Tempt the Devil (19 page)

She licked dry lips and straightened her shoulders. “That's nothing.”

“Not true, Olivia. You've already given me so much.”

The tender smile returned. Oh, dear God, how she wished he wouldn't look at her like that. Every time he did, he pierced her heart with a flaming spear. He pushed her to her limits, forced her to acknowledge her failings, threatened the shell of indifference that held her safe.

He was an unmitigated disaster.

And she wouldn't have missed knowing him at any price. If at this moment he fell on his knees and offered her the world in exchange for his departure, she'd deny him.

Utterly terrifying
.

She started to shake and her heart raced like a wild horse set free. “What have I given you?” she asked belligerently.

“Don't you know you've given me back my soul?”

His stark words cut through her prickly anger like a knife through butter.

With difficulty, she forced astringent words out. “Perhaps you'll think me worth the money, then.”

He didn't react with anger. She should have known he
wouldn't. Instead he looked unutterably sad. Which left her feeling more crushed than anger ever could.

“Olivia, don't.”

Just two soft words and the coiling, raging beasts of shame and truculence and defiant loneliness lay down as peacefully as a child tired after a long day in the sun.

“I want to give you back your soul too.” He spoke so softly that she leaned forward to hear. Drifts of his musky scent made her dizzy with longing.

Longing?
She never longed for a man. Even if she did, what use would she be to him? With her body dead to touch and her heart dead to feeling.

Although astoundingly, her heart now was too constricted with painful emotion for that to ring even partially true.

“You're talking about sexual pleasure,” she said dully.

What was the point of all this? He must know it would get them nowhere, whoever tied whom down. Last night was the closest she'd ever come to wanting a man. What a miserable failure that had been.

“It was an unforgivable crime that your capacity for pleasure was stolen from you.”

“I've survived.”

“Survived but not lived.”

She blinked away hot moisture. Just as she could no longer lie about wishing she was the woman he wanted her to be, she could no longer pretend he didn't move her to tears. And what he said was so true and so tragic.

“It's too late.”

He shook his head. “No.”

She felt he looked at her more deeply than anyone ever had. She dreaded to imagine what he saw.

“Do you trust me?” he asked.

She glanced at him uncertainly. “I don't trust anyone.”

“I know.” He paused. “Could you trust me tonight? I'm not asking for forever.”

“People like us don't do forever,” she said sadly.

“Yes, we do.” His voice was deep and sure. “At least give me the privilege of your honesty.”

She summoned the tattered remnants of resistance. How she wished she could diminish him, make him like every other pathetic man she'd ever had in her bed. “I'm a whore. Honesty is a luxury.”

“Do you feel like a whore when you're with me?”

How could she answer that? “What do you want, Erith?” she asked desperately, as she'd asked before.

“I want what you want.”

“That's nonsensical.”

“Unprecedented, perhaps.”

“No man has ever said that to me.”

“I know.” His eyes filled with such compassion that she almost reached out to touch him. But she stopped herself.

If she yielded the last of her defenses and he betrayed her—and as a man, betrayal was his essential nature—it would break her.

She ignored the tiny whisper that any barriers against him had fallen long, long ago.

Without looking, he stretched down to pick up the cords and extend them toward her. “Tie me up. Then do whatever you want.”

Astonishment kept her silent. And automatic, vehement rejection of what he asked.

Something essential in her resisted the idea of placing him so overtly in her power. An alarming admission when power over men was what she'd lived for since she was fourteen.

Old cynicism surged up, defiance from the Olivia she'd created over so many turbulent, unhappy years. “Can't I trust you unless I bind you?”

“Of course you can.” Again that smile. Heavens, she wished he'd stop. “But if you tie me up, you'll
know
I'm in your power.”

She didn't bother to rein in her sarcasm. “And I'll give you pleasure. Goodness, what a sacrifice.”

“Do whatever you please.”

“Beat you?” Although she never would.

“If you like.”

“Ignore you?”

“Yes.”

“Leave you?”

A muscle flickered in his lean cheek, and she realized that in spite of his outward calmness, he was far from indifferent to her decision. “If you must.”

“Why are you doing this?”

He shrugged again. His voice was impossibly grave. “We have to break the impasse between us. Or we'll end up destroying one another.”

“The easiest solution is to part.”

“Do you want easy?”

She didn't dare answer that. “So I tie you up and do exactly what I want?”

“Yes.”

She put out her hand. To her astonishment, it was completely steady. “Give me the cords.”

H
oping to hell he knew what he was doing, hoping to hell he'd survive whatever came next, Erith passed the silk bindings to Olivia.

