Cheryl Holt (3 page)

“I demand that you go.”

“God, you’re pretty.” He reached behind her head and tugged at a comb that had helped to restrain her abundant locks, and the velvety mass cascaded down her back and hung to her waist. “I love your hair. It shimmers like fire.”

For one, mad instant, she thought he planned to kiss her, but instead, he ducked under her chin and nuzzled against her shoulder at the site where her pulse pounded so furiously. A shiver of excitement tore through her, and she swallowed a baffled squeal that could have been either delight or indignation.

His lips were heated and soft, and he tenderly kissed against her nape then, to her astonishment, he licked across her skin. She jumped then twirled away, only to end up facing the mirror, with him behind her, and she assessed the two of them, evaluating the differences: his tall to her short, bronzed to fair, brawn to lean.

Boldly, he settled his hands on her hips and snuggled her backside against him, and she was assailed by an array of unique anatomical impressions. As though she’d been searching for this man all her life and had finally found him, she ignited with sensation, every pore alert and animated, and her nipples tightened painfully, poking at the towel.

The knave immediately noticed how they’d peaked. “I can’t wait to have my mouth on you.”

The declaration kindled cryptic images, and restlessly, she scrambled to flee—from the unusual fleshly perturbation and from him—but because of their positions, he merely nestled her close and flexed against her. His groin stroked across her bottom in a manner she’d never presumed a man might attempt with a woman. There was a solid ridge along his abdomen that dug into her buttocks, and her traitorous body reacted by squirming to get nearer to it. He appreciated her participation and gripped her firmly, flexing again.

“Your breasts are so beautiful,” he murmured. “Just the size I like on a woman. Not too big. Not too small.” Before she knew what he was about, he’d pushed the towel aside, revealing one to his torrid gaze. He cupped it, weighing it with his palm, then he pinched the nipple, twirling and manipulating it back and forth.

The swirl of agony he instigated was like nothing she’d ever previously experienced. The torment blazed a trail that commenced at her bosom, then rushed out across her torso, to the roots of her hair and the tips of her toes, and she curled them into the rug.

“Please,” she begged, but whether she was beseeching him to continue or cease was impossible to surmise. On some secret level, she surreptitiously craved what he was vigorously inflicting.

“Look at us,” was his rejoinder. There was a gleam in his eye that made him appear wicked and beyond redemption. “Look at how exquisite we are with my hands on you.”

His gaze met hers in the mirror, and she could only conclude that he was correct. Mesmerized, she was beguiled by the incongruous perception that she was magnificent in his arms: curvaceous, feminine, alluring. Their bodies were flawlessly reconciled, perfectly attuned, and the display titillated and disturbed. Much as she wanted to, she couldn’t quit staring.

He could read her thoughts, and he smiled insolently. “You see it, too, don’t you?”

“You’re mistaken,” she pointlessly asserted.

“Am I?”

Determined to prove her wrong, he unveiled her other breast, and she desperately grasped the towel around her waist, so it wouldn’t fall to the floor and leave her uncovered. As she battled with her nude condition, he petted and fondled, squeezing the mounds and tweaking the nipples until they spasmed intolerably.

Her breathing hitched. Too much was happening too fast. The wanton episode was so inconceivable that it played out like a fantasy—except that he was really present, arousing and addictive. Her mind wailed for her to call a halt, but her body wouldn’t obey.

“I’d planned to have you on your bed the first time”—his assertion brushed against her ear—“but maybe I should take you here, by the mirror, so you can see how splendid we are together.”

An exotic fog may have temporarily immobilized her, but a fragment of sanity managed to seep in, and she was coherent enough to realize that her virtue was in peril, so she fought his restraint, but he scarcely noted her opposition. He lifted her and deposited her on the vanity, in a fluid move, scooting her back and positioning himself between her thighs.

They had rapidly vaulted to a different, more ominous, stage of involvement. There was an obstinate air about him; he wouldn’t desist until he’d journeyed to a conclusion of which only he was cognizant.

