For Desire Alone (20 page)

“A message,” she repeated, uncertain she fully understood as she stared at the jewelry in her hands.

He shook his head. “I’m so, so sorry, Mariah. So sorry I cannot fully express it.”

She leaned over to the small table at his bedside and set the necklace there. Then she swigged the entire glass of scotch and placed the empty tumbler next to the jewelry. When she faced John again, she straightened her shoulders and held his gaze evenly.

“John, you guard your history and your emotions religiously, I know that. But I must have a greater explanation than you have presented thus far. I
must
.”

John shifted and Mariah could see how utterly uncomfortable her request…no, her
demand
…made him. But she could also see something to his expression she had never seen before.

He was going to acquiesce. He was going to reveal all he had concealed for so long. He was going to give her that glimpse into himself that she had longed for.

She tensed as she allowed him as long as he needed to prepare for that confession. In truth, she needed a moment to draw breath and calm herself.

“I do owe you what you ask for…and so much more,” he murmured, his voice distant. “Forgive me if the telling takes me some time. This is not a story I wished to share with anyone. Ever.”

She nodded and slid to the end of the bed. As he watched, she shimmied down and moved to sit on the settee beside him. Wordlessly, she took his hand. He stared at their intertwined fingers for a long moment before he cleared his throat.

“You certainly remember when my brother intruded upon us in my home a short time ago,” he said.

She nodded. “I do. You did not wish to speak of it.”

“No, I did not. We have been estranged for a very long time. The reason is…” he hesitated and his voice barely carried as he said, “The reason is our father. I’m certain you must know that his name is Vaughn Rycroft. He is the youngest son of the Duke of Lynnmore and was raised in great privilege. He…and the rest of us…were disowned from that family decades ago, but the connection remains and
that
is how my father began his fortune. He increased it via a plethora of cheats and plans, as well as the occasional good investment.”

Mariah shifted. A good mistress did investigate her lover’s history, but she had not been able to find much more than bare facts in John’s. Clearly there was much more to it.

“How did your father cause an estrangement?” she asked softly.

He squeezed his eyes shut. “Many men are disowned from their families, but the reason my father lost his connections was because of his uncommon cruelty. He is like an animal—nothing is too low for him. He destroyed my mother, sending her to live on the street and die alone. I don’t even know where she was buried. He spent his life brutalizing his children. His servants. His workers. Anyone he could bully, he exerted his control in the darkest and most painful ways, only to prove he could.”

Mariah flinched. Here she had spent years wondering at John’s past and the truth of it was as painful as anything she had ever heard. Even without the benefit of fine detail, there was no denying that what he said conjured the most painful and terrible images of two frightened children, ruled by a man on the edge of madness. A man driven to control or destroy.

“John,” she whispered and squeezed his hand gently.

He allowed it, but Mariah could see that he barely felt the comfort she hoped to offer in her touch. His expression was too far away, too lost in memories she could not share.

“He was, and is, a bastard of the highest order. Not by birth, but by action. He will hurt. He will steal. He will destroy if it gets him what he desires. He sees himself as king, with everyone else in his life as pawns on his chessboard. He has sacrificed a great many people in order to further his cause. And that included destroying any relationship my brother and I might have had.”

Mariah stared at him. She had known John as long as she had known Owen, but she had never seen him this way. His pain was palpable, and it was made worse by the fact that he hid it always behind that dashing veneer.

“Why did your brother come to you?” she asked. “Especially if you two had been at odds for so long.”

He sighed. “My father bestowed his entire fortune on my brother some time ago. It was a way to punish me, and the reason for our initial falling out.”

Mariah drew back. “I cannot picture you fighting over something as petty as money.”

“It wasn’t about money,” he said with a shake of his head. “I was already building my fortune when he removed my inheritance. I didn’t care about that. But I did care, very much, that he would have my brother under his thumb in such a powerful way. We quarreled. My father convinced Adam that it was my greed that drove my concerns. And Adam, who always longed to see the best in our father, took his side.”

Mariah dipped her head. “I can well imagine how painful that must have been.”

In truth, she could more than imagine it. Her own family had separated themselves from her once her virtue had no longer been a bargaining chip for them. She had tried so many times to reconcile with them, but they had no interest in associating themselves with a woman they identified as a “whore”. Over the years, she had come to terms with that, but there was no joy in it. So she understood loss.

“When he came to me that afternoon, it was because our father had, in turn, cut
him
off. Adam…” He looked at her. “That is my brother’s name…
Adam
…he came with a warning that Vaughn Rycroft was turning his eye toward me again. And he was right, for our father visited me not two days ago with all his demands and attempts at control. When I rebuffed him, he turned those threats toward those I cared for. And I believe…no, I
know
, that the attack against you was to prove that he could find a way to reach anyone I lo—”

He broke off with a shake of his head. Mariah stared. His truncated sentence could only end one way, but the sentiment was not directed at her, of course. She had been a pawn to Vaughn Rycroft, a test of what John could expect toward those he truly loved. He certainly didn’t count her as one of them. It was not possible.

His shoulders slumped and he shook his head.

“I should have known he would take his threats as far as they would go. I should have protected you.”

She cupped his cheeks with her hands. “Look at me.”

He blinked and his gaze settled on her for the first time since he began his confession. His dark eyes swirled with pain. Pain she wished to take away, even though she couldn’t.

