Desired (24 page)

Her gloom deepened when she stepped inside the house. It was so dark and murky, overlooked by those ghastly marble busts and stone statues. In a flash of despair she imagined how Joanna would have stamped her mark on the house and made it bright and welcoming and somehow her own.

“Is it true that you wanted to elope with Joanna?” She burst in, flinging open the door of the library. She had not intended to accost Owen like this, but now the jealousy was driving her hard again and she could not
hold her tongue. There was a pain about her heart. She had never realised that love could hurt so profoundly.

Garrick Farne was with Owen. Tess registered his presence then ignored him. She planted herself in front of Owen’s desk.

“Well?” she demanded.

Garrick got to his feet. “I don’t think you need me anymore, do you, Rothbury?”

“No,” Owen said. He eyed Tess thoughtfully. “I am sure I can make a hash of this on my own, thank you, Farne.”

Garrick grinned. He bowed to Tess and went out.

Tess slapped her gloves down on the table. “Is it true that you—”

“I heard you the first time,” Owen said curtly, cutting her off.

Tess stared at him. He had always been so patient with her, so courteous, that she was utterly unprepared for a different reaction. There was a hard, angry light in his eyes. With a shock to the heart Tess realised that this mattered to him. It mattered a great deal. She felt sick despair twist in her stomach.

“Yes,” Owen said. “Yes, it’s true. I asked Joanna to run away with me. I was in love with her.”

She had not even asked that and he was offering the information. Anger at the obtuseness of men in general and her husband in particular lit Tess with a vivid fury.

“So you married me because you could not have her?” she asked sharply.

The darkness in Owen’s eyes deepened. The hot, angry atmosphere of the library simmered up several notches.

“That is unworthy of both of you,” he said, biting off the words.

All Tess wanted to hear were the words Joanna had spoken—that it had been over a long time ago, that it had meant nothing to him, that she was the one who mattered now. But being a man, he was not going to say the right thing.

“Every time,” she said slowly, “when we have been together, I thought you were thinking of me. I can’t bear to think that you were thinking of her whilst making love to me.”

“I wasn’t,” Owen said.

“Perhaps you have some sort of obsession with rescuing damsels in distress,” Tess continued, as though he had not spoken. The pain sliced through her and she could not prevent herself from inflicting it on him too. “You should consult a physician for a cure before it happens again,” she said.

“I don’t need a cure,” Owen said. He got up and came around the desk. Tess could feel the controlled fury in him as he walked slowly towards her.

“Teresa,” he said. “Don’t do this. Don’t break something so fragile.”

“I am not the one spoiling things!” Tess said furiously. “Were you ever going to tell me, Owen? Or did you think I would never find out?” She turned away.
The ache inside her was excruciating. “I trusted you,” she said. “I told you every last one of my secrets. I never realised that you told me nothing in return. Now I know why.”

There was a long, heavy pause in which even the tick of the clock on the mantel seemed to slow and then Owen grabbed her and kissed her. There was no warning and no time to prepare. It was so utterly out of character that her mind reeled with the shock. And this time he was not being careful. His kiss was fierce, harsh and glorious.

“Does it feel as though I am thinking of anyone but you?” he demanded, as his lips left hers. “Does it feel as though I want anyone but you?”

The turbulent expression in his eyes demanded an answer. It demanded honesty from her.

“No,” Tess squeaked. Her heart was beating hard against the silk of her bodice. She thought she should have been frightened by the anger and violence she sensed in him but she was not. Throughout the past ten days he had shown her nothing but tenderness. He had come to her bed every night and made love to her and it had been blissful. But always he had held something back. She had not realised it at the time but she recognised it now. Owen had been careful and considerate with her always, putting her needs and desires first. Not once had he betrayed her trust. He had treated her with absolute tenderness. Now Tess found she did not want that gentleness anymore. Now there was an edge
of darkness in him and she responded to it instantly. There was fire here that he had not shown her before and a wild passion. She had sensed that depth of emotion in him but she had never experienced it. Now she felt her own passion rise to meet his.