He yanked the towel away, and she was completely exposed,
and he dipped to her nipple and sucked at it. The untried crest was raw and inflamed from how his fingers had handled it, and his mouth only increased her distress. With a yelp of surprise, she resisted his machinations, even as her body hastened forward toward an unfamiliar destination, and she had to combat the urge to spur him on.

So entranced was she by his concentration on her nipple that she didn’t discern how he’d shockingly traced his hand down her stomach until he massaged across her womanly cleft. Without warning, he delved through the springy hair and parted the folds, then pushed a finger inside. She froze, wondering what he contemplated, but he caressed her gently, the maneuver at odds with the tension she could sense emanating from him. The foreign intrusion strengthened her conviction to escape, but retreat was blocked by his hips and thighs.

“Stop it!” she commanded, but he didn’t appear to hear her; he kept on. “Stop it, now!”

Blindly, she groped about, latched onto a heavy decanter, and swung it at his head. The blow glanced off his crown, but it definitely got his attention. He wrenched away, patently confused.

“Jesus,” he muttered, “what the bloody hell did you do that for?”

She swung again and caught him alongside the temple, tearing a gash. Blood welled into the cut, and he staggered, momentarily off balance, and she utilized his distraction to leap away, swathing the towel about her as she went. Dashing into the bedchamber, she considered sprinting into the hall, but she couldn’t let anyone discover her predicament.

Commotion emanated from the dressing room, and she spun around. Her adversary, a cloth jammed to his head, had stumbled in behind her, and she cast about for a weapon but didn’t see anything useful. She still held the bottle, so she smacked it against the marble of the fireplace, and it shattered effectively.

“Stay away from me,” she ordered, brandishing the broken
glass. “Depart at once—the same way you entered—or I’ll slice you to pieces like the swine you are.”

The man paused for the slightest moment then, enraged as a wounded bear, he stalked toward her.

Michael Stevens stopped in the doorway to the bedchamber as the crazed woman before him smashed a decanter against the fireplace. Glass shards flew everywhere.

“I mean it!” she repeated in threat. “Go!”

He wasn’t certain what had just occurred between them in her dressing room but, considering the aftermath he was now viewing, he had to sincerely wonder whether she was prone to lunacy.

What type of female invited a man to her boudoir, enticed him beyond reason, then panicked like a silly virgin? She was fortunate he still had control of his wits, that he wasn’t the sort who would rush across the room and take what she’d initially offered but had obviously decided she didn’t want to supply.

The woman was a menace, and he couldn’t help but wonder what Pamela Blair, Lady Carrington, was thinking, welcoming such an unstable person to her fete. Pamela regularly opened her home to her decadent friends and acquaintances, providing them with a private and confidential environment where they could frolic at their leisure. They came in droves, to fornicate and debauch, both the men and women ready to wallow in every sick, ribald, immoral fantasy imaginable, and there were plenty of men currently visiting who wouldn’t desist, despite these loud, fervent protests.

Pamela was risking disaster by bringing such a volatile guest onto the premises, and Michael couldn’t wait to tell her so. In the meantime, he had to figure out a method of soothing this beautiful-but-deranged shrew before she shouted the house down.

To think that he’d let himself be lured away from a placid, civilized game of cards for this! If he’d utilized superior judgment, he could be downstairs—winning—while safely sequestered in the company of rational men or, better yet, he could have gone to cavort with any of the other female guests who’d asked, and he could at this very moment be copulating in peace, without being banged on the head for his troubles.

Considering the numbers of gorgeous, lustful women who were flowing in and out of the property, he’d had numerous other acceptable choices. As he was the most disreputable male in their midst, the wanton ladies of the
ton
were positively dying to couple with him, and for the past few weeks, he’d impulsively obliged their despicable caprices.

The party was every man’s greatest dream come true. The level of decadence guaranteed that anything and everything was permitted, the women pleasing and amenable, and rules and inhibitions abolished. Raw interaction and meaningless sex, copious, insignificant, unrefined intercourse, was not only tolerated under Pamela’s roof, but absolutely encouraged, with the prerequisite being that the people partaking of her hospitality were completely predisposed to misbehavior.

