The Marquess Who Loved Me (15 page)

His arm tightened around her, and for a breathtaking moment she thought he would stop. But even his revenge wasn’t that cold. His free hand found her derriere, caressing her, pulling her closer — tilting her just an inch, just enough to give him a fresh angle.

She came apart then. Everything disintegrated in a violent blast of heat. Her heart shuddered; her legs trembled. Without his arm around her thighs, she might have fallen. Her mouth fell open, but she swallowed her scream as he’d taught her, back when they were young and she still had chaperones.

As she fell from the peak, as her legs stopped quivering and her pulse slowed, the past caught up with her. She reached for her blindfold, wanting to see Nick as he was now — wanting to see whether there was any emotion in his eyes that matched the beat of her damnable heart.

“Not yet,” he murmured, breaking away from her skin to catch her hand.

He swept her off her knees and onto her back. The old Nick would have checked her comfort, touched her softly, kissed her slowly — made sure she was ready.

The new Nick didn’t ask permission. He plunged into her moments later, and she gasped as the force of it rocked her back against the bench. His trousers, softer than the brocade beneath her, brushed against her thighs. He’d waited only long enough to free himself before taking her.

The depth of his need for her shocked her — a depth she couldn’t anticipate when all she’d felt was the deliberate, calculated seduction of his tongue. But he wasn’t deliberate now. He surged again. She slid a hand down his back, under the waistband of his trousers, settling on the firm muscle of his backside to urge him on. He found her breast with a heavy hand, more conquest than caress. She moaned under him as he sank into her — moaned again as he took her free hand in his. She might have found the gesture sweet if their fingers twined together. But he grabbed her wrist instead, pinning her arm above her head as he sunk into her again.

He was claiming her, not loving her.

And she would damn herself later for letting him — but at that moment, she didn’t care.

He leaned in to her ear. His unshaved cheek rasped against hers. “Beg me, Ellie.”

He withdrew his cock as she hesitated, until only the tip remained. “Tell me you want me,” he whispered, flicking his thumb across her linen-covered nipple. “Tell me you’ve always wanted me.”

She arched up to him, wanting him to fill her. “Nick — it was always you. Please…please, Nick. Don’t leave me again.”

His hand crushed her wrist as she said more than he’d asked for — more than she wanted to reveal. Her words fell apart as he rewarded her, driving into her with a force that could make her believe he was just as lost as she was. Three more strokes and she came again, her body rising off the couch like she was possessed. But she couldn’t move far, not when he still held her pinned. The torment of wanting to touch him, to see him, when he denied her, added an edge to her climax, sending her faster and harder into the void.

She sensed, as she slowly returned to her body, that he was about to join her. She felt the tension in his back where she still stroked him — heard his harsh breathing as he fought for control. But he didn’t bury himself — didn’t succumb to temptation as she clenched around him. He withdrew with a groan that went straight to her heart and spent himself on her belly.

Ellie squeezed her eyes shut beneath her sash as he collapsed, half on her, half on the couch. She told herself she didn’t care — he almost always withdrew, a wise precaution. He had only spilled inside her once before — when they’d first made love, before her father denied his proposal. Still, as his seed cooled on her skin, she felt deflated, somehow — like the dream he’d given her in the dark could only turn sordid in the light.

By the time Nick could breathe again, he’d already lost her to her thoughts. He knew it from the way she tensed under him — a small, defenseless thing retracting into its shell. Ellie would skewer anyone who saw her as defenseless, and even among the Amazons she wouldn’t be small. But his old protective instincts rushed forth, wanting to save her, to make things good for her.

Even though it went against all his plans for her. And even though he was the greatest danger she faced.

He tried to remind himself to be ruthless, as ruthless as she had been when she broke their engagement. But he couldn’t quite bring himself to leave her lying there alone. His mouth refused to utter some callous quip meant to wound her. Instead, he pulled the sash away from her eyes.

