Dangerous to Hold (35 page)

She stopped his mouth with a kiss. Marcus needed no more encouragement. He quickly undid the buttons on
her bodice and bared her breasts. When he took a nipple in his mouth and sucked strongly, she threw back her head. He released the nipple he’d laved and went for the other. Catherine was almost delirious with the pleasure of it, and her hips began to move in instinctive appeal, sliding and grinding against his hard groin.

His hand began to stroke beneath the folds of her gown, kneading her hips, her bottom, feeling for the strings of her drawers. Through a daze of passion, it began to dawn on Catherine that Marcus meant to take her right there in the coach.

She brought her hands down and pushed feebly against his shoulders. “We shouldn’t be doing this. What if the coach stops? The coachman will find us.”

He crooned soothingly into her ear and dealt with her drawers, tearing them apart to give him greater access to her body. In spite of her protests, she didn’t try to stop him.

His fingers delved and found her wetness, then he dipped into her, stroking, probing, driving her to her knees.

“Cat?” he muttered. His breathing was harsh and rushed in and out of his lungs as though he had just run a race. He fumbled with the closure on his trousers. “Say yes to me, Cat. Say yes.”

She was gasping, quivering from head to toe. Her blood throbbed in a fever of arousal. He always had this effect on her.

“Yes,” she said. “Oh Marcus, yes.”

She jolted from the shock of his entry. He lay quietly, wanting to give her time to adjust to the fit of his body, but her throaty pleas weakened his control. Clamping her to him, he moved inside her with deep, hard strokes, giving her what she wanted. Shudders wracked her body, driving him mindless with need. When he felt her body tense, hovering on the edge, he surrendered to his own explosive climax, grinding into her till they were both spent and gasping for breath.

It was a long, long time before either of them realized the coach had come to a stop. Catherine looked out
the window and saw that they were back at Heath House. She groaned and tried to clamber off his lap. She couldn’t believe that she’d been so lost to reason that she’d allowed him to take her in a carriage. At any moment, she expected the door to be thrown open by Marcus’s coachman.

“No,” said Marcus, tightening his grip on her. “I want to spend the night with you. Oh, not here. Come with me now, to the cottage I’ve rented.”

Everything was going too fast for her. She wanted to say yes, but she didn’t know what she was thinking, what she was feeling. “I can’t,” she whispered.

She came to her feet, and began to adjust her clothing. Marcus said nothing as he did up his trousers, but his thoughts were bitter. He hadn’t meant this to happen, but now that it had, he expected her to act like a normal woman. She should be demanding that he make an honest woman of her, and not be slinking off as though she were ashamed of what they’d done. He wasn’t ashamed. What the hell had he done wrong?

He couldn’t bring himself to tell her what his solicitors had told him. If she couldn’t commit herself to him without threats or persuasion, then there was no hope for them.

When they were both ready, he descended from the carriage first, then helped her alight. He walked her to her back door, took the key from her, unlocked the door, then gave the key back into her hand.

As she moved by him, he said her name.

She looked up at him. “What is it?”

“Are you angry with me?”

“No. I’m not angry.” Though she didn’t know what she was feeling, she knew it wasn’t anger. She’d always felt in control of her life, had always lived her life by rules she’d never questioned. Now she felt adrift, with no compass to guide her.

“I must go,” she said.

“About the cottage …” He hesitated.

“What about it?”

“If you change your mind, I’ll be there, waiting for you.”

The silence lengthened as they stared into each other’s eyes. Her lips parted. His breathing became audible. He lowered his head to kiss her, and she whisked herself into the house.

The fire was lit; the wine was ready to pour. This time, if she came to him, he wanted everything to be perfect for her. He wasn’t going to take her like a rutting boar. He would be restrained, and gentle, and as tender as she could wish. They would drink the wine, and talk, and drink some more. Then he would kiss her hand, and perhaps her lips, but whatever he did, it must be what she wanted. He’d made up his mind that he would never again shock her with his unbridled passions. He had himself completely under control, if only she would come to him.

God, he’d never romanced a woman before. Was he doing it right?

An hour passed before he finally admitted that she wasn’t going to appear. He didn’t know why he was so angry. If he’d been one of her precious partisans, he would have fared better. She’d committed herself to them come what may—those were her own words.

He poured himself a goblet of wine and drank it back in several long swallows. The air in the cottage suddenly seemed oppressive. Seizing his cloak, he threw it over his shoulders and flung out of the house.

The heath was dark and silent, then not so silent as small sounds began to register. To his right a twig snapped. Branches above his head creaked softly as an easterly breeze bore in from the North Sea, bringing with it sleet and rain. The night was not fit for a dog to be abroad. Cursing himself for a fool, he turned to retrace his steps when he heard something, a sigh, a moan, but whether it came from man or beast, he had no way of knowing.

“Cat?”

The sound that carried to him might have been his name. A shadow hurled itself at him, then she was in his arms, and he was kissing her as if this were to be their very last kiss. They kissed endlessly, with no skill, drinking each other in like lovers dying of thirst. They were no longer aware of their bearings, or that the driving rain was penetrating their garments, molding them into one.

The rain drowned out their kisses and they pulled apart laughing. She whispered so he could barely hear her. “I don’t know what I’m going to do about you, Marcus Lytton. You make me feel things I never knew existed, things I shouldn’t want to feel.”

“What do I make you feel, Cat?”

“Everything,”
she said helplessly, and he kissed her with abandon because he knew exactly what she meant.

Catching her by the shoulders, he dragged her up the steep incline toward the cottage. They stood in front of the fire undressing each other, laughing nonsensically over trifles. There were no servants to see to their wet garments and they draped them over chairs to dry.

