Three Heroes (9 page)

"There are certainly times when getting drunk seems like an excellent idea." Guarded eyes rested on her as he sipped. "You mean there are times when it doesn't?"

The bleakness hit her, but she tried not to show it. She didn't know what she was doing here, but she knew she mustn't fall into emotion. "Did you get drunk before battle?"

"Not on purpose." He shifted slightly, relaxing. He was, at least, willing to talk.

"Some did. They tended to die. Perhaps happier than the ones who died sober. Or even the ones who lived ... I was caught in the bottle once or twice ..." He eyed his almost empty glass and the decanter, and then went about filling it with notable care.

Maria sipped her wine. This was the first time he'd mentioned the darker side of war. Was that good, or bad? Was it war memories that chained him in the dungeons, or the loss of his family, or both?

She couldn't wipe one away, or bring the other back. She had to try to give him reason to live.

"Why did you join the army?" she asked, as if making idle conversation. "You were an only son."

"Still am. Last of the line as well. All the hopes and expectations of the Vandeimens rest upon these paltry shoulders.” He toasted her and drank. "You have a lot of hair.” Instinctively, she touched the tight knot of plait, but she stuck to her purpose. "So, why did you join the army?”]]>

The eyes half-glimpsed beneath lazy lids suddenly shot wickedness. "Let down your hair and I'll tell you."

Perhaps she should rise and leave now, but she knew she couldn't abandon him here like this.

She could call his bluff, but she suspected that Demon Vandeimen never bluffed.

She raised her hands and pulled out the pins, letting the braid fall heavily down her back.

"Don't think to play your games with me, sir. You'll neither win nor escape by pretending to desire me."

"Pretending? You can come over here and feel if you want." Her breath caught and she couldn't help glancing at his crotch. She hastily looked up. "So, why did you join the army?"

"That isn't really down," he complained, but then said, "The others were.

Why not?"

"The others?" Her mind was stuck on his earlier words, however. He was aroused?

Now? By her? A responsive beat began between her thighs.

"Con. Hawk." He knocked back an irreverent amount of her very good cognac.

"Con was a second son and willing to do his duty. Defeat the Corsican Monster. Save the women and children of England from invasion, rape, and pillage. Hawk saw a way to escape his family. As for me ... what more could a sixteen-year-old who fed on excitement and challenge desire?" Those dangerous eyes met hers again. "I feed off excitement like a vampire feeds off blood, dear lady.

Do you want to come over here and let me drink your pale, angelic blood?"

"No," she lied, beginning to burn with raw lust. She should leave . . . "And my blood is as red as yours, I assure you."

"All the better." He put down his glass and shifted to begin crawling over to her. In another man it might have been clumsy, but she immediately thought of a wolf, a lithe and lethal wolf. She wanted to flee, but she knew that would be disastrous. And part of her wanted to stay, even to bleed . . .

He knelt beside her on all fours and raised a hand to her neck. "So pale, so pure ..."

"I'm a widow." Despite fingers stroking her neck, she used a cool tone, trying to deny all this, trying to summon the strength to flee.

His eyes were close now, intense, pupils large in the dim light. "You shouldn't have chained me, dear widow, if you didn't need me." Need. She did need him. It had been so long, and here was that danger that always drove her wild.

It was real danger now. Not her husband, who had only pretended because it excited her, and that excited him. It was this wild and wounded young man with heat and sex rising off him like steam.

A wise woman would get up and run.

A decent woman would save him from himself.

Mouth dry with fear and longing, she whispered, "Do you need a woman, Vandeimen?"

"I need you."

"Then take me."

He kissed her with brandy-soaked heat and greedy passion, and she kissed him back as fiercely, sprawled against the seat of the big chair. It had been so long, too long, and he tasted like hell and heaven combined.

Then she was flat on her back, her legs up over his shoulders and him in her, deeply, fully, in her. He reared up, hands on the floor on either side of her head, eyes triumphantly on hers.

Magnificent. Beautiful. Virile.

