“You’ve thought better of it,” she said slowly, her eyes, although she did not know it, faintly pleading.
“Have I?” He smiled. “Tell me, my darling, just which of us are you so worried about? Ivor, the slimy bastard, or me? It occurs to me to wonder why you didn’t scream for help. Surely you were not worried about disturbing Lady Chetwood’s guests in their enjoyment of her daughter’s atrocious singing?”
Megan glared at him furiously. “I didn’t want to make a scandal.” She told the exact truth. The consequences attendant upon screaming for rescue from a man’s embrace at a soiree had been too horrible to contemplate.
“Oh, yes?” he said politely, as his eyes slid over her from head to toe and then came back to rest on her face. They were lit at the back by tiny demons; Megan, looking at them, nearly shuddered. He looked as if he were on the brink of hell itself, and was having thoughts about dragging her there with him.
He continued softly: “Or was there another reason for your damnable silence, my darling? Were you so hungry for what I taught you that any man would do? Did you want Lord Ivor, Megan, the way you wanted me that night in my room?”
Megan stiffened, feeling furious color flood her face. “How dare you? How dare you suggest such a thing—or remind me of an event that fills me with shame every time I think of it? You’re contemptible! I despise you!”
“Do you?” he said, still terribly polite. “You relieve my mind. I can see that I have nothing further to lose.”
He straightened away from the doorjamb; Megan, frightened by something that had sprung to life in his face, began to back away.
“And where do you think you’re going, my own?” he said, moving toward her very slowly. Megan looked at him, saw the wild flicker of his eyes, and swallowed. He did not look sane. She continued to edge toward the door, her movements stealthy.
“Frightened of me, darling?” He laughed; the sound sent a chill down her spine. He was stalking her. With his black hair rioting around the harsh lines of his dark face, with the powerful length of his body clad in stark black and white, with the little golden demons glaring at her from the depths of his eyes, he looked like the devil himself. “Why, I believe you have reason.”
That mocking voice sent a chill down her spine. Megan took another step backward, relieved to feel the polished wood of the door against her back. In just a minute, she would be safe.
“Justin,” she began, her voice placating. She never got a chance to finish. With an oath, he drew back his hand and hurled the bottle into the fireplace. It landed
with a splintering crash. The whiskey caused the fire to flare hungrily; its fumes permeated the room. Megan jumped, her eyes flying fearfully to his face.
“You little bitch,” he rasped, stopping in his tracks and glaring ferociously at her. “Did you call him by name as he kissed you? Timothy, did you say, ‘oh, Timothy’?” His falsetto imitation of a female voice husky with passion made Megan cover her ears with her hands.
“I don’t have to listen to this!” she cried, her eyes full of sudden rage as they met his savage ones. “How dare you insult me in such a way? You know perfectly well it wasn’t like that. Your mind may live in the gutter, my lord Earl, but mine does not. I came in here tonight to try to make you see sense about that damned stupid duel, but now I see that it’s just the thing: I hope he kills you. I hope he blows a hole through you so big that a camel could pass through it. I hope… ”
She paused for breath, panting as she searched for words to describe the awful fate she hoped befell him. He smiled sardonically.
“Never mind,” he said softly. “I get your general drift.”
Megan glared at him furiously. “Good night, my lord,” she said with what dignity she could muster as she fumbled at the doorknob. “I’m going back to bed.”
Justin smiled again, his expression frightening. Panicking suddenly, Megan whirled, attempting to turn the knob and jerk open the door at the same time. With a sound like a snarl he lunged. Megan, panting,
her heart drumming loudly in her ears, pulled frantically at the door, but to no avail. He was too fast. In an instant he was beside her, his hard arms catching her around her shoulders and knees as he lifted her high in his arms. Instinctively Megan screamed. He muffled the sound with his mouth.
“Doesn’t the scandal worry you anymore?” he mocked harshly, striding with her toward his bedroom. Megan was still reeling from the brutal possession of his mouth, with its pungent whiskey fumes enveloping her.
“Put me down!” she cried when she could speak. “Damn you, you swine, put me down!”
