Prisoner of Desire (14 page)

She discovered, with shock, that she did not want to put the matter to test. It was not fear, but rather that she preferred not to know if Ravel would rape her. But if she did not, if she failed to defy him, then it must mean the defeat of her plans. It would mean that Ravel, riding hard and fast through the night, could still reach New Orleans by daybreak, could still arrive at the dueling field in time to meet Murray.

It might also mean, after such a long and tiring ride, coming so soon after his head injuries, that the odds of Ravel being killed, instead of killing his opponent, would be greater. That too was something she did not care to see put to the test.

“Why?” she asked with tears of angry distress rising in her eyes. “Why are you doing this?”

“For honor,” he answered, though the words were etched with the acid of self-derision.

“It can’t be necessary for you to kill a young man like Murray Nicholls. Not for so slight a reason. Your honor can’t mean that much to you.”

“Can’t it?” he asked in bitter tones. “How much does your virtue mean to you?”

“Not as much as a man’s life.”

The words hovered between them. Anya stared at him, her drowned gaze widening as she realized the implication of what she had said. She hadn’t meant — or had she? In that confused moment, with her heartbeat pounding in her chest and the tight feel of reluctant response in her lower body heightened by his lean form resting heavy upon her, she could not be sure.

Outside, the thunder crashed and the rain poured down, sluicing over the roof and channeling in streams from the eaves, splashing on the ground below the windows. The sound was loud in the sudden stillness.

“My honor for your virtue, a fascinating exchange.”

Even as he spoke, Ravel could not believe she would do it. She had hated him too much, for too long. When she did not answer, he went on. “I wonder if Murray Nicholls is worth the sacrifice, or if he realizes the depths of your affection.”

“It isn’t affection.”

“What then? A simple concern for your sister’s happiness?”

“In part,” she agreed, her voice breathless.

“And what else?” he asked in goading tones. “The purest of altruism? The regard of one human being for the welfare of another? Will you believe me if I tell you that I am inclined to accept your offer — if offer it is — for the same reason?”

“For Celestine’s sake?” Anya asked, confusion drawing her brows together.

“For yours. And because I lack the strength of will to refuse.” He laughed, a husky, sardonic sound. “So much for honor.”

By slow degrees, he released her, taking his hands away, levering himself up so that his weight no longer oppressed her. Anya rubbed her wrists to restore the feeling and circulation. He sat watching her, propped on one hand with his knee drawn up. She could feel his gaze upon her, considering, devouring in its intensity.

Her virtue for a man’s life. Murray’s or Ravel’s, it did not seem so bad a bargain. She had no real expectation of marrying, so that purity for her wedding night did not greatly concern her. This one physical act would be quickly over, and as quickly put from her mind. The process was of no great importance; only the result mattered.

It was long moments before she could bring herself to look at Ravel. Still, when she finally sat up and lifted her lashes, her eyes were steady and darkly blue with determination.

“You agree? You swear you will make no attempt to meet Murray in the morning?”

How could he refuse? Loss of honor was a small price to pay for this boon, one he had never dared dream would come to him. But could he bear the hatred that must accompany the sacrifice? Would it suffice to still the pangs of conscience if he told himself she despised him already, could not despise him more?

“I agree,” he answered, his voice deep.

Anya swallowed hard. For a moment she had thought he meant to repudiate her and the agreement. She had even dared hope that he might say she could go, that she need trouble herself over the duel no longer. She should have known better. What was he waiting for, then? If a blackguard he must be, then why could he not be one completely? Why could he not take her at once and have done with it? Hard, remorseless, the rain drummed on the roof above them.

“Well then?” Her voice came near to cracking with the strain that gripped her.

His lips curved in a slow smile as his dark eyes held hers. “There is no hurry.”

“Could you — lower the lamp?”

“I would rather not.”

