Tempting a Devil (29 page)

“You have?” she asked hesitantly. “Roger, what is going on?”

He turned her to face the mirror again and began to apply long, slow strokes to her hair. It was incredibly soft to the touch, like silk, and it crackled as he brushed it,
clinging to the bristles and his hand. He dragged the brush down her back, his other hand following, petting, and soothing her. “I’m sorry, that’s what it’s about.”

She shook her head, lowering her eyes to her dressing table and fiddling with some pins and jewelry. “You did nothing wrong,” she said. “I’m the one who lied.”

He continued to brush her hair, for his own enjoyment and also because she seemed to be relaxing a bit under his ministrations. “I didn’t handle the truth well, so perhaps you weren’t so wrong to lie to me,” he said ruefully. He sighed. “What happened, when you were married, that was before this, before us. I shouldn’t have reacted that way.”

“Was that what it was about?” she said, sounding terribly weary. “I thought it was about the lies.” She turned to face him then, and her hair was like a curtain between them, still clinging to the brush. She pulled it free. Roger didn’t step back to give her more room. “You can’t accept what I did. That I lay with Faircloth willingly in order to have a baby so that I could gain control of Mercer’s money and estate.”

She said it with a challenge in her voice, as if testing him. She didn’t realize he’d said it to himself a thousand times in the last two days, and it wasn’t her actions that horrified him, it was the fact that she’d had to do it at all. “I wish you had come to me,” he whispered, running the backs of his fingers down her cheek tenderly. “I would have protected you.”

“I couldn’t. I didn’t even know where you were two years ago.”

Two years ago. He shook his head. “I was in Italy.”

“Well, then,” she said turning back to the mirror and watching him in the reflection, “I couldn’t have gone to you, could I? I couldn’t even leave the estate.”

“I’m sorry that I made you … do what you had to do with Faircloth.” And there it was. The very thing he’d tried to forget with the whiskey. He was no better than that degenerate bastard.

Her eyes widened. “Made me? I practically had to tie you down to do it.” She turned then and placed her hands on his shoulders, looking into his eyes with a grave expression. “Believe me, I wanted to do it. Sharing that with you erased any memory of the past, Roger. I needed that so much.”

He set the brush down on the dressing table blindly and took her in his arms, hugging her tightly. “I’m glad, then.”

She hugged him back. “I am, too.” She pulled back, but not out of his embrace. “Does this mean we’re friends again?” she asked tentatively. “I’ve missed you.”

“No,” he shook his head. “It means we’re lovers again.”

“I’ve missed that, too,” she whispered, a little smile on her lips. “Not because I need you to ruin me in some foolish, ill-conceived plan. But because I want you and I want to feel that way again with you.”

“The wanting,” Roger said. “I told you it was the best part.”

Chapter Twenty-five

To her complete shock, Roger picked her up in his arms and carried her over to the bed. “What are you doing?” she asked in delight.

“Ravishing you,” he replied.

“Oh, all right.” She wasn’t sure what he had in mind, and she didn’t care. He was taking her to bed. Whatever happened there was going to delight and thrill her, that much she knew. She was just so incredibly relieved that he didn’t hate her. This was more than she’d ever hoped for.

He began to undress her. “Tomorrow we shall tackle the Faircloth problem together. I think I have a solution.”

“I do not want to hear his name again tonight,” she said firmly. “He has no place here with us.”

“Agreed,” Roger said. “Tomorrow.”

As soon as he had her dress and corset undone, Harry shimmied out of them. She sat on the bed to remove her shoes and stockings and watched Roger remove his clothes. When he went to hang his jacket on the dummy, he noticed his coat still there. He just smiled and covered it with the rather threadbare one he’d been wearing.

She loved to see each inch of his skin revealed. His broad chest with its swath of dark hair, his flat stomach, and his so very muscular thighs. He was manliness personified, and she was overwhelmed, just as he’d said she would be the other night. She was going to touch him, to worship him with her body in a way she’d never wanted
to with another man, despite her wedding vows.

He walked over to her slowly, letting her see his arousal and look her fill. “Aren’t you going to take that off?” he asked, running a finger around the décolletage of her chemise.