She looked up at him. All the emotions he’d wanted to wring from her were there, reflected in sapphire. Desperation. Need. Regret. Fathomless pools of regret, so deep that he knew, then, how much she’d missed him — how deep she’d excavated into the core of her own heart, letting the acid of memory eat away everything else.

Did his eyes look the same? Had he given away as much as she had — shown anything beyond the ruthlessness he wanted her to see?

Don’t leave me again
. She didn’t repeat the words, but they hung between them as though the sound had turned to resin, trapping them within it like flies in amber. He’d made her beg — and taken a fierce, visceral satisfaction from hearing his name break on her lips — but he hadn’t expected that.

They couldn’t stay preserved in this moment forever, though. If she’d taught him anything, it was that nothing lasted — not promises, not love, and certainly not a perfect half hour of pleasure.

He rolled off the couch and stood beside her. He adjusted himself and refastened his trousers, but she stayed still, unashamed, her gown hiked up to her ribs and her legs splayed as though closing them would prove the moment was over. He wanted her again already — might have damned his revenge and made love to her, slower this time, the way she used to like it — but she shivered. The room was still cold, even though he hadn’t noticed while he was inside her.

“Stay there,” he ordered. He strode across the studio and retrieved her cloak, along with the handkerchief in his coat pocket. She sat up when he returned, looking dazed, but he nudged her back down and used his cloth to clean his seed from her skin.

“Apologies for that,” he said as he dropped his handkerchief and helped her stand. “Next time I’ll be ready with a cloth.”

Her nightgown falling back into place cut the final thread of their dream. Her eyes narrowed and annoyance layered over her regret until he could almost believe she’d never cared for him at all. “Thank you for reminding me of my debt,” she said. “I’m sure my comfort was not part of our agreement.”

If she wanted cold, he’d give it to her. “I’m a man of business. You will perform better if you are well fed, well rested, well groomed, and put through your paces at appropriate intervals.”

She’d been twisting her hair into a messy knot, but she dropped it and glared at him. “I’m not a racehorse, Nick.”

He scooped her peignoir up from the floor and handed it to her. “You cost more than one. Don’t be surprised that I feel a bit proprietary.”

“If I could throw you right now, I vow I would,” she muttered, slipping her arms into her robe and finding her sash to tie it shut.

“I’m sure you’ll be too tame to throw me by the time your debt is repaid.”

Ellie glared at him, but took her cloak from his hand like he was a gentleman rather than a scoundrel. “Thank you for deigning to pleasure me tonight. If no woman will marry you — and really, who would? — I’m sure there’s a whole host of widows who would pay for that tongue of yours.”

She was trying to shock him. He smiled thinly. “If you want to keep paying for it after you’ve settled your debt, I’ll entertain your offer. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, darling.”

She tossed her hair back. “Unlike you, I’ve never had to pay for a bed partner. Now, if you’re quite done insulting me, I shall take my leave. You can show yourself out, if you know your house well enough to find your way.”

She swept out, her slippers dampening the rage he heard in her steps. He waited until he no longer heard her, until the house was silent around him — or as silent as an old house could be, creaking and shuddering as the temperature fell and an icy wind beat against the windowpanes. It was too cold to stay there, when a featherbed and a warming pan waited for him downstairs. His blood no longer found joy in winter, not after an endless summer in India.

But he put on his shirt, shrugged into his jacket, and returned to the paintings that lined the walls. Ellie confused him at every turn — one moment making him think she’d always loved him, the next claiming that she could never love anyone at all. Not that he blamed her; his thoughts were just as confused. Perhaps, in this life, there would never be clarity between them.

But after tonight, he realized there were two places where he might glimpse the real truth, the one she hid even from herself: in her paintings, made when she never expected him to return, and in his arms as she came undone.

He’d have endless time to exploit her weakness for him in bed. But her paintings — she might move or destroy them, especially after he’d recognized himself in her painting of Odysseus.

So in the candlelight, alone, he explored her.

