Claiming the Courtesan (14 page)

“This isn’t working,” he murmured, lifting his hand to brush a few stray strands of hair back from her cheeks.

How she abhorred the false tenderness of the gesture. Loathing lent her response an acid edge. “I told you I wasn’t willing.”

He ignored her interjection. “I’m too disturbed myself. I find the strategy I’ve chosen…distracting.”

“What do you want from me? Sympathy?” she gritted out.

In the candlelight, he was almost sinfully beautiful. His narrow face was thoughtful under the wing of black hair that fell across his brow. It lent him a boyish air she knew was a lie.

His gaze dwelled on her as though she were a philosophical problem he was compelled to solve. “I’m trying to stir you into a frenzy of lust,” he said consideringly.

The idea was so ridiculous that she couldn’t restrain a scornful laugh. “You must know that won’t happen.”

“You shouldn’t make challenges you can’t live up to.” He tugged at a lock of her hair in gentle reproof. “You’re far from unaffected now. But I can’t concentrate on driving you out of your mind while I’m so unsettled myself.”

Part of her wished he’d just get on with it and take her. Another part dreaded his possession. Every time he gave her pleasure she didn’t want, he chipped another piece of her soul away. Soon there would be nothing left.

“Perhaps you should go away and think about it,” she suggested without any expectation he’d heed her.

His own huff of laughter contained a trace of genuine humor. “And perhaps not.”

Strange that after all the turbulent emotion, they should speak almost like friends. This was something new. Soraya had always treated the duke with the distance due his rank, even when she’d used her mouth and hands and body to bring him to climax.

It was doubly strange when at any moment the duke would be inside her. The flickering light gilded the strong, lean lines of his body and left her in no doubt at all of his rampant readiness.

As he rose above her, she searched desperately for her hatred and anger. Both had receded further than she’d have believed possible.

He bent to kiss a long scratch a thorn had left on her neck, and they receded even further.

“You’re hurt,” he whispered.

Yes, she was, but not in the way he meant.

“It’s nothing,” she said, making her tone hostile.

The spurious intimacy of the warm bed in this candlelit room sapped her ability to resist. When she stopped resisting, he’d destroy her. His scent surrounded her, reminding her irresistibly of other occasions when she’d lain next to him willingly.

“Let me kiss it better.” He lifted one of her hands and deliberately pressed his mouth to each mark. Her hands had borne the brunt of her wild flight into the shrubbery.

For a moment, she remained quiescent. Absurd, but his kisses did soothe the sting. She realized how close she came to wavering, and she snatched her hand away.

Yet again, Kylemore summoned tenderness to vanquish her. She had to conceal just how vulnerable she was to that particular ploy, although he was frighteningly perceptive and he’d probably already guessed, damn him.

“Stop it!” she snapped. “There’s no need to dress up what you intend to do to me in pretty words or gestures.”

He caught her hand again and gently but inexorably unfurled her fingers. He studied them for a long time.

“Soraya had perfect skin. Verity has calluses.”

He swept his thumb across the rough area at the base of her palm. By now, she was so sensitized to his touch that the caress tingled right through her and down to where liquid heat pooled in her loins. She shifted uncomfortably against the cool sheets.

“I’m sorry if that offends you,” she said with feeble sarcasm. “I never pretended to be anything but a peasant.”

He kissed the place he’d just touched and she experienced another of those unwelcome inner tugs. Surely he couldn’t seduce her with a mere kiss on the hand, could he?

“Actually, I don’t think we ever discussed your background. An oversight I intend to correct very soon. I take it from your brother’s execrable accent that you’re originally from the north of England.”

She frowned up at him, so annoyed that she didn’t even try to draw away as he lowered himself between her legs. “I don’t exist purely for your entertainment, Your Grace.”

He braced himself on his arms and stared down at her with a breathtaking mixture of amusement and hunger. “Entertainment is a flimsy word for what we share, don’t you think?”

He moved back slightly to clasp her hips and angle them up toward him. But still he didn’t take her. She hated to admit the pause tantalized her. It must just be that she wanted the long torture over.

Why did he take the trouble to linger over her like this? Her availability to him couldn’t be clearer.

She struggled to adopt Soraya’s cool tone. Not surprisingly, given her trembling awareness of the massively aroused male poised above her, she failed. “A mistress is only a rich man’s plaything.”

“This particular mistress seems a considerably graver matter than that,” he said gently.

He tensed and finally—
finally
—slid into her. Her gasp mingled with his deep groan of pleasure.

