The Seduction (27 page)

He spun Juliet inside and closed and locked the
door. The room plunged into instant darkness.

"Why here?" Her voice was sharp with
bravado. "Ι have no aversion to green."

He reached for her face with both hands and
cupped her cheeks while he kissed her on the forehead.

"Do you still not know what kind of men
these really are, Juliet? Denby's green bedroom is infamous in the clubs of London."

"Infamous?" she asked faintly.

"For its walls and ceilings, even the bed
canopy. The room is filled with mirrors, hidden doors, peepholes-"

"Why?"

"So that an audience may watch."

For a moment, her shattered breathing was her
only response.

"Oh," she said at last.

He groped forward in the pitch dark, still
leading her by the hand. His fingers brushed over hanging garments, a dresser,
a patch of plastered wall. The darkness muffled and obscured, leaving him only
sound, scent and touch. Every little rustle, every sigh, magnified. Every
scent, poignant, pungent, intoxicating. Every touch, a focused concentration of
sensation.

The room smelled of clove-pinned oranges, sharp
and sweet. Her skirts brushed against his legs, releasing the tang of lavender.
Beneath all of it ran the scent of Juliet: musky, winsome, bathed in wildflower
water, powdered with aromatic starch.

His senses fired.

He was aroused, alive, vibrant with desire. He
felt for the couch and sat, pulling her down beside him. Her breathing sounded
harsh and frightened. Her hooped skirts enveloped his legs. He held her hands
in both of his and waited. Her fingers shook with a fine tremor. Her nervous
breath brushed his cheek. For a moment, he thought perhaps she was crying.
Everything else fled his mind but that one thought: had he made Juliet weep?

Somewhere in the house, he heard a clock strike.
The single chime of the quarter hour. Fifteen minutes till midnight.

With one fingertip he traced her cheek and
brushed his thumb over the curve of bone below her long lashes. Her eyes were
dry, yet - somewhere in his heart - he still thought she wept.

Alden slipped one hand behind her head, feeling
the stiff powder in her hair. Her stays creaked as he pulled her into his arms
and laid her head to fit into the curve of his shoulder. For a few moments they
sat in silence, two human beings embraced by the dark. He felt alive with a
tenderness so strong that even his scorching ardor must wait in the face of
it. With the fingers of one hand he smoothed the hair back from her forehead,
until he heard her breathing grow quiet and steady.

"It's not too late, Juliet," he said.
"You have sufficiently humiliated Lord Edward. Ι can take care of
myself without this sacrifice."

She pulled away. He could imagine the proud tilt
to her chin, the way her hands smoothed her skirts to make that slight crackle.

The air beside him cooled as she stood up.

"It's no sacrifice," she said. "I
need
you to best Lord Edward, and that is more than just bravado. Honor forbids
that we lie about this."

He reached out one hand. It did not feel like
chance that he immediately caught her fingers. An invisible cord stretched between
them now. He could do nothing wrong.

"And what else, Juliet?" His arousal
filled his world, a sharp convergence of carnality. "What else?"

"There is nothing else."

"But there is still something else that
Ι hope is true, Juliet."

"What?" Her voice shadowed the dense,
quiet darkness.

Could she feel the quick pulse of his desire?
Sense the pleasure and anticipation building in his body? He gently separated
her fingers and caressed each one, from knuckle to tip, lingering over the
sensitive pads, letting his thumb stroke small circles in the center of her
palm.

"This truth: That you would like to discover
what a rake knows about women that an ordinary man can't imagine. All those
long lessons in Italy. What he learned from the keen passions of the many women
since, too many to count. All of that wickedness and pleasure, more intense
than honest people know. Perhaps you want that, too. Just once. To sin in the
dark with a stranger."

Her hand trembled. "I want only that you win
your wager against Lord Edward."

He traced over the swell at the base of her
thumb, around and around. "What if that isn't enough reason for us to make
love, Juliet?"

"It has to be!" She sounded desperate,
the tears closer to the surface.

He lifted her hand. She allowed him to carry her
knuckles to his lips. Her fingers gripped his convulsively as he kissed them,
one by one, carefully, fleetingly, in a caress designed to tantalize.

"Then it will be enough, because you wish
it." He knew absolutely that he meant it. "So let us make this the
most memorable night of our lives."

HE RELEASED HER. INSTANTLY JULIET PRESSED HER
HAND TO her lips. Sweet fire burned over the backs of her knuckles and licked
at the center of her palm. Clenching her fingers into a fist, she stood bereft,
abandoned in the night. Her corset constricted, laced tightly around her ribs
where it forced up her breasts. Was that why her heart ached?

Everything she had said about the duke's son was
true. It was worth anything, even this further destruction of her reputation,
to disrupt his plans and force his public repudiation. Lord Edward would never
forgive her, but he would also never pursue her again after what she had done
downstairs.

Yet she did not intend for one moment to truly
allow this rake's misuse of her body.

Her pulse raced. It felt like panic. She
swallowed.

There was something else the duke's son had said
to her when he' d told her about that base wager in London:
Ι knew
Gracechurch would never succeed with you. You could neuter such a popinjay with
the lift of one eyebrow.

She had almost done it in the open carriage, when
she had pretended to be unmoved by his kisses and seen that fleeting
vulnerability cross his face. Let Alden Granville think he had secured her
favors. Let him think he had won his wager and saved his fortune. Then let him
find himself impotent in the face of her scorn! She would humiliate him,
destroy him, strip him of his pride and conceit, and leave him shattered.

