One Night of Sin (37 page)

He kissed her again, roughly, and her soft groan with his tongue in her mouth, opened wide for him in eager reception, told him all that he needed to know. He caressed her face, trying to temper his wild need for her; they both paused, took a breath, and then simply tore into each other like starved people at a feast.

Alec’s hands were shaking like those of an untried youth. He touched her everywhere, greedily. He stroked rosy satin; he wanted white skin. He tore her lovely bodice in his haste to get his hand on her breasts while she flew through the buttons of his waistcoat, dragging the vest off his shoulders.

He plucked the pins out of her upswept hair and brought it tumbling down, letting it spill luxuriously through his fingers like so many strands of sable silk. Then he knelt before her, hungrily sucking on each of her rigid nipples. She hugged his head to her bosom, tangling her fingers in his hair. She tugged his white shirt off over his head a few moments later, and then, bare-chested, he pulled her down onto the floor with him, fierce and reckless in his haste. Becky kept pace with him as no woman ever had.

Both of them on their knees, Alec bent her over the long silk chaise, lifted her skirts, and took her from behind with quick, hard thrusts.

She arched her back and urged him on; he grasped her hips and quickened the pace, simply ravishing her in raw, mind-numbing bliss without a word between them. His cock was enormous sliding into her, a lancer’s pike, a frigate’s mast. He’d never been so hard in his life. Caressing her round bottom, he trailed his fingers up her back and grasped the silken rope of her hair, dragging her head back gently, just hard enough to make sure she knew who was in charge. She groaned in helpless pleasure, submitting to his mastery, perhaps despite herself.

He closed his eyes, savoring the velvet wetness of her dripping core. As he stroked the warm, supple curves of her back, his whole body tingled with celestial sensation. “Ah, Becky.” He wrapped his arm around her thin waist and rained steamy kisses on her back, her nape, her shoulders. He told her with his body, with his proprietary hold, as his fingers dug into the soft flesh of her hips; he told her with every deep stroke, buried in her to the hilt; and even with the light teeth marks that he left on her tender shoulder; that under no circumstances was he letting her back out of this marriage.
“You’re mine,”
he whispered.

She groaned his name, quivering violently as his middle fingertip played ever so lightly over her pebble-hard center. “Oh, yes, Alec. Don’t stop.”

“No, Becky, never.”

She carried him away with her when the hot wave of her release crashed through her nubile body, making her shudder and grind against him, her backside slapping wildly against his groin. Her skin damp with sweat.

Alec buried his face in her hair and followed her blindly into oblivion. A few final pumping heaves of his hips lunging into her, and he was flung out in another world, where there was only this woman and pleasure and sweet darkness.

“Becky,” he breathed as she quieted in his arms. He could barely open his eyes, but as a bead of sweat rolled down his cheek, his embrace around her slim waist gradually changed from one of dominance to chastened affection. Still inside her, he nuzzled the sweet shoulder that moments ago he had covered in love bites. “Ah, angel. You are miraculous.” She let out a quivery little sigh as he withdrew. “Are you all right?”

She nodded, suddenly turning shy after their wild mating. Alec smiled, taking in her crimson blush. She was just too adorable, he thought, besotted.

“Come here.” He fixed her torn dress a bit, fastened his trousers, and glanced warily into her eyes. “Do you want to talk now?”

She lifted her eyebrows, searching his gaze. “Do you?”

Alec gave her a somber, wordless nod. Maybe if he stopped running from his demons and instead looked them straight in the eyes, the past would lose some of its terrible power over him. Yes, it was time to have done with it, and face the consequences.

Becky cupped his face in her hand and then nestled her cheek against his, her long lashes dusting his skin. “Whatever it is, Alec, we’ll get through it together.”

He wrapped his arms around her and closed his eyes, praying as he held her that these were not just pretty words. Then he stood, lifting her with him.

She clasped her hands behind his neck and held his stare as he carried her slowly upstairs to the summer bed.

“I had grown used to winning. Winning . . . well, it was who I was. But about a year and a half ago, you see, I hit a losing streak at the tables. A rather . . . spectacular losing streak.”

