Midnight Jewels (21 page)

"Come here, Mercy. You know you want me. I can make you want me."

"Who the hell do you think you are to walk into my bedroom like this and try to seduce me? I'm not a convenience for you, Croft." Her own voice was just as low as his, a soft hiss of feminine challenge. The battle was to be conducted in whispers, it seemed.

"You know you don't want to fight me, honey. You want to feel what you felt the other night in my arms. You want to give yourself to me."

"Is that right? What are you? The all-knowing, wise male who thinks he knows exactly what women really want? I've got a much harder question for you, Croft. What do
you
want?"

"That's not a tough question. I want to be inside you. I want to feel you wrapped around me, shivering with your pleasure. I want to know exactly how much you need me."

"I don't need you any more than you need me." She didn't know whether she had meant the words as a plea for reassurance or as a defiant challenge. They sounded like a challenge.

"Come close and we'll find out how much we want each other." There was soft satisfaction in his voice.

"I won't let you do it, you know. I refuse to go to bed with you while you're in this mood. You're nothing more than a cold-blooded male on the prowl tonight. You're only intent on proving to yourself and to me that you can control me in bed and I won't have it. You got away with the heavy-handed seduction routine that first night, Croft, but it won't happen again."

"Heavy-handed?"

"Well, you have to admit it was very deliberate. You seduced me as part of your—" She saw his eyes narrow. Belatedly she remembered the warning about watching her conversation in the bedroom. Mercy didn't believe for one minute that Gladstone was a crook or
that there were secret microphones in the room, but she had given Croft her word
that she would be careful. "It was a deliberate act of seduction. There was no love involved, was there?"

"I wanted you very badly the other night. I want you even more tonight. If that seems like deliberate, heavy-handed seduction to you, then I can't argue. When it comes to emotional interpretations, everything's relative, especially for a woman. But I think you're being unfair to me and yourself to label our lovemaking that way. There are a hundred different avenues for desire. Most of them don't have names."

"Don't bother using any of your fancy philosophical logic on me. Not on this particular subject. I don't think you're any kind of expert, and I won't let you trip me up with your crazy reasoning tonight. I have to draw the line somewhere. I won't let you manipulate me."

"Easy, Mercy. Just relax and come here to me."

She leaped off the bed, sensing a slight change in the way he was balancing himself. "Stay right where you are. Don't you dare use any of your… your tricks on me."

His eyes gleamed in the shadows. The starlight that poured through the window provided just enough illumination to define the unyielding set of his jaw and the sleek contours of his shoulders. He had no trouble following her movements. Just as Mercy had known from the first, Croft was very much at home in the darkness.

As she bounced to her feet, Croft slowly stood up on the other side. He started to circle the bed, coming toward her with smooth, pacing strides.

"You're the one using tricks tonight, sweetheart. What game are you playing with me? I mink it was a mistake to let you sleep alone last night."

She backed away from him. "I chose to sleep alone last night and I choose to sleep alone tonight."

"In a few minutes you'll change your mind."

"You talk about me playing games, but you're the one who plays them. That's exactly what you're doing with our relationship. You're toying with it the way a cat toys with a mouse, using it for your own advantage."

He grinned briefly. "You're not much of a mouse, sweetheart."

"I'm not joking, Croft."

"Neither am I. So let's stop talking about our 'relationship' and start talking about us. You and me."

He was very close now. Mercy risked a quick glance over her shoulder and found she was less than two feet from the wall. There was no more room to run. She looked back at Croft, tried to gage the distance as best she could, then dove wildly past him.

"Damn it, Mercy!"

For the first time that evening Mercy heard some genuine emotion in his voice. Unfortunately, that emotion was
chiefly frustration and annoyance. She couldn't even take minimal satisfaction from it because his arm was suddenly in the middle of her flight path, coiling around her and whirling her gently to an abrupt halt. Mercy came up against Croft's chest with a silent thud and found her face pressed into his bare shoulder. The warm, sexy scent of him assailed her nostrils.

"Let me go." The words were muffled against his skin.

