Too Wicked to Tame (27 page)

He marched forth, leaving the mad crush behind until only a distant thrum of voices floated down the corridor after them. Spying a door amid the wood-paneled wall to his right, he glanced up and down the hall’s length. Satisfied no one observed them, he yanked it open.

“Heath,” she scolded as he thrust her within, “I insist you—”

He silenced the rest of her words with the hot seal of his mouth, suddenly forgetting what it was he meant to tell her.

“What are you doing?” she hissed, tearing her lips from his and backing away several paces. Her temper burned bright—bright as the eyes glittering down at her in the dim room.

She pressed her fingertips to her mouth, still tasting him on her burning lips. Against her fingers, she raged, “How dare you drag me in here. I told you to stay away from me.”

Moonlight glowed through the single window high in the wall, the sole light in which to see his features, harsh and fierce with emotion as he charged, “And you think I would listen? We’ve much unfinished, you and I.”

She dropped her hand. “We have nothing to finish. Nothing at all. I’ve heard everything I ever want to hear from you.”

He stalked her, backing her against the wall. “You cannot mean to seriously consider another man’s suit. Not after what happened between us.”

“What I mean to do is no affair of yours,” she snapped, shaking her head, confused. Why was he here? Why would he imply that what happened between them held any significance when he himself had declared it a mistake.

He laughed, a dangerous, mirthless sound that made her skin tingle. Trapped in this closet, she was totally at his mercy.

She latched on to the single weapon available—her anger. Recalling his shabby treatment of her, his words: you’re no different than any other prostitute selling herself for the right price—her anger sprang to life. “You’ve said everything you had to say.”

“Matters have changed—”

“I don’t see how,” she replied, trying to step around him once again. “Let me pass.”

“Not until you hear me out,” he growled.

She pressed her lips shut and arched a brow, waiting.

He stared down at her for a long moment, as if testing whether she would remain truly silent.

Inhaling, he announced, “I still want to marry you.”

Still. He needn’t sound so blasted aggrieved.

“As I said, much has changed.” He dragged a hand through his hair. “There have been certain…discoveries. The madness cannot be passed. Not like I thought.”

She felt her brows draw together. “But your father, your brother—”

“Were sick,” he finished. “And showing all the symptoms of porphyria…as my grandmother wanted everyone to believe.”

“I don’t understand.” She pressed her fingers to her temples where a dull throb had begun.

“Grandmother wanted everyone to believe my father had porphyria.”

“He didn’t?”

“No,” he sighed, and she felt that sigh vibrate through her, stretch along her nerves. “My father had the pox.” His words fell hard as bricks in the dense still of the room. “He infected my mother while she carried my brother.” He paused as though searching for words less shocking than those he had just uttered. “He killed her. And my brother.”

“Syphilis?” Portia demanded, her head spinning. “Isn’t there treatment—”

“Either he didn’t realize it until it was too late, or he was in denial. The latter, I suspect. In any case, it killed him. And there was little to be done for my brother. A babe born with the pox has no chance.”

“I don’t understand. Why were you led to believe—”

“Grandmother,” he snapped, recalling his grandmother’s tearful excuses when he confronted her.

“She considered a king’s disease more acceptable than a whore’s disease.” He laughed bitterly.

Portia nodded. “Your grandmother chose the more dignified malady,” she mused, rather suspecting her grandmother would have done the same. Despite her anger—her desperate need to put distance between them—her heart ached for him. “I’m sorry, Heath. Sorry for the years you and your sisters suffered.”

“It’s done,” he said with a lift of his shoulder. “I’m concerned with now, this moment. For the first time in my life, I have a future to look forward to.” He grasped her by the arms, his eyes glowing with an unyielding light. “Do you know what this means, Portia? There’s no reason I shouldn’t marry.”

“No,” she said slowly, “There’s no reason you shouldn’t.”

“Considering I’ve already ruined you, you’re the best—”

“Ruined?” God, how she detested that word. “I’m not ruined. No one knows—”

“That doesn’t change the fact that I’m honor bound to marry you.”

“Stuff your obligation,” she cut in. “I release you from it.”

