The Rake (17 page)

Chapter Twelve

As angry and hurt as she was, Demi welcomed
his punishing kiss with fierce gladness. She wanted to drive him
over the edge into madness, wanted to push him until he hurt her so
that she could hate him. Instead, desire rushed through her the
moment she felt his hard mouth, felt the ravishment of his tongue
as it skated over hers possessively, tangled with her own, began a
wild, primal mating dance as he sought to dominate her. For many
moments, she could not think at all, couldn’t catch her breath with
the influx of heat and desire, like heady wine, racing through her
blood. Driven by both need and anger, she clenched her hands,
digging her nails into his chest, kneading his flesh like a
contented cat. He shifted away from the pain, kissing her more
savagely still. The moment he did, she slipped one hand downward
and cupped his sex.

He stiffened, but as she rubbed the palm of
her hand over the distended ridge, imitating the movements of their
lovemaking the night before, he placed one hand over hers, pressing
her palm hard against his length. A shudder went through him, a
quaking, as one who holds himself so tensely they strain near the
breaking point. His breathing grew ragged, labored. Abruptly, he
tore his mouth from hers, struggled with the tie at the neck of the
gown briefly, then caught the neck of her dress with both hands and
snapped the tie, baring her almost to the waist as the torn lacing
slipped from its grommets. Her unfettered breasts fell free with a
gentle bounce, her nipples growing tight instantly, pouting with
need.

He caught a breast in each hand, leaning
down and suckling first one and then the other, kneading them. Demi
sucked in her breath at the first contact of his heated mouth,
feeling a wave of dizziness wash over her. Tangling her fingers in
his dark hair, she cupped his head, urging him to lavish the
teasing torment of his mouth and tongue on her nipples, scarcely
aware of the whimper of protest that edged its way up her throat
when he abandoned one for the other.

Catching her waist, he lifted her, swinging
her around and laying her back on the edge of the bed. She dug her
fingers into the bedding, gripping it tightly as her head swum. He
followed her down, leaning over her, an arm braced on the bed on
either side of her as he kissed her mouth briefly, then moved along
her throat to capture one trembling peak of her breast in his mouth
once more. If possible, the sensations were even more intense. She
found that she was gasping so hard it was more like hoarse cries
than gasps scoring her throat.

After a few moments, she realized she lay
half on and half off the bed. Gripping the sheets, she pulled
herself backwards until she felt the mattress beneath her hips as
he moved his mouth from her breasts to her neck once more. He
caught her hips, trapping her on the edge of the bed, and she
opened her eyes to look up at him in confusion. Grasping her
skirts, he dragged them up, bunching them about her waist.

He lifted his head then, catching her gaze
as he slipped a hand beneath the waist of her pantalets and very
deliberately snapped the tie. She gasped, torn between a fervor
that matched the taut desire in his face, and dismay at the anger
that she saw still seethed beneath the surface. Her uneasiness
increased as he pulled the pantalets from her and tossed them
aside, then reached for the opening of his breeches, unsheathing
his erect member.

Catching her legs with his hands, he hooked
her heels on the edge of the bed and leaned over her. She felt the
rounded head of his member nudging along her sensitive cleft and
tensed with expectation, feeling a renewed burst of hunger for him
that chased her doubts into abeyance. She wanted him. She didn’t
care at this moment about anything beyond feeling him deeply inside
of her, a part of herself and yet excitingly unfamiliar, as well,
his hardness engulfed by her yielding flesh, the heat and strength
of his body possessing even as it caressed, taking from her even as
it gave.

She reached for him as she felt her flesh
yield to his pressure, felt him sliding slowly into her damp
passage, but she found that the position prevented her from
touching him. It was enthralling and at the same time disconcerting
to feel him joining his body with hers and yet so distant that only
those two points converged. Panting, dizzy with the pounding of her
heart and the rush of blood through her, she gripped the covers as
he leaned forward, slowly moving deeper and deeper inside of her,
stretching her resistant muscles, until he’d claimed her depths. He
withdrew almost as slowly, until no more than the rounded head of
his member remained imbedded inside her, then thrust again, more
smoothly and easily as her body adjusted to him.