"Not yet, sweetheart." He started to fold her closer. "Not for a long time."

Mercy felt his other arm around her, locking her to him. She reacted instinctively, driving her small fist into his ribs. It felt as though she had struck a solid wall, but she had the satisfaction of hearing Croft's sharp intake of bream. His grip loosened slightly and Mercy danced back out of reach. A new kind of excitement washed over her.

He wasn't invincible.

"So, you're not all that tough, after all, are you?" Her mood was shifting with a rapidity that left her feeling euphoric. A wave of adrenaline seemed to have unleashed itself in her bloodstream. Mercy found herself enjoying a heady sensation of power. "I warned you not to use your clever little tricks on me. I took a class in self-defense once."

"Is that right?"

"Damn right." She edged a few more steps away from him. The class in self-defense had been a three-hour seminar conducted by a policewoman the library had hired to instruct female employees in certain emergency measures. It had been over two years since she had had the class and Mercy was realistic enough to assume she shouldn't push her hick too far.

"Are you sure you want to turn this into a battle, Mercy?"

"What I'm sure of is that I want you to go back to your room and leave me in peace."

"I can't do that."

"Try."

"And leave you here by yourself to think about what a charming, educated, cosmopolitan man Erasmus Gladstone is? Not a chance. I want you to think about me tonight, Mercy."

She felt her breath catch in her throat. "Are you jealous, by any chance?"

His eyes were fathomless. "Is that what you want? Is that why you were hanging on Gladstone's every word tonight? Did you want to see if you could whip up a little jealousy?"

"Not much chance of that, is there?" she shot back, goaded to a rashness she knew she would probably regret. "You've got too much cold blood in your veins."

Something flashed in his gaze, and in spite of the precarious position in which she found herself, Mercy felt a flicker of triumph. It was dangerous to prod Croft Falconer, but at times it seemed the only way to find out what lay beneath the cool, totally controlled surface of the man.

"Maybe what I need is some of your warmth to take the chill off, Mercy."

He flowed toward her without any warning, his hand snapping out to catch her by the nape of the neck even as she tried frantically to duck back out of the way.

"Damn it, Croft," she hissed, "I'm not going to make this easy for you." She brought her hands up quickly in an attempt to break his hold and shoved against the wall of his chest. When nothing happened, Mercy used both hands to try to dislodge the gentle grip on her nape.

He was drawing her inexorably toward the bed. She tried another rib punch, aware that she was severely hampered in the conflict because she didn't really want to hurt Croft. The knee-to-the-groin routine and the finger-in-the-eye bit were definitely off limits.

She wasn't fighting for her life or her honor. She was just trying to make one very thickheaded man aware of her on a
vital level. She would force him to be just as emotionally involved with her as she was with him even if it meant a knock-down, drag-out battle royale.

Croft didn't seem to notice her side punch, but he must have felt her heel when she brought it down fiercely on his bare toes because he reacted immediately. He swore, something very short and very crude. Mercy had never heard him use the word before. He used his convenient grip on the nape of her neck to yank her off his foot and then he gave her a small shake. "You little witch. I ought to turn you over my knee." Mercy gave him a fierce, reckless smile
that showed all her fine white teeth. "I think I read something about that technique in
Valley of Secret Jewels
. Does it work?" "Use your heel on my toes again and we'll find out." "Let go of me, Croft. I won't be dragged off to bed like this." "It seems to be the only way to get you there." She didn't use her heel this time, she used her whole foot. Mercy hooked it around his ankle and tugged violently. Croft didn't lose his balance, but he finally lost his temper.

"That does it," he said between clenched teeth. "If you want to do this the hard way, we'll do it the hard way." He swung her off her feet and into his arms, ignoring her wriggling, twisting efforts to free herself.

In two strides he reached the bed and tossed her lightly down across the rumpled sheets. Her bare legs dangled over the edge. Before Mercy could scramble out of the way, Croft stepped between her knees. He spread his own legs into a wide stance
that had the instant effect of prying Mercy's thighs far apart. Her prim cotton nightgown was scrunched up around her buttocks, providing no modesty or protection at all. Mercy lay open and vulnerable, her hair tumbled around her shoulders, her eyes widening with the realization
that she might have gone too far. Hands on hips, Croft stood looking down at her.