“You can’t release me. Obligation is simply that. No one can release someone from their duty.”

Duty. A word she had come to appreciate lately. She felt inappropriate laughter bubble up inside her. He offered her marriage. He could wed her, bed her, and beget children with her. All for duty. Not out of love, not out of need or desire for her, but out of what was expected of him. She pressed a hand to her belly, suddenly feeling ill.

And ironically enough, duty demanded she wed.

Yet not him. Not this arrogant, insufferable man who had already broken her heart once. Who couldn’t even manage a dignified proposal. She would not give him the power to hurt her again.

“I have my own obligations,” she said tightly, lifting her chin. “I’ve changed, too, you know.”

His gaze flickered over her face. “Is that so?”

“I no longer shirk my responsibilities.” She shook her head, feeling painfully foolish to ever have thought that she could, that she could have been that selfish, that she could have been so much like Bertram. Squaring her shoulders, she confessed, “My brother has left us, departed for foreign soil.”

“He abandoned you?” The astonishment in his voice rang clear and Portia smiled grimly. Heath would not be able to make sense of such a thing—a brother, an eldest son, fleeing duty, leaving his family to face trouble alone.

“Where has he gone?” he demanded in affronted tones, as if he himself would fetch her errant brother home.

She laughed dryly. “He did not exactly leave a forwarding address. It’s for the best, I suppose.

Scandal was imminent if he remained. Bertram became involved in certain activities.”

Heath stared at her for a long moment before nodding, accepting the little she had told him and not pressing for more.

“With Bertram gone,” her voice faded. “Well, suffice it to say things have become rather desperate.” Humiliation stung her cheeks, sharp as a Yorkshire wind. It scraped her pride to make such a confession, to reveal her brother’s abandonment, to disclose the weaknesses of her family—even if logic reminded her that his family had its fair share of flaws.

“Portia,” he began, his hands flexing over her bare arms, the rasp of his calluses on her flesh fluttering her insides. “Let me help. Marry me and—”

“No,” her voice rang out, sharp and inflexible. Automatic. Although she had accepted the notion of marriage, she could not accept the notion of marriage to Heath. Let me help. So now he would marry her out of pity as well as obligation? Could he humiliate her any more? Regardless of how he made her feel, how her body responded to him, she could not tolerate marrying him for those reasons. And for what reasons could you tolerate marrying him? Shaking her head, she shoved the question into the dark night of her mind.

“No?” he echoed, his angry voice reverberating in the confined space, eyes flashing in the glow of the moon. “Why am I not acceptable? I thought deep pockets were the only requisite? You said you’ve decided to wed. You need to marry someone capable of supporting your family. I’m willing. Why not me?”

Why not me?

She shut her eyes in one long blink, hating how logical he sounded—how illogical he made her sound. Why not him?

His face as she had seen him that last day in the library—his handsome features twisted in loathing—flashed in her mind. He’d hurt her, wounded her to the core. She could not let him do so again. She couldn’t be that weak, that stupid.

Her lips moved numbly, spilling forth an explanation that had nothing to do with the one that squeezed at her heart, “Oliver Simon will not simply support us, he will also settle Bertram’s debts.”

His fingers dug into her arms, nearly lifting her off her feet. “I can do that.”

“Why would you want to?” she bit out. “With Simon it’s an even trade. I get something. He gets something. Business. Plain and simple.”

The opera resumed, the music swelling until it pounded all around them, humming along the walls and floor beneath their feet.

“And what exactly does he get?” The question was loaded, rife with danger. Heath’s gaze slid over her, indicating he had already formed an opinion.

It was the one question she refused to dwell on. Not when her nights were spent thinking about Heath, remembering his hands and mouth on her. “Mr. Oliver wants respectability, an entrance into Society.”

“He smells of the docks.”

“It’s a practical arrangement. You and I—”

“Make a hell of a lot more sense that you and him.”

She smiled tightly, wanting desperately to fling his words back at him. There is no you and me.

Instead, she settled for, “We don’t suit.”

“No?”

The tiny hairs on her nape tingled and she knew she had provoked him too far.

