He moved slowly across the room, graceful, lethal. She remained still, awaiting him, telling herself to hold still when he touched her, telling herself to close her eyes and retreat inside herself and it would soon be over. Telling herself that fighting him would only make it worse.
But when he reached out and touched her shoulder, something inside her snapped, and she slapped him across his elegant, beautiful face, as hard as she could.
Nicholas’s head whipped back from the force of her blow, but his fingers neither tightened nor released her shoulder. “That was unwise of you, Ghislaine,” he murmured, but there was no disguising the tight thread of anger beneath his indolent tone. “Don’t you know what they say about me?”
“Get your hands off me.” She tried to squirm away, and this time his hands did tighten, painfully.
“They say I’m half-mad. A bad ‘un, through and through, with no sense of decency or honor. They say to cross me is to put one’s life at risk. Most people steer clear of me and my hot temper.” His voice was as thin and mocking as his smile.
“Are you?”
“Am I what?”
“Half-mad.”
He stared at her for a long, meditative moment, and there was no discerning the expression behind his dark, fathomless eyes. “Surely I must be,” he said. “To still want you.” And he pulled her up against him, his mouth coming down on hers, hard.
She struggled, but it was useless. He was far too big, too strong, his arms holding her tight against his aroused body as his mouth plundered hers. She tried to push, but her hands were trapped between their bodies. She tried to jerk her mouth away, but while one of his strong arms held her immobile, his other hand was free to hold her chin still for his marauding mouth. He tasted of the brandy he’d drunk with abandon; he tasted of the coffee she’d made him. He tasted of anger and determination and sex. She only wished he tasted of poison.
She stopped her struggles, for a brief, deceptive moment. And brought her knee up, hard, between his legs.
He was too fast for her. He moved, just in time, spinning her around and falling onto the bed with her beneath him, his mouth never leaving hers, and she wanted to scream.
It would do no good. There would be no one to hear her. She’d survived rape before; she could do so again. She closed her eyes, closed away the sight of him, and withdrew, curling up in that small, dark place inside, away from him, away from everyone.
She was barely aware of the moment when his mouth left hers. She lay very still, waiting for him to rip the dress off her. Perhaps he intended to be more frugal, simply tossing her skirts over her head and pulling them back down when he was finished. It didn’t matter. She couldn’t feel a thing.
His hands slid across her cheeks, his fingers entwining in her long, tangled hair, and she felt the fall of lace against her bruised mouth. She waited, waited for the violence that would help her descent into forgetfulness, but nothing came. Nothing but silence, broken by the crackle of the fire, the harsh, gradually slowing sound of his breathing.
Finally, unwillingly, when the silence had grown so that it filled the room, she opened her eyes. He was straddling her body, looking down at her, an odd expression on his face. “You’re back,” he said.
She braced herself, waiting for the assault to begin once more. But he made no move, his hands still cupping her face, his eyes intent. “Back?” she managed to echo, her voice a rough whisper. It sounded as if she’d been screaming for hours. Perhaps she had.
“From that little world where you go,” he said, his thumbs brushing, caressing, her soft mouth.
Long ago, one of the older women at the inn where she used to cook tried to explain to her the joys of married sex. It wasn’t the act, so much, the old woman had said. A messy, overrated thing, as far as she was concerned. It was the holding, before and after, that mattered. Sex was simply the trade-off wives had to make.
Ghislaine had scoffed at the notion. No amount of tenderness before or after could make the act bearable. To be sure, a younger matron, one with a brood of six hopeful children, had differed with old Mag, informing Ghislaine that with the right man, sex wasn’t the price she had to pay; it was the reward.
That notion struck her as even more absurd. Still, lying beneath Nicholas Blackthorne, his hands in her hair, she could begin to understand the sweetness of a soft touch. And sympathize with those women who were willing to pay the price.
It took all her formidable will to resist the seduction of his warm hands on her face, but she managed. “If you’re going to do it,” she said in a hard little voice, “then I wish you’d get on with it. I’d like some sleep.”
