Seven Nights in a Rogue's Bed (22 page)

Why should she?

Except she’d trusted him with her body. He didn’t underestimate what that meant. He wanted to thank her. He wanted to beg her to stay. He wanted to tell her she was the most marvelous being in creation. Emotion silenced him, made it impossible to express what lay in his heart. He raised her hand to his lips and kissed her palm with a veneration that sprang from his soul.

He wasn’t good enough for her. But by God, he meant to make her happy while he had her.

A
s Jonas whirled her into the bedroom from the corridor, Sidonie hid her face against his shoulder. Her belly twitched with nerves. Last night she hadn’t had to endure the mirrors. “Can we sleep in the other room?” she muttered into his shirt.

His laugh was a soft rumble under her ear and his arms tightened around her. “Courage,
bella
.”

“I can’t watch myself doing… that.”

All day, he’d kissed her and touched her but had taken the caresses no further. She supposed he was being considerate, letting her recover from last night, but she was past appreciating his thoughtfulness. Frustration had come near to driving her mad.

“Trust me.” He swung her up with an ease that made her breath catch. Curse her longing heart, she swallowed her protest and curled her arms around his neck. She should insist on walking, if only to confirm that his merest glance didn’t turn her knees to water.

As he gently settled her on the bed, she met her gaze in the oval mirror above. She sprawled across the sheets in her ruby silk dress. Under the glass’s stare, the connection between the man and woman was palpable. Jonas leaned over her with unmistakable intent, but an air of protectiveness for all that. Sidonie’s eyes glowed with uncontrollable excitement.

“You turn me into a sybarite.”

“A man lives in hope,” he said softly, drawing a sparkling pin from her hair. He dropped it onto the nightstand and sat on the bed beside her, his hip nudging hers.

She slid up to lean against the headboard, watching Jonas with a hunger she didn’t try to hide. His angular features showed the strain of long hours of self-denial. She hadn’t mistaken the urgency with which he’d rushed her away from dinner. “I didn’t thank you for my present.”

This evening when Sidonie came upstairs to change, the jeweler’s box had been waiting on the bed. She’d cringed to think Jonas proclaimed his conquest with some garish bauble. But as always, he was a man of surpassing subtlety. Inside the box, a dozen sparkling hairpins lay on white silk. Exquisite sprays of ferns and flowers. She’d never owned anything so pretty.

“I look forward to your gratitude,” he said as more pins joined their fellows on the nightstand.

“I’m sure.” She supposed she should be ashamed of what she meant to do with this man in this bed tonight. In spite of a lifetime of unsullied virtue, she couldn’t conjure a shred of compunction. Instead she felt… free.

Jonas removed the last pin, brushed aside her loosened hair and kissed her neck. That same sensitive spot he’d found last night when he’d been inside her. A thrill rippled through her, spiced with memory and anticipation.

She curled a hand around one powerful arm. “I thought… I thought you might humiliate me with diamonds,” she said unsteadily as he nipped his way to the curve of shoulder uncovered by the scandalously low-cut gown.

She felt him smile against her. “Diamonds a humiliation,
amore mio
? Clearly I know the wrong women.”

“Clearly,” she said sourly, not wanting to think about his other lovers. Before or after her. Other lovers would feel him shaking with desire in their arms. Other lovers would hear that deep growl when he found release. Other lovers would lie in blessed satisfaction after he’d shown them paradise.

He raised his head and stared at her with a warmth that radiated to her toes. His arms loosely circled her waist. “Jealous,
tesoro
?”

“Madly,” she said sarcastically, hating those faceless women. She wanted to scratch out their eyes and pull their hair and warn them to stay away from what was hers. It would be amusing if it wasn’t tragic. Beyond the next few days Jonas wasn’t hers, no matter what fancies addled her mind.

His expression alerted her to a private joke. “What is it?” She paused and her grip on his sleeve tightened. “Oh, no. You didn’t. They
are
diamonds, aren’t they?”

