Jo Goodman (28 page)

"No." Colin removed his jacket and slung it over the back of the chair.

"No?"

He began to unbutton his waistcoat as he approached the bed. He stopped only when he stood directly in front of her. Her face was raised to look at him. "You could have asked me for the money," he said. "I don't know what I would have said, but you could have asked. You didn't. You chose to steal from me instead."

There was no defense she could offer. That she had been stopped from committing the act was all Colin's doing. Her grip on the coverlet was white-knuckled now.

He reached out and touched her face. His fingertips brushed Mercedes's pale cheek. "You offered yourself up to hide your deceit."

Mercedes would have looked away but Colin's own glance was compelling.

"You were willing to share my bed to cover your crime." He paused. His fingers drifted away from her face and slipped into her hair. "I'm willing to ignore your crime as long as you share my bed."

She didn't move away from his touch. The movement of his fingers at her nape was gentle. She could have easily turned her cheek into the palm of his hand. Her voice was grave, her gray eyes intent. "Then I'm to be a whore for you."

"Whores are for an evening," Colin said. "Two thousand pounds is a great deal of money. For that you'll have to be my mistress." A light shudder caught Mercedes unaware. It could have been his words. More likely it was the pass his thumb made along the underside of her jaw. "I don't—"

He stepped slightly to one side so she could see the desk and the paper upon it. He watched her eyes shift in that direction. It wasn't necessary to say anything else. The threat would have been ugly if spoken aloud.

Mercedes looked back at Colin. Her mouth parted but she had no voice.

He sat beside her on the edge of the bed. The coverlet she held so tightly was lowered slowly between them. His fingers nudged her until she was looking at him again. Beneath the heel of his hand he could feel her pulse racing. He bent his head and kissed her lightly, tasting the warmth of her softly parted lips. "Shall I tell you what's really different?" he whispered against her mouth.

Mercedes wasn't certain she wanted to hear. She was being lowered back to the bed. Supported by his hands, she felt weightless. There was a sense of detachment, as if the things that were being done to her were being done to another, as though she were only a witness to the mouth that covered hers or the fingers that lowered the straps of her shift.

"What's different," he said lowly, "is that there are no pretenses left. You can't tell yourself that you're in my bed to serve some other purpose. You can't fool yourself that I don't know why you're here. You can't pretend that my mouth on yours means I'm halfway to falling in love with you."

His perception was sharper than the dagger he carried in his boot. The cut of it was deeper. Mercedes gasped at the pain he could inflict with words. A moment later her breath caught again, this time because his mouth touched her breast, and where she felt the deepest ache there was suddenly the damp edge of his tongue, laving her, licking at the wound.

"It was fine with you," he said huskily, "if I was the one deceived. You didn't mind feigning some interest, acting as though you really wanted me. If I was half-witted enough to believe you might desire me, better yet, that you might actually be in love with me, you would find more pleasure in it."

"No." It was a desperate sound, softly spoken then extinguished by the pressure of his mouth on hers.

The kiss was deep and hard, like a battle engaged. Mercedes met him measure for measure. Aroused, she became arousing, taking the fullness of his passion and turning it back on him. She arched beneath him, not to escape the weight of his body but to feel the strength of him at her breasts and hips and especially at her thighs.

The gown was stripped from her. A sliver of lamplight bathed her shoulder. She lowered her eyes, not to shield her glance, but to watch Colin as his lips trailed between her shadowed breasts. He sipped her skin before her nipple was covered by the hot suck of his mouth. Her fingers threaded in his bright flaxen hair and when her heels found purchase in the mattress it was to make herself more open to him.

The back of Colin's hand brushed her side from breast to hip. It lifted again and settled at the curve of her waist then trailed along her abdomen. Her skin retracted beneath the calloused pads of his fingers. When he raised his hand it retracted again, this time in anticipation of the contact. She was exquisitely sensitive to the lightest touch, and when his hand slipped between her thighs he wrested a cry of pleasure from her.

Levering himself on one elbow, Colin watched the play of emotion on her face as his fingers continued to search and stroke. "Look at me," he said when she would have turned away. "I want to see your face."

Even now she couldn't blush. Mercedes tried to move away but found herself rising to meet his intimate caress instead. She could feel her own fiery heat against the warmth of his fingers and when he slipped one inside her she felt her damp response to his entry. A cry hovered on her lips, and she held it back, the restraint causing the ache in her chest to deepen.

"You can say it," he whispered, bending closer. The movement of his hand was insistent now, the rhythm purposeful. He bound her with the knowledge that as soon as he wished, it would be his body filling her this way. "You can say anything."

Not anything, she thought. "I could learn to hate you," was what she said.

He smiled then, that narrow, maddeningly enigmatic smile that could have meant everything or nothing. He laid that smile upon her mouth until he drew out another response. Then he watched her as the thrust of his hand and fingers pressed and quickened and she met the caress with the lift of her own body.

Her fingers curled in the sheet under her. Her breasts ached for the pressure and suck of his mouth. Tension pulled her so that her skin was taut as she arched and stretched her neck and back. The heat that was coiled like some steel spring straight from the furnace began to unwind and slipped through her veins in its molten state, raising her temperature until the room seemed cool in comparison. The shiver became more than that as she was mounted by pleasure.

Mercedes cried out, weightless again as she was raised by a new, frighteningly more powerful sensation. It licked at her skin and swelled her breasts. The slender length of her legs tightened as she was buffeted, then carried by the waves of heat and light. Everything that had come before was in preparation of this and she was helpless to do anything but ride it out.

