“Odious creature!”
“Name calling,
my
dear, is not nice,” he admonished her playfully.
“Then do not call me ‘sweetings’, because my name is Myriah.”
“Myriah …?” he said slowly, looking her over. “Your name suits you well, for if memory serves me, it means
pernicious
!”
“Oh! Wretch! Pernicious indeed! Your memory does not serve you, my lord, for it means no such thing! It is a biblical name, though I do spell it differently, and it means spirited!”
She sighed and moved away from him, but the sadness in her voice was not lost on him. She looked at him then and added, “Mama had the naming of me—she nearly died giving birth to me, for I came early. She said I was just a slip of an infant, and my fighting for life at birth won me the name Myriah. But Papa would have it that Myriah was what he always called Mama … and because I was her image, he claimed he had the naming of me.”
“And from that moment on, of course, you have tried to live up to your name?” teased his lordship.
“I have never had to try.” She sighed heavily. “’Tis no pleasant thing to have the blood of a runner and be made to walk. I am forever being told, ‘No, Myriah.’ ‘It
would not do, Myriah.’ ‘Don’t, Myriah.
’
Faith
, you can have no notion what it is to be able to fly … and be forbidden the use of your wings!”
He read the pain in her face, and it brought a frown to Kit’s dark eyebrows. “Your parents are no longer pleased with your spirit?”
“My parents? Oh, Papa … well, he is a man, and to be fair he is really good about most things. He says I am Mama … all over again, and that pleases him. But he has sisters, many sisters—and they don’t see it quite in the same light. He has to deal with them, and it isn’t always easy. How could it not affect him?” She sighed again and played with her fingers. “It was different when I had Mama. She always understood. She said it was like watching herself growing up. How we laughed together …” Her voice trailed off as her heart rediscovered a scene long ago.
Kit
felt
rough fingers work at his heart. “When did you lose her, Myriah?”
“Five years ago. I came home from school to find her with fever. She died shortly after. She had never before been low or ill. Papa was in shock for such a long time … but he and I are friends. Papa says I am Mama in every way. But he is wrong. She was contented, so sweetly contented … and I no longer am!”
Myriah had never before spoken to anyone about this.
She did not now understand why so much had flowed so freely. She only knew that she had let down her guard before this man, who was virtually a stranger.
“Poor Myriah, but it is not Myriah
White
from
Dover …
now is it?” Kit asked, because he had an urge to hear the truth from
her
lips. He had a need to trust her completely—to have the lie dispelled.
Myriah’s guard went right back up. Why did he harp on that single point? What was he after, confound him! She couldn’t tell him who she was—she didn’t want him to know she was an heiress.
It was obvious
he
was in need of money, and although she had begun the lie to spare her name from being bandied about in gossip, she now needed the lie for another reason.
“I … I don’t know what you mean,” she said.
All at once he was towering over her, pulling her almost roughly, certainly hungrily against his hard body. His gray eyes smoldered above her own.
“Don’t you know that you have not learned the knack of it, Myriah? You have such speaking eyes … they give you away. You shouldn’t lie—unless you can.”
“Why … my lord,” she said, avoiding eye contact, her blood rushing throughout her body and turning her mind into mush. “Just recently you declared I lied very well.”
Suddenly she was tight in his embrace, and his kiss burned her lips intensely as his tongue parted them and dove to find a willing partner.
Myriah felt her body go limp and pliable in his arms. She felt helpless to stop him because she didn’t want to. What she wanted was his kisses, and she realized here were her bells and rockets and …
She wanted his tongue to go on teasing hers—to feel the velvet lapping seductively at her own. She wanted his hands all over her body.
She ran her fingers up his rock-hard chest and held on with a passion she had never known she was capable of feeling. She suddenly realized he had undone the lacing of her gown so it was falling to the floor—and she stepped out of its velvet folds and used the rug to work her slippers off her feet.