The air in the tiny room changed subtly, thickened, grew electric. He snatched both her wrists and pulled them above her head.

“What are you doing?” she squeaked as he pressed the hard length of his body against her.

His unsmiling face looked down at her, watching her intently as he lowered his head. His head inched toward hers, but she dodged his mouth.

His eyes narrowed, lips thinning into a grim line. Releasing her wrists, he spun her about and crushed her into the wall. He grasped her hips in rough hands, pulling them out slightly from the wall. A shocked gasp escaped her as he nudged her thighs apart through her gown.

“What are you—” her voice froze, trapped in her throat as his hands came around to clasp her breasts. A hard bulge prodded at her backside through the volume of her skirts.

His fingers rolled, tweaked and squeezed her nipples into rock-hard points. Desire pooled low in her belly. A keening moan escaped her. She turned her face and rested one cheek against the wall, unable to move, unable to resist the seductive assault.

His hands dropped. She moaned in disappointment.

Then she felt him hike her skirts to her waist. He shoved down her undergarments. Cool air caressed her. His hand traveled over her thighs, her backside. A hissing cry escaped her when he bent and nipped at her exposed buttocks. His hand slid between her legs, fingers probing, pushing deep inside her.

She came out of her skin, sobbing as his hand plundered her. Then the hand disappeared. An anguished whimper ripped from her throat, swallowed by the music pulsing around them. She bit her bottom lip, waiting, desperate for what was to come, what she had thought she would never have again. Her body burned, ached, trembling like a leaf.

Hard hands fell on her hips, fingers digging into her softness, lifting her to accept the hot length of him sliding inside her. He penetrated her deeply and a scream welled up in her throat.

His hands shifted, angling her for deeper invasion, anchoring her for his thrusts. She clawed the wall, fighting for a handhold. Her knees felt like water. If not for his hands on her hips, she would have slid to the floor in a shuddering, boneless pile.

Cries tore from her mouth at his every plunge. He lifted her higher, the heels of her slippers coming off the floor. His own breath came hard and fast in her ear as he ground into her bottom.

One of his hands slid from her hip, kneading and squeezing her bottom possessively before sliding around, dipping, finding that plea sure spot between her quivering thighs that begged to be touched, stroked, set afire. She gasped as his fingers worked their magic, moving in fast little circles until she broke, shattered, convulsed between the wall and the man at her back that had become her entire world.

A few more powerful thrusts and he stilled, buried to the hilt. He pulsed within her, spilling his seed deep within her.

A mixed sense of elation and horror grabbed hold of her heart, squeezing tightly. The night at the lodge he had always withdrawn, always held himself in check. Not so now.

She lifted her cheek from the wall and gazed at her hands splayed flat before her. Moonlight washed the walls, tingeing the flesh of her hands blue.

Strong fingers brushed the back of her neck. “Portia—”

“No,” she choked, loathing for herself—for him—burning a bilious trail up her throat as she squeezed between him and the wall. Her hands shook as she bent and set her undergarments to rights. “Don’t say a word.”

Straightening, she risked a glance at his face and her heart constricted at the almost tender look on his face. If his words matched the look on his face, she was doomed.

Her unsteady hand touched her hair as she moved toward the door.

His hand clamped down on her arm. “Surely now you can see—”

“I see nothing save two people who haven’t a shred of sense or dignity.” She inhaled a great gulp of air. “Who just copulated like beasts in a closet.”

The tender looked fled, a hard mask taking its place.

“Marry me and you won’t have to worry about that. We’ll be husband and wife.” He scoured her with a dark look, one full of lust and promise. The smoldering fire in her belly flared to life, betraying her. “You can have this every night without threat to your sense of dignity.” He uttered the word as if it were a jest, something that did not exist. And perhaps for her it did not. When it came to him she had displayed very little dignity. It was as if she lost the ability to think when he entered the room.

Marry me and you won’t have to worry about that. We’ll be husband and wife. No, but she would have to worry about much more. Her heart, her pride, her self-control—her future with a man who held the ability to wound her like the sharpest of blades. She would have to be daft to bind herself to him.