“Only small ones,
tesoro
,” he said apologetically. His eyes glittered with what she tried not to interpret as delight.

“I suppose that’s all right, then.”

“Will you thank me with a kiss?”

“Should I? After all, they’re only
small
diamonds.” She couldn’t resist running her hand down his unscarred
cheek. Beneath her palm, his skin was firm and smooth. He must have shaved before dinner. She drew him down to her. Above her in the mirror, the man sank toward the sitting woman. Under the white lawn shirt, his back moved subtly as he kissed her.

“You’re not getting into the spirit,” he complained against her lips.

She shifted. “It’s the mirror.”

“I’ll make it right.” He leaned down to open the nightstand and drew something out, then kissed her tenderly.

Too quickly the kiss ended. She grumbled incoherently and followed him, holding his shoulder and pressing her mouth to his. His tongue flickered out to meet hers. Triumph flooded her. But he withdrew after a mortifyingly brief taste. “Shut your eyes.”

“Merrick…” She reached a point where his teasing grated rather than amused. He watched with the half-smile that had her heart performing acrobatics.

“Shut your eyes. Please, Sidonie.”

The ‘please’ was meant to disarm. Confound him, it disarmed. She bent forward from the headboard and shut her eyes. It was a relief not seeing a hundred Sidonies.

“And my name is Jonas,” he said softly. “Surely after last night, you can bring yourself to use my Christian name.”

She knew she was ridiculous. Calling him Merrick helped maintain the illusion that she wasn’t tumbling headlong into enchantment.

Merrick teased and taunted, and schemed to dishonor Roberta. Merrick was sarcastic and powerful. Merrick, no matter how appealing, she could resist.

Jonas…

Jonas was someone else entirely. Jonas hid a breathtaking generosity of spirit from all the world except her. Jonas had struggled to the point of pain last night to save her hurt. Jonas was so lonely and damaged, she’d sell her soul to heal him. Jonas called to her heart as nobody had before.

Jonas threatened her in ways that became clearer with each minute. And in ways that would leave her ruined indeed, well beyond the physical, when she returned to Barstowe Hall.

“Jonas.” She wanted to sound short and snappy. Instead his name emerged as a sigh of concession.

“That’s better.”

She didn’t need to open her eyes to confirm that his expression reeked satisfaction. “Can I look now?”

“Not yet.”

Her hands clenched in the sheets. Denying sight sharpened her remaining senses but she couldn’t help feeling defenseless. She smelled lemon soap overlying his individual scent. The bed was soft beneath her. Her hair lay heavy around her shoulders, sliding against her skin as she moved.

The mattress shifted as Jonas stood. She heard his boots brushing across the carpet. Every hair on her body lifted as he stopped beside her. He didn’t touch her but she was so aware of him, he might as well. On a whisper of material, something smooth and cool covered her eyes.

“What are you doing?” she asked sharply, starting as his hands moved deftly behind her head. She opened her eyes to darkness. She lifted one hand to rip off the blindfold.

Jonas caught her. “No mirrors.”

“They’re still there.” She gave a halfhearted tug. Uncertainty lent her tone a raw edge. “I don’t like these games.”

“Ten minutes,
tesoro
. That’s all I ask. After that, if you don’t like it, we’ll play something else.”

She exhaled with annoyance. “You think just because you ask nicely, you’ll get your way.”

“Manners maketh the man,
amore mio
.”

“Do you always blindfold your lovers?”

“Often.” She could tell he meant
always
. She shivered, not sure whether she was appalled or curious. She suddenly remembered how he’d snuffed the candles last night before tumbling her.

“You’re a manipulative devil, Merrick.” Her tone was edged.

“Jonas.”

She sighed. “Merrick for the next ten minutes.”