Lethal—and she loved it.

She clutched his arms, moving, then firing off into her own particular hellfire heaven.

When she opened her eyes, swooningly pleasured, she was still locked in position with him, wishing she could see behind his closed eyes and set face.

Was he in heaven or in hell?

He shifted, sliding out of her and away, letting her legs come down, head turning from her.

"Don't,” she said quickly, "say you're sorry.” He knelt between her legs, sweaty, rumpled, troubled, but he looked up at her. "You liked that?”]]>

"Is it unladylike? In these things, I am not a lady." She saw that he was hunting for evasion, for polite lies. She had no way to convince him with words, so she simply waited, lewdly disheveled, on the floor.

"What else do you like, then?" The unvarnished hunger in his voice made her want to smile, but she was afraid a smile might be misunderstood.

"A bed for a start. I'm too old for carpets all night." She put in the reminder of her age deliberately. She wanted this, but honestly.

She stretched out a hand to be helped up, but he went to his haunches, put his arms under her, and rose to his feet. His raw strength started the thunder of excitement again. Oh, she was a wicked woman to like this so, but she did.

He staggered slightly as he carried her to the bed, but it was drink not weakness.

Was she taking advantage of a drunken man?

He wasn't that drunk, and he was getting as much from this as she.

He placed her on the bed carefully enough. "Will you undress for me?" he asked.

"As I watch?"

It stirred a little qualm. "If you'll remember that I'm gone thirty, and can't rival a sweet young thing of eighteen."

"Does it matter?" He leaned against a bedpost, prepared to watch.

His comment could be taken many ways. She chose to ignore it. Even this was exciting her—the demand that she do something a little difficult and daring.

Did he understand her all too well?

Eyes on him, she loosened the drawstrings of her gown and pulled it off over her head. He was still watching. She had nothing on now but her shift and corset. Heart seeming to beat in her throat, she undid the front hooks of her corset, one by one.

He suddenly moved to brush her fingers away, to undo the last hooks and peel it open, almost reverently.

She didn't want reverence. She pulled his shirt out of his unfastened pantaloons.

"Strip."

With a laugh, he obeyed. She thought she moaned at the sheer beauty of his body. An anatomist could study muscles from him without dissection, but they were all sweetly smoothed by flesh—ands scars.

Dozens of slashes, some puckered from rough healing.

For every one, she suspected, there was an internal scar. Scars, once formed, were permanent, though time did soften them. What of the scars that marked his heart and his soul?

She saw the dark stain of a tattoo on his chest, and remembered the duchess's comment.

"Rumor says that's a demon," she said.

"Rumor tells the truth, for once."

He came toward her and she saw that it was a demon, pitchfork in hand, amid red flames.

What was she doing here in a bed with a mad young demon?

He stripped off her corset and tossed it aside, then pushed her down on the bed in her shift. With a sudden grin, he ripped the garment open down the front.

Mad. Demon. And he understood her. It frightened her that, but thrilled her at the same time.

While her heart still raced, he spread the garment wide so she lay on it and leaned down to suckle her left breast, deep and firm.

"I love that," she breathed, even though her body's surge must have told him.

"I love it. Teeth too, if you don't draw blood." He looked up, bright-eyed. Whatever else, he was alive now, alive in this moment. Every inch of him.

"And what if I do draw blood?" he asked, sending another mad shiver through her.

"You'll spoil this." Deep in her mind, however, an imp stirred with curiosity. No.

She couldn't want that.

He kissed her breast softly—both a tease and a promise. "You're a remarkable woman, Maria."

"I'm a hungry one, too."

He laughed and returned to the ravishing of her breasts while she used nails to torment his skin. Without drawing blood.

Then he spread her legs and pushed into her again, and she rose eagerly, hungrily, nearly in orgasm already.

He moved in and out once with tortuous slowness. "It'll be longer this time." He made it into a thrilling warning.

She opened her eyes. "Will it?"

His wolfish smile was answer. "Do you like it long?" Her head was buzzing, and the world swirled. "I don't know," she whispered.

