A Dangerous Love (20 page)

Then something slid inside her.

She twisted her mouth free. “What are you…” She trailed off as what felt like his finger delved deep, in an intimate stroke that wrung a moan from her. “Ohhhh…Griff…that’s…dear God, it’s…”

“
Indescribable
, judging from your curious inability to speak.”

He was gloating over her, blast him, and she couldn’t even rouse any anger to retort. “Indescribable, yes. Oh, do it again.”

“Witch,” he whispered with a devilish chuckle, then did it again. And again. And again, until soon two fingers were caressing her, making her writhe
against his hot, hard palm in a restless urge for more.

“You like that, do you?” His voice sounded tense and guttural now, as if it cost him great effort to speak. “You like that, my wanton Amazon?”

She loved it, reveled in its luxury of sensation. If that made her a wanton, then she was a wanton indeed. At last she understood about the dairymaid she’d caught laughing and blushing in the barn with the groom, her blouse all undone and her skirts rucked up around her thighs. Though Rosalind had fled in embarrassment, she’d thought of the woman as a wanton for days after.

Now she knew how easy it was to be a wanton. And how very, very delicious. The strokes of his fingers quickened, tugging her forward into a hidden forest where beasts roamed to ravage virgins as he ravaged her. Yet she wanted his ravaging…oh, yes…she felt as if she were running through the woods to meet it…faster and faster as he drove deep into her…over and over and over…

The explosion came like quicksilver lightning, tightening her loins, dragging a low, shameful cry from her lips as she arched into his hand.

She finally sank back onto the bed, half-sated, half-bereft, though his thigh still lay heavily across hers and his fingers lingered inside her. A second passed, during which the only sound in the room was his rapid breathing and her faint gasps, before he withdrew his hand from between her legs and wiped it on his trousers.

Sudden embarrassment seized her. Trying to hide her face from him, she turned her head into the coverlet, but couldn’t escape him there, for it smelled of him, musky and male.

“Rosalind…damnation, Rosalind…” he growled as he bent over her to scatter ardent kisses along
her neck, her jaw, her cheek. His whiskery skin scraped her, heightening the varied delights of his kisses. Then his breath warmed her ear. “Touch me, too,” he whispered. “I want your hands on me. Please…Only a little…”

Her gaze flew to his. Touch him? All this time he hadn’t asked her to do anything, hadn’t even said
please
. But the unquenched ache of desire hardened all his features as he stared down at her.

He caught her hand and flattened it against the bulge in his trousers. “Touch me, my sweet, or I’ll go mad.”

She nodded fiercely, overwhelmed by a desire to please him as he’d pleased her. When she curled her hand around the clothed rigid flesh, it jerked beneath her fingers.

Groaning, he shoved it against her hand. “Yes, darling Rosalind…like that but…harder…”

She smiled with feminine satisfaction as she took firmer hold of it. With a growl, he thrust against her hand, then hungrily drove his tongue inside her mouth with deep, bold strokes.

She rubbed against the stiff thickness in his trousers, increasing the pressure as he caressed her breasts and lavished fiery kisses over her cheeks and brow. Her curiosity about that part of him intensified until she cursed the layer of kerseymere that separated her hand from his flesh. Well, if he could pull up her skirts…She fumbled to release the buttons of his trousers.

He froze and caught her hand to halt it. “No, my sweet. I already want you beyond endurance.” Raw need sculpted his face. “And if you take my cock out, I swear I’ll bed you, virgin or no.”

For a moment, she simply stared at him stunned, the word
cock
ringing in her ears, so crude and coarse. Then the rest of his sentence hit her, and she
realized the enormity of what she was doing. What she’d just done.

“Dear God,” she whispered as horror swept over her. She jerked her hand back from him. “Dear God, oh, dear God…” she kept chanting as she rolled off the bed.

Frantic to cover herself, she grabbed at the front of her gown and yanked it up, but it wouldn’t stay because he’d unfastened it. Vainly she twisted her arms behind her back to reach the buttons while sheer mortification overtook her.

He leapt from the bed with a curse. “Calm down; you’ll tear it!”