She stared into his eyes. Her lips parted. Owen made an inarticulate sound and dragged her back into his arms. His mouth came down on hers again, blotting out all thought.

O
WEN HAD NEVER INTENDED TO
lose control. He had been angry with Tess for her demeaning of his feelings and for the way she had confronted him, but he had intended to talk the matter out calmly and with restraint. Then he had made the mistake of kissing her instead.

All week he had been holding himself back when he touched her, making love to her with exquisite care, trying to make certain that he did not frighten her by asking too much of her too soon. It had been bliss but it had been torment too. To hold her delicious, lush body and treat it like china when he wanted to claim her with everything he possessed, to exercise iron constraint over his own needs and desires when he wanted to plunder her and drive them both to the far shores of pleasure… The strength of his feelings had consistently shocked him. He had never wanted a woman as much as he wanted Tess. Yet it was not simply lust. It never had been.

Owen kissed her again and felt her response, eager and totally unrestrained, and the shock and sheer vis
ceral power of it pushed him right over the edge. He dragged her down onto the wide chaise longue and yanked her close beneath him, moulding every last one of her curves to his, feeling her softness and the heat in her. Her mouth opened beneath his and he kissed her deeply, hungrily, his mind reeling when he heard her voice, a broken whisper, begging for more.

He raised himself above her and searched her face with an urgent gaze. Her eyelashes fanned thick and black against her flushed cheeks. Her lips were parted, stung rosy with his kisses. She was panting.

“These have to go,” he said. She was wearing far too many clothes. So was he. He dealt summarily with the buttons and bows on her bodice. Her hands bumped his, impatient as he. Something ripped. Was it his clothes or hers? He did not care. He stopped to kiss her again, and lost himself in the maelstrom of feeling. He felt her hands against his bare chest and groaned.

Her bodice hung open but her skirts, obdurate as they were, were never going to oblige him. He dropped his head to her breast and took her in his mouth so that she cried out. The need that drove him was sharper than anything he had known, blotting out reason, blotting out thought. He lifted her skirts, slid a hand up her thigh and met the hot, damp centre of her. She cried out again and he stroked her, loving the way in which she lifted her hips to beg his touch. She was all heat and fire as he drove her on, his mouth at her breast, his fin
gers at her core until she trembled for him so much he could wait no longer.

His body was hard and aching. He tossed her skirts and petticoats up to her waist, spread her wide, lifted her hips and pushed deep into her heat. He had not intended it to be so quick but he was beyond control now. She came immediately, with a keening cry, and her body closed around his in pulses so tight and smooth that he almost lost his mind. He thrust into her over and over, deeper and deeper, his hands braced against the rough velvet of the chaise, plunging into her sleek, warm body hard and fast as he possessed her with relentless intensity. He could not seem to quench his need; it left him shaking. He wanted to conquer her completely and claim her forever.

He felt Tess’s body gather again and clasp his and he shattered too in a climax so powerful it left him dazed. He had never fallen so swiftly and so completely in all his life and he had certainly never lost all restraint with any woman.

They were both breathing hard. Owen rested his forehead against hers, utterly shocked at his total lack of control and the fierce way he had taken her.

Tess opened dazed eyes, so deep and vivid a blue that his heart clenched. She smiled at him and raised her head a little to kiss him. Her lips, deliciously soft, brushed his. He could feel her smiling against his mouth. Owen thought of Joanna then but only to dismiss her ghost, so pale now in comparison to the deep
feelings he had for Tess. Loving Joanna, he thought ruefully, had been something of a habit for him. It was only now he realised how hollow those emotions had become over the years, how empty of real feeling.

“We were supposed to be talking,” he said slowly.

“I’m sorry.” Tess looked impossibly pleased with herself. “I misunderstood.”

She looked so tousled and so slumberous that Owen was ambushed by a sharp desire to kiss her again, to make love to her over and over until he had possessed her with the ravenous need he felt within. He forced himself to draw back, sitting up on the sofa, pulling her close into the curve of his arm.

Regret, bitter and sharp, pierced him for the way he had used her.

“No,” he said. “I’m the one who should be sorry.”