For a long moment, he was still. Then he began to thrust into her, deeply, fully and with a relentless drive she couldn’t help but recognize. His skin against hers burned hot, belying
the teasing edge to his words. As did the implacable fierceness of his possession.

Her body had only just adjusted to his size and heat when he gave another groan and lost himself inside her.

Verity lay panting beneath his weight. They were still joined. She felt uncomfortable and sticky.

And that couldn’t be frustration skulking in her heart, could it? After such extended preliminaries, she’d imagined he’d make more of an effort to bring her to completion.

Hadn’t he mentioned sending her mad with lust? Her obdurate soul had looked forward to denying him.

Although perhaps this businesslike coupling had been an inadvertent rescue. For a few moments before he’d taken her, her soul had been about as obdurate as blancmange.

She raised her hands from where they lay at her sides and gave him a push. His bare skin felt like warm rock under her palms. It was the first time she’d touched him of her own free will all night. “Get off me, Kylemore!”

He lifted himself on both elbows, although he didn’t break the connection between their bodies. “Oh, we’re not finished yet,” he said softly.

He moved his hips suggestively, and she felt him swell inside her again.

“Oh, yes, we are,” she insisted, squirming in protest.

“That was nice. Do it again.” A wolfish smile, familiar from London days, creased his face. That particular expression had always warned her he meant to launch some inventive piece of love play.

And she’d always gone along with him. But not tonight.

She was very near the end of her resistance. She knew it. He knew it. A glance into his intense indigo eyes told her he considered victory already his.

Verity made herself remember everything she had at stake. Her self-respect. Her future. Ben and Maria’s future.

She deliberately sought the cold obsidian center of herself. The obsidian center that had helped her survive as a demimondaine. The center where no one reached her. The center that was utterly Verity and which Soraya had never touched.

Closing her eyes, she waited, secure in the knowledge that her true self was safe from him.

There was a silence. Kylemore must have noted and understood how firmly she was now locked away from him. He might possess her body, but the real Verity was as inaccessible as the moons of Jupiter.

She heard him sigh. Then he began to move within her, slow strokes as powerful and endless as the tide. After a few seconds, he reached out and raised her knees so his penetration went deeper, surer.

She could have told him it didn’t matter. She was isolated in her inviolable sanctum.

Except her cold black center was neither as cold nor as black as she longed for it to be. She was too aware of his scent and the evocative sounds of his body moving in hers. She closed her eyes more tightly and clutched her inner bastion.

Kylemore’s heat beckoned to her. It took all her willpower to keep herself from sliding against him, answering that rhythmic rocking of his body with her own warmth.

A moan escaped her. She wanted it to be a furious protest, but it emerged as a mew of pleasure. To stop herself reaching for him, she fisted her hands into the rumpled sheet beneath her.

“Open your eyes, Verity.” His low voice teased across nerves raw with sensual excitement. “Open your eyes.”

“No,” she said stubbornly, knowing any surrender, however
small, would lead to ultimate defeat. She turned her head away to deny the almost overwhelming temptation to obey him.

“Open your eyes.” When that had no effect, he continued almost dreamily, “I can keep going all night, you know.”

She whipped her head around and met his gaze. It was dark and intent and steady. She couldn’t doubt he meant what he said.

Her lips parted on a wordless sob. She couldn’t keep fighting him. As if to underline that thought, her inner muscles clenched to draw him deeper.

This time, he was the one to close his eyes, and his sigh was a long
aah
of appreciation. He dropped down against her and rubbed his beard-roughened cheek upon hers in a gesture almost more intimate than the sex itself.

Against her will, she arched into him, her breasts brushing the hair on his chest. He reached down to stroke between her legs. No deceiving herself this time that her cry conveyed anything but pleasure.

With a broken exhalation of defeat, she began to move with him in the heady dance of passion. As she rose to meet his next thrust, she heard him give a low growl of triumph.

And why not? What price her defiance and hatred now?

But the thought was distant, unrelated to the climbing spiral of tension inside her, tension that built higher with every thrust of his powerful body into hers. She twined trembling arms around him and threw her head back as the storm within her gathered.

By now, Kylemore’s inhuman control faltered. His slow, powerful pace changed, became faster, more relentless. She hardly noticed. Her own response rose, tightening her muscles, compelling her to cling to him even as he drove into her for the last time.

She broke in his arms on a peak higher, purer, more distressing than anything she’d ever known before. Kylemore’s
groan of release underscored the shockingly exquisite turbulence. Her body leaped greedily to devour every second of rapture, every ravishing sensation.