Black night filled her vision. She could hear his
steady breathing. His keen, masculine scent filled her nostrils. She had inhaled
it like fresh air when she'd first come up behind him in Sir Reginald's drawing
room. The other men were doused with strong perfume. In contrast, Alden
Granville carried only the bouquet of fresh water, like a fast-flowing brook,
mixed with some indefinable maleness that she wanted to draw deep into her
lungs. Damn him that he had used all of that beauty to deceive her!

"There can't be much time left," she
said into the breathing silence.

Something clunked as it hit the floor. The sound
echoed in her heart in a small burst of panic.

"What are you doing?"

"Removing my shoes," he replied calmly.

Metal made a small clink.

"What was that?"

"My smallsword. Ι don't usually wear it
when Ι make love." His voice teased, full of confidence. Damn him!

"You are getting undressed?" Her voice
was too high, almost a squeal. Juliet swallowed again and took a deep breath.

"Does that alarm you?"

That slight shush of satin must be his waistcoat
sliding from his arms. She could imagine it, the rose-and-silver embroidery folding,
dancing as it was shrugged off his strong shoulders and back.

"Ι don't-
 
Νο, of course I'm not
alarmed!" Yet she stood frozen in the dark.

Something fine and soft rustled, tiny sounds as
if the bells in the pattern on his lace rang in Some almost inaudible,
miniature world.

"Then you
will be glad to know Ι
have now shed my shirt. My breeches come next."

Her eyes must be closed against the pitch dark,
squeezed tightly shut, for she could see a vision of him moving as he had moved
through her hayfield, golden and powerful. Heat flooded her, as if her skin
caught fire in that imagined bright sun.

Α muffled snap. Opening buttons?

The
shush
of sliding fabric. His breeches
slipping down over his strong, slim hips?

The fire was spreading, smoldering up over her
belly and sending long tendrils of flame deep inside. Let him build an
answering fire of his own! Let him be desperate, pleading when she finally
mocked and repudiated him!

The tiny shivering sound of soft underclothes
being drawn down over bare muscled thighs.

His breathing, fast and strong.

Then - except for that steady cadence - silence.

"You are naked?" she asked at last.

"Yes." His voice smiled.

Scarlet shame burned over her face, but she must
know. She must know that he was ready and keen and vulnerable. "You are
aroused?"

"Yes."

She had to gulp down panic, try to breathe
normally, but the heat was consuming her and she couldn't catch a proper
breath. "You have that much desire?"

"Ι vibrate with desire-"

"You're invisible. Ι can't tell!"
Her voice was tight with trepidation and this underlying, all-consuming rage.

''Yes, you
can. You don't need eyes to
know that Ι am aflame with intensity. You know it in your bones, Juliet,
because you
feel the same way."

Not yet! Not yet! He must be brought to the point
of desperation before she took her revenge. Yet her legs wanted to fold, collapse
into a heap of satin skirts and hoops. She reached out to steady herself and
found nothing. She couldn't see. She didn't know where he was. She couldn't
interpret the small sounds any longer.

"What happens now?" Panic vibrated in
her voice. She gulped convulsively.

"Now it is up to you."

Her fingers flailed in the darkness, only to
brush over some thing silky and soft. For a moment she was arrested in a kind
of blind madness. But it was only his hair.

He was kneeling at her feet.

Juliet gasped in a breath, then another.

"Hush, " he said. "Relax. Your
wish is my command."

She stood stock still, her fingertips resting on
those waves of unpowdered gold. Silky. Soft. Spun sunshine robbed of color by
the dark, cheated of its visual splendor, leaving nothing but silken
sensuality. She stroked back over his head, feeling the part and slide of that
gold on her palms, the ripple of curl, then the heavy mass entrapped by the
ribbon.

"Untie it, if you
like," he
said.

She did not want the distraction of words, only
this floating sensation. She tried to focus again on her burning desire for revenge.
"What?"

"My hair ribbon. You may untie it, if you
like." His voice was amused, warm. "Then Ι will truly be -
like the first man - entirely naked."

Juliet froze. She had demanded that he ravish
her. When he was helpless with desire, she intended to destroy him, verbally
emasculate him. Let him find himself helpless and flaccid, while she poured
scorn on his impotence! He knelt defenseless at her feet. Yet she shook deep in
her bones when he asked her to untie his hair?

Her breath rushed out as somewhere in the soaring
confusion of heat and emotion she found the courage to continue.

"Very well. Ι do not- Ι do not
have much practice at this.
       
You
will forgive my being a little clumsy?"

"It's only a ribbon."

She slipped her palms over his bent head, groping
past the shock of his firm shoulder, his strong neck, his skin aflame, until
her fingers closed over the ribbon.

He knelt at her feet like a knight errant and let
her fumble. Juliet groped for the loops, identified the free ends and disentangled
them from his thick hank of hair. She tugged until the knot slipped undone.
Tentatively she ran her hands through the strands, separating them, letting the
flow of liquid silk slide over her palms and between her fingers, lifting the
rippling mass away from his face, smoothing ίι over his broad shoulders.

Heat emanated, a fine vibration, from his skin.
His muscles flexed hard as he dropped his head forward, offering his vulnerable
nape. Her hands slipped from his hair to feel the wonder of his muscled neck,
knit so smoothly into his naked shoulders. Α vision of his hot, golden
skin scorched her memory. She traced over his strong upper arms, smooth as
polished wood, yet vibrant, dynamic, warm with life.

Her fingers touched his face as he lifted his
head. Α fleeting fingertip over one cheekbone. Α palm momentarily
cupping the slight roughness of his jaw, then slipping down the strong line of
his throat. His bright scent flooded her nostrils, bringing a new, deeper
undertone. His breath came hot and fast. Yet he still knelt, not touching her.
How could she bring him to the point of desperation, if he left everything to
her?