Wicked at Heart (29 page)

The barest
flicker of something — admiration?  alarm? — moved across that iridescent
stare.  He smiled chillingly, then slowly lowered his hand, his head tilted a
little to one side.

"And why
would I do that?" he asked silkily.

"Because I
am getting a little too close to the core of whomever Damon, Lord Morninghall,
is."

He uncrossed his
arms, then straightened up, so tall that his great height seemed to lower the
deck above by several inches.  He filled the cabin, and every inch of him was
throbbing with rage.  With slow, menacing grace, he moved forward.

Toward her.

"Too close,
eh?" he murmured dangerously.

Gwyneth had seen
that look in his eyes before, the one where his lids came down to half-shutter
fiery, glittering intelligence, anger, and yes, desire.  No.  Not desire.  That
was too mild a word for a man like this one.  What she saw there was a craving,
a hunger, an obsession as lethal to him as it was to her.  She knew what was
coming, and her skin began to prickle with warning, with hope, with wanton,
screaming excitement.

She held her
ground in the face of his advance.  "Yes, too close, and you don't like
it, do you, my lord?"

"You have
no idea what I like, and you have no idea who the real Damon, Lord Morninghall
is," he said softly and, reaching out, tilted her chin up with the tip of
his finger.

She remained
stiff and unresponsive, though her nostrils flared with delicious fear as she
stared up at him.  "Oh, but I think I do — Damon."

He released
her.  She thought he would come back with a cold retort, but instead he moved
slowly behind her chair, his fingers whispering along its arm as he passed. 
She sensed him standing just behind her, over her, staring down at the top of
her head:  a magnificent, angry force she could sense but could not see, could
feel but could not face.  She shivered uncontrollably, yet she refused to turn
around and give him the satisfaction of knowing that he was unnerving her.  She
refused to flinch, even when his hand came down to rest lightly on her
shoulder.

God, help me.

The seconds
crept by, crackling with tension.  Every beat of her heart was louder than the
one before it, every nerve in her body began to scream.  She heard his slow,
measured breathing.  She felt his hand burning through the muslin to her
shoulder.  And now his fingers were pushing into the delicate flesh just
beneath her collarbone . . . questing . . . stroking.  She stared fixedly at
the opposite bulkhead, hardly daring to breathe.

And then, with
one sudden, savage movement, he tore her hat off — and sent it flying across
the room.

Gwyneth's mouth
went dry.

She felt his
fingers in her hair, slowly splaying through the heavy masses and sending pins
tinkling to the floor.

She shut her
eyes, praying for strength.

But what she got
was desire, and he was a master at inducing it.  Desire, skating over her flesh
as his hand moved toward the swell of her breast.  Desire, tightening her nipples,
deepening her breathing.  She felt it in the dampness between her thighs, and
in the wild, erotic images playing out in her mind.

But he is not
so terrible, not such a monster as he wants you to believe!
  She had
seen
that glimpse of goodness in him, God help her, she had, that spark of humanity
he kept brutally locked within himself, and the tiny flame of hope it gave her
was all that kept her frozen in the chair, hardly daring to breathe, when every
primitive survival instinct was shrieking at her to run for her very life. 
Light and dark, good and evil, it all faded and she knew only that dark and
masterful hand, combing out her hair, pulling the rich waves of silk down
around her shoulders, the slow, skillful fingers catching in a tangle, gently
tugging it free . . . now moving downward to linger on the clasp of her mantle,
thumbing suggestively over it before moving with scorching slowness back up her
neck —

"You want
me, don't you Lady Simms?"

His voice was a
dark angel's, wickedly soft, seductive, and husky.  He was leaning down over
her, so close that the low words stirred the wispy hair at her temple, so close
that she could feel the quivering anger that made every word he uttered something
dark and threatening and deadly.  She swallowed hard, but there was not a drop
of saliva left in her mouth.  She felt his knuckles grazing the side of her
neck, his palm and fingers opening to cup the fragile, white column of her
throat and encompass it totally, only the thumb moving as it tested her
frantically beating pulse.  That hand was hot, hard, terrifyingly powerful.  He
could kill her with one quick movement and she was powerless to stop him.  She
knew it.  He knew it.