Mercy caught her breath at the implacable, deeply sensual expression that etched his mouth and filled the bottomless pools of his eyes. She could feel the new level of tension radiating from him. He was no longer the cool, calculating lover who had entered her bedroom intent upon a cold-blooded seduction. She had his full attention now, on every level. She tried to tell herself it was what she had wanted, but the assurance didn't do much to cut through the belated sense of wariness that was growing in the pit of her stomach.

When all was said and done, she knew very little about Croft Falconer. She was taking chances with a stranger that she hadn't ever taken before in her life with any man. She was trusting her instincts when she probably ought to be listening to reason.

"Anything else you learned in that self-defense class you'd like to try before we stop playing games?" Croft asked with silky menace.

Mercy levered herself up on her elbows, aware of the crisp hair of his legs against the inside of her wantonly spread thighs. She felt so very vulnerable. "If you think I'm going to give you any advance notice of the next move, you're indulging in wishful thinking. You'd better be very careful of what you decide to do next."

His eyes glittered as he shoved his briefs down off his hips and kicked them aside. "Don't worry, little witch, I'll be very, very careful." He reached out to touch her with one hand.

Mercy stared, mesmerized by the sight of his huge, pulsing shaft as it thrust toward her. Then she flinched and gulped for breath as his fingers combed boldly through the triangle of dark hair that guarded her warm secrets. She was aware of the shocking, sweet sensitivity of his touch in every fiber of her body. It freed a wild excitement in her and at the same time reassured her. No man who ever touched a woman in this exquisitely sensitive way would ever hurt her.

"Croft," she breathed, his name a whisper of longing in the darkness. Still braced on her elbows she trembled and knew he could feel the tremors in her legs as he stood between her thighs.

"Do you like playing such dangerous games, sweetheart?" His touch became more intimate.

He slid one finger across the small pleasure bud hidden in the soft hair and Mercy sucked in her breath. Part of her felt so excruciatingly vulnerable and sensitized that she didn't think she could bear the deliciously erotic caress. The other part of her wanted to arch her lower body closer to his hand in a silent plea for more. The conflicting sensations came together in a hot spiral of emotion. Not knowing which action she wanted to take, Mercy settled for the safer of the two. She used her elbows as a lever and tried to scramble backward on the bed.

Croft's other hand grasped her upper leg and held her in place. "You're not going anywhere, honey. Not until you've apologized for all the trouble you've put me through tonight."

"What about the trouble' you've put me through?"

"Your problems have just begun," he informed her with deep satisfaction. He stroked his finger lower, finding his target easily.

"Oh! Croft,
please
." Mercy gasped for bream and her nails dug into the rumpled sheets. Her eyes squeezed shut and her head tipped back as she felt his fingers tracing an intricate design around her heated flesh.

"Please what? Please touch you here?" He parted her with the tip of his finger and Mercy shivered. "Or here?" He edged his hand a little lower. "You're going to have to spell it out, sweet Mercy. You're going to have to tell me exactly what you want. And then I think I'll wait until you're begging me before I take you completely. I'm in a mood to let your punishment fit your crime tonight."

"Damn you!" But it was more of a plea than a curse.

"Try again. I want the sweet, hot words, Mercy. All of them." He edged her thighs another inch or two apart and his thumb moved over the small nubbin again. Another large finger was circling the opening of her body, coaxing forth a honeyed flood that dampened his hand. This time Mercy didn't try to pull away. This time there was no uncertainty or confusion in her reaction. She wanted more of him inside her. She lifted her hips against his hand.

"Say it, sweetheart. Tell me exactly what you want. Then we'll both be sure." Croft's words were even hotter than the flowing warmth between Mercy's legs.

"Touch me. Please, touch me, Croft. There. Yes, like that. Inside me.
Deeper
." The plea was squeezed out of her, infinitely hard for her to say aloud, but even harder, apparently, for him to resist.