She knew herself a wanton creature when she started pulling at his jacket and it came away and fell to the floor. Somehow he was out of his shirt, and
oh
… she thought,
oh … his chest
…
She noticed the etching of a tattoo and traced its unusual design with her fingers across his sensuous, hard torso. He growled low in his throat, and the sound sent erotic shivers through her. A voice called her name.
‘Myriah … you
are turning into a tart
… ’
Yes
—a tart
, she thought, for an innocent maid did not give herself to anyone but her intended … but she had never wanted to be innocent.
She blocked all reason. Rules were made by men—and this one was absurd.
What she wanted was more of his touching—like the night he had found her naked in his bed and his fingers had created magic throughout her senses.
She threw back her head as his kisses traveled over her neck, down further to the breast he was fondling. She wondered,
Is this love? And does he feel what I do?
* * *
He wasn’t thinking. He wasn’t evaluating, and he wasn’t going to. He had lost all reason, and he didn’t want it back … a thing that had never happened to him before. He had pleasured and been pleasured by exquisite women in his time, but … this …?
She filled him with need, and he threw caution to the wind as he let himself surrender control.
He had always been careful, telling himself not to allow his cock to rule his head … but he couldn’t stop. He wanted her beyond imagination—and damn well meant to have her!
Her kiss tasted like strawberries and honey, and he wanted to go on kissing her forever. Her body … he had to have her body. Before he knew what he was doing, he had pulled her blue velvet gown until it fell to her ankles. He sucked in a long drag of air because she had nothing—absolutely nothing—on beneath her gown.
She was ravishing … every inch of her under his fingers felt like silk. He burned with an ache that sizzled through his veins and made his dick throb and dance with wanting.
Her breasts were full and so perfectly rounded he wanted to bury his face there. He took her nipple between his fingers and teased her until she was arching and making delicious moaning whimpers that set him on fire.
She removed his jacket, and he hurriedly threw off his white shirt. She touched his tattoos, and he heard the feral growl escape his lips as he bent to suckle at those beautiful rosebuds, fondling her all the while.
One hand worked the buttons of his breeches, got them undone and off. He easily, expertly used his heel to get off his Hessian boots, and kicking them away he kissed the hollow in her neck, licked her nipples, and pulled her butt into him …
Boots gone, breeches followed, and then he held her naked, beautiful form to his solid body, pressing his throbbing manhood against her.
Something in his mind told him to stop. Good sense told him this was trouble. A warning clicked off that he was going too far with her …
Those thoughts were buried as his hand took hers and placed it on his huge, pulsating dick. He whispered, “Touch … stroke … love … stroke … oh yes, beauty …” And then he was lost to the lust as he picked her up cradle-like in his arms and carried her upstairs to his bedroom, where he laid her on the bed and stared for a few moments before he moved to straddle her.
She seemed mesmerized by his manhood and kept playing with its tip, driving him wild. He took it from her and put it to her lips. She was hesitant at first as she kissed it.
“Hell and Fire … Myriah …” He shivered as an electric bolt, fully charged, shimmed through him.
* * *
His manhood was something she couldn’t tear her gaze away from. She felt this instinctual need to touch it, squeeze it, run her hand up and down its long, wide length …
She wanted him but didn’t know how to express herself. She wanted something from him as her body built into a fever-pitch of desire, and then he had the tuft between her thighs in his hand. He shook it until she arched up high and groaned with need.
“Want me, Myriah … want more?”
“Yes … yes … want …”
He maneuvered her so his face was between her thighs, and then he began licking her, nibbling, driving her mad. All the while his finger worked the pink nub within until she released a cry of hunger that left her shuddering with pleasure she had never known possible.
He seemed almost ruthless as he set her in place, primal as he positioned his cock between her legs and looked for entry.
“So tight, beauty—made for me … so fucking tight … here, love, let me …” His hands went around her ass.
She felt him raise her butt and bring her to him as he inched his cock inside. She bucked against him, wