The Pleasure Garden: Sacred Vows\Perfumed Pleasures\Rites of Passions (21 page)

With a soft click, he locked the bedroom door and slid the key out of the lock before dropping it into his trouser pocket.

She should have demanded the reason for his presence, should have screamed for help, but she could not, not when he was prowling toward her wearing nothing but an unbuttoned linen shirt and black trousers. Her lips trembled on a soundless word as her gaze slipped along the length of his chiseled chest and flat stomach. Good Lord, had he always looked like this, like a marble statue come to life?

True, he had always been physically fit and wonderfully muscled, but to this extent? Almost helplessly she dropped her gaze to the dark line of hair that disappeared into the waistband of his trousers.

She stood before the mirror, eyes wide, fingers clutching the fabric of her nightgown so hard that her knuckles
shone white as he neared her. Finally he stopped behind her, towering above her as he met her eyes in the mirror.

Her knees suddenly betrayed her, and she had to fight to show no outward signs of her body’s response to his.

“Am I that frightening that you would swoon?”

“Of course not!” She stared at him in the mirror, saw how his left cheek, chin and chest had been burned. His lips had not been. But his eye… She wondered what was hidden there beneath the patch. “I am no wilting flower,” she admonished.

“Obviously,” he said, showing his teeth. “You’re willing to marry and bed my lecherous cousin. You must be made of stern stuff.”

She flushed, angered. It was no less than she deserved, but it hurt all the same. “Why have you come?”

Fire flickered in the depth his eye. “Because you forced my hand. You refused to come out into the gardens after our meeting in the hall. You left me no choice but to follow you here, to your chamber.”

“What do you want from me?”

He smiled and she saw that he was no longer looking at her, but at her profile, then the exposed mounds her breasts. “I think we both know what I want.”

She trembled. She would not give in to this man, no matter how appealing he might look standing behind her. She just couldn’t. It was too dangerous. Edward could walk in at any time. He would not let a locked door stand between them.

“These, I’m afraid,” Joscelyn said, reaching into his trouser pocket, “aren’t what I want.”

She watched as he placed the diamond-and-sapphire earbobs and the ring she had given him on her dressing table.

“Are they not worth enough?” she sniffed indignantly. “Perhaps you wish for our transaction to be in hard currency, is that it?”

The flame in his eye flickered higher. “Baubles and diamonds are not what I’m seeking. I told you, I have money—I’ve been saving for years by living like a damned monk—all so that I might one day be able to have you.”

She did feel like swooning. The notion of what he had done made her want to fling herself into her arms.

“It was always money between us, wasn’t it, Cathy. You never cared that I was born a bastard—that never mattered. I know the money doesn’t matter to you, but your family—your parents are all you have. Money for their sakes, not your own comforts.”

“You don’t understand the depth of debt.”

“I can still keep you in style, even after paying off your father’s most pressing concerns, if that is what you fear.”

No, that wasn’t what she wanted! Material things meant nothing to her. She wanted to be loved and held.

His fingertips trailed along her collarbone, then over her shoulder. The warmth of his touch burned her through the thin nightgown. “You know what I want, Cathy,” he murmured as fingers deftly trailed along the outer curve of her breast. “It’s not money I’m after, but something far more precious.”

Reaching for her left hand, he lifted it, then slipped the ruby ring Edward had given her as an engagement ring from her finger. With a careless air, he tossed the ring to the carpet, once more finding her eyes in the looking glass.

“You know what they say about marrying in haste,” he murmured. “You repent in leisure.”

Her eyes flashed angrily at his insinuation. “We mustn’t
do this,” she gasped. “We must act as though we are little acquainted, for both our sakes.”

“Little acquainted?” He chuckled. “I hardly think so,
m’lady.
I’m intimately acquainted with you, or have you forgotten? My cock hasn’t forgotten. Even now it’s stirring. It’s recalling just how familiar we really are.”

Her stomach flip-flopped at the reminder. How could she forget him, the feel of him moving inside her? The memory of it was both pleasure and pain.

“Tell me. Have you told my cousin about us?”

Catherine lowered her eyelids so she could watch his lips caress the side of her neck without him knowing.

