Putting his plan into execution was ridiculously easy. The fact that he was her legal guardian and that she resided under his roof simplified things. After all, he had the ultimate authority over Megan until she married, and she was not married yet. He had only to tell her idiot of a fiancé the story about her relation, and that was that. No possibility of scandal, while he whisked Megan off with the most dishonorable of intentions.
Looking at her now, as she stared disbelievingly at him from the other side of the carriage, he felt a welling of fierce triumph. She was his now, whether she liked it or not. And the sooner she accepted the fact the better it would be for her.
“You’re either drunk or mad,” Megan said with conviction, her eyes enormous in her pale face. Justin allowed his own eyes to roam insolently over her, touching on each exquisite detail with savage satisfaction. Her raven curls were piled high atop her head, showing off the delicate perfection of her features and the porcelain purity of her skin. Except for the gold cord binding her hair, her jewel-like eyes were her only ornament. Justin looked at them, slanting violet gems fringed by feathery black lashes and set beneath silken brows, and thought that a man could be forgiven for believing in her angelic innocence. The expression in those eyes said everything of heaven and nothing of hell, and yet it was to hell that they had driven him. Now he meant to bring her down with him. Her lips were as red and delicious looking as the ripest of berries, and beneath the flimsy silk of her dress the fullness of her breasts was clearly visible. The straight lines of the garment hinted at rather than revealed the narrowness of her waist, but Justin didn’t need any help remembering exactly what lay beneath her dress. The image of her body was seared on his brain forever.
“Do you think so?” he asked negligently, stretching his long legs out in front of him and smiling at her. Annoyance began to replace the sheer astonishment with which she had been regarding him.
“Where do you think you’re taking me? You know perfectly well that no one is admitted at Almack’s after eleven, and if you don’t turn back at once, we’ll be too late.”
“Then I suppose you must resign yourself to being too late, because I have not the slightest intention of telling the coachman to turn back.”
“I will then,” Megan glared at him, then sought to open the first window and then the door while he watched her with a satiric grin on his face. Neither would budge.
“They’re locked,” he said laconically as she turned a flushed and angry face to him. “From the outside. And I’ve instructed the coachman not to stop until we reach a certain inn in Abingdon.”
“You are mad!” she spat furiously. He raised a mocking eyebrow at her.
“If it pleases you to think so.”
Megan looked at him, uncertainty battling with the anger in her face.
“Where are you taking me?”
“I own a house on the coast of Wales. It’s a beautiful place, quite peaceful, and almost totally isolated from the world. My great grandfather, I believe, named it Windsmere, and it is every bit as lonely and as magnificent as the name sounds. I thought you might like to see it.”
“I am getting married in two days’ time.”
Justin smiled again, but this time there was no mistaking the underlying nastiness.
“I don’t think so,” he said with unhidden satisfaction.
Megan stared at him with growing horror.
“Dear God, what have you done?” she whispered, her hand coming up to cover her mouth.
At the honest dismay he saw in her face, Justin’s mouth took on a hard, straight line.
“So anxious to marry young Donald?” A sneer laced the words. “That’s just too bad. Because I have a prior claim, and I intend to exercise it.”
“I can’t marry you! You’re married!” She was practically wailing with despair.
One corner of his mouth twisted up mockingly.
“I don’t recall mentioning marriage,” he drawled. “You can consider my previous offer withdrawn. I have since decided that you will fill another position in my life most admirably. I’ve been out a mistress for some weeks.”
“If you think I’m going to be your mistress,” she spat the word at him, “you are crazy. As soon as we stop, I’m returning to London, and I’m marrying Donald the day after tomorrow.”
“I think not,” he said, as if that settled everything.
“You can’t stop me.” The words were mere bravado on her part. She was beginning to feel truly alarmed. Justin’s only reply to that statement was a derisive smile. He could stop her, and they both knew it.
“You don’t understand,” she said desperately, biting down hard on her lower lip in an effort to make him see reason. He watched the betraying gesture as if it fascinated him. “I must marry Donald. I love him.”
