare skin. She stroked his back, up and down, up and down. The ache to bury himself between her thighs drove him to madness. Impatiently he reared up and wrenched at her dress. With shocking ease, the gown tore to the waist. The half corset and transparent chemise did little to hide her.

He nipped at her lips to keep her distracted. And because he couldn’t get enough of her taste. Urgency whipped him onward. He didn’t pause to savor, to enjoy. Although pleasure flooded him at every brush of her skin, every broken moan of surrender.

Jonas trailed kisses down her throat while his fingers drifted lower. Still he paused before touching her breast. Every second of this encounter was weighted with importance. He couldn’t describe the feeling even if he wanted to. She curved her hands around his buttocks, digging her fingers into the thin trousers. He shut his eyes, prayed for control, prayed for skill to give her pleasure, prayed he’d survive the next hour.

When at last his palm covered her breast, she whimpered against his lips. Gently he rolled her nipple. She bucked and the pressure against his cock blinded him with scarlet need. She moaned his name, the sound lovelier than music.

He took her other nipple between his lips. Immediately his senses drowned in Sidonie’s sweetness. She sobbed and arched. His hand meandered down to the soft curls covering her sex. Victory thundered in his heart. Vision faded to fiery darkness. Then fiery darkness exploded into light as he slipped his fingers between her legs. He groaned appreciation into the warm skin of her shoulder.

Carefully he slid one finger inside her. She was slick
and hot, but not yet ready, in spite of the ragged saw of her breath and the way her arms tightened around him as he invaded her body. He slid in a second finger, moving in and out. He kissed her again, tasting desperation, and brushed his thumb against her center.

She jerked and cried out. Holy Hades, she was sensitive. She approached her peak and he’d hardly started. He kissed her harder while his thumb circled and tormented. She tensed and heat welled over his fingers. For what seemed an eternity, she convulsed against his hand.

He’d never forget watching Sidonie cross the threshold of pleasure for the first time. Except for two flags of color along her cheekbones, she was pale. Her lips were red and full. Her voluptuous breasts trembled, the nipples beaded. When he was old and sad, he’d smile to remember that once he’d held Sidonie Forsythe and shown her the path to bliss.

He wanted to quote poetry to her. He wanted to tell her what this moment meant. He wanted…

But he was merely human and what emerged sounded like a rake’s meaningless flattery, although he meant every word from the bottom of his worthless heart. “You’re so beautiful.”

His words shattered the spell of intimacy. Horror banished delight from her expression and her body straightened into rigidity. “Let me go,” she said in a raw voice, pushing uselessly against his bare shoulders.

“Sidonie…”

She was past heeding him. Her efforts to shove him away became more frantic. “Let me go. Now.”

He heard the seeds of hysteria and immediately shifted to the side, even as she continued to batter his shoulders. “It’s not—”

He stopped, not sure what to say. It wasn’t important? The problem was it was important. More important than anything in his entire misbegotten life.

Clumsily she squirmed away, bringing her knees high and cowering against the headboard as if she expected him to leap on her. With shaking hands, she wrenched her dress together.

“You took advantage.” She sounded as if she loathed him. Even on the first night, she’d never spoken to him with such rancor.

“Sidonie, please…” All gifts of eloquence had abandoned him. Rolling out of the bed, hoping some physical distance would soothe her, he reached for her. She flinched away as though avoiding a blow.

“I’m so stupid,” she said in a broken voice, then set a great crack in his heart when she wiped her eyes with shaking hands. Sod it to hell and back. She was crying. He felt like the lowest worm ever to crawl upon this foul earth.

“You’re not,” he said, even as his belly cramped with sick shame and misery. In an attempt to ease her grief, he dared to touch her arm.

That was a mistake, too.

She recoiled and scrambled from the bed. Panting as if she’d run a mile, she stood in the center of the room. She looked young and afraid and heartbreakingly vulnerable. Not at all like the siren who had measured the heights of pleasure only seconds before. The mirrors reflected a woman with eyes huge and dark as bruises. A woman who stood proudly even as her mouth twisted in humiliation.

“
Bella.
” He stepped nearer even as reason told him she’d interpret any approach as threat.

“Don’t
bella
me.”

“I didn’t mean to upset you.” He was a blundering clodpole with no idea what damage he did. Why couldn’t she be an easy woman? Except if she was, she wouldn’t be Sidonie Forsythe and he’d rapidly reached the conclusion that Sidonie Forsythe was the only woman he wanted.

“No, you meant to seduce me before I realized what you were up to,” she said sourly.

He bit back another protesting Italian endearment. They both knew she’d fathomed his scheme.

She didn’t wait for his reply. She cast him a hate-filled glare. “The pity is I always succumb. You touch me and my mind turns to custard. I don’t know how you manage it, but it’s jolly clever.”

Her knuckles shone white as she clutched her bedraggled dress and backed toward the door. His great seduction had disintegrated into complete disaster. She blasted all stratagems to dust.

“
Tesoro
…” Then he remembered she didn’t want his endearments.

“Don’t try and bamboozle me with cheap flattery.”

How to make her believe that calling her his beauty and his treasure was the truth? “Where are you going?”

She inched toward the door. “Away from you.”

“It’s the middle of the night. This is the only warm room in the house.”