“Does he know you come to him soiled? Does he know I’ve had your virgin’s blood covering me?”

“What purpose would it serve?”

Irritation flickered in his eyes. “Would he still want you, do you think, knowing you’ve slept with his bastard cousin?”

She met his gaze in the mirror, holding hers steady. “Are you going to tell him?”

He smiled, lowered his face to her neck again and inhaled the scent of her throat. He did not reply to her question, and soon Catherine was struggling to think and not give in to Joscelyn’s skilled lips.

Suddenly he released her and walked around to face her. Brushing her hands away from her nightgown, he forced her sweating palms to her sides.

“What is it you want from me?” she begged, unable to stand the pleasure of his touch. “Just tell me—
please.
And be done with this.”

She had asked him that in a quiet, almost wary little voice. It was so easy an answer. Her body. Her love. The
heart that was beating so hard in her chest, and the soul that no one ever considered inside the beautiful wrapping that was Catherine.

Joscelyn did not say those words. Instead, he sank to his knees, skimming his lips between her breasts, down the middle of her ribs to the gentle rise of her belly as he did so. Instinctively, her abdomen contracted when his hot breath grazed her sensitive skin beneath the sheer silk gown. His hands captured her hips, stilling her as he flicked his tongue across her navel. When he heard her suck in her breath, he stood and reached for the lace neckline of her gown.

His mouth went dry as he saw the shadows outlining the rounded flesh of her breasts. He wanted to rip the gown from her body, but that would be rash and gauche. This time it was going to be different. This time he knew how to control his urges. This time he would pleasure her like a true, skilled lover—and she would come back to him.

He saw her pink nipples begin to harden through the translucent material. He was standing behind her again, one hand holding the fabric, the other skating up her midriff to rest below her breasts.

Gooseflesh flared to life all over her body and he smiled knowingly as he watched her reaction in the mirror. “Edward’s blood might be blue, Catherine, but blue is cold. My blood is red. Hot and lusty. Which man will give you the type of passion you’ve always craved? The blue blood or me?”

She would not answer him, would not give him the response he needed so desperately to hear. But her body was speaking for her. The words she could not voice, but he heard them anyway, in the shaking breath that escaped her lips, felt them in the way her body trembled.

“What will you tell your husband when he discovers he is not the first? Will you tell him your innocence was taken brutally from you? Or will you admit the truth and tell him how you kissed me, how you let me fondle your breasts, how I coaxed the honey from between your thighs with my mouth? Will you tremble and beg for him, as you did for me?”

Joscelyn brought his finger to his lips and wet the tip, then dragged it across the bud beneath the fabric. The silk was rendered transparent, the fabric molding to the nipple and areole. She gasped as he slid his wet finger over the damp silk, making her nipple curl and tighten as he repeated the action. She gasped again as he lowered the bodice, exposing her breasts for the briefest of seconds before she shielded them with her hands.

Reaching beneath her arms, he cupped the undersides of her breasts, feeling the softness, testing the heavy weight of them. She swallowed hard and closed her eyes, refusing to watch his dark hands as he pried her fingers from her breasts and covered her fully with his.

“Can you not bear it?” he asked, his voice a mixture of need and anger as his thumbs traced circles around her pebbled nipples. “Can you not stand to see my coarse hands covering you? Does it shame you, to have me, a monster, touching you?”

She refused to answer, keeping her eyes tightly shut.

Flicking his tongue up the length of her neck in time to his stroking thumbs, he whispered, “Does seeing my hands on you disgrace you, Catherine, or do you feel mortification because you like it, because you know you should be ashamed to desire the attentions of a bastard commoner who has been burned, beaten, left blind in one eye?”

“You are intentionally being hurtful,” she said in a painful whimper.

“Am I? No, only truthful. You’re a lady of breeding, and I’m just a mongrel.”

“You’re brooding for no reason. I’ve told you the scars mean nothing to me.”

“No reason? I’m sulking, Cathy. Do indulge me. It’s not easy for a man to spend three years away at war, surrounded by death and despair, his only hope and light the thoughts of a woman he loves. I came home broken, but I have faced my demons—I’ve shown myself to you. And now you’re being a coward.”