She squeezed her eyes closed, allowing her
mind to focus on the stroke of his hard member along her passage as
he began to thrust and retreat more quickly. A glorious tension
began to build inside of her, vibrating along her nerve endings
delightfully. Mindlessly, she reached for him again, the need to
feel the closeness of his body almost as intense as her urge to
struggle toward release. She touched his fingers where they gripped
her legs, touched his hands, but he was too caught up in his own
battle toward release to respond to her silent plea.

As if her touch had driven his own hunger
beyond his control, he began thrusting harder and harder, pounding
into her so hard she began to slip away from him, felt her body
driven slowly, inch by inch, along the mattress. She dug her heels
in, gripping the bed covering tightly in her fists as he released
her legs and caught her around the waist.

Abruptly, he leaned over her. Slipping an
arm beneath her, he moved her further into the bed, following her.
Bracing his arms on either side of her, he pushed inside of her
once more. She gasped as she felt her body rise swiftly and hover
on the brink of fulfillment as he thrust into her again,
immediately setting the hard, pounding rhythm of before. She
hovered so long on the edge, fearful that she would fall over, and
fearful that she would not, that when the pleasure suddenly thrust
her over the brink into an explosion of blinding pleasure, she
cried out, half in surprise, and half in shock at the intensity of
it.

As if he had been holding himself back,
awaiting that moment, he uttered a guttural growl and stiffened,
slamming into her in several shuddering thrusts and finally pushing
deep and holding himself perfectly still as he gasped to catch his
breath.

Coolness washed over Demi as her body
floated back to earth. She shivered, realizing suddenly that he had
held himself away from her even after he’d pushed her up onto the
bed, that he still held himself away from her.

The sense of euphoria began to thin like
mist before the wind, a cold wind that brought disenchantment and
reality crashing in on her.

Weak in the aftermath of his own release, he
withdrew from her and dropped onto the bed beside her. Almost
simultaneously, the door opened. Both of them stiffened, whirling
toward the sound instinctively. Fortunately, Garrett was far
quicker to realize the threat than she was. He blocked her view of
the door, thereby blocking the view of the person who’d entered the
room.

“
My lord! I beg your
pardon. I heard a noise and thought you might need
assistance.”

“
Out!” Garrett roared
furiously.

The servant backed out, slamming the door
behind him. Frozen in shocked horror, Demi listened as his
footsteps disappeared in the direction of her aunt’s room.

“
We are in the soup now,
and make no mistake,” Garrett muttered. “Or I am, at
least.”

Demi glanced at him sharply in
confusion.

His look was sardonic. “I could not have
compromised you more if I had planned it that way. Or, perhaps
someone did?”

Despite the lingering aftereffects of their
lovemaking, and the fear of being caught, Demi had no trouble
instantly connecting his meaning. Her lips tightened. Without a
word, she sat up and began to hastily adjust her clothing. He’d
broken the tie at the bodice. It was too short now to put it to
rights. She contented herself with lacing it to the tops of her
breasts and tying a short bow. The pantalets, she discovered when
she climbed off the bed and stepped into them, were in pretty much
the same condition. Bunching the cloth, she tied the open edges
together in the place of the broken lacing.

After studying her a long moment, Garrett
had gotten off the bed and moved to the door, belatedly shoving the
bolt home. She glanced at him.

He shrugged. “It will give us a few moments
… maybe.”

For what, she wondered? Dread? Regrets?

There was no way out of the room beyond the
door Garrett had just bolted. She could unlock it and race to her
room, but that wasn’t likely to help at all. Even now, she could
hear the servant tapping at her aunt’s door to report--he might not
know it had been her, but he certainly knew someone from the house
was in Garrett’s bed. One way or another, they would soon know
who.