The soft glow through the soot-darkened globe was not that intrusive, but neither was it the darkness she craved. She did not insist, however. She drew a deep breath, then let it out slowly. She glanced over his shoulder toward the door, and the fire that was slowly dying in the fireplace, before looking back at him. “You — you will have to help me undress.”

“Of course,” he said gravely.

She shifted with stiff muscles, turning her back to him so that he could reach the row of tiny buttons fastening her gown. He did not begin on them at once, but closed his hands upon her shoulders, holding them, feeling the flesh and sinew and bones of her, quiescent under his palms, accepting his touch. His heart contracted in his chest, and lowering his head, he brushed the tender and vulnerable nape of her neck with his lips. So brief, so gentle was that caress that Anya sensed it rather than felt it. She tilted her head in inquiry.

Ravel removed his hands with slow reluctance, lifting them to her hair and probing with his fingers for the pins that held her braided coronet. He pulled them out one by one, tossing them to the floor so that they made a musical, tinkling sound. With swift movements, he unplaited her braid, spreading the silken strands with the waves pressed into them, draping them around her shoulders. Only then did he begin on the buttons.

Panic, suffocating, stomach-wrenching, beat up into Anya’s mind as she felt his fingers so warm and sure upon the bare skin of her back. It was only by a supreme effort that she could force herself to sit still, to permit this encroaching intimacy.

She had held herself inviolate for so long that she was not certain she could bear what was to come, regardless of all her attempts to reassure herself, not certain at all.

He did not wait for further permission, however, but when the gown was undone and the sleeves sliding down her shoulders, began to untie the tapes of her crinoline and petticoats, and to unlace her corset. Within a few short minutes he was drawing the layers of clothing off over her head and tossing them aside, as if plucking the petals from a flower.

When she was left only camisole and pantalettes, she swung back to face him. He reached out to catch the end of the blue ribbon that held her camisole closed at the top, and slowly untied the bow. The knot slipped free. The edges of fine cloth began to widen, exposing the gentle curves of her breasts, though the ribbon was still crossed. With the tip of one finger, he spread the gap a fraction. He drew in his breath with a soft hissing sound.

The soft lamplight touched her hair with red-gold highlights and gave the intense blue of her eyes the soft sheen of sun-touched mist on the sea. It gilded her cheekbones, leaving the triangular hollows underneath in shadow, and with delicate fidelity burnished the perfect globes of her breasts until they appeared sprinkled with gold dust and crushed pearls.

Anya looked up at him, wondering at his lack of haste, his apparent enjoyment of the process of removing her clothes. His face was intent, the corners of his mouth lifting in an expression of absorbed pleasure. He glanced up. Finding her watching him, he stopped.

His smile widened with a slow and sensuous lightening of his features. Shifting, he lay down, stretching full length. He clasped both hands behind his head. His gaze holding hers, he said, “My turn.”

“You mean — you want me to undress you?”

“That’s the idea,” he answered in rich amusement.

She was aware, suddenly, of a peculiar excitement churning inside her, a rising feeling of recklessness that carried also a sense of freedom. She could touch him; he wanted her to touch him. There was nothing to prevent her from satisfying every curiosity she had ever known concerning men and the mysteries of the marriage bed. She had, thanks to the frankness of the Creole ladies, and also the slave women, a working knowledge of the male anatomy and the process that led to procreation, but there were gaps in her understanding of both. Those gaps would be filled this night.

Supporting herself with one hand, she leaned over him. Her fingers trembled as she reached for the bone buttons of his shirt. One by one she unfastened them. She drew the edges of red flannel aside, exposing the hard planes of his chest with its dark matting of hair. She trailed her fingertips through that curling growth in tentative pleasure, surprised at the crisp yet soft feel of it, and at the unyielding firmness of the bands of muscle underneath. She brushed his hardened paps, conscious of his indrawn breath of sensitivity in that area. She did not linger, but trailed downward over the flat, tight wall of his abdomen to tug his shirt from the waistband of his trousers.