He flung her up to fly free among the stars. While her heart lingered behind to grieve.

When some shred of control returned, tears dried on Verity’s cheeks. She clasped Kylemore as if she’d die before she let him go. His rough breathing warmed her ear.

She had no idea what that fiery encounter had meant to him apart from providing yet more evidence that physically, she had no defenses against him.

Their lovemaking had turned her every hope to ashes.

In spite of her bravery and determination, he’d required a mere two days to have her panting and begging in his arms.

Two days.

How he must laugh. How he must gloat over his quick victory. Soraya had held her own against him for a year. But Verity, with so many more reasons to deny him, had crumbled before half a week was out.

Although she knew it was too late for any pretense of distaste or reluctance, she unwound her arms from his back.

He raised himself so he could see her.

She searched his face for triumph, but he looked as shaken as she felt. Or perhaps her own reaction was so overwhelming that she imagined she saw its reflection in him. Her body quaked with after-tremors, and the memory of mind-shattering bliss ran sluggishly in her veins.

“I hate you,” she said clearly.

Something flickered in his eyes, but she was too tired and heartsick to try and read it. He lifted himself off her, then, surprisingly, left the bed.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said flatly, bending to pick up his scattered clothes.

He was right. It didn’t. He’d already demonstrated that by proving she was as vulnerable to him as she’d ever been.

More.

She stared up at the heavy beams that crossed the whitewashed ceiling and told herself she wouldn’t cry. Although more tears couldn’t worsen her humiliation.

The door opened, then shut behind him.

It was much, much later and she’d fallen into a disturbed sleep when the first tortured cry woke her.

A
t first, Verity thought that the strangled sound was part of her confused dreams, but as she raised eyelids still heavy and swollen with tears, the cry came again.

Somewhere in the house, a man called out in inconsolable agony.

One of the servants must be troubled or sick, although she’d thought that all the people in the valley, apart from Kylemore and herself, slept in the cottages.

Without consciously deciding to act, she was on her feet and pulling on the first piece of clothing her hand lighted on in the armoire—a silk robe. Habits instilled through years of looking after her brother and sister had never left her. She couldn’t ignore the terrible need in those hoarse screams.

Fumbling, she lit a candle, then let herself out of the room. She paused in the hallway, unsure which direction to take.

The man cried out again, a long keen that faded away into broken sobs. It came from down the corridor. Clutching the
robe around her naked body, she went toward the room where she’d sought refuge from the duke last night.

She quietly pushed open the door to the simple chamber with its narrow bed only to discover no servant broke the silence of the night.

Instead, it was the Duke of Kylemore.

She stood in the doorway as hatred rose in a black tide to choke her. Nightmares should plague a man with such evil on his soul. In any just universe, he’d never enjoy a peaceful moment. No other revenge lay open to her, but at least knowing he battled night demons was something.

The long, lean body in the bed thrashed wildly, as if he fought some invisible assailant. Twisted sheets tangled around him, mute testimony to his struggles. His chest was bare, and sweat shimmered on his white skin under the light covering of black hair.

The duke had bad dreams. What was it to her? He’d kidnapped and abused her. His conscience
should
trouble him.

She turned to go. Let him rot in his misery. Let pains in this world give him a foretaste of the pains of hell that surely awaited him.

Behind her, he gave a low moan. She paused, not wanting to hear the bone-deep grief in the sound but unable to help herself.

She straightened her spine. No, she must be ruthless, as Kylemore was ruthless. Her fear and entreaties and resistance had never kept him from taking what he wanted. So why should she care if his sins returned to haunt his sleep?

Her enemy’s agony was her only vengeance.

He writhed again in the grip of his dream, so violently that the bed creaked loudly in the small room. She tried to rejoice in his anguish, but something stronger than her futile dreams of retribution prevented her leaving.

Slowly, reluctantly, she turned back.

This time, she couldn’t help edging closer. He’d rolled to lie spread-eagled on his back, braced for imaginary attack. She told herself she wanted to luxuriate in his distress while he was too lost in his fantasies to threaten her.

But when the light of her candle spilled across the sleeping duke—for all his turmoil, he was still fast asleep—she didn’t feel remotely like laughing.

No trace now of the supercilious aristocrat she’d known in London, or even the ruthless tyrant who had abducted her. Instead, the man stretched out before her was tormented to the edge of sanity.

He tossed his head with its sweat-dampened dark hair from side to side as if in violent denial. His breathing was loud, and his powerful chest heaved with each difficult inhalation.