Turning, she paced to the window and pulled
the drapes aside. It was dark beneath the window, but she didn’t
need the light to know there was no way she could safely reach the
ground. If she could, she had a chance at least. Assuming her aunt
didn’t race to her room immediately and check on her, she could
climb the ladder the yardman had left, but she rather thought it
more likely that her aunt would go directly to her room than come
to Garrett’s. She would not want to confront him on such a thing
without having some sort of proof of who was with him.

“
Thinking of
jumping?”

Demi sent him a look but decided to ignore
than comment as she had his earlier suggestion that she’d planned
this to force his hand. She supposed she had no one to blame but
herself. If she hadn’t been so hurt and angry as to make those
remarks before about Flemming, he might not have been so quick to
assume the worst of her, to believe that she was just devious and
manipulative enough to have decided to seduce him so that he’d be
forced to do the gentlemanly thing and marry her. It still rankled.
Unreasonable as she knew it was, she resented that he’d been so
easily convinced that she was inherently evil.

Of course, if his judgment had not already
been impaired by the fact that he was pretty well into his cups,
she probably wouldn’t have seduced him so easily either.

She was still angry, upset that he was only
human after all, that he wasn’t as astute, or as perfect, as she’d
believed, and irritated with herself for trying to find excuses for
him, even now, when he was being a complete horse’s ass.

“
You are not, surely, that
loathe to have me instead of Flemming?”

He was seated on the bed, propped up by a
mound of pillows, his legs crossed before him. She sent him a
narrow-eyed glare and succumbed to the urge to lower herself to his
level. “Truthfully, at the moment I don’t see a ha’penny’s worth of
difference between the two of you,” she snapped angrily and marched
from the window to the door, putting her ear to it. There was a
great deal of activity down the hall now and above, too, in the
servants’ quarters in the attic.

Her aunt had sent the serving man to check
the maids.

She was tempted to ease the door open to see
if the hall had cleared and there might be a chance of dashing,
unnoticed, to her room. Unnerved by the notion, she hesitated,
gnawing her lower lip while she considered if the timing was the
best she could hope for. A sound from the other side of the room
captured her attention, and she glanced toward Garrett. She saw
that he was looking at the window.

Her heart skipped a beat, but a surge of
hope rushed through her. Sarah would almost certainly have put
together the commotion. Leaving the door, she moved to the window
again, this time pushing it up and leaning out. In the shadows
below, she could see movement. “Who’s there?” she whispered as
loudly as she dared.

“
Shhh! Fitzhugh’s movin’
the ladder.”

In a few moments, Sarah’s worried face
appeared through the shadows. “I hadn’t figured to need this
bleedin’ thing, but I’m that glad I told Jamie to leave it.” She
climbed over the window sill and into the room. “Down with ye now,
Miss, while there’s still time.”

Demi stared at Sarah. “What are you going to
do?”

“
Lady Dragon’s expectin’ to
find a female in here. I wouldn’t want ta disappoint
her.”

Demi grabbed Sarah’s arm. “Don’t! She’ll
dismiss you without a reference. I know you mean well, but I can’t
let you take the blame for me.”

Sarah shook her head. “Go on, now. I’ll be
fine. Don’t ye be worryin’ about me. Mr. Fitzhugh has promised to
find a place for me, an’ I know he’s a man of his word. Not that I
wouldn’t have done it anyway, mind you. I’m careful with my money
and I’ve a bit tucked away for emergencies.”

Still, Demi hesitated. “I’ll miss you,
Sarah. Maybe … maybe I could convince Mr. Flemming to hire you on,”
she said doubtfully.

Sarah patted her cheek. “We’ll worry about
that later, if ye don’t mind. I climbed into yer room and
barricaded the door, but it won’t take them long to break it down
if they’re a mind to. Go before we both get tossed out on our ear.
Ye can’t do me any good if ye’ve no place ta lay yer own head.”

Nodding, Demi threw a last look at Garrett.
He was sitting on the edge of the bed now, she saw, frowning at her
and Sarah. Without a word, she turned her attention to her task,
climbed carefully through the window, and made her way down the
ladder shakily. When she’d stepped off, Fitzhugh caught the ladder
and moved it down to her window.