A short while later Alec began his confession. His low murmur reached Becky from the shadows on his side of the summer bed. They had changed into their nightclothes and assumed their respective sides of the separated bed, which had already served as the intimate setting for so many whispered conversations.

Moonlight filled the room; a slight breeze stirred the curtains. Becky turned onto her side and stared at his muscled silhouette.

“Faro and hazard,” he said with a low sigh. “Games of chance were my poison. There’s no strategy to it. Just put your money down and see what happens. Those were the kinds of games I loved to win.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. It made me feel . . . Singled out by fate. Beloved by the goddess of fortune. Chosen. I guess that sounds absurd.” The pillow rustled as he shook his head, staring up at the canopy above them. “But if it made me feel uniquely blessed to win, then losing, as you may imagine, made me feel cursed. I kept thinking I could turn it all around—as if I were being tested. I refused to give up. One more throw of the dice, one more hand at cards. I became fixated on regaining my golden status.”

“Why did it all hold such appeal?” she asked softly.

He considered the question. “I guess it took my mind off other things.”

“Like what?”

“Well, for instance,” he said hesitantly, “like how I could have everything and still not be happy. More and more of everything could still not . . .”

“Fill the emptiness?” she asked softly.

He turned his head and just stared at her for a moment. Slowly, somberly, he nodded.

“Go on.”

Lying back again, he stared up at the canopy with his arms folded under his head. “The longer I hung in there, trying to turn it around, the worse it seemed to get. It was a disaster taking shape, but still, I refused to admit defeat. Robert warned me a few times that I was getting into dangerous territory, but I didn’t listen. Finally, he cut me off in an effort to force me to quit. He had no other choice, really. It was for my own good—but I did not intend to take that lying down. Instead, I made a few discreet inquiries about taking out a bank loan to cover my expenses until my luck returned. Bad idea, yes, I know. In any case, the reputable moneylenders around Town heard that I had been cut off. Without Robert’s backing, they wouldn’t grant me a farthing. And then things got really . . . interesting.”

“What happened?”

“Some of my creditors caught wind of my situation and came banging on my door. I had borrowed all I could from my friends; I owed them all. I couldn’t bring myself to ask for another penny. Even a ruined gambler’s got his pride. I was so angry at myself, so disgusted,” he said, his voice thickening. “I had bailiffs lying in wait for me to drag me off to debtor’s prison, and I knew Robert was going to leave me there, because he had told me so. He feared that was the only way I was ever going to learn.”

Becky listened in silence.

“Well, I knew that if I allowed myself to be locked up, it would be the end of Lord Alec Knight, captain of all London rakehells,” he said cynically. “It was bad enough to have inexplicably become a loser overnight, but debtor’s prison would have made me a social outcast to boot. Ton life can be damned shallow, God knows, but it’s the only sort of life I’ve ever known. I wasn’t thinking clearly,” he admitted in the darkness. “And so I went off and did something . . . incredibly stupid.”

“What was that?” she murmured.

“I took a loan from Mr. Dunmire.” He rolled onto his side and propped his cheek in his hand, his elbow resting across his pillow. His eyes glimmered in the silvery moon-glow. “He’s a sort of underworld businessman, part criminal. He owns half a dozen crooked gambling hells throughout the East End. Brothels. Low pubs that usually feature cockfight pits. He’s got an army of blacklegs who prey off the Fancy. I knew it could be suicide to deal with him, but as the only honorable option that remained held, shall we say, limited appeal, I signed on the bottom line.”

“Oh, Alec.” She shivered, remembering all those gamblers whose fates were printed in the newspapers, blowing their brains out or hanging themselves, after having chased ruin to the end of the line. Such exits were reported as customary, unsentimental, matter-of-fact. Acts of honor. For, when a proud gentleman had disgraced himself beyond recovery at the tables, self-slaughter was viewed as the only way to answer the disgrace he had brought down on himself.

“But still, I refused to give up hope,” Alec said. “The loan’s rate of interest was outrageous, but I was absolutely certain that my luck
must
turn around sometime. Well, once I had the money from Dunmire, I paid down a few of my debts and got rid of the bailiffs, but by the time the first payment on the loan came due . . .” He shook his head. “I couldn’t pay.”