"My husband never went very long. He was over thirty when he married me."

"You've had no one else?"

She could protest the implication, but just said, "No."

"Am I better then?"

She laughed because it was only part tease. Deliberately, she challenged the demon. "I don't know yet."

He shifted and put one hand firmly over her mouth, while beginning deep, even strokes. She looked up, excited by that mild restraint. It implied that she had no right to object. That he could do anything with her, even draw blood.

And perhaps he could.

As she'd thought, Maurice's demanding sex had been a very safe game. Now she might be in the jungle with the animals. It excited her as nothing before.

She moved to wrap her legs around his waist, but he said, "No. Keep them down." It could be a request. It sounded like a command.

Then he stilled and lowered his head to her breasts again, sucking painfully strongly, arching her, breaking a muffled cry from her. His teeth. She felt his teeth, pressing so carefully, but so lethally.

Her heart pounded with sudden terror and violent lust. His silencing hand felt like a gag, but when she tried to fight it off, it tightened. He raised his head and looked at her, a glint of triumph in his eyes before he lowered again to her breasts. Mercy on her, it was that contest again. What might it drive him to do?

Instead of biting, he licked. Slowly, lazily, he licked all around her breasts when she wanted to scream at him for more.

She lay there, pinned to the bed, resentfully enduring this meaningless tonguing, resenting even more that he'd assessed the game as a whole and was winning a Pyrrhic victory simply by being gentle. She was full with the burning hardness of him, and apart from an occasional twitch, he wasn't moving at all.

He looked up again, claiming the mystery. She could hate him, but she didn't. She realized that she was hot, hot all over, boiling with need, excited by being entirely in his power and that she'd never before had time to know what this felt like.

Desperately intolerable.

He took his hand from her mouth and began to thrust. Deep rhythmical thrusts that truly did feel as if they could go on forever. He was watching her as if she was more interesting than his own pleasure. She watched back, desperately fighting dissolution under those competitive eyes.

Losing.

"Bastard!" she hissed, and surrendered.

When she swam out of the hot darkness he was still thrusting.

"Zeus, no," she muttered, but he didn't stop. Why did she think she could say no to this? And did she want to? Soon her body ripped off into madness again.

It happened one more time but that time he was with her, or far, far away from her. When he collapsed on her, she had to fight the urge to push him off and run away.

No more.

She couldn't take any more.

But of course, there would be no more. It was not physically possible. Was it? What did she really know of this?

Maurice's lovemaking had been strong, and when he demanded that daytime sex she'd been excited before he'd entered her, and exploded quickly. He'd always stroked her to more pleasure afterward as if in a kind of payment. She'd didn't know why, and had never asked. He'd seemed to enjoy watching her fall into pleasure.]]>

She'd never experienced anything like this, however. Ravished expressed it perfectly. Ravished, razed, and conquered. Aching, burning, and drained, and ashamed about how much she was already grieving the loss of it.

There was no doubt. Lord Warren would never do this to her . . .

She woke exhausted, parts of her body still sore. She gently touched her nipples and almost flinched.

When she tried to move away from him, however, she found he was lying on her hair.

When had it been freed of her plait?

During that other ravishing sometime in the night, as hot, as fierce, as strong as before. Could she walk?

She had to.

The light through the partially open curtains suggested very early morning, but she must be back in her room when her maid came.

She looked back at him and saw his eyes open, watching her. Blank eyes. Guarded eyes. With a suppressed groan she knew she couldn't let him feel the slightest regret about what had happened. And there wasn't any. She just didn't want more at the moment.

Or most of her didn't want more.

Parts of her were shameless hussies.

"Good morning," she said softly.

"Is it? Good?"

"It promises to be a lovely day." But she realized they were going to have to talk about sex. It was not something she had ever imagined doing. She reached up to touch his stubbled cheek.

"I fear you must have a low opinion of me this morning." By a sudden release of tension, she knew she had found the right words. He moved his rough chin against her hand. "You really enjoyed that?"