Once she realized what he intended, she'd become surprisingly calm. When she first came in, she was visibly uncertain, bewildered. Then she tried to draw the protective shell of the courtesan about her. Without succeeding, he was encouraged to note.

Surely that meant something.

Now what did she feel? Was she angry, reluctant, resigned, triumphant?
Repelled?

Devil take it, he had no idea. Not for the first time, he doubted the reckless strategy he'd devised after his troubled conversation with Roma. In theory, it offered a way out of an impossible dilemma. In practice, he felt like he put his head inside the mouth of a hungry tiger.

And Olivia hadn't even tied him up yet.

But it was far too late to back down.

Imperious as any queen, Olivia gestured in his direction. “Take off the robe.”

He'd sworn to do her bidding. And by God, that's what he'd do. No matter how hard it was for a man of his overweening pride to submit to a woman's command.

Without comment, he shucked the black silk garment and let it slip to his bare feet.

Nor did he speak as she contemplated his nakedness for what felt like an eon. Her eyes glided over his shoulders and chest and homed in on his cock. Which predictably rose to the unspoken challenge.

He'd have to be dead not to want her. But he didn't feel comfortable standing before her like this. She studied him like an object. Like a marble statue in a gallery.

Slowly, she circled him, considering him with the cool gaze of an art connoisseur. Her arms were folded in front of her as if she didn't find the work on offer worthy of particular appreciation.

Worst of all was when she passed behind him. She seemed to stare at his bare backside forever. Every muscle tensed along his legs, over his buttocks, and up his back. He had to steel himself to stand where he was and not fumble after the crumpled robe like a nervous virgin on her wedding night.

Damn it, he was an acknowledged rake, a virtuoso in the sensual arts. He'd stood naked before a host of women.

But never had he felt so bloody…
naked.

He abhorred feeling like this. Loathed it to the depths of his being.

And she knew it, the witch.

He braced himself to endure. If he could break through the shell of ice that enclosed her, he'd gladly subject himself to the worst torture she could devise. Somewhere in their liaison, he'd reached a point where releasing her from the prison of her frigidity was more important to him than his next breath.

He could do this for her.
He would do this for her.

What happened between them then was in the lap of a fate he'd learned to distrust.

How had he got to this point, where her wellbeing outstripped his pride and self-preservation? But he'd passed the stage where he could cavil at the obscure path he'd chosen. Now he was well and truly lost in the woods. He just hoped his instincts about this woman showed him the way home again.

The memory of how Olivia looked when she told him of her past strengthened him, and he set his shoulders. She'd borne her hardships with such courage. This silent subservience was all he could offer as recompense. He hoped to blazes it proved enough.

As if she touched him, he felt her burning eyes trace the line of his spine from his buttocks to his shoulders, which knotted with tension. He waited for the brush of her hand, but she merely shifted around to face him.

“Lie on the bed.” Her face was smooth and expressionless as alabaster. And just as cold.

The electric possibility of danger, even physical harm, hovered in the air. Her slanted tiger eyes promised retribution, punishment…
pleasure
.

Without protest, he prowled into the bedroom, crossed to the bed and stretched out. The room was so quiet he heard the faint swish of her skirts as she followed. On the way, she picked up his robe, which she tossed across a chair in the bedroom.

His heart raced with a strange mixture of emotions. Excitement, certainly. But trepidation as well. And a stirring of masculine resentment that he couldn't quite stifle.

Even if he had nobody but himself to blame for his predicament.

No woman ordered him around. Especially in the bedroom. He'd always been in charge. Damn it, he liked to be in charge.

This obedience to a woman's whim was new. Unsettling.

But something deep in his gut insisted that humbling his pride was the only way to grant her true freedom. If it cost him a moment of humiliation—he hoped to Hades she didn't plan more than that—then he could withstand it.

If she only once showed him genuine desire, he'd face the fires of hell and smile as the flames roasted him.

The reminder of what was at stake drained his cramping tension. Even so, when she grabbed his wrist and dragged it up toward one bedpost, he started.

Her firm, completely unseductive touch shot a wild jolt of incendiary heat through him. He grit his teeth and fought for control.

She was close enough for him to snatch into his arms. But if he did that, the brittle trust building between them would shatter forever.

“Relax. This won't hurt a bit,” she murmured as her clever fingers looped a dark blue cord around his wrist then tied it to the bedpost with an efficient knot.

“Easy for you to say.”

He sought reassurance in the fact that she felt safe enough to tease. Perhaps everything would be all right after all. A tendril of uncertain hope uncoiled in his desperate heart.

“Easy for me to do.” She looped his other wrist to the second bedpost with more of that impressive dispatch.

