Susan Johnson (52 page)

“There,” Empress answered, understanding the incautious hunger, hardly unable to control her own ardent desires, although the requisite words of denial had been spoken. On the verge of her own compulsion, which overlooked probity and principles, she pointed toward her room so she could feel him inside her again, so she could still her ravenous craving for a faithless, beautiful, and thoroughly selfish man who made her feel like she was on fire.

Picking her up in a swift, sweeping scoop of his arms, Trey
strode toward her room, pushing the door open with a crash, and heedless to the sound, kicked it shut with equal force. His glance rapidly surveyed the room looking for the bed, although in his current near orgasmic state it wasn’t a requirement. Dropping Empress roughly on the white satin coverlet of the gilt-and-amber shell-shaped bed, he pulled off her slippers, tossing them aside without looking, pushed her skirt and petticoats out of the way with tense impatience, stripped her drawers down with deadly quiet speed, unbuttoned his trousers in a seeming blur of motion as the pulsing urgency in his body drummed in his ears, and climbing on top of Empress without preliminaries or care, plunged into her.

Expeditious and selfish, he was finished in seconds, as though she was no more than a convenient receptacle for his lust, and withdrawing as abruptly as he had mounted her, Trey rolled away, still angry, still frustrated, orgasmic but not satiated. His arms flung over his head, he lay beside her, tense and agitated. He blamed Empress for the chaos in his mind, blamed her for the crying need inside him, for this hot, fierce wanting that ate at his reason, lawless and violent. He was never like this with women. Never. And he swore at the cupid-painted ceiling as though the smiling and oblivious garland-draped putti were the instruments of his discontent.

Lying curled on her side, her back to Trey, Empress cried silent tears of misery and self-pity. Even with his cynicism and sarcasm of the past fortnight and all the vicious insinuations, she had never expected this: a cold, impersonal coupling without a scrap of feeling, detached as though they were strangers—worse, enemies. She no longer knew this man and couldn’t continue deluding herself with rainbow-colored dreams or cling to the memories of her weeks with Trey. The man lying beside her was different, harsh, and pitiless—a stranger—and she had no wish to prolong this particular wretched style of warfare. Sitting up, she slid off the bed to escape the disaster that had transpired, but Trey’s hand stopped her before she could move away, closing around her wrist like a shackle, hauling her back.

“I’m not finished.” His half-reclining sprawl was languorous; his expression, in belligerent contrast, mirrored his turbulent emotions—emotions, he realized with the saner
sensibilities still functioning beneath his insanity for this woman, that were the grossest impudent folly.

“Please, Trey, not this way,” Empress pleaded, regret in her voice and eyes.

She saw him try to master his response and fail. “Why not?” he said softly, unsettled and high-strung. “You’ve an evening free.” His fingers were hurting her, his face hard. “Consider me your Saturday night. Offer me some of your popular, generous … hospitality. I’m no different from the other men.”

“There aren’t other men,” Empress replied quietly, no longer interested in the deception, trying to reach this chill, cold man who was gripping her wrist painfully tight.

“You’re lying,” he retorted harshly.

“Ask them,” Empress entreated, only wanting surcease from this battleground of misunderstanding.

“How droll. Should I do it individually or save time and ask them en masse whether they’ve slept with you? My compliments, sweetheart, on your bold offense … you certainly know the subtleties of when a bluff is a bluff is a bluff.” He winked at her gratuitously and smiled his most dazzling, mocking smile.

“The simple truth,” Empress said levelly, looking at the darkly handsome man who had slept with so many women that he should be the last person on earth to take a proprietary virtuous stance, “is … you’re the only man I’ve ever slept with.”

“Charming lie, I’m sure,” Trey said with elaborate courtesy, untouched by the sincerity of her words, his own internal images of the merry widow of Paris quite different. One was not awarded the sobriquet the Green Temptress for the table one set. “Is that innocent denial normally effective?” he added as a facetious afterthought.

“What do you want from me?” Empress asked wearily, her emotions crushed and bludgeoned, her expectations and dreams in shattered fragments, all because of a beautiful man who’d shown her kindness once.

“I’d like to fuck you steadily for a week or so to begin with … and then I’ll reassess my priorities. How does that sound?”

“It sounds like Trey Braddock-Black, world-class stud,”
Empress replied sharply, reminded instantly of how little her dreams meant next to the reality of his libertine life, “and I don’t care to accommodate you!” she added heatedly, attempting to pull loose from his punishing grip.