He moved to accommodate her, then, as she freed the tail of the shirt, rose on one elbow to permit her to push it from his shoulder. She spread her fingers, smoothing her palm over his neck and upper arm, brushing the soft material from his firm skin until it was caught by the width of his biceps and his elbow. She leaned closer to him then, using both hands to pull the sleeve free.

Her breasts tingled, the nipples tightening, as she brushed his chest. She recognized suddenly the warm, masculine scent of him combined with the freshness of soap and the cotton-lint smell of the flannel shirt. She felt a loosening sensation inside her, and the slow rise of warm anticipation. She refused to consider it, however. Keeping her lashes lowered, she stripped the shirt from him and tossed it on the pile of her own clothing beside the bed.

He lay back down. Immediately, before she could lose her courage, she unbuttoned the front of his trousers. Opening the flap revealed his underdrawers of linen, so finely woven they were almost transparent. Uncertain how to proceed from there, she hesitated.

A grin crossed his face. With the toe of one foot, he prized off one of his half-boots, then the other. They fell to the floor with thuds that were loud in the quiet. His movements swift, economical, he stripped down his knit socks, pulling them through the leg shackle before skimming out of trousers and underwear. These last two items, encasing the chain over which they were drawn, trailed also to the floor.

There was a scar on his thigh, a long, angry-looking slash. Anya stared at it, because so long as she did, there was no need to acknowledge his nakedness or to look elsewhere. In a show of concern, she reached out to touch the scar, though the moment her fingers came in contact with his warm skin her concern was abruptly real.

“How did you get this?”

“A Spaniard with a bayonet in Nicaragua.”

“Did you—?” She stopped.

“Did I kill him? Yes, I did.”

His voice was tight, as if he expected her denunciation. She said with quiet deliberateness, “You might have been crippled.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, “not now,” and discovered that he spoke no more than the truth. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except the moment and the strange pact that held them together.

“No,” she whispered.

He looked at her, his eyes black and opaque, with mysterious shadows in their dark depths. Quickly, almost before she realized what he was doing, he flicked open her camisole and removed it. His gaze kindled as it swept over the perfect symmetry of her tip-tilted breasts with their apricot pink nipples. With a sound in his throat that might have been a sigh of deepest satisfaction or the release of some deep-held disbelief, he put his hands on her shoulders and drew her across him.

Her hair swung forward around them like a russet satin curtain. Glinting with fiery highlights, it enclosed them in perilous intimacy and the heart-catching scent of damask roses. Her breasts were flattened against his chest. He cupped her face with one hand, then slowly brought her nearer until her lips touched his.

His mouth, the chiseled and passionate molding of it was upon hers, and there was no hardness there, only a warm and sensual enticement, a firm entreaty. His tongue teased the sensitive and fragile curves of her lips, testing the line where they met. He found the small injury where his teeth had cut her as he had been struck the night before, and he soothed it with minute soft strokes. Enthralled by that tenderness, she permitted her lips to part, allowing him entry, and with tentative pleasure touched his tongue with her own.

In some distant recess of her mind, there was a feeble and puritanical protest at her cooperation in her own fall from grace. Conscience dictated that she submit; it did not require that she enjoy the submission. She would have liked to blame it on the wine that ran with heavy strength in her veins or perhaps some ancient feminine weakness, or even on Ravel’s overwhelming strength. It was none of those things. The cause lay within herself, in the stirring of desire long unawakened, of needs long unfulfilled. It was an ungovernable instinct to accept this chance to experience life’s most bountiful reward for the pain of living, this chance that had been thrust upon her.

Ravel tasted of coffee and the wild sweetness of the berries of summer. His mouth was warm and welcoming, the inner surfaces moist and smooth. Their tongues clashed, entwined with fine-nubbed grain against nubbed grain. His hands glided over her shoulders and down the slender line of her back, pressing her to him, moving lower to clasp her hips. His fingers sought and found the side button of her pantalettes, and he released them, sliding them down, following them with his hands upon her bare skin, kneading, sweeping in easy circles along her sides.