“You've done this before.”

“On my father's estate, we learned to tie stray animals up securely or we'd be out looking for them.”

Her father's estate? Her slip confirmed Erith's earlier guess about her wealthy background. He bit down on another wave of futile anger at what her brother had done.

Still, it was a struggle to keep the light note. “Do you liken me to an animal, Miss Raines?”

“Let's see.” Very deliberately, she ran her hand down his naked chest and over the vulnerable plane of his belly. Every muscle of his body clenched as he waited for her to touch him where he wanted her most.

She paused just short of his erection.

He ground his teeth, biting back a strangled plea, waiting in trembling yearning for her to move that final inch. Just one little inch.

Good God, he felt like he'd been hard for a century.

But her cool hand remained flat on his belly. Close. But not close enough.

His hips jerked upward.

The tiniest of smiles twitched her lips, and her feline eyes sparked as she withdrew her hand. Not for the first time, he imagined the velvety mole near her mouth was a witch's mark. She certainly cast a spell on him. She had from the first moment he'd seen her.

“You torment me, she-devil,” he gasped.

His heart pumped as though he'd just run up a steep mountain. He'd only started this cycle of torture and already he was in extremis.

How in Hades would he survive?

“Mmm,” she almost hummed.

“What do you plan to do with me?” His voice was hoarse with the effort of controlling his titanic hunger.

“I haven't decided yet,” she said musingly, moving down the bed and taking one of his ankles in a firm grip. Again the impact of her hand on his skin shuddered through him like a collision with a speeding coach.

“I think you have.”

Erith might have gone disastrously wrong with the women in his life. But he knew enough about the sex to recognize her expression. He'd seen exactly the same look on the stable cats at Selden when they had a mouse in their claws. His future unquestionably involved teasing, torment, and eventual destruction.

Even so, he didn't resist as she bound each foot to the posts at the end of the bed. He lay spread-eagled and vulnerable in front of her.

Before buying the silk cords, he'd tested them. For all their
satiny smoothness, they were terrifically strong. He wasn't sure he could break them if he had to.

That was the trust he placed in Olivia. Tied up, he truly was defenseless. He did this right or not at all.

As if she read his mind, she spoke. “Try those knots for me.”

He noticed since he'd given himself over to her domination, she'd stopped using words like “please” or even addressing him with his title.

“As you wish.” He tugged violently at the bindings on his arms. They didn't shift. He tried to kick his legs. Again no movement. Those animals on her mysterious childhood estate had been well and truly tethered.

“Nothing?”

She stood at the base of the bed, her scrutiny more clinical than loverlike as it ran across his body. Even so, every sinew tensed. He tried not to resent her coolness but it was difficult. Especially when he was a raging furnace of need.

“Nothing.”

“Good.” She trailed one finger up his instep and along his ankle and his shin to his knee. Where she paused…and paused…

Every drop of moisture in his mouth evaporated.

Higher, higher.

The demand was a fractured scream inside his head. He gritted his teeth until they ached. He'd promised her complete power over him. He'd sworn to accept anything she did.

Even when he'd made his plans, the prospect of achieving what he set himself seemed unlikely. Now that he was actually roped down like a bull for slaughter, he wondered if his goal was impossible.

Without lifting her hand from his leg, she drifted around the side of the bed. Her alluring smoky honey scent combined with his own musk to make him dizzy. Her gaze on his nakedness sent him into a cold sweat. Although that was
all that was cold about him. He'd had the fire built up before she returned so the room was warm. But hotter still was the blood pounding through his veins.

She performed a devilish little circle with her forefinger on his knee. His cock jerked as he imagined that finger sliding up to stroke him.

“Olivia,” he grated out, knowing his mind followed exactly the path she intended.

“Yes?” she asked in an indifferent tone. “Do you want me to untie you?”

Yes.

“No.”

“Good.”

As if to reward his answer, she made a foray up his thigh. Still just with one finger. His heart faltered as he waited for her to complete the caress.

Surely she knew where he wanted her. His mouth was parched and his jaw throbbed from clenching his teeth.

Olivia, please…

She lifted her hand away and stepped back from the bed. “If you need anything, call. I'm sure the servants will hear you.” She paused. “Eventually.”

“Where are you going?” He despised the begging note in his voice.

She was almost at the door to the hallway. She stopped and glanced over her shoulder with a derisive little smile. “Good-bye, Erith.”

Good-bye? What the Devil was going on?

“Hell, Olivia!” He struggled in earnest against his bonds, fighting with much more force than he'd used testing them. Still they held. “Olivia! What—”

She opened the door and slipped out of the room without another word.