“Blast you!” she whispered, as he moved behind her and began deftly fastening the buttons. Her breath stuttered from her in quick gasps. How humiliating to have to rely on
him
to hook up her gown. And why must he be so very good at it? That could only mean one thing.

“You probably do this all the time,” she said with irrational jealousy, “play the lady’s maid for all your women—”

“
All
my women?” he bit out. “You make it sound as if I have a damned harem.”

“For all I know, you do!” It dawned on her that she hardly knew him. He might actually keep a mistress. Or two or three…He’d probably had virgins before, too, prettier ones than she.

Her heart sank under the horrible thought. “How you must be congratulating yourself on seducing me into acting the wanton not once, but
twice
!” she lashed out. How could she have been so reckless?

“Seducing you?” He swung her around to face him, frustration tightening his features into a scowl. “Don’t blame me for this! I warned you what could happen. I didn’t ask you to come here, of all places! I tried to throw you out!”

It was true, curse him. She’d brought this on herself. Even now, with his hands gripping her shoulders and his bare male chest only inches away, all firm and muscled and sprinkled with hair, she wanted to have him kiss her again, take her back to the bed.

She covered her face with her hands. Dear God, she truly was a wanton. “You’re right.” She pulled away from him. “I’m entirely at fault.”

“I didn’t say entirely—”

“This can’t happen again, do you hear? It mustn’t! You have no interest in marriage and I—”

“Want to be an actress,” he finished coldly. “Yes, I know. You made that perfectly clear before.”

She lifted her head to stare at him. An actress? Dear God, that dream seemed so remote from this wretched muddle. And she couldn’t help noticing that he hadn’t denied his lack of interest in marriage.

Knowing his past, she’d be surprised if he had any pangs of conscience about what they’d done. He certainly wasn’t the sort to marry a woman who practically threw herself at him every time he kissed her.

Not that she
wanted
the rutting beast to marry her. No, indeed! The last thing she needed was an impudent, devious man of affairs with a criminal past ordering her about.

Still, if he and his employer stayed here much longer, she didn’t know how she’d resist him. She’d never excelled at self-denial. If he continued these…cursed sweet seductions of his, he would either take her virtue, leave her with child, or both. It was one thing to be a spinster and quite another to be a ruined pregnant spinster.

She must stop this madness. She must do something to put Griff—and his employer—out of harm’s way, before she succumbed entirely to him
and Juliet married Mr. Knighton. She could think of only one way, one plan that might work.

Bending to scoop up her fallen shawl, Rosalind headed toward the door.

“Where are you going?” he ground out from behind her. “We must discuss this.”

“What’s there to discuss? We agree it shouldn’t happen again, and I intend to take steps to ensure it doesn’t.”

“Take steps? What the hell do you mean?”

She hesitated at the door. “I’ve been foolish and selfish. I thought I could stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“All of it. Your being here. Juliet’s marrying Mr. Knighton. But I’ve tried and I can’t. And the longer I wait, the more chance…”
That I’ll yield to you
. She sucked in a painful breath. “There’s only one way to stop it. Helena won’t marry him, and I refuse to let Juliet marry him, so that leaves only one of us to offer herself in marriage.”

She forced herself to meet his gaze, to say the words that might buy her temporary protection. “Me.”

Chapter 12

Nobody can boast of honesty till they are tried
.

Susannah Centlivre, English playwright
, The Perplex’d Lovers

G
riff stared at Rosalind, dumbfounded. His Athena stood there with her hair tumbled down about her shoulders and her lips still reddened from
his
kisses, and she talked of marrying another man? Daniel, whom she believed to be her cousin?

He must have misunderstood her. “You’ve obviously scattered my wits. I could have sworn you just said you wanted to offer yourself in marriage to Knighton.”

She swallowed, her gaze fixed to the floor. “That’s precisely what I said.”

The thought of her planning to marry
any
other man after the intimacies they’d just shared sent rage boiling up through him, unreasonable, unpredictable, and ungovernable.

“Over…my…dead…body,” he enunciated in a low growl.

Her head shot up and for a long moment, she stared at him speechlessly. Then stubbornness glinted in her eyes, and she headed for the door again. He grabbed her by the arm, forcing her around to face him.