His brows snapped together as if he’d been stung, and he looked quite furious. Megan visibly quailed from the menace shooting from those golden eyes.
“I wouldn’t marry him on that score, if I were you,”
he spat out. “Think how fickle your emotions have already proven to be. Less than a month ago, you were saying the same thing to me.”
“I was mistaken,” she said lamely. His eyes flashed golden fire at that.
“Were you now?” he drawled. “What a pity. You see, you whetted my appetite for your delicious little body, and I don’t intend to let you go until it’s quite appeased.”
Megan stared at him. “I won’t let you do that to me again. I tell you, I love Donald, and I mean to marry him.”
His eyes narrowed, and his jaw clamped shut.
“The hell you will,” he growled, and reached for her.
Megan fought as his hands closed hurtfully over her upper arms, hauling her across the carriage into his arms, but pitting her puny strength against his powerful muscles was like trying to turn back the sea. He dragged her across his lap so that her head was cradled on his shoulder, and when she would have rolled to the floor he twined his hand in her long hair and twisted it cruelly, holding her in place. His mouth closed on hers with a ferocity that shook her to her core. His lips and tongue were brutal as they possessed her, forcing her to submit to him whether she would or not. Megan could only moan helplessly into his mouth as he bent her back against the plush velvet upholstery, bending over her and holding her in place with the weight of his body. Megan’s hands were crushed between them, and she could feel the
heat and strength of him in every fiber of her body. Weakly she tried to avert her head from his kiss, but the hand that was twisted in her hair jerked on it so fiercely that she cried out. After that she lay quietly beneath him, making no effort to escape but protesting his action by her very passivity. When at last her silent resistance seemed to penetrate the thick fog of angry passion which held him in thrall, Justin lifted his head to look down at her. His face was so close that Megan could see every little detail of the harsh lines that bracketed his mouth, and the smaller ones that radiated from the corners of his eyes. A thick swath of his black hair had fallen over his forehead; Megan was conscious of an instinctive urge to push it back. In the flickering light from the lanterns, his face looked very dark; the hard straight mouth that had so unfeelingly ravaged her own was set in a cruel line. The feeling blazing from his eyes was barbaric in its intensity, and the primitive effect was not lessened by the elegant black evening suit that fit him to such perfection. Megan felt as if she were seeing through to the true, uncivilized nature of the man for the first time. He was an animal, she thought, and not all the elegantly tied neckcloths or superbly tailored coats in the world could ever blind her to the fact again. He was revealed at last in his true form, and she would never forget it.
“Kiss me back,” he growled at her, his eyes aflame as they bore down into her own. “Kiss me back, you little bitch, or I’ll take you here and now.”
Looking into those glittering eyes, Megan had no doubt that he meant it. Something in him wanted to hurt her, to punish her. She supposed that it was his way of revenging the blow she must have dealt his monumental male pride by seeming to prefer Donald to him. When she returned his stare with a bitter one of her own, she felt his fingers digging hurtfully into her scalp. Despite herself, she whimpered.
“I mean it, so help me God,” he whispered threateningly.
Defeated, Megan closed her eyes and waited. He was beyond the stage where any sort of reason could reach him, and he was far bigger and stronger than she. She had no doubts that he would do just as he had threatened if she did not obey him.
He looked down at her, saw the submission implicit in her closed eyes and laughed harshly.
“I said for you to kiss me,” he grated. “Damn you, put your arms around my neck and kiss me. I want to feel your soft little mouth begging me.”
Megan’s eyes fluttered, and she looked up at him through the shield of her thick lashes. He looked totally capable of any cruelty. Her hands fluttered against his chest, trapped still between their bodies, and he lifted himself slightly so that she could free them. Moving slowly, so slowly, she slid her hands up to his shoulders, then around to the back of his neck. Against her breasts she could feel the lower part of his chest crushing her. The beat of his heart reverberated throughout her being.