The curl of Justin’s lips was ferocious. His gleaming tiger’s eyes raked her face with humorless intensity. Her frantic struggles seemed to have no effect on him except to make him tighten his grip.
“With a great deal of pleasure, my darling,” he said tightly, and before Megan realized what he was about she felt his arms loosen their grip on her. She was falling, arms and legs flailing, her eyes and mouth opened wide with surprise, to land with a bounce in the center of his huge bed. For just an instant she lay where he had dropped her, too stunned to move, and then, reading his intention in his eyes as he towered above her, she began to scramble frantically for the side of the bed.
“No!” she cried as his hard hands caught her, dragging her back. “No, no, no!”
Justin laughed, his face cruel with harsh mockery.
He was beside her in the bed, stilling her cries with his mouth, his hard thigh imprisoning hers so that she could not move, his hands capturing her flailing hands as she tried to claw his face and imprisoning them in one of his above her head. She was trapped, pinned by his weight, practically immobile.
“Oh, yes,” he whispered savagely against her mouth. “Yes, my darling, yes.”
He was kissing her, his mouth hard and hot against her own. His tongue was like a fiery rapier as he forced her lips apart; when she would not open her teeth for him he bit down warningly on her lower lip until her faint cry of pain allowed him the opening he sought. His tongue invaded her mouth, thrusting savagely into her softness, piercing her, violating her. Megan tried desperately to turn her head aside, but his hand was under her chin, holding her in place as he ravaged her mouth. His kisses continued until her struggles ceased, until she lay shivering and still beneath him.
“Justin, don’t do this,” she whispered as he reared his head back to look at her. He looked like a dark frightening stranger with his flesh taut over the hard bones of his face and his eyes blind with wanting. The violence he was showing terrified her. Never in her darkest dreams had she imagined that he could behave like this.
He paid no heed to her barely audible plea. Instead, his hands shaking, he began to tear ruthlessly at her wrapper and the demure white nightgown beneath it, ripping it from the throat clear down to the hem, tearing
it from her shoulders with long ripping sounds, his eyes brutal as he watched her squirming attempts to escape him.
“Justin, please,” she gasped when he had her naked and lay propped above her, his eyes scalding her as they raked her body.
“I aim to, my darling,” he muttered thickly, and then his mouth was closing over the small pink rosebud of her nipple, making her gasp with sensation.
He had been gentle with her, before; this time he was barbaric in his passion, taking what he wanted, forcing her to submit to him. Megan’s mind rebelled furiously from the burning mastery of his hands and mouth, but her healthy young body reveled in it. She wanted him, and he was forcing her to acknowledge it; quivers raced over her from head to toe, centering from whatever vulnerable part of her flesh he was branding with his hands and mouth.
“You beast,” she moaned in a last desperate attempt to deny him. But the hands which he had freed minutes before were clinging to him, and she knew he could read desire in her eyes. Faced with the tantalizing demands of his hard body, she was helpless; she knew it, and so did he.
When he drew away from her to remove his own clothes, she whimpered a protest, a strange mewling sound that came from deep within her throat. The sound of her own voice shocked her. Her eyes fluttered open to see him looking down at her. He was jerking off his shirt and breeches with shaking hands, and
his eyes were alive with passion as they moved over her slim body. She could feel his gaze burning like molten lava on the quivering fullness of her breasts; the creamy peaks were crowned with small, rigidly erect nipples that screamed without words how weak were the dictates of her mind when compared with the needs of her body. Then his eyes moved lower, to the ivory flesh of her small waist and flat belly, to the silky black triangle of hair between her thighs, to the slender beauty of her long legs. She trembled beneath that gaze, her thick black lashes coming down to veil her eyes from his as they rose to probe her face.
He took her almost without preliminaries, his body a hard, driving instrument of exquisite torture. Megan felt the tremors that racked his long limbs as he plunged ever deeper into her soft flesh, heard the harsh rasp of his breathing which sounded almost like sobs in her ears, felt the staccato thudding of his heart against her breasts. She gasped out his name as he entered her, her nails digging deep into his broad, bronzed shoulders, her legs lifting of their own accord to encircle his hard waist. Only once did she open her eyes, trying desperately to escape the ultimate surrender that she knew was waiting for her. He was looking at her, his eyes hot on her face, avid as they watched the response that was reflected there. He was exciting her madly, driving her wild, beyond anything she had ever dreamt existed, and he knew it. The hard triumph was there in his eyes for her to read.