He didn’t move, her struggles ineffective against his effortless power. “I’m not sure your acquiescence is entirely necessary, darling,” he drawled, his pale eyes raking her intransigent figure, his tone as heated as hers. “Maybe it’ll be just as interesting to tie you to my bed for a fortnight and see if I can remember everything you like.”

“So sorry to disappoint you,” she retorted maliciously, standing defiantly before him in tumbled hair, stocking feet, and crumpled gown, “but with Max, my schedule is limited.”

“You don’t have to be untied to nurse Max.”

“You beast! This isn’t the hinterlands of Montana where your word is law!” Her voice trembled with rage. “The Jordans have been noblemen since Charlemagne, long before your people had even
seen
a horse, when the Absarokee were still hunting on foot!”

His entire person went still, not a muscle moved, his face like a mask. “I don’t care,” he said, each word as unyielding as his posture, “if the Jordans were here before the Flood.” A muscle high over his cheekbone clenched, marring the perfect stillness, and his voice lowered to a grating rasp. “I don’t care if they rode horses for a thousand years before we did. If I want to take you away tonight, I will. Do you understand? And a nursemaid for Max is hardly a problem. Don’t be naïve about my capabilities and resources.” He was crushing the bones in her wrist.

Her face went pale, reminded of Trey’s autocratic impulses, conscious, too, of the full extent of his compulsion. He was not a gentleman pressing his suit. And all the accoutrements of Braddock-Black power rushed back: the personal guards; the small army of clansmen; the private train and railroad track; the influence on politics; the limitless wealth. She remembered, too, a time at the ranch when she’d asked Trey what he intended doing with his life, and he’d said, “Rule my half of Montana.”

“Would you?” Her eyes were deep green and large in the whiteness of her face. “Would you imprison me?”

“Maybe,” he said flatly. “Come here and we’ll discuss it.”

“I despise you.” Each word was separate, frigid, and inescapably poisonous.

“This whole situation is lunacy,” he said, coolly indifferent, “so it doesn’t matter as long as you flatter me with your enchanting company.”

“I never will by choice,” she spat, her bitterness keen-edged and surly.

“Let’s see if we can remedy that.” His smile was so unpleasant, she shivered at the unctuous animosity, and when he jerked on her wrist, she moved forward with trepidation. This hard, implacable man frightened her. “Undress,” he said, the single word imperious. “I haven’t seen you in months.”

She hesitated briefly, but the expression on his face was wintry, precluding dissent, and when his fingers uncurled slowly as if testing her obedience, she obeyed.

Standing before him, faltering and uncertain, she looked at him from under the lush fall of her lashes, the green of her eyes like a magnet with that damnable capricious flicker of innocence. The lure of innocence, that was the temptation, he thought … wanting that trembling innocence. And he understood perfectly why they called her the Green Temptress over drinks at the clubs.

“I’m waiting.” Relaxed against the ornate headboard, he ran both hands through his long hair, insult in his gesture.

Empress reached for the small enameled buttons on her dress.

“Take your hair down first,” he ordered, wanting her to look as he remembered, without the fashionable Parisian hairdo of upswept curls. “I want to feel your hair.”

Reaching up to slide a tortoiseshell comb from her hair, her expression mutinous after his imperious command, her transient fear nullified by her ready temper, she muttered disdainfully, “Yes, sire, will there by anything more, Your Highness?”

“There’ll be substantially more, darling, before you’re through,” he murmured lazily, his silver eyes wolfish. “We’ll be testing your docility and my imagination … all in due time.”

“I refuse,” she hissed, her eyes sparking flashes of green flame at his high-handed coercion, “to be treated like some … some …”

“Trollop?” he supplied mockingly.

“Exactly! And I
won’t
!” She stood holding the jeweled comb like a weapon.

“I should think the role quite comfortable for you, Mrs. Miles. Certainly I’m not the first of your harem to make a request for some particular fancy. I
like
the feel of your hair,” he noted incidentally, as though they were discussing the merits of his request and her bitterness were irrelevant. “In any event”—and his voice lost its pretense at lightness—“I’m not concerned with your opinions or sensitivities, only the availability of your body. And I’m waiting … the south of France is waiting … or if you prefer more exotic locales, North Africa.”

She threw the comb at him, but he only caught the flung missile and smiled. “It’s entirely up to you,” he said with gentle mockery, “my
dear
Mrs. Miles.”