Her answer was grudging permission to continue. He released her and she heard him shift again. Dear God, she was painfully conscious of him when she could see him. Plotting his movements through sound alone threatened sanity. Thought dissolved when he dropped a kiss on her lips. Her hands curled in her skirts as she fought the urge to grab him by the ears and make him kiss her properly.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

“Ten minutes.” She had a sinking feeling each minute would last an hour.

“I’m counting,
tesoro
.”

Trying to track him, she turned her head. She jerked when he caught her hand and kissed the pulse at her wrist. Without benefit of sight, her skin felt unnaturally sensitive.

She bit her lip then jumped when he pressed a finger into the cushiony flesh. His touch felt like a kiss. She felt the air shift then his mouth covered hers. He sucked her poor gnawed lip into his mouth. Her heart set out on a frenetic gallop. Before she could deepen the kiss, he withdrew. Frustration coiled in her belly. Clumsily she reached to catch him but he avoided her.

Confounded blindfold.

She supposed she could take it off. She wasn’t a prisoner. Something made her leave it in place. But, oh, how it smarted, waiting for those glancing caresses from every direction.

“You’re playing with me.” She hated how breathless she sounded. She fumbled after him and caught his arm to keep him still.

“Oh, yes.”

This time she had warning. His breath was warm on her neck, raising a legion of goose bumps. His mouth traced a tendon until she trembled.

“Have we had ten minutes?” she asked in a ragged tone.

“Not yet,” he said casually, nibbling a hot line along her jaw. “You’re the most delicious dish in creation,
dolcissima
.”

He kissed the corners of her lips and she whimpered. He smiled against her cheek. For all that she missed her vision, there was something breathtakingly seductive about feeling his expressions rather than seeing them. What he did to her felt forbidden, like a wicked sensual adventure.

Her fingers dug into the muscles of his arm. “At this rate, I’ll be ninety before you do anything about it.”

He shook off her hold. “Patience.”

She felt the mattress dip as he kneeled behind her. It shouldn’t make any difference where he was. She couldn’t see him anyway. But having him at her back put her on edge.

All capacity for speech fled when he tugged on her gown. As the dress sagged open, she felt the drift of air on her bare back. The sharp nip of his teeth on her earlobe set off another cannonade of response. A pulse began to pound, heavy and hard, between her legs. She gulped in a mouthful of air. She kept forgetting to breathe.

“You make me wanton.” Resentment pricked under growing arousal.

“A wonderful wanton.” Silk glided over her skin when he lowered the gown from her shoulders.

“That’s a devilish provocative corset,” he said after a pause that made her skin tingle.

Her cheeks heated. She wore the most revealing of her new underclothes. A shift so fine, it was almost nothing. A corset lifting her breasts high for a man’s hands. For Jonas’s hands, she’d thought with a surreptitious thrill when Mrs. Bevan had laced her. Roses and lilies snaked across the corset, stirring brazen thoughts of limbs twined in lovemaking.

“It’s sinful,” she whispered, fighting the urge to cover her bosom with her hands.

“Exactly,
bella
.” She heard his amusement. The blindfold made her hearing so acute, she was alert to every shade of emotion in his voice. That beautiful baritone wrapped around her like a thick blanket on a wintry night.

Suddenly she needed her eyes. To check whether he was predatory or triumphant. Or perhaps worse, whether
he regarded her like the one perfect rose in his garden. When she fought so hard to resist his power over emotions as well as senses, that was the most terrifying option of all. She rose onto her knees. Her hands shook as she lifted them to the blindfold.

“No, Sidonie.” He caught her hands.

“Take the blindfold off, Merrick,” she demanded.

That low laugh stroked her nerve endings like thick velvet. Good God, his voice had her panting. How helpless would she be when he touched her in earnest?

“Not yet.” He brought her hands higher and glanced a kiss across each set of knuckles. A caress fleeting as a puff of summer wind. Her belly tightened with arousal. She inhaled, striving for clarity. If she insisted, he’d remove the blindfold. But he’d asked her to trust him. Even while she hated how the request twisted her into knots, she couldn’t deny him.