If she expected to goad him she failed. Instead, a mocking smile twisted his mouth. “You know, my pet, it’s damned hard to rape a woman who doesn’t fight. And it’s just as difficult to make love to a woman who simply lies there in a trance.”
“My apologies,” she snapped.
“I don’t suppose there’s any chance I could convince you to show a little more enthusiasm for this project? No? Then maybe we should both concentrate on getting some sleep.”
To her astonishment he released her, climbing off her body and sinking down on the pallet beside her. The moment he moved away she tried to bolt off the bed, but his hand shot out and caught her wrist, hauling her back against him, her skirts covering his long legs. “That doesn’t mean I’m about to let you go,” he said, levering himself up on his elbow. “I need my sleep as much as you do, and I’m frankly more concerned with my wellbeing than with yours. The only way I expect to be able to sleep well is if you’re taken care of. I’d hoped to seduce you into a nice little puddle of acquiescence, but since that seems unworth the effort, we’re simply going to have to resort to bondage.”
“Bondage?” she said, her eyes widening in the fitful light.
“Bondage,” he said, pushing himself off the bed.
She tried to bolt once more, but he simply caught her around the waist and threw her back down on the bed, none too gently. “I wouldn’t do that again if I were you,” he said calmly. “Next time I have to throw you down on the bed, I might not mind your passivity. Stay put, and count your blessings.”
“
Merci
,” she said, her voice rich with sarcasm.
“You never let up, do you?” he said, sitting down beside her, taking her wrists in his. He’d become adept with his neckcloth, only the jerky deftness of his hands betraying his tension as he bound her hands behind her back. “That’s one of the things that I admire about you, Ghislaine.” Leaning forward, he flipped up her skirts, exposing her legs, and she jumped.
“You promised…” she began, as she tried to squirm away from him.
“I promised nothing.” He sounded completely impersonal. “I’ll take you when and where I want to. And how. For the moment, I’m simply going to tie your ankles. I don’t want to have to worry about you creeping around looking for a weapon while I manage to catch up on my sleep.” He was as good as his word, tying her ankles and pulling her skirts back down around her. He stared at her, then sighed. “I have the feeling, my pet, that it might be a very long night.” He stretched out beside her, and she did her best to move away from him. The bed, however, was concave, and she simply rolled back, up against him.
He stared down at her with unholy amusement. “The question that remains,
ma mie,
is what do we do with that mouth of yours.”
She glared at him. “Apart from gagging me, there’s not a damned thing you can do.”
“But that’s where you’re wrong.” He slid down beside her, cupped her face with his long fingers, and brushed his mouth against hers, very gently.
“Don’t,” she said, trying to pull her head away.
“Grant me this much,” he said, and it wasn’t a request. “Since I’m being such a good boy tonight.” He kissed her again, just as gently, his lips clinging to hers for a long, breathless minute.
She couldn’t fight him. Not with her limbs tied, not with his hands holding her face still, not with his mouth so impossibly soft and gentle that it brought tears to her heart.
He nudged her lips apart with his own, using his tongue this time, not as invader but to stroke her, seduce her, tasting her lips, the sweet inside of her mouth and tongue, as he wrapped his long, lean body around hers.
She shut her eyes, wondering if she could escape from this, the most devastating assault of all. She could feel him through the thickness of her skirts, and she knew he was thoroughly aroused, even though he seemed to have decided against raping her. Perhaps he thought he could seduce her. She would simply have to show him it was a lost cause.
But he was demanding nothing from her, content to hold her in his arms and kiss her, lingeringly, every inch of her trembling mouth, before traveling up her face, to press his lips against her fluttering eyelids, then moving down to the unbearably sensitive lobe of her ear. Something was burning inside her, something she told herself was disgust.
She closed her eyes, trying to shut him out, trying to calm the pounding of her heart, trying to still the racing of her pulses, but when his mouth finally touched hers again, starting at one comer and nibbling on her lower lip, she couldn’t keep from moving her own lips, to catch his, to keep him there, to kiss him, and his quiet little sound of pleasure brought an answering rush to her own heart until she suddenly realized what she was doing…
A cry of anguish was torn from her as she tried to pull away from him. But for all the gentleness of his mouth, his hands were still inexorable, holding her still for his merciless gaze. “What’s the matter, Ghislaine?” he murmured. “Afraid you might like it?”