“Let go!” she cried. “You have no say in this whatsoever!”

“Why the hell not? You nearly let me bed you! That gives me all the say I need!” She opened her mouth to retort, but he cut her off. “Don’t try to convince me you were unaffected by our activities. This time I know better. I forbid you to marry him when you obviously want
me!
”

“You
forbid
me? Why, you arrogant bastard—you have nothing to do with it!”

The word
bastard
reverberated in the room, striking an ancient chill along his spine that evoked Eton’s cold garrett and the cruel taunts in the halls. Icy fury froze his blood as he backed her against the closed door and planted his hands beside her shoulders to trap her. “You didn’t seem to mind my arrogance or my bastardy a few minutes ago when I had my fingers inside you.”

For a moment she only gaped at him, two spots of color blooming high on her cheeks. Then she slapped him, the impact of her hand against his cheek echoing in the room. “How d-dare you!” she sputtered. “Y-You are the crudest man I’ve ever met!”

“Not half as crude as Knighton, trust me,” he snapped, thinking of Daniel’s frequent visits to the London trollops. “Nor even as crude as you, my sweet, who are leaving one man’s bed to throw yourself into another’s.”

He might as well have struck her back, for hurt
drained her eyes of their sparkle and leached her face of color. With a strangled whimper that would have melted stone, she slumped against the door, turning her head to lay her cheek against the oak panel. “That should not surprise you. You’ve already noted that I’m a wanton.”

Tears trembled on her lashes, flooding his conscience with guilt and dissolving his anger. Damnation, he’d made her cry. Self-loathing filled him as he shoved away from the door. What kind of monster had he become?

That was easy to answer: the green-eyed kind.

He was jealous. Of himself, for the love of God! He’d never been jealous in his life, and this was beyond ridiculous. If she wanted to marry “Knighton,” that was
him
. If by some chance she actually wanted Daniel—which he doubted—Daniel wouldn’t marry her anyway. So why torment her?

“Damn it, Rosalind, I didn’t mean…” He rubbed the cheek she’d slapped, which still stung. He should have known his Amazon would give as well as she got. Not that he didn’t deserve it. “I shouldn’t have said that. Any of it. I know you’re no wanton.”

At her long silence, he swung his gaze back to her. She was staring past him now, tears streaming down her face and her shoulders shaking with the fruitless effort to contain them.

Something tore inside him. “You’re
not
a wanton. It’s not your fault I took advantage of the attraction between us.”

“But it’s…my fault that I…let you.” She was sobbing now, struggling to speak between great gulps of air. “That’s why I…must end this.”

He didn’t know which was worse—her pitiful sobs or her determination to get away from him. Forcing himself to stay calm this time, he
approached her. “End it how? By marrying Knighton?”

“Would you have me…marry you instead?” She groaned, then added quickly, “No, forget that I said it.”

He went very still. He
could
marry her, couldn’t he? Until now, he’d been convinced she wouldn’t consider him—or rather, Brennan—as a prospective husband. But if she would take him as Brennan, thinking there was no advantage to such a marriage, then she’d surely take him as Knighton—

Damnation, what was he thinking? That couldn’t be what she’d meant. “I thought you wanted to marry for love,” he said softly, searching her face for a sign of her true feelings.

Rubbing her tears away with her fist, she bent her head to focus on the shawl she twisted in her hands. “Yes, of course. I couldn’t possibly marry you.”

The sharp words scraped at his pride, a reaction he tried doggedly to ignore.

She lifted her tear-streaked face to him. “Besides, you don’t want to marry, do you? You said so in the deer park. You said other matters concerned you more than marriage.”

Other matters. Memory slammed into him. He couldn’t believe he’d been so caught up in this that he’d forgotten his situation. If he married Rosalind, he’d have to reveal his identity, what he wanted…everything.

He stared down into her face, so hesitant, so expectant…so enticing. The possibility of marrying her tantalized him. She would belong to
him
, every fascinating, delightful, lush inch of her. And all he had to do to have her, aside from convincing her to marry the “wicked” Mr. Knighton, was—