So what was this woman doing in Pamela’s house? What did she hope to accomplish by this maidenly display of offense?

Belowstairs, he’d stepped from the card room in order to stroll outside in the fresh air, when he’d been accosted by a buxom blonde who’d pulled him aside and whispered insistently that the auburn-haired virago standing in front of him wanted him to visit, that she was too shy to come to him later on as others would, so she sought a covert rendezvous in the privacy and sanctity of her own bedchamber.

Supposedly, she’d never previously attended one of Pamela’s parties, was nervous about her participation, and
therefore wished an inconspicuous orientation into the carnal routine.

When the request had been posed by her alleged friend, he hadn’t given much thought to who the blonde ambassador was, or to why she was soliciting sexual congress on behalf of another, but he was definitely curious now as to her identity. Earlier, he’d presumed she was a lady’s companion or perhaps her maid, so he hadn’t ruminated over the entreaty or why it had been oddly made.

Already, he’d grown bored with the proceedings that Pamela had instituted and the situations she’d convinced him to try. The available lovers were as jaded as himself, and surprisingly, he missed the closeness and spark that should have come with making love, so he’d readily consented to indoctrinate this novice but, in light of the manifest level of her upset, he had to admit that something was seriously awry.

She hardly resembled a reticent, demure paramour. Instead of a lonely female awaiting a bit of subdued loveplay, she appeared overwrought, shocked, outraged, and—if the murderous gleam in her eye was any indication—ready to kill.

Typically, he disdained the bored, unhappy aristocratic noblewomen who had filled Pamela’s country house to overflowing. He detested their loose morals and their lewd, lascivious lifestyles. They were pathetic in the lengths to which they would go to find diversion from their tedium.

With no conscience and no integrity, they would commit any contemptible act. They saw nothing wrong with cuckolding their husbands, with carrying on indiscreet liaisons, or fornicating with little concern as to whether they bred children not fathered by their spouses.

His aversion to them was only surpassed by his disgust for their husbands, those lazy, impotent peers of the realm who drank and wagered and debauched without regard to the consequences. They assumed they had a God-given right to inflict themselves on the rest of the world.

In London, he and his brother, James, owned a gaming
club where they pandered to and coddled the slothful lords. Those earls and barons couldn’t keep their blunt in their wallets or their cocks in their trousers, and he and James catered to their base whims, which was undeniably the reason their business was so popular.

If he’d been in town at the moment, he’d have been hard at work, ensuring that there was adequate liquor and food available, so that the exalted gentlemen would be comfortable while they complacently gambled away their estates and their children’s inheritances.

How he despised them all!

They were men of no principles or ethics, who would spout their accursed code of honor until they choked on it, but deep down, they were blackguards and cads with nary a scruple, so he was more than happy to have sexual relations with their willing wives, which was why he’d traveled to Bedford.

Whenever one of their spouses beckoned, he was entirely agreeable. In any manner, in any fashion, as often and savagely as they could bear it, he’d dabble with them, heedless as to the damage he might leave in his wake, because in his opinion, they deserved every bit of misery he was able to mete out.

So he wasn’t exactly sure what had gone wrong this time. He’d been
invited
to the damned room. Asked to watch. Asked to fondle. Asked to fuck. And all he’d gotten for it was a cockstand so excruciating he could barely walk, and a crack on the skull that had nearly put him out. As it was, he’d probably end up with a stitch or two in his cheek before the night was through.

Bloody, wretched woman! Didn’t she know better than to trifle with a precariously aroused man?

Though he’d never been the sort to raise a hand to a female, he had half a mind to take her over his knee. In his present mood, the chance to deliver a good thrashing—especially to someone as reckless and idiotic as she appeared to be—sounded like a fabulous idea.

He stepped into the room. “Would you please lower your voice before someone hears you?”

“Stay back!” she commanded again, wielding her makeshift weapon, and she lifted one of her dainty feet as if she might actually wade into the sea of broken glass surrounding her.