“Oh, no,” she said softly, wincing as she held his gaze.

“Dunmire wasted no time in sending his thugs out after me. They pounced on me one night when I was on my way home from a party, foxed and alone. I did my best to ward them off, but I was in no condition. . . . If I had been sober, I’m sure I could have taken them on, but, well, to be perfectly frank, I was bloody drunk. They got the best of me. Slammed my damned head against the ground until I saw double, and then one of them jumped on the lower part of my leg and broke it—as a warning.”

“Oh, sweetheart.” She got up and crossed the gap between them, sitting on the side of his bed. She searched his face in astonished concern.

He sat up against the headboard, shirtless, one knee bent. “I wish I could tell you that I held my ground boldly, but that wasn’t exactly the case.” His lips twisted as he met her questioning gaze. “Having barely managed to limp away from them with my life, and quite defenseless after the condition in which they had left me, I hid at Knight House—at least, for a few weeks, while I was mending. I didn’t even tell my family what was really going on. I told them it had happened during a drunken wager with my friends. They believed me and, considering my injuries, they called for a doctor and took me in.” He took her hand, lowering his gaze. “It didn’t take long for Dunmire’s thugs to find me. I was sitting on the terrace one evening playing chess with Miss Carlisle when they came up to the fence and told me I couldn’t hide in there forever, and that when I came out again, I was a dead man. By that time, of course, I had missed several more payments.”

She petted his shoulder in pained sympathy.

“Unfortunately, Lizzie had heard the whole thing. You remember, I told you about her—lady’s companion to my sister.”

Becky nodded.

“I had been hiding it from everyone, but she was right there, so of course, she found out. She questioned me about it, and she had been so kind to me, looking after me while I was on crutches, that I just couldn’t lie to her. I finally broke down and told her the truth, but I made her swear not to tell the others. Do you know what she did for me?”

She shook her head.

Alec was pale, the fine planes and chiseled angles of his face taut with sorrow. “She took out her dowry that her father had left her and—she gave it to me to pay back Dunmire.”

Becky rested her hand on his forearm. She couldn’t help feeling a tiny bit threatened by his past bond with Miss Carlisle—or Lady Strathmore, since her marriage, as Alec had also told her. She wished she could have known Alec all her life, as Lizzie had. On the other hand, she was grateful that he had had a friend like Lizzie when he needed one most. “She must have loved you very much,” she said wistfully.

“Almost as much as I despised myself,” he answered in a low tone. He paused. “The truth is she never really knew me. Not like you do. She was in love with an image of me that she had made up in her own head. She finally came to understand that, because what she later found with Dev was real by comparison. In any case, her generosity that day thoroughly humbled me. Lizzie comes from modest origins, you see—the money she was offering me represented her entire future. At first I took it. Because she insisted. And because my back was to the wall—I thought I had no choice. But on the way to Dunmire’s office, I realized I couldn’t possibly go through with it. I couldn’t have lived with myself. Instead . . .” His voice dropped to a pained whisper. “I told the driver to take me to Lady Campion’s house.”

Becky studied him apprehensively. He touched her arm for a moment, took a deep breath, and then visibly forced himself to continue. “Eva . . . is a widow with a fortune of her own. She can do what she likes, when she likes. With whom she likes. She had been trying to lure me into her bed for years, but I never . . . I had heard things about her. The sort of things she likes. I never . . . We made a bargain.”

“I see.” The short, whispered words rushed from her on an exhalation, as though someone had punched her in the stomach, or perhaps stuck a dagger in her heart. She dropped her gaze. Outwardly she sat very still, but inwardly she was reeling, for she grasped what Alec was about to tell her before he actually said it.

He swallowed hard, a trifle pale; but with a look of stony resolve, he forced himself to be done with it, and Becky closed her eyes as he said the words. “Eva paid off Dunmire in exchange for my services in her bed.”

She sat very still, one arm hugged tightly across her waist. She was appalled, indeed, shaken to the core.

“Our liaison went on for over a year. She refused to pay Dunmire off all at once because she so enjoyed the power she had acquired over me. She flaunted it in front of all the world; she enjoyed testing how far she could push me.”