“Now kiss me,” he muttered. Megan saw the excited flare of those thin nostrils as she lifted her head to obey. As her mouth touched his she felt the convulsive tremor that shook him, and then he was assuming total control of the kiss, taking her mouth with a fierce passion that demanded her total response. By the time he lifted his head again, Megan was breathless, her senses aswarm with the delicious way he could make her feel. She had betrayed herself utterly with that kiss. She hadn’t been able to help herself. Her traitorous body went crazy if he so much as touched her. He had taught her passion, and her flesh recognized its master.
He looked down into her face with bitter triumph, reading there the response that she couldn’t even begin to hide.
“So you love Donald, do you?” he rasped. “Does he know how much you want me? Does he know how very wanton his future wife can look when she’s being kissed senseless?”
The sneering words lashed her like a whip. He saw her involuntary response and abruptly sat up, running a hand through his black hair and staring down at her with barely disguised contempt.
“Sit up,” he ordered coldly. “And straighten your clothes. I think I’ve made my point. No matter how much you may protest for the sake of propriety, we both know that you won’t find being my mistress any hardship. Who knows, if you’re a good girl and do your best to please me, you might even do quite well.
Many ‘ladies’ have emerged from similar positions, as quite wealthy women.”
His words were meant to hurt, to insult, and they succeeded. Megan’s eyes widened as if from a blow, and for just a moment she could only stare at him. With a grimace, he reached out and hauled her into an upright position, then nearly flung her over onto the opposite seat.
“Tidy yourself,” he instructed briefly. “I fancy we are nearing Abingdon. And be patient. You’ll have everything you want, and possibly quite a bit more, very shortly.”
Megan couldn’t bring herself to reply to the cruel words. Her response to his brutality had left her without any defense. He had made her want him, and they both knew it. It was shameful, but horribly true.
As Justin had predicted, in a very short while, the carriage rocked to a halt. Megan blushed to the roots of her hair as she heard the bolt drawn back from the door, and drew her cloak tightly around her shoulders, hoping desperately that the mark Justin had made on her showed only on her soul, not her body. Throwing a quick, unhappy glance at him, she was humiliated to notice that, for him, the degradation of the last few miles might never have occurred.
“My lord.” The door had opened, and the coachman, one of Justin’s servants, was standing anxiously by it, waiting to help them alight. Justin sprang lightly down, then turned around to lift Megan out. Her weight might have been nonexistent for all the trouble
it caused him. He held her against him, and to her shame she felt her body melt obligingly as it touched his hardness. He smiled with grim mockery, and Megan knew that her involuntary response was not lost on him.
“I would advise you not to try anything foolish for I have known the innkeeper who will shortly be greeting us for many years, and I assure you that there is no help for you here. If you were misguided enough to try to enlist his or his staff’s sympathy, all you would accomplish would be your own humiliation, or worse.”
He didn’t bother to wait for a reply, but set her away from him and turned to his coachman.
“Be sure and rub them down, Pryor, and bring the carriage around at first light. We have a long drive ahead of us tomorrow.”
“Aye, my lord,” the man said, pulling deferentially on his forelock as he stepped back. Justin paid no more heed to him, but ushered Megan before him into the inn. The warmth and light within was very welcome after the cold darkness of the night.
“Welcome, my lord,” cried a voice, and Megan looked around to see a giant of a man in a stained white apron advancing on them, his face wreathed in smiles. For just an instant Megan felt a flicker of hope. This man was Justin’s match physically, and if he could be persuaded to champion her cause all might not yet be lost. Then she looked back at Justin, absorbing his air of command that was as much a part of him as his skin, and knew that Justin was exactly right
in his assessment of the situation. If she appealed to this man to help her to get back to London, he would undoubtedly defer to Justin. A simple innkeeper, no matter how brawny, was no match for the Earl of Weston.
“Thank you, Rogers,” Justin said civilly, halting Megan with a hand on her arm. “I trust rooms have been prepared, as I instructed?”
“Oh, yes, my lord,” the man rubbed his hands together, smiling servilely. He seemed totally oblivious to Megan’s presence. With a tiny spurt of shamed anger, Megan wondered whether he supposed her to be Justin’s mistress and was being discreet. Then, she thought, “But I am,” and felt all the color recede from her face as she wondered if Justin meant to openly display her as such.