She began to
shudder.

"Did you
hear me, Lady Simms?  I'll bet that when I spread those clamped legs of yours,
I'll find you hot, wet, and wanting."

She didn't
answer, only staring straight in front of her.  His hot, male scent,
deliciously spicy with the taint of sandalwood, infiltrated her senses.  He slowly
let his fingers drag across her windpipe before moving down the column of her
neck, skimming the sensitive skin there until coming to rest on the fastening
of her mantle.  She felt the barest tug, a loosening; then, with a faint
whisper, the cape-like garment slid from her neck and he was pulling it up and
off, letting it fall to the decking behind her.

"Hot, wet,
and wanting," he repeated.  "Just waiting for me to" — his lips
were warm against the side of her neck, and she shut her eyes on a shiver of
delight — "taste you . . ."

Her insides went
hot and wobbly.  Gwyneth anchored her hands around the parasol, staring
straight ahead and trying to hold onto herself, her will, her reason.

And then she
realized what she had to do to gain the upper hand and throw him off balance.

"As a
matter of fact, you're right."

He paused. 
"What?"

"I'm not
going to bother denying that I find you attractive, that my body aches for
yours, that there are things I've never done before but would find wildly
exciting to do with you.  There, I've admitted it, Morninghall.  I've admitted
that I desire you, would like to get to know you better.  But can you admit the
same?  Do you have the strength to say you can't resist
me
?"

He laughed. 
"I cannot resist you, my dear Lady Simms."

"Well,
there's a start.  And now what?"

"You tell
me."

"Oh, I'll
tell you, but it'll be things you won't want to hear, Morninghall."

"Please,
call me Damon.  We are . . ." his lips brushed her nape ". . . past
the hand-holding stage, are we not?"

"You will
listen to what I have to say, then?"

"Later. 
Not now  . . ."

Gwyneth,
breathing as though every inhalation might crack lungs gone suddenly to glass, felt
him find the top button of her dress.

God help me.

And began to
undo it.

"
Now,
"
she said.

"Oh, go on,
then," he murmured, close to her ear.  "Enlighten me."

He had the first
button undone.  She could feel the sweep of cool air against her nape, the brush
of his skilled fingers.  He found the second button and knew she had to think
fast, and act even faster.

But she couldn't
think.

"Well?"
he taunted, already moving to the third button.

She swallowed
hard and plunged ahead before he rendered her completely mindless.  "I
think that beneath that hard, diabolical armor in which you wrap yourself, you
are a very sensitive and caring individual."

"You're correct,
I don't want to hear this."

"No, my
lord, you're
going
to hear it or I'll get up and walk out of here,
whether you like it or not."

A fourth button
slid through a tiny hole.  His fingers were skating between her shoulder blades
now, dragging shivers of exquisite feeling from every pore as they moved lower.

And lower.

"Very well,
then.  Carry on."

She took a deep
breath, desperately trying to hold onto her resolve, her purpose, her mind
before she lost them altogether.  "I think that you have been" — 
oh
God, he's making me melt, please give me strength and courage
— "cruelly
misused, scarred even, and that there is something beautiful worth saving in
your soul."

"The lady
needs spectacles," he murmured, but the slow, purposeful descent of his
fingers faltered, just the same.

Then continued.

"And I
think the reason you have these — these attacks, Damon, is because there is
something dark and wounded inside of you, something afraid, something that
needs to be confronted, to be — healed."  She shut her eyes, glad that he
could not see her fear.  "But you won't confront it, because the idea of
doing so . . . terrifies you."

His fingers went
deathly still.  His breathing stopped.  There was no sound behind her, just a
stunned tension, like that awful moment between a close bolt of lightning and
the terrible crack of thunder that always follows.  Gwyneth held her breath and
shut her eyes, waiting for that thunder, a blow against the side of her head
that would break her neck and knock her sprawling from her chair, never to get
up again.