And hoped that somehow, on some canvas, he might discover why she had given him up.

The next morning, at an unfashionably early hour, Nick asked one of the footmen where to find his study. He had arranged to meet Ellie, Marcus, and Ellie’s maid in hopes that they might solve the issue of the highwayman discreetly and with minimal bloodshed. Not that he wanted to see Ellie in such circumstances — not after the pleasure, and confusion, of the previous night. But when Nick found his study, he wished he hadn’t.

“Bloody hell,” he muttered as he came to a sudden stop in the center of the doorway. Studies were supposed to be male preserves, all dark wood and handsomely-bound leather books. This was…this was…

“Do you like it?” Ellie said as she came up the hall behind him. “I redecorated last year.”

“It’s…”

There were no words.

She slipped past where he stood rooted to the floor and claimed the seat behind the desk. Then she gasped, hugely and artificially, with a hand pressed to her heart as though she were an untrained Covent Garden actress. “Oh my, this is your desk now, isn’t it, Lord Folkestone? How tactless of me.”

But she didn’t stand to give way. And he didn’t want her to. The study was an affront to everything masculine — but she was somehow even more beautiful when her blue eyes were lit up with smug satisfaction. And they were certainly lit up now, as he reacted to what she had done to the room. Even her own salon, the one where he had proposed their unholy bargain on his first night in the house, was more masculine than this. His father had told him that the study, at least when it had belonged to Nick’s paternal grandfather, had held hunting trophies, ancient furnishings, and comfortable leather chairs for reading.

There were no comfortable chairs now — just a few tufted hassocks in varying shades of lavender. He walked into the room, pretending it wasn’t utterly ridiculous. The walls were hung with a soft pink damask. The desk was white and gold, with curved legs better suited to a French boudoir than an English gentleman’s retreat. The only welcome sight was the whisky decanter on one shelf — even Ellie’s hatred of him wouldn’t make her banish spirits from the room.

“I will say, Lady Folkestone, your color choices surprise me. I believe I prefer the palette you used in your painting of Circe — even with the chains.”

He couldn’t tell if she blushed or if the pinkness of the room had blinded him. Either way, she smiled. “I hope you’re always so approving of my artistic efforts.”

It was only when her eyes flickered toward the fireplace that he took a closer look at the painting above the mantel. It was the first canvas she’d ever painted of him, if he was not mistaken — and he had always hoped that the silly, besotted look on his face was due to her previous inexperience with human models, not because he actually looked at her like that.

But the painting was different than he remembered. Before, he’d held a book, half-falling from his hand in a negligible pose. Now, the hand still stretched down — to pet a poodle with a giant pink bow that perfectly matched the wall hangings.

“A poodle?” he choked out

“Shall I ring for tea?” she asked, ignoring him. “Lucia should be down momentarily. I can only assume your brother will do your bidding as he always does.”

“I detest poodles.”

She stood and tugged the frilly lavender cord that served as a bellpull. “Again, an artist’s license. If you had given word that you were coming home, I would have replaced it. Perhaps I could have you pat Marcus’s head instead? Or does he work for gold, not affection?”

Marcus strode into the study in time to hear her words. “Ellie, I am truly sorry,” he said, with the resigned voice of a man who knew his apology would go unheard.

She waved a hand. “It was my fault for forgetting you were a Claiborne. I should have expected you to bring me to grief.”

Nick watched her sit again. She was prickly this morning, with all her armor in place. In this mood, with those blue eyes sparking instead of softening, he could almost believe that the previous night had been another one of his dreams.

But this wasn’t the woman he dreamed of. A footman arrived and she sent him for tea, then turned her daggered gaze back on Nick and Marcus. “If you don’t mind, let us postpone any more words until my poor maid arrives. I am sure she is just as eager to know why she was forced to kill a man as I am.”

“And as I am,” Marcus said, shooting a dark look at Nick. “Mrs. Grafton should never have been in such danger.”