“John, you
tried
to protect me. You put a guard on me.” She shook her head. “But I did not understand the gravity of the situation and I found a way to escape him. This was not your fault.”

He shoved away from her to his feet. “But it was. I should have told you the moment my father threatened you. Instead, I protected myself by keeping the truth from you. I should have known that you, in all your headstrong glory, would not accept the protection from some unnamed threat.”

He shook his head and paced to the fire. “My father has taken everything, all I ever held dear. I refuse to allow him one more moment, one more person, one more fraction of my soul.”

She stared at him. His voice was cracking, though she doubted he even recognized it and she could no longer hold back and respect his clear desire for space. She pushed to her feet and moved across the room to him. Wrapping her arms around him, she held to him as tears streamed down her face.

“John,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

He looked down at her and gently swiped the tears from her cheeks. “Don’t.”

She shook her head. “How can I not?”

His fingers hesitated against her skin and he stared down at her with an intensity that held her in her place and kept her from breathing or thinking or doing anything except looking at him and seeing everything and everywhere she had ever wanted to be.

Without thinking, she leaned up and gently brushed her lips to his. She felt him hesitate, but then he returned the kiss, holding her so gently that it was as if he thought she would break. He brushed his lips back and forth against hers with a tenderness she had never experienced before.

But as much as she craved that tenderness, she craved something else more. Him.

She parted her lips and demanded more from the kiss as she darted her tongue between his lips and tasted him.

He jerked back as if burned and stared at her. “After tonight—” he began.

She shook her head. “John, tonight I have experienced a great deal of guilt and fear. If I could end this terrible day with pleasure and comfort, I would very much like to feel those things. With you. For both of us. I think we deserve to lose ourselves a little tonight.”

He pinched his lips together and she could see that he was thinking of all the reasons why they couldn’t, shouldn’t, wouldn’t, but then he shook his head. He cupped her chin and tilted her face toward his.

“Will you tell me to stop if you don’t want this anymore?” he whispered.

“If I didn’t want this,” she said, just as softly. “I would tell you. But I do want it and you. Always. I ask you to please take me, claim me, make me forget.”

His jaw set, working with some kind of struggle against what she asked, but in the end it seemed he was as helpless to their bond as she was. He returned his mouth to hers and kissed her once more. This time, she had no doubt that the kiss would end in so much more.

With a shiver, she wrapped her arms around his neck and leaned into him. The terror of the night melted away as he lifted her against him and carried her to his bed. He kissed her as he laid her across his pillows and took a place beside her.

“Let me help you with your gown,” he offered as he began to unbutton the dress. They both looked at the satin fabric, splotched and splattered with blood. “I’ll have it destroyed,” he said softly, “and another brought here by morning.”

She nodded. Certainly, she did not wish to ever see that dress again, even if copious scrubbing
could
make the bloodstains go away. She would always see them there, splashed across the silk.

When she was in a seated position, he slid the gown away from her shoulders and down around her waist, leaving her only in her thin chemise. She lay back down and he removed the rest of the gown to toss it on the floor beside the bed. Then he stared at her.

Mariah had been seen in so many intimate positions in her life. Long ago, she had lost any shame she had in her body or in the pleasures of sex and sin. But here, with John examining her so closely in the firelight, she actually felt…girlish. As if she had never been touched before. Heat burned her cheeks and she fought a strange desire to cover herself.

And yet, perhaps it wasn’t strange. She loved John. Acceptance of that fact had finally settled upon her and she no longer tried to deny it, even to herself. So when he looked at her, it was as if she were being seen for the first time. His opinion of her mattered more. She wanted to please him in every way.

“You are the most beautiful woman,” he murmured, almost more to himself than to her.

“Even battered and bruised,” she teased, if only to lighten the emotion that suddenly hung between them, never to be spoken since it would never be returned.

He frowned. “You are alive. In those moments I thought you weren’t…” He shuddered as he reached out to gently drag his fingertips along her cheek. “No, even these marring bruises are beautiful. They mean you survived. And that means more to me than anything in the world at present.”

She parted her lips to respond, but the only words she could think of were a declaration of her feelings. So instead, she kissed him. Let him feel her love in her body, but she could never say it.

With a groan he glided his fingers into her hair and tilted her head for greater access to her lips. He kissed her and kissed her for what seemed like an eternity and soon she lost track of all time, lost track of everything except for how her body ripened beneath his touch and readied itself for a joining she wanted more than anything.

Except that this didn’t feel like their typical sexual encounter, overflowing with passion and desire and wicked intent. There was something gentle about it. Something emotional. But she couldn’t dare believe that and put it from her mind as she reached up to unbutton his shirt as best she could with a bandaged hand.

He drew back and looked at her with a frown that was filled with the guilt he continued to insist plague him, and there was a moment’s terror that he would pull away entirely. But to her relief, he instead stripped himself of his own shirt, followed by his boots and trousers in short order.

The next time he lay down beside her on the bed, he was more naked than she was and she shivered as his bare skin touched hers.

“Cold?” he asked, moving for a thin blanket draped at the end of the bed.

She caught his hand and lifted it to her breast. “No, not cold,” she murmured.

He smiled and the wickedness that had been in check returned in that instant. He cupped her breast lightly, massaging the flesh with just the right amount of pleasing pressure that made her gasp with the feel of it. As her back arched, he began to brush her nipple through her chemise with the back of his hand, teasing the sensitive tip over and over again.