She shifted beside him; he felt her touch his cheek, her fingertips soft against the roughness of his stubble.

“I’ll never understand sex,” she said drily. “I thought it was delicious. Unimaginably exciting. And then you apologise.”

Owen grimaced. “I was rough. I treated you with less consideration than I should.”

“Consideration.” Tess’s voice had warmed into humour. “I can bear a great deal less consideration if it means that you make love to me like that, Owen.”

Owen glanced quickly at her. She was snuggling into his embrace, her cheek rubbing his shoulder, all dishevelled clothing and lush, warm woman. His senses
tightened even as he rejected the renewed arousal of his body.

“You don’t understand,” he said roughly. He felt weighted down with regret. “I don’t lose control. I cannot. It’s too dangerous.”

The sleepiness fled her eyes at his tone. She sat up, a little away from him, tucking her feet beneath her rumpled skirts.

“What do I not understand?” she said simply. “Tell me.”

In the end Owen found it easy to tell Tess the one thing that caused him so much shame he had never spoken of it, not even to those of his friends who knew what had happened. He talked and Tess sat with her chin resting on her hand, listening.

“You asked me if I had a compulsion to help women in trouble,” Owen said. “I had never thought of it that way before but I suppose that I do.”

Tess’s eyes narrowed but she said nothing. He had thought she might ask him about his feelings for Joanna again but there was a new awareness in her face as though she had moved beyond the jealousy that had driven her before. She waited.

“There was a woman, a long time ago,” Owen said. “A girl.” He glanced at Tess quickly as she moved a little. “Oh, not like that,” he said. “I did not love her. I did not even know her name. I was a young midshipman in those days and full of ambition. We were in Southampton, and a rougher port you’d be hard-pressed
to find.” He shrugged. “We had been drinking that night and I was more than three-parts cut. As we came out of the tavern I saw that the ship’s first officer—a brute called Bates—had picked up a girl. They were arguing and then he started to hit her.” He stopped. The image of that dark alley and the woman’s pale flesh and ripped clothes, and the sound of her screams were seared on his mind, something he had never forgotten.

“She was a prostitute,” he said. “Little more than a child. It was hideous. Intolerable.” He moved uncomfortably as the unbearable memories flooded his mind. “I had always been brought up to respect women,” he said. “I was young and it gave me a shock to see things differently. Oh, I knew—” He stopped and shifted his shoulders again. He could not feel comfortable. The memories were too bleak and their legacy too painful. “I was not naive. I knew such things went on. But this was my commanding officer. So perhaps I
was
naive after all if I thought that such men would always behave with honour.”

Tess was sitting very hunched and still. “What happened?” she whispered.

“I wanted to intervene,” Owen said, “but the others held me back. I shook them off—I was full of idealism and pride and nobility.” He gave a short laugh. “I went to plant Bates a facer. I was spoiling for a fight. And he was so angry to have his authority challenged. He was full of violence and fury. But instead of hitting me he took the girl and…” His throat convulsed and he swal
lowed hard. “He hit her so fast and so hard that she fell and cracked her head against the wall and was killed. He did it deliberately, like a display of power, to show me his absolute dominance over her, to prove that nothing I could do would make a difference. I hated him for it.” His voice shook. Tess was silent, watching him. “And after that, subordinate or not, I laid into him as though I was possessed by the devil himself. I lost control and let my anger drive me. The others pulled me off in the end, but by then…” He paused. “I had half killed him.”

He heard Tess give a horrified gasp. The colour left her face, leaving it white and stark. “That was why you left the Navy,” she said.

Owen raised his eyes to hers. “I had no choice,” he said. “There was a frightful scandal. I lost my commission and was thrown out. My family had scrimped and saved and gone without and I threw away all that they had given me in one careless night because I lacked the self-control to restrain my violence.”

“Oh, Owen.” Tess put her arms about him and burrowed closer into his side. She felt warm and soft and very giving and Owen felt the cold tension start to drain from his bones. He pulled her to him and buried his face in her hair. “It was not your fault,” she said, her words muffled against his skin. “That was not justice.”