Her jaw hardened with purpose and she regarded him as if he were a snake. Frankly he didn’t feel much above one. “I don’t care.”

“Sidonie,” he said as evenly as he could. “I swear I won’t touch you.”

“After tonight, I don’t believe your word.” She was almost at the door.

He stifled the urge to excuse himself. He’d promised to await consent before he took her. He hadn’t really infringed the agreement. Except excuses were dry legalities. Ruthlessly he’d sought to quash her resistance.

“I’ll go,” he said grimly. Dear God, another night on the cot in the dressing room. He’d limp like an arthritic octogenarian tomorrow.

“No.” She tugged on the door until it slammed open against the wall, making the mirrors rattle. Her repeated image wavered around them.

“Don’t be silly.”

Her glare should have blasted him to ashes. “I’m not being silly.”

“You can have the bedroom,” he said, then made the ultimate mistake.

A few steps to reach her and he caught her shoulder. He felt the fine bones beneath his hand and the soft brush of her hair across his knuckles. He also felt endless, unshakable rejection. He’d made a right shambles of this, bugger him for a benighted fool.

With a violence that shocked him, she struck his hand away. “Don’t touch me.”

She took a pace back, another, then whirled to dash headlong into the corridor beyond.

S
idonie ran blindly, stumbling in frantic haste. Anything to escape Merrick and terrible, dangerous temptation. Reason disintegrated. There was only primitive instinct. All she knew was the need to separate herself from what he’d done to her in that elaborate bed.

Through the hallway, carpet brushing bare feet. Down the staircase over the chill of stone. To the cavernous great hall with its ghosts and faded tapestries. Like a hunted animal, she darted through dark rooms, thankfully empty and easy to navigate. The main door was locked every night at sunset and was too heavy for her, but she could reach the grounds through the rear of the castle.

“Sidonie!”

From upstairs she heard Merrick calling. Part of her knew she acted like a madwoman and she should end her lunatic dash. If she said no and meant it, he’d leave her alone. She trusted him that far.

It was herself she didn’t trust.

Not after those astonishing moments in his arms. He’d made her his creature and she couldn’t bear it. She’d spent her life swearing she’d never become some man’s slave. Yet she verged on infatuation with Jonas Merrick. A devilish, vengeful, damaged man. She needed to regain the woman she’d been before she arrived, and banish the wanton creature who moaned and writhed under Merrick’s skillful ministrations.

She tore at the wrought-iron handle on the terrace doors. She struggled for breath. “Open, curse you, open,” she sobbed, fingernails breaking as she scrabbled at the latch.

A flash of lightning revealed the key in the lock. Of course. With a shaking hand, she turned the key, shoved the glass door open and dashed into the storm. Immediately, the wind barreled into her like a charging elephant.

“Sidonie, for God’s sake, come back!”

Merrick’s voice was nearer. She guessed he was in the hall.

“Sidonie, where are you? For heaven’s sake, there’s no need for this.”

She couldn’t look into Merrick’s eyes and remember him doing… that. With a strangled sob, she banged the door shut behind her and stumbled into rain-swept darkness.

Damn it, where in Hades had she got to?

Jonas heard the door crash from the back of the house and his heart dived into his gut. Bloody, bloody hell—if Sidonie ran outside, she was in danger. More danger than he presented. Horrific images flooded his mind of her lying lifeless under the cliffs.

He grabbed a lantern from the hall. His hands shook as he lit it. Every second seemed an hour. He snatched up the greatcoat he’d left draped over a worn oak chair. Roughly he tugged it on as he rushed across the flagstones on bare feet.

Praying Sidonie hadn’t got far on such a wild night, he dashed through the house and burst out into the storm. Freezing wind and rain pummeled him. He staggered and wondered how a woman, even one as stalwart as Sidonie, had made headway.

“Sidonie!” The howling wind whipped his words back into his teeth. He struggled to raise the lantern, to locate her. But the light offered feeble defense against inky darkness.

Hell, hell, hell.

Where the devil was she? She could have run in any direction. But he had a bleak premonition she’d head for the cliffs. Cursing, he slipped and slid across the lawn, hoping she’d gone this way, hoping she hadn’t. Progress was slow and he fell on his arse more than once.

“Sidonie!” Good God, surely she must know he wouldn’t hurt her.

But then she’d trusted him not to force her and he’d come damned near. For one breathless moment while she’d quivered under him in a climax sweeter than any he’d ever witnessed, he’d poised to plunge between her thighs. He was a damned savage. Guilt strangled his gut.

He should have left her alone.

The rain drenching his hair and pouring down his neck, the stabbing cold, all seemed inadequate punishment for the evil he’d done. It was too late to change what had happened. He hoped it wasn’t too late altogether. “Sidonie!”

If she didn’t make it back safely…

He refused to complete the thought. He’d find her. Or die trying.

When he lifted the lantern, he saw no sign of her. The gardens were large and overgrown. She could be anywhere. He shouted her name again. Nothing. The storm made such an almighty noise, perhaps she didn’t hear him. Or perhaps she was too frightened to answer.

Christ Jesus, this was such a bloody mess.

Should he fetch the Bevans? But if she’d run ahead, any delay could mean she stumbled over the cliffs. He tasted sour bile. Surely any fall would be accidental. Surely he hadn’t driven her to preferring a watery grave over facing him.