No blow came, no
words came, only the cool breeze whispering in through the broken window,
swirling around her exposed shoulders, down her damp spine, into the delicate,
curved middle of her back.

And
him
.

"You're
mad," he said without rancor.  "Bloody crazy, in fact."

"I'm not
crazy and you know it.  Something threatens to get too close to you, and you
have an attack.  Something starts to penetrate those walls of apathy, anger,
and self-pity you've erected to protect yourself, and you have an attack. 
You're afraid of intimacy, Damon, of anyone getting too close to you."

"Tell me,
then," he murmured, his fingers grazing the side of her neck, "if it
is fear of intimacy that incites these strange attacks, then why did I have one
just after I met you for the very first time?  That would seem to dispute your
ridiculous theories."

"Maybe your
soul knew something your mind did not:  that I was going to be the person to
penetrate those defenses and learn your secrets."

She heard the
whisper of fabric behind her as he straightened up, and then there was only his
fingers sliding down, over her collarbone and beneath her gaping bodice to touch
the fragile white swell of her bosom.

Gooseflesh began
to rise on her arms, and she knew that, for her, it was all over.

She had pushed
him too far, and now he was going to make her pay.

"How very
interesting," he murmured from somewhere just above her ear, and she
tensed, melting inside, as his fingers moved slowly toward her nipple. 
"And do you want to know what
I
think, Lady Simms?"

"I suppose
fair is fair."

"I think
that your theories are a load of bollocks.  Codswollop.  The ramblings of an
insane mind."

She swallowed,
overcome with heat as the raspy pad of his forefinger reached her areola,
tracing it, circling it.  It was all she could do not to lean her cheek into
the cool, crisp fabric of his sleeve and sigh in defeat.

"I am not
insane, and you know it," she said, still staring rigidly at the opposite
bulkhead as all feeling moved out of her bones and drained into that wet
conflagration between her thighs.

"No, but
you think I am, do you not?"

"Another
misconception only you suffer.  You are not insane, just — wounded."

"Wounded,"
he murmured darkly.  His hand was fully beneath her breast now, cupping it,
weighing it, his thumb skating over her hardened nipple with exquisite and
torturous repetition.  She shut her eyes.

He continued to
stroke her, until she could no longer maintain her poise.  She began to squirm,
pinned between the hard bar of his arm and the stuffing of the chair's back. 
He loosened her chemise and pushed it and the gown off her shoulder, exposing more
skin.

Gwyneth sank her
teeth into her bottom lip to contain a helpless moan.

"And what
do you think might
heal
this so-called
wound
, madam?"

"Understanding
. . . and love."

He let out a
snort of laughter and pushed his thumb into her hard nipple, driving a tiny cry
of pleasure from her.  "Love and understanding.  Dear God, that's
rich."

"Everyone
needs love and understanding.  Especially you, Damon.  Your soul begs for it. 
Your body begs for it, and yet you push it away —"

"My body
begs for only one thing," he said with a bitter blitheness that tore at her
heart, "and so does yours.  Quite shamelessly, I might add.  Look down at
your tit, my dear Lady Simms, and you will see that it blushes like a new
rosebud.  It wants to be suckled."

"Stop
it."

"It wants
to be . . .
understood
."

"Damn you,
do not mock me!"

"It wants
to be
loved
."

He gently rolled
the hard, engorged bud between his thumb and finger.  Gwyneth gasped, sinking
down into the chair as he flicked his thumb over it, sending bolts of lightning
sizzling through her belly and into that tingling, burning place between her
legs, but she did not move, not even when he leaned over her shoulder to brush
warm, drugging kisses against her collarbone, the swell of her breast.

"Are we now
through with this ridiculous exchange?" he asked, challenging her.

""Only
if you're prepared to think about what I said."

"I am done
with thinking.  It's time for action."  His lips were perilously closed to
her nipple, now.  "I could have you right here, right now."