He watched her grudgingly take down her hair and with a faint smile caught each comb she hurled at him, neatly placing them on the bedside table. She struggled a moment to work the small buttons at her wrists free, then shrugged out of her dress, dropping the glistening gown with a studied, deliberate affectation. Trey’s gaze idly followed the fall of spring-green silk as it rippled to the floor at her feet. “Do you really intend on going through with this despotic charade?” she asked resentfully, standing before him in her chemise and petticoats.

“I prefer more tranquillity—or at least a restful neutrality, to be perfectly honest.” He shrugged. “But Paris has made you less cooperative.” Because all the other men have profoundly expanded her options, he thought censoriously.

“And Paris has brought out the bloody autocrat in you,” she replied tartly.

“Ah, dear.” He sighed mockingly. “Both of us with blighted hopes in paradise. But let’s see what satisfaction we can salvage from the discontent. Personally,” he went on with a sardonic smile, “I’ve always found a good fuck breaks my concentration on the disillusions of life.”

“Someday,” she vowed quietly, “I’m going to exact retribution for this damned servitude.”

You already have, he wanted to say; you’ve made ten months of my life hell.
“If you’ve finished playing God’s
avenging angel, could you move on to your next role?” he said instead, his voice deliberately mild. “Finish undressing.”

Her petticoats were stripped off in quick succession as Trey watched. But his arousal was a less dispassionate gauge of his emotions, his erection prominent, rising markedly as each petticoat was discarded until she stood finally in only stockings and chemise, the focus of all sexual attention framed by her two remaining articles of clothing. He only motioned this time to have her finish, and in moments she was nude.

“Are you satisfied now?” Empress snapped, tossing aside her last stocking, her tawny hair tumbling around her shoulders, her eyes blazing.

“Hardly.” His drawl was punctuated with a quick lift of his eyebrows. “Surely you understand the sequence of events in these fascinating, amorous games, sweetheart. Satisfaction comes … much later. But I see,” he went on in the same insolent tone, “you’re becoming interested. Cooperative at last—”

“I
am not
,” she repudiated hotly, his derisive murmur impelling her heated rebuff.

“Then what’s that?” He raised a slender bronzed hand and languidly gestured.

Shamed, Empress felt milk oozing from her breasts, dripping on the rumpled clothes at her feet, her senses immune to her hot-tempered offense at Trey’s barbaric conduct. “I’m
not
interested,” she maintained stubbornly.

“Good,” he said calmly, “we’ll keep this businesslike.”

“Fine,” she replied with a toss of her head, her tone outrivaling his in indifference.

He stretched out his hand, and after one considered moment and Trey’s curt, “Now,” she walked forward and put her hand in his. Sitting up fully, he swung his legs over the side of the bed and pulled her close. “We can’t have you ruining my suit … with this,” he murmured as his elegant finger caught two drops of milk trickling from her nipple, and mortified at her body’s brazen response, she felt the flush of embarrassment creep up her cheeks.

Trey saw the rosy blush, too, and smoothly remarked, “What a marvelous actress … virtuous modesty after all we’ve been through …” But it roused him, that feigned
naíveté and angered him, too, when he considered how many other men had enjoyed its captivating enchantment.

“How much more,” she said in a small, tight voice, “do you want?”

“I haven’t,” he replied very softly, gazing at her splendid glowering rage, “even started.”

And if she’d dared, she would have shoved him away a short moment later as he bent his head and lowered his mouth to her breast. His lips closed gently over her peaked nipple, his tongue licking the tip, sliding over and around the hardened, tingling crest, teasing for one heartbeat, two, while she tautly waited for the full pressure of his mouth. And then it came—hard, firm, sucking—and her milk came rushing down, her knees went weak, every pleasure receptor in her body opened wide. His hands came up swiftly to steady her, clamped hard on her hips, and supported her while he teased and sucked and nibbled and made her think: It’s been too long … too long … 
too
long. She shouldn’t respond so acutely,
she mustn’t
, Empress thought in the next instant, desperately fighting the dizzying sensations. He was everything she hated in a man—arrogant, insolent, selfish. But a thundering pleasure pealed through her body, drummed, roared, swelled through every quivering nerve, obliterating judgment, scorning cognitive thought, only wanting lavish, unrestrained fulfillment. And she felt a wayward wetness not only at her breasts but also sliding down from the pit of her stomach, a hot, tropical, steaming heat that wantonly disregarded “shouldn’t” and “mustn’t,” overlooked the flagrant flaws in Trey’s character, and waited, poised breathlessly, for the surging rapture to intensify.