In spite of everything he’d done to her, in spite of how she
wanted
to react, Verity’s heart contracted with pity. She couldn’t abandon any fellow creature, however despicable, to suffer as the duke so obviously suffered.

“Your Grace,” she said softly, leaning over and hesitantly touching his bare shoulder.

The smooth skin was clammy beneath her hand. Some monumental crisis gripped him.

“Your Grace, you’re having a bad dream. Wake up.”

He jerked away as though her touch scorched him. The marks of tears on his cheeks shocked her. He was still deeply asleep, lost in his nightmare.

She curled her fingers around his shoulder and gave it a gentle shake. “Your Grace, wake up.”

His hand shot out and grabbed her wrist as the gentian eyes opened wide. For one startled moment, he looked up at her through that hazy blue like a lost child. She had another sudden vision of the little boy he must once have been.

All the while, his adult strength crushed her fragile wrist.

“Who is it?” he grated out, his gaze blind.

She doubted he was actually awake. The dream still dug its claws into him.

“Kylemore, it’s me.” She tried to break away, cursing herself for her stupidity in venturing so close. Did she never learn?

He didn’t seem to hear her as he inexorably dragged her toward him. When he forced her to bend over him, her unbound hair tumbled forward to pool on his naked chest.

“Who is it?” he asked again.

“It’s Verity.”

The room was silent except for his ragged breathing. Hesitantly, he brought up his free hand to tangle in her hair. The gesture was almost tender.

“Black silk,” he said in husky wonder. Then more sharply, “Verity? Is that you?”

“You’re hurting my hand, Kylemore,” she said firmly, hoping to disperse the miasma in his mind.

His dazed glance fell to where he gripped her with such bruising force. “Your pardon.”

He immediately freed her. She should seize this reprieve and flee to her room, but still she didn’t go.

He pushed himself upright against the pillows and looked around as if unsure exactly where he was. “Verity,” he said in a more normal tone. “What are you doing here?”

She rubbed her sore wrist. “You called out in your sleep. I came to see if you were all right.”

“Just a bad dream,” he said with a carelessness she knew better than to believe.

It had been more than just a bad dream. His terrifying distress still echoed in her ears. And he’d cried. She wouldn’t have thought the heartless duke capable of tears, but tonight proved her wrong.

“Go back to bed.” He spoke as though dismissing a servant in his grand London house. “I promise not to disturb your rest further.”

She couldn’t ignore this reprieve. She should be relieved he was sending her away unscathed apart from a few bruises.

With every second, he returned to his usual self. And Kylemore’s usual self was dangerous, as she knew to her cost. She retrieved her candle and began to sidle out of the room. Out of the corner of her eye, she tried not to notice how his hand shook when he raised it to brush his hair back from his face.

He didn’t look at her. “Good night.”

“Good night, then,” she said, telling herself she imagined the bereft note in his voice.

At the door, she impulsively looked back and caught the naked desolation on his fine-boned face. He sat up as if he meant to watch out the rest of the night.

For once, the shell of his self-confidence had cracked, and she saw him more clearly than ever before. Exhaustion marked his face—she suddenly wondered if he’d slept at all since they’d arrived in the valley—and the beautiful mouth was taut with anguish.

Cursing herself for being every variety of fool, she returned to stand beside the bed. “Can I get Your Grace anything? A glass of wine? Something from the kitchen?”

He focused those bleak indigo eyes on her, and she struggled not to recognize a loneliness as strong as her own.

“No,” he said.

“Very well.”

But as she turned once more to leave, he reached out and snatched for her hand. “Yes. Yes, stay.” His voice was harsh, turning what should have been a plea into a command.

“Your Grace, I…” If she crawled between the sheets, she was all too aware what he’d do.

He must have read the refusal in her face, because he dropped her hand and looked past her with an attempt at his usual hauteur. “Of course you must go.”

Ridiculous to be moved by his foolish pride. She reminded herself he plotted her destruction. But at the moment, it was difficult to think of him as the unrelenting, omnipotent Duke of Kylemore. If anything, he reminded her of Ben, who as a child had always been quickest to deny he wanted comfort just when he needed it most.

But he wasn’t Ben. He was the man who contrived to make her his slave. He was the man who, only hours ago, had come close to achieving that end. She was mad to pretend that a troubled, grieving Kylemore wasn’t as perilous to her as his daytime self ever was. Perhaps even more perilous.

His thin face indicated aristocratic disdain as he stared stoically into the distance. But shadows darkened the hollows around his eyes and a muscle jerked spasmodically in his cheek.