She closed her eyes again, not wanting to see him
glorying in her degradation. He had reduced her to the status of animal, conscious only of the demanding pleasures of the flesh with no thought for right or wrong, religious principles or morals. He was making a whore of her, an adulterer of himself, and the horrible part of it was, she didn’t care. With his hot, powerful body joined so intimately to hers, she felt as if he were forcing her to a form of devil worship. And he, of course, was the devil.
“Megan,” he groaned at the end, thrusting deep inside her and holding himself there while wild tremors quaked through his body. Megan felt the pulsating warmth of his seed inside her and gasped with pleasure. Her arms clutched his back and her legs held him to her as she was drawn down into the dark abyss of a hellish ecstasy.
It was some time before he heaved himself off her exhausted body and shrugged into his dressing gown. Megan refused to look at him. She kept her eyes tightly closed as he wrapped her in the coverlet that had been beneath them, then lifted her into his arms.
“Look at me, Megan,” he whispered, his arms tightening around her as her head fell back limply against his shoulder. Unwillingly, Megan did as he bade; her lashes lifted with slow reluctance to let the smoky-violet pools of her eyes touch on his face.
“I’m not going to apologize this time,” he said, still holding her cradled against him and staring down at her with a grim expression. “You asked for everything you got, and you enjoyed it. You’re just damned lucky
it was me, and not Ivor. This is what he had in mind for you, you know.”
Megan gasped with shock. “No.”
Justin’s mouth curled unpleasantly. “Yes. I almost feel sorry for the poor bastard. You were probably driving him crazy, an innocent little baby with the face of an angel and the instincts of a temptress. He had to be going out of his mind to do what he did; he knew I’d kill him if I found out, and he knew damned well that I would find out.”
“Justin, please, you can’t mean to go through with that silly duel. He didn’t hurt me.” Megan was shaking. Her eyes were wide with anguish as she remembered what had prompted her disastrous visit to his room.
“I can and do.” He said it brutally, beginning to walk with her, carrying her through the bedroom into the sitting room and then out the door into the hall. “How does it feel, my darling, to know that in just a couple of hours a man will be dead for love of your
beaux yeux
?”
“No.” The word was a moan, and she looked up at him beseechingly as he shouldered his way into her bedroom and carried her over to her bed. The room was pitch dark, and she could not see his face.
“Justin, please don’t go through with it. You could be killed.”
He laughed harshly. “I thought that was what you wanted,” he taunted. “I seem to recall you saying something about hoping he blows a hole through
me big enough for a—what was it? A camel?—to go through.”
“Justin, you know I didn’t mean it. Please.” The words trailed off as he dropped her without ceremony on the bed.
“Justin,” she cried as he turned and started for the door. “For my sake… ”
He laughed again. Then he was through the door, and Megan listened incredulously as he turned the key from the other side.
“To keep you from meddling in things that don’t concern you,” he said through the panel. “But don’t worry, my darling, I’ll be back in plenty of time to let you out before anyone even knows I’ve locked you in.”
“Justin!” she wailed, leaping from the bed and flying to the door to press herself against the cool wood. She heard footsteps receding, and beat her fists impotently against the door. “Please don’t do this. Justin, I think I’m going to have your baby.”
But the continued silence on the other side of the door told her that he hadn’t heard.
CHAPTER
14
A heavy fog obscured Hampstead Heath, but Justin paid scant attention to it, as he leapt nimbly down from his curricle and threw the reins to his diminutive tiger, Todd. Charles, whom Justin had chosen to serve as his second out of a desire to keep the business as quiet as possible, climbed laboriously down. A note delivered at his lodgings at the ungodly hour of four in the morning had half-convinced him that Justin must be going mad.
“Buck up, Charles. Looking at you, anybody would be forgiven for thinking that it was you whom I was meaning to put a bullet through instead of Ivor,” Justin told him grimly.