When it was over she lay very still. She was heavy now, heavier than she had ever been in her life, weighed down by the slumberous aftermath of pleasure and the enormity of what had been done to her. The ache was back, not in her chest this time, but in her throat. It was difficult to muster the words, impossible to manage dignity. "Are you through with me?"

Colin didn't hide his dry amusement. "Hardly."

He kissed her at his leisure, tasting, sipping. His lips touched the backs of her closed eyes, her cheeks, her jaw. He placed kisses at the base of her ear and along the sensitive cord of her neck. His tongue made a damp line to the hollow of her throat before he slanted his mouth over hers again.

Only when he felt the faint stirrings of a like response did he raise his head. Sitting up so that he blocked her path out of the near side of the bed, Colin divested himself of his clothing. He would have welcomed her hands on him, helping him do what he was entirely capable of himself, but she didn't offer and he didn't insist.

When he was naked he stretched out beside her. Her hip pressed against his hard groin and Colin's body reacted instinctively, thrusting against her. Mercedes closed her eyes but she didn't move away.

"Don't do this," he said, brushing his lips against her shoulder. "Don't make this a sacrifice. This isn't against your will."

She would have liked to deny it, but he was right. She had named a price and he had paid it. She owed him this. Earlier she had been willing to do anything to gain freedom from her uncle; what galled her was that she would win it from one man and come to know tyranny from another. Mercedes opened her eyes and saw Colin watching her closely. "No," she said finally, softly. "It's not against my will."

She raised her arms and laid her hands on his shoulders. Her fingers threaded at the nape of his neck. His flesh was firm and warm. She drew him down then raised her face in the last instant and initiated the kiss.

There was strength in the way he held her, still more in the way he held back. Mercedes's fingers flicked at the bright tufts of hair at his neck then her hands spread apart and ran along the breadth of his shoulders. His fair hair was in contrast to the bronzed patina of his skin. Weeks and months on the
Remington Mystic,
shirtless in the salt spray, had lent his skin a sun-kissed color that even an English summer couldn't fade. Her hand was pale in comparison, slight and delicate against the corded muscles of his back and arms.

Her nails were drawn lightly along his chest. His belly was hard and flat and his waist tapered to narrow hips. She touched the back of his thighs once then raised her hands again. He drew them back and she caressed the firm curve of his buttocks in her palms. Groaning softly, he pressed against her.

His legs were strong and lean and covered with flaxen hair even lighter than that on his head. The texture was somehow both rough and silky and wonderfully different from her own. She rubbed her foot on his calf slowly, liking the heat and friction and the shudder that vibrated his body first, then her own.

It was then that Colin separated her thighs with his knee. She cradled him as he lay with more of his weight against her. His breath came more harshly but there was no hurry in his movements. When he raised himself she missed his warmth. Her knees were lifted and pushed backward as she was positioned for his entry. She clutched his arms and then he was pressing himself into her.

The first thrust brought pain. With the second there was only a sense of fullness. He waited after that, letting her feel all of him inside her. She was tight, surrounding him like a warm leather sheath. Her muscles contracted, then accommodated, and when he pulled back she tried to hold him, making the withdrawal exquisitely pleasurable.

She knew the rhythm. It had been taught to her by his hands and fingers. She moved with him now as he ground against her. He came forward and was embraced by her thighs and captured by her knees. His breath was hot on her breast but the edge of his tongue was hotter, and sparks skittered along Mercedes's skin.

Each thrust was hard and sure until pleasure was in a moment of overwhelming him. She felt his rhythm change and the strokes become more rapid and shallow and it was then that the bud of heat in her own belly burst open and she was flooded with his seed.

He was the first to move. Sliding off the bed he went to the dressing room and washed himself. When he came back he was carrying a basin of water and a towel. Mercedes had drawn a sheet over her but now he pushed it back. She tried to turn away but he brought her to him again. There was no expression on his face as he dampened the edge of the towel and laid it between her thighs. It came away tinged with her blood as his penis had been.

"You were a virgin," he said without inflection. "I wasn't sure."

Another thrust, she thought. Once again it was more painful than anything he had done to her body. She placed her forearm over her eyes while he bathed her as if it could make her invisible to him and herself. When he was finished, she asked, "May I have my shift?"

He handed it to her and she slipped it over her head, but when she would have risen to leave the bed, he laid his hand against her shoulder. He didn't have to press. The resistance of his palm was enough.

"I want to go to my room now," she said.

"No." He offered no explanation but put the basin and towel on the floor then slipped in bed beside her. With simple direction—a touch on her knee, another on her shoulder—he brought her to curve her body against his so that they lay like spoons in a velvet-lined drawer.

Colin never slept long and he never slept deeply. It had been his way since the first days at Cunnington's Workhouse when he learned that the older boys often wanted something at night from the younger ones. He had fought them away then, even when he didn't know what or why he was fighting. Those answers came later when Jack Quincy took him aboard the
Sea Dancer.
His favored status with the captain and Quincy's watchful eye weren't always enough to protect him. There were men among the crew who saw it as a challenge. It was still early in the voyage when Colin was pinned to the wall of the armory while another young sailor was raped. His two abductors satisfied themselves with their other victim and let Colin go. The threat that they would enjoy him in the same manner was never spoken. Even at that young age Colin sensed it was because it made them savor the cat and mouse game that followed.

They never trapped him again. One man was lost at sea in a wild North Atlantic storm. The other died of food poisoning. The victims themselves never suspected Colin. Certainly no one else did.

Colin had no reason to expect he would sleep well this night, but he was reluctant to leave his bed. The prospect of lying beside Mercedes, having her curled against him when she had been so recently joined to him, was curiously comforting. He imagined watching her sleep or listening to her gentle breathing. It was outside all his experience that exactly the opposite could happen.