Never Kiss a Rake (26 page)

She tried to tug them away, but he held them, almost a battle of wills, before he released them. “I’m pleased to know you’re so concerned with my welfare,
my lord
.” There was just the faintest emphasis on the last, and she did it to annoy him, to break this strange, heated atmosphere.

“Oh, I’m not, Miss Greaves,” he murmured. “I’m just looking forward to feeling them on my skin. This time when you know I haven’t really passed out.”

She could feel the heat drain her face. He’d known? He’d been awake when she’d touched his chest, when she’d pressed her lips against his on that very first night in his household? And then the heat returned, and she wanted to crawl under the table and slink away.

Denial was the only way to handle it. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Her voice was stalwart.

“Then why are you blushing?”

“You can’t see that!” she said, and then could have kicked herself. She’d just admitted to it, whether he could see it or not. She soldiered on. “Besides, the very mention of me touching you is indecent.”

“Not nearly as indecent as what we did in my bed last night.”

She tried to rise, but he caught her wrist and pulled her back down, his strength gentle but inexorable. “Stop running away from me, Bryony. There’s only so far you can go.”

“Don’t call me that. And I believe I can go anywhere I please. I can leave your employment—”

“But then you won’t have accomplished what you want to accomplish.”

She froze at his gentle tone. What exactly did he know about her? She pulled herself together, but even the small amount of cognac she’d drunk before he’d come in was having an unsettling effect on her. It warmed her bones, heated her flesh, stirred strange things inside her. Or maybe, to be truthful, those strange things had been stirring for days. Since she’d met Adrian Bruton, the Earl of Kilmartyn.

“Again, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I needed a position, and—”

“And what? You weren’t sent by any reputable employment agency. You sent a letter to my idiot wife, requesting an interview. A very simple way to infiltrate my household.”

She was feeling a little desperate. “Why would I want to do that?”

“You tell me.”

Before she could come up with an answer he picked up his glass, as if the subject no longer interested him. “You can scarcely warm the glass if you’re wearing gloves, my pet.”

She swallowed nervously, pulling herself together. “Another reason women shouldn’t drink hard spirits. In society women wear gloves.”

“But we’re not in society, are we? We’re sitting in a kitchen, you in your nightdress, me not much better, and we’re drinking cognac together. No one to watch, no one to know.” The smile he gave her was peculiarly sweet. “Pick up the glass and hold it.”

She did. The weight of the heavy crystal, the movement of the liquid, the way her heat moved to the glass, caught her attention, and she stared into the golden color, lost in it, forgetting about the man beside her. Almost.

“Very good,” he said softly. “Now lift it to that charming nose of yours and breathe it in. Let the aroma play with your senses. Seduce you with its strength.”

For a moment the spell cracked, and she shot him a wary glance, but he simply ignored her. “Then bring it to your mouth and take the tiniest of sips. That’s right, just a bit, and then hold it on your tongue. Play with it. It’s hot and dangerous, like my tongue in your mouth, but it’s what you want, isn’t it?”

There was no way she could protest, not with the small amount of cognac on her tongue, no way she wanted to protest. The fiery taste of the cognac was divine, full of notes of apple and honey, and she savored it, closing her eyes for a moment, before swallowing.

She opened her eyes to find him staring at her, an intense, heated expression on his beautiful face.
Beautiful,
she thought. He was beautiful. What would he want with someone like her?

“Do you have any idea how erotic you look when you do that?” His voice was low, as seductive as the cognac. “And I like the way you swallow.”

Why did that seem to mean more than the simple words? Before she could question him he took her hands and wrapped them back around the glass, and the touch of his skin against hers set off all sorts of clamoring need, need she refused to identify. “Another small sip, darling girl. Don’t worry, I’m not planning to ply you with cognac and seduce you—there’s not enough to make a rabbit drunk. This time let it roll around in your mouth. Let it dance against your tongue.”

She could do nothing else. She was caught, hypnotized by his voice, his words, by the book, the instructions, the warmth of him beside her, the heat of the cognac in her belly, the longing for what she could never have.

“Did you like the book I left for you, my precious?”

She almost spat the cognac out again, and she only barely managed to swallow it on a choked protest. Her eyes were watering from her suppressed coughing, and she met his gaze defiantly. “What book?”

He laughed. “You know what book. I collected that when I was sent on the grand tour. It’s quite rare and valuable. Usually the art in these things is a great deal shoddier.”

She could see those pictures in the back of her mind, so clearly that she had to fight the need to push back from the table and run. She had to pretend that the book had had no effect on her. “The writing was excellent as well,” she said, aiming for a disinterested voice. “It was both instructive and poetical.”

“You can read Italian, Miss Greaves? You intrigue me. But then, you already know that, don’t you?”

She should never have admitted to that, she thought, but the cognac and his intoxicating presence were destroying her better judgment. And then she remembered her lies. “I lived in Italy with my former employer,” she said defiantly.

“Yes, my love, but that’s Renaissance Italian, not street argot or the stuff of polite conversation. Even I had a hard time translating.”

“Even you,” she echoed, letting a trace of mockery into her voice. “You find it surprising that a lowly female could reach your lofty intellectual understanding?”

“I find it surprising that a shopkeeper’s daughter could.”