There was a trace of blood on his mouth, blood that must have come from her own mouth, bruised from his earlier harsh kiss. She stared up at him, shocked to realize she wanted to kiss the blood from his thin, mocking mouth. She wanted to kiss him, again and again and again. It was like a drug, one that wiped away common sense and safety, honor and revenge, the past and the future. All that mattered was the damp sweetness of his mouth against hers.
“If you kiss me again, I will kill you,” she said fiercely.
He shook his head. “Tell me something new, my angel. You’re already planning to gut-stick me the first chance you get. I might as well enjoy myself in the meantime.”
“By raping a bound woman?”
“No, love. By seducing a woman who is not quite certain whether she hates me more than anyone she’s ever known, or is still torn by an adolescent passion she never had a chance to outgrow.” Then, even as the words struck a death knell in her heart, he released her, kissing her once more, a brief, hard kiss on her bruised mouth, before sinking back beside her.
She could feel his body pressing along hers, the heat and hardness of him. Once more she tried to edge away. Once more she slid back.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” He sounded almost meditative in the darkness. “You’re keeping your chastity by only a thread. If you keep bumping against me I might regret my first act of nobility in at least twenty years.”
Ghislaine held still. The thought of her chastity was a joke, a sour one, one she was tempted to share. Except that it would give him license to touch her again, and she didn’t think she could bear it. Her heart was inured to cruelty, to harshness and brutality, even to rape. It was pathetically vulnerable to gentleness.
Nicholas had already ascertained that fact. He was an intelligent man—he knew all he needed to do was be gentle with her and she’d have no defenses at all. She couldn’t help but wonder why he had stopped, knowing the sure way to have her.
Perhaps, blessed be, he didn’t really want her all that much. This game of cat and mouse might have nothing to do with real desire, and everything to do with anger and revenge.
And then she remembered the unmistakable feel of his body pressed against hers, and knew without doubt that the desire was very real. On his part, at least.
She wanted to cry. No, she didn’t, she reminded herself. It was a blessing she couldn’t. If she were to cry, he would know it. If she were to cry, he would comfort her. And she knew with chilling certainty just what form that comfort would take.
She wouldn’t move, wouldn’t breathe, wouldn’t let her heart pound. Wouldn’t betray her confusion, her agitation, any more than she had to. Not when he guessed the cause already.
He wasn’t the beautiful young man she’d fallen in love with when she was young and innocent. He wasn’t the handsome English boy with the face of an angel, who smiled at her with a sweetness just for her, who took her small hand in his large, strong one, who looked at her with such intensity that it had frightened her as much as it called to her. That boy had never existed.
He was the monster who mocked and repudiated her to her father, who left her family to face disaster and tragedy. He was a gamester, a drunkard, a womanizer, and a murderer. He was responsible for all that had gone wrong in her life, and if she simply killed him, then everything would be fixed.
Foolish, foolish conceit on her part. Killing Nicholas Blackthorne wouldn’t bring her parents back from the guillotine, or return her safe, bucolic life. It wouldn’t bring Charles-Louis back from whatever horrifying fate had befallen him. It wouldn’t return to her all the things she had lost. And it wouldn’t fill the black hole in her heart that she had wanted to fill with revenge.
She would let it go. Let him go. She should have known her thirst for justice would only rebound on her own narrow shoulders. Even at his worst, Nicholas Blackthorne was no match for the pure evil of Jean-Luc Malviver. And the sight of Malviver after she’d killed him, was a vision that would haunt her till her own grave. And perhaps beyond.
She heard a soft, guttural noise, one she didn’t recognize. Until she realized with a shock that the enemy beside her was asleep, her torment and troubles casually dismissed. She wanted to kick him. She wanted to roll from the bed and make her escape, even if her bound feet forced her to hop all the way to the border.
She told herself she dared not risk it. He’d already warned her of the consequences if she woke him, and those were consequences she dare not pay. She would have to lie there, pressed up against the fiery warmth of his body, and endure.