She’d regret relenting. Even as she placed the candle on the ugly oak side table and climbed onto the mattress, she knew she’d regret it. But common sense had lost all authority over her actions.

“Verity?”

When she didn’t answer, he shifted to make room for her.

She didn’t want to touch him. Although she might be a fool, she wasn’t that much of a fool. But while he was a lean man, lying apart from him on the narrow cot meant she only just balanced on the edge.

She was close enough for the heat of his body to curl out and beckon her nearer. She waited for him to haul her to him and spread her legs so he could rut over her, but instead, he lay still and tense beside her. It was as if somehow the rules of engagement between them had changed.

For a long moment, neither spoke. Verity became more and more uncomfortable. His musky scent was everywhere, reminding her cruelly of how she’d responded to him earlier.

What was the duke to make of her rebuffs when she came willingly to his bed now?

This was wrong. Terribly wrong.

“I should go,” she said shakily, starting to rise.

“No.”

He surged up and lashed his arms around her to drag her down so she lay with her back pressed to his chest. Through the silk of her robe, she felt him tremble. It vividly brought back the memory of how she’d found him. Hesitantly, knowing she was making one of the worst mistakes in her life, she turned and very gently embraced him.

“Sleep, Your Grace,” she whispered. “It’s not long until morning.” It was the same tone she’d used to soothe Ben and Maria when they’d woken frightened in the night.

She waited for mockery or triumph. After all, what credence would her claims that she hated him have when she lay here cradling him like the most precious thing on earth?

But for once, Kylemore’s cutting tongue was silent. Instead, he pulled her fully against him and relaxed with a great sigh. His bare flesh under her hands gradually lost its worrying coldness, and his breathing became deep and even.

The Duke of Kylemore slept in her arms.

Kylemore stirred from the sweetest sleep he could remember in years. The capricious Highland sun poured through the humble chamber’s uncurtained windows. It was warm. It was late. And he held a fragrant bundle of slumbering femininity within the shelter of his body.

Or actually, she held him. His head rested on Verity’s breast and her arms encircled him as though she protected him from every threat. Curious and rather sad to reflect that no one had ever held him like this before.

And even more curious that he should feel so safe in the arms of someone who detested him so virulently.

Detested him with good reason.

The unwelcome thought had no power to disturb him. He’d slept deeply and well. He’d woken with the woman he wanted above all others.

Literally. He was hard and ready.

But most curious of all, he made no attempt to seek relief. Although relief, asleep and defenseless, lay at hand.

He wished he were pitiless enough to take advantage of having her in his bed. He could be inside her before she woke. Before she set up any barriers. And after last night’s astounding inferno of pleasure, those barriers would be dangerously weak.

So why did he hesitate?

Perhaps because she’d conquered her fear and abhorrence to come to his aid. She’d joined him of her own free will and had offered solace where he’d deserved only loathing. She’d seen his pain and risked herself to ease it.

Altogether, last night had been a revelation.

He’d been a brute, forcing her to flee from him into the night. He’d caught her and manipulated her into surrender. He’d schemed and blustered and bullied. And his reward had been the best sexual experience of his life.

But now her gallantry had changed everything between them.

The anger driving him for the last three months was absent this morning. His craving for revenge had retreated.

But though he no longer wanted to punish her, he couldn’t
let her go. She was his only hope for peace. If nothing else, last night proved that was truer than ever.

Verity was his shield against the demons that pursued him. So her fate was sealed. She must stay with him forever.

The sun was warm on the back of Verity’s neck as she tugged relentlessly at the weeds infesting the flowerbeds behind the house. Kate Macleish, Hamish’s wife, kept a forbiddingly neat kitchen garden to supply the household, but she had no time left over for growing flowers. Verity had noticed the untidy beds yesterday, and the Yorkshire farm lass who still lurked within her had itched to create order.

She hadn’t seen Kylemore all day—he’d been mercifully absent when she’d awoken. She had no idea what she could have said to him.

Actually, she was astonished she’d remained unmolested. Good heavens, she’d slept the night cuddled up to him, for all the world as if she’d wanted to be there. A better man than the duke would have made use of the woman so conveniently at hand.

For the thousandth time, she berated herself for a fool.

What had possessed her to go to Kylemore? Her only hope of prevailing against him was continued resistance. Yet how convincing would refusals sound after she’d crept into his bed without a murmur of protest?

She’d survived and prospered as a courtesan because she’d used her head and not her heart. What if that heart she repudiated ached for his misery? The duke was nothing to her.