She was making too many mistakes. She was used to being cool and hardheaded, but he seemed to have an innate ability to get inside her thoughts. Get inside her.
Inside her.
She shouldn’t be thinking like that.

“Why are you blushing, my dear Miss Greaves? Is it in shame over your many arrant lies, or is it something else?”

“I do not lie,” she said with dignity, taking another sip of the cognac. He was right, it was so much better this way, savoring it, letting it roll around in her mouth. Like his tongue, he’d said.
Oh, God.

She set the glass down with a snap, and for a moment she was horrified she’d broken it. She hadn’t, thank God. Bad enough pilfering the master’s brandy—breaking his crystal would be beyond the pale. The master. He wasn’t her master, no matter what role she was playing.

She should get up, leave him. He wouldn’t stop her, wouldn’t force her, she knew that much. But she didn’t want to. She wanted to stay here in the warmth with his eyes watching her with slow, slumberous arousal, and she wanted this. Wanted him. One glass and two sips of cognac and she was losing all her common sense, that was fine with her. She reached for the cognac bottle, ready to pour herself more.

He put his hand over hers, stopping her. “I think you’ve already had quite enough, my girl.” There was laughter and something else in his rich, slow voice.

“I’ve barely touched it. You were the one who told me I needed to master it.”

“You’re a fast learner.” He pulled the bottle out of her way. “So what do we do now?”

“I should go to bed.”

“Excellent idea. Here?”

“Please,” she said, no longer sure what she was asking for.

“Please,” he echoed, his voice soft and seductive, and she raised her eyes to meet his.

A mistake. She, who knew far too well the emptiness of physical beauty, was enrapt by his beautiful face, his forest green eyes, his tawny mane of hair and seductive, cynical mouth. He was beautiful, and he wanted her. And God help her, she wanted him. Not because of his beauty, but because of the odd gentleness in his manner when she didn’t expect it, because of the lost look in his green eyes, because of the way he made her feel with just a few words, because of the way he made her melt when he touched her. The jaded rake he presented to the world was just as much a mask as her own was.

“P-p-please what?” she stammered, losing the train of thought.

“We need to go to bed,” he said in a soft, practical voice. “Do I need to ply you with more brandy before I get you there? Because I’m not going to do so. You’ll have to decide on your own.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Of course you do. You feel it too. You can pretend all you want, but I’ve had a vast deal more experience in things like this, and I know when the need, the interest, the desire is mutual. I doubt you could want me as much as I want you, but I expect you want me more than anyone you’ve ever wanted in your life.”

“You are so vain!” she protested, trying to ignore the fact that he still held her hand.

“Not vain, Bryony. Realistic.” He was too close, but he didn’t touch her. “Now come with me to my bed. I don’t have to take your virginity—there are ways around it, leaving you technically pure in case you decide to marry.”

Whether it was the small amount of brandy, or whether she was using it as an excuse didn’t matter. She had decided. She wanted him. Her body cried out for him, her heart cried out for him, and this could be her only chance to have a taste of what had always been denied her, and she wanted more than a taste.

“You can’t take my virginity,” she said in a choked voice.

“Darling, I’ll do whatever you let me do, up to and including that. There’s a limit to the small amount of honor I still possess.”

She shook her head, and she could feel tears prick at her eyes. That damned cognac. “You can’t,” she said again. “I’m not a virgin.”

He stared at her for a long, heated moment. “Good enough,” he said, pulling her into his arms.

H
E WAS A RIGHT
royal bastard, in word and deed and birth, Kilmartyn thought as he pulled her slight, warm body against him. If he had any kind of decency at all he’d let her spend the night dreaming of the book of erotic drawings and his kiss on her mouth, and then simply start anew tomorrow. He wanted her to come to his bed with clear intentions and informed agreement, and he’d always planned to have her that way. It didn’t matter that she was a lady—he would treat a courtesan the same way. You didn’t coerce, you didn’t force, and you certainly didn’t drug an unwilling female into your bed. Although if she put up any more resistance he was going to look for the laudanum.

He needed this woman, no matter who she was or what she wanted from him. He needed the sweet comfort of her skin next to his, her long legs around his hips. He needed to lose everything in the sweetness of her body, he needed to forget, needed to wash himself clean, and he needed her. No one else would do. And thank God she wasn’t a virgin—he wouldn’t harm her if he was careful.

She was shaking slightly in his arms, and she had her face tucked down against his shoulder, against the skin beneath his opened shirt. He
reached his hand under her chin and tilted it up, to see her eyes full of unshed tears. “Are you crying, my dear Miss Greaves? Surely not. Tell me you don’t want this, be honest just this once, and I’ll release you. You can make your delectably tipsy way back up to the attics and we’ll never speak of it again.” He was lying to her, of course. Nothing could keep him away from her indefinitely. But maybe, just maybe he could keep Bryony for a better time, untainted by the bleakness of the last day. He could take her in sunlight and a field of flowers, no darkness and pain and death.

He realized with a shock that her arms were around his waist, holding him. Maybe she’d had more to drink than he’d thought. And maybe he was needier than he thought.

Her eyes were closed, the tears seeping beneath them, and he cursed the fact that his cock was so damned hard he could come just from looking at her, cursed the fact that he could never do the right thing. He needed to carry her up to her own room, settle her in her bed, and leave her with a chaste kiss on the forehead.