“A coward?” she gasped.

“Yes, you’re either afraid to acknowledge what you feel because you’re a coward, or because of me. My scars.”

“You’re deliberating goading me?”

“Am I? I know you so well, Catherine. How you feel. You’re warring with yourself, trying to not yearn, because you know a woman of breeding should not have yearnings for a man who is beneath her. A woman such as you should not be wet and wishing a man such as me would finger her and bring her to ecstasy. Because that is what you want, don’t you? My fingers stroking you until you come. “

A small inarticulate sound—from excitement, or from shock?—escaped her parted lips. The rush of her hot breath caressed his flesh. He took satisfaction in the way her hands were clutching the gown, which had fallen to her hips. “It’s not you—not how you…look, but how you make me feel. I can’t allow myself the pleasure because you will ruin me. How could I ever be with Edward after you? Yes, you’re right, I am a coward. Please s-stop, Joscelyn,” she stammered, and shivered as he breathed against her. “Stop,
please.
”

“How beautifully you tremble for me.” And just to prove it, he took both nipples and rolled them between his thumbs and forefingers, making them stiffen into peaks he wanted desperately to slip between his lips. She shook her head, denying the obvious truth, and he pressed his body closer to hers, brushing his hard cock against the supple flesh of her bottom.

“I could take you like you this, you know. I could make you so needy that you would grant me anything.”

“No.” The protest came out as a sigh, but he was certain she meant it to be a scathing denial.

He admired her tenacity, but she would not win tonight. He was much too intent on his goal. And his goal was to see everything he had missed out on before. He was here in the light. There were no more secrets between them. He wanted her body—to see it, to touch it, to watch them together.

Skimming his roughened fingertips down the satiny flesh of her abdomen, he rested his index finger at the point where the nightgown dipped teasingly below the small mound of her belly. He captured her gaze and smiled most wickedly. “Now which part will you choose to shield, hmm?”

She was breathing more quickly, and the pulse in her throat throbbed faster. He sensed her desire, the struggle within her to fight what she was feeling. Slowly he pulled the silk from her body, the swishing sound as it slid across her hips erotic in the charged silence. He was about to reveal the thatch of blond curls when she simultaneously lowered one hand to cover her mound, and made to cover her delightful breasts with her other arm and hand. He intervened then, capturing her wrist and holding her still. She made a small sound in her throat when he pulled her
hand away from her breasts and brought it up over her head, to rest against his neck.

How damn gorgeous she looked like this, arched, pressed against him.

“We can’t…that is…” She swallowed hard. “I don’t want this.”

“You don’t?” Reaching for her other hand, he placed it on his neck, watching in the mirror as her body bowed back. “Let us see how much you don’t want this, Cathy.”

Her eyes widened when he reached down and hooked her leg over his, exposing the slickness that lay between her thighs. “You’re aroused, luv. Admit it. I can see your desire glistening between these plump folds.”

She cried out, clung to his hair with her fingers as he parted the swollen lips, exposing pink flesh that gleamed like silk. Her breath left her lungs in a whoosh when he raked one long finger from the bottom of her sex to the crest of curls at the top, then tapped her erect clitoris with the tip of his finger.

“Now that is what I came to see. You completely naked and welcoming me.”

He slid his finger deep inside her and watched his tanned flesh disappear into her body. His cock swelled further and he pressed it against her, wishing she would reach around and free him from his trousers. He’d give anything to feel those soft, supple hands on his rigid shaft.

“Joscelyn, please,” she cried as she began to ride his hand. “We can’t do this. Edward…” She swallowed, gasped and began to cry. “My parents. He’ll destroy them if sees me with you.”

Joscelyn stopped, released her leg and held her, letting her trembling body mold against his. Looking into her eyes, he swept his fingers down her cheek. “Believe in me,
Catherine. This can work. Trust me to take care of you, and your parents.”

She hugged him tightly, shaking her head in denial. “No, it can’t, Edward…he’s the monster.”

“Believe me, Catherine, things are not as desperate as they seem. If you could only see past your fear, you would realize that I can help you. But you’ve got this notion in your head that you, solely, must bear this burden of protecting your parents. That isn’t the case.”