He poured out the wine and they drank from their goblets, then from each other’s lips, but they didn’t need wine. He was drunk on her; she was drunk on him. They rolled on the bed laughing together, but their lightheadedness slipped away as they threw off the last of their clothes.

When they were both naked, he spread her glorious mane of hair across his pillow. “I have dreamed of this,” he whispered, and wound his hands through those fiery tresses, holding her captive for his kiss.

She pulled to her knees and loomed over him. He wanted to touch her, but she wouldn’t permit it. All her modesty and inhibitions had slipped away and he reveled in the passion he sensed in her.

She put her hands on him, testing the hard, muscular body that was so different from her own. He was so powerfully made that it was almost frightening. But she wasn’t frightened. This was Marcus.

She kissed his mouth, then his throat, and became suddenly teary when she found the scars on his shoulder
and on his thigh. These were from the wounds he’d received in Spain, the wounds she had tended in that small priest’s cell in the partisans’ base.

“What is it, Cat?”

“When they brought you in,” she whispered, “you had lost so much blood, I thought you would die. We all did.”

“Don’t cry. I didn’t die. And I can’t be sorry that I was so severely wounded. If I hadn’t been, I would have been billeted in the crypt and I would never have met you. Are you sorry you met me, Cat?”

“No.” She inhaled a teary breath. “No,” she repeated.

“Don’t sound so sad. Everything will be fine, I promise.”

“I don’t want to think about the future. I don’t want to talk. I just want to make love.”

“Then make love to me.”

She fell on him, kissing, stroking, driving him wild to take her. It was as if she could not get enough of the scent and flavor of him. There wasn’t a part of him she did not touch and taste. He let her have her way until it became too much to bear. Rearing up, he tumbled her on her back, and his hands rushed over her, caressing her breasts, her hips, her belly. He parted her legs and his fingers found and entered her, and he watched her eyes glaze over as he built the pleasure in her. There was a wildness in her that he had never encountered before, and he knew that she would give him whatever he asked of her.

He kissed her breasts, but he did not linger there. His lips and tongue laved her belly, then he put his mouth on her, there, between her legs, and she arched into the caress. A cry tore from her throat, then soft throaty pleas as she urged him to take her.

He positioned himself between her legs and fettered her arms above her head. There was something primitive in the gesture, and he was seized by a sensation he had never experienced before. He wanted her to know—he didn’t know what he wanted her to know. She tried to throw off his hands so that she could touch him, but when she felt the steel in him, she stopped struggling and
looked up. He read the trust and surrender in her eyes and his heart soared. In sheer masculine triumph, he threw back his head and drove into her, then he went perfectly still when it came to him that he had taken her with all the instincts of an animal.

“Cat!” he said hoarsely.

She was unaware of his distress. Her arms and legs wrapped around him, locking him to her. He laughed softly, then groaned when she moved, driving him deeper into her body. For one moment more, he savored her abandoned response, then he surrendered his control and let the driving pulse in their bodies take them both.

The chimes of a clock somewhere in the house struck the hour. Marcus stretched, reached for Catherine, and came sharply awake when he realized she wasn’t in bed with him. He hauled himself up and glanced around the room. There was no sign of her, nothing to show that she’d been with him last night, not a ribbon or a handkerchief or even a hairpin. With a savage oath, he got out of bed and began to dress.

It was what he deserved, he supposed, for a lifetime of mornings like this when he’d escaped before his bed partner had awakened. He’d had good reason. Women were always angling for declarations. They could never be satisfied with the pleasure of the moment. And now, just when he had worked up enough courage to make the declaration every woman wanted to hear, Cat had run out on him.

With another oath, he sat down on the bed and began to pull on his silk stockings. She would never convince him that she did not love him. Other women could give their bodies for the pleasuring, but not Cat. From the very beginning, there had been something special between them, until she’d learned that he was the Earl of Wrotham.

He glowered down at his black pump. What, he wondered, was she running from?

On the drive to town, he fell into a light sleep and awakened when the carriage slowed to a halt. They were
in St. James’s Street, and carriages that were coming and going to various houses in the square hindered their progress.

Marcus put his head out of the window. “Take the approach from Pall Mall,” he yelled to his coachman.

Pall Mall, however, was also choked with vehicles and Marcus decided to walk the short distance to his godmother’s house. Halfway along Pall Mall, he passed Amy Spencer’s house and he halted.

Though it was after four o’clock in the morning, that wasn’t late by London standards, and he would have expected to see every window ablaze with lights. Instead, only two windows in the upper floor were lit up. No one was coming and going through the front doors; there were no sounds of life. The house looked as quiet as a church. On impulse, he crossed the street and mounted the stairs to the front door.

The footman who answered the knocker recognized him and allowed him to enter the vestibule. “Mrs. Spencer is not receiving,” he said.

“Is Mrs. Spencer alone?”

“Yes, m’lord.”

Marcus’s air of indolence slipped away. Giving the footman a hard stare, he said, “Mrs. Spencer will wish to see
me
, Foley. Take me to her at once.”

“But sir—”

“At once!”

The footman’s eyes dropped away. “Certainly, sir,” he droned, and led the way upstairs.

Marcus did not wait to be announced. Pushing past the footman, he entered the drawing room. Amy rose from a chair by the fire.

“Marcus,” she said. “I was just thinking about you.”

All the frustration and torment that he’d been made to suffer because this woman had lied about him swept through Marcus in a sudden tide of fury. “This isn’t a social call,” he said. “I should like to know why you lied about me to Cat. Your lies have caused more damage than you could ever know.”