“I am? I mean, am I?” she asked, shocked. What did this mean?

He nodded. “Oh, yes. Tonight, naked.”

There was no need for him to ask twice. She jumped up from the bed and pulled the chemise over her head. Her hair flew into her face and she dropped the chemise and used both hands to push it out of the way. Suddenly Roger’s hand was there, grabbing a fistful of her hair and firmly pulling her head back until her startled gaze met his. “I’m going to take you tonight, Harry,” he told her, shocking her senseless. “Is that all right?”

“Yes,” she said breathlessly, her body quivering with a desire that slammed into her hard and fast. “God, yes. I want you there. I want only you there.”

His mouth crashed down on hers and she knew then that this would not be slow and gentle. She clutched him to her, her nails scoring his shoulders at the intensity of her feelings, and he moaned, pulling her closer, kissing her deeper, pressing his sex against her. She was shaking, weak-kneed with desire.

He broke their kiss, and his stare was dark and would have frightened her if he wasn’t Roger. He was going to take her, he’d said. His eyes were telling her the same thing. At last, he was going to make her his and stake a claim to her body, which had desired no man but him.

He laid her down on the bed and climbed on top of her, and she breathed a sigh of relief that he wasn’t going to make her wait. She ached with need.

“Are you ready?” he asked. He touched her then and she gasped, jerking into his broad hand, his fingers slipping through her sex with an intimacy and sureness she knew she would crave from that moment on. She spread her legs and invited him into her and he accepted. He moved his hand and kissed her again and then he slid inside, pulling her against his length with a hand on her hip.

She moaned at the exquisite feel of him. She’d never known it could feel like this, not painful or humiliating or frightening, but as if two people were suddenly one, and the joy of it brought a pleasure indescribable to those who had not experienced it. He moved then and she gasped against his mouth, crying out.

“Are you all right?” he asked roughly, panting against her lips.

He was heat and hardness and man surrounding her, claiming her, and she had never felt safer or freer. “Yes,” she said forcefully. “Yes. More. I want more.”

He laughed, his mouth still touching hers. It felt as if they were so in tune, they were sharing their very breath. “Yes. More.” He began to move steadily then, and Harry’s mind scattered until Roger was all there was—what he was doing to her and what he was making her feel. Her body felt as if it were someone else’s, someone daring and wild and lusty. She gave herself to him with abandon, and he took greedily and demanded more.

Her climax broke suddenly and violently and she cried out and held on to him with arms and legs and nails, not letting him go, and he groaned his surrender as he gave in to her passion, joining her in ecstasy.

“Next time slow and sweet,” he growled in her ear sleepily a few minutes later, when they were snuggled together, her back to his front.

She nodded, barely able to stay awake. “Next time,” she sighed, and she faded off
to the feel of his kiss upon her nape.

* * *

It was hard for Roger to think with Harry sprawled across his chest, the two of them still breathless from her morning ride. She’d taken to that particular saddle with aplomb, thrilled at the prospect of being in control. He’d enjoyed it immensely, much to his surprise. Harry in control was quite a thing to see. But he could no longer ignore the sun coming brightly through the windows. It was tomorrow, and he had plans to make.

“I should like to marry you,” he told her with satisfaction, envisioning many such mornings as this, Harry satisfied atop him as he prepared to greet the day.

Harry scrambled off him so fast that she unmanned him in the process, and she ended up sprawled on her posterior on the carpet beside the bed.

“What the devil?” Roger cried out, doubling over as he took a deep breath to assuage the pain of a knee in the groin. He glared at Harry and she backed away awkwardly on her hands and feet, like a crab on the shore.

“Sorry,” she said breathlessly, her eyes wide. “You surprised me.”

“Clearly,” he grunted, rolling up to a sitting position. “And not in a good way.” He took several more deep breaths through his nose, waiting for the burning pain to go down. Finally he was able to speak again. “Madam, you have almost destroyed that which gave you great pleasure. Could you, perhaps, try not to be so hasty in future?”

Harry sat on the floor, her knees drawn up, her hands resting flat beside her as she watched him warily. “Oh, good. I thought for a moment I’d have to get the smelling salts,” she said, unmanning him further.

“Thank you for your concern,” he said sarcastically. He started to get up and Harry made a mad scramble for her armoire, grabbing the same silky peignoir she’d worn the other morning.
That
morning. “I am not going to accost you,” he said, annoyed at her behavior. “I’m going to have some privacy and check and make sure everything is still where it should be. If you can contain your panic, would you mind waiting here so we can actually try talking about something for once?”

“I am not panicking,” she said, with as much dignity as she could muster while standing there in a see-through peignoir clutching a random shoe. He had no idea where the shoe had come from. He’d never seen it before.

“Of course you’re not,” he said soothingly, “not at all.”

She glared and pointed at him. “You can’t go out like that.”

He reached down, wincing at the slight, remaining sting, and grabbed his pants. “No, I cannot.” He pulled them on, and with as much dignity as
he
could muster, limped out.

* * *

As soon as Roger left, Harry slumped down in her little dressing chair, feeling light-headed and sick. She leaned over and rested her forehead on her knees.

She hadn’t handled that well.

She knew, in some forgotten corner of her brain, that she ought to be very happy that Roger wanted to marry her. After all, she was relatively sure she was in love with him. Her feelings for him hadn’t changed since she was six years old. Her love may have taken on a different sort of expression, but it was love. She adored everything about him.
She thought he was perfect, though she knew he wasn’t. She didn’t care. She wanted to look at him, listen to him, touch him, and be with him every minute of every day. Surely that was love? The sort that ended in … marriage? She could hardly bring herself to even think the word.

The door opened and she sat up so quickly that she grew light-headed again.

“Better?” Roger asked with a brittle smile as he closed the door. He wasn’t limping. That was a good sign.

She nodded.

“Now, would you care to tell my why my marriage proposal sent you into a panicked frenzy?” he asked, too calmly. She rather thought that that voice meant he was trying very hard not to yell.

“It isn’t that I hate the very idea of being with you,” she began, and he winced. Perhaps she should try a different tack. “It’s this whole marriage business. We’re adults, aren’t we? I’m a widow, with the freedom and leniency that society gives widows of means and stature. Surely we don’t have to sign some silly papers, and I don’t have to agree to give my life away in order to be together?”

“Ah,” Roger said. He sat down on the end of her bed and regarded her somberly. “So you feel that marriage to me would mean giving up everything you hold dear.”

“No, no, that’s not what I said,” she hurried to correct him. “What I meant was that I’ve just got all that I need. I don’t need marriage.”

“None of us
need
marriage,” he said reasonably. “It is a state into which we enter willingly with the hope that we shall benefit in some way from sharing our lives with another person.”

“
I
did not enter it willingly,” she told him bluntly, “and the benefits were far outweighed by the misfortunes.”

“Perhaps the benefit-misfortune ratio was skewed by your unwillingness,” he observed. “But I do not fault you for that in any way. Rather I fault your father and the late Lord Mercer.”

“And so you should,” she agreed indignantly. “As you know, my experience with the married state was not a good one. Did we …” She wasn’t sure what to call it. “Did you take me last night in hopes I’d have to marry you?”

“No,” he said, visibly holding back his anger at the question. “I took you last night because I realized I’m in love with you and that eventually I hoped we would marry. Holding back under those circumstances seemed foolish.”

“Perhaps we should have discussed this beforehand,” she said shortly. “I have been forced to marry once. I have no desire to do so again.”

“And you believe that I would force you, as they did before?”

She didn’t answer, not because she believed it but because she feared it.

“And you also believe being married to me would be similar to being married to Mercer? Let me assure you, were we to marry, you would enter that blissful state willingly, and benefits would accrue accordingly. I do not desire marriage, with you or anyone, under any other circumstances.”

“But you can’t be sure,” she said, feeling a little desperate. “There are no guarantees that benefits will accrue. I was told marriage to Mercer would be a fine thing. Look how that turned out.”

“Again, I am not Lord Mercer,” he said patiently. “And of course there are no
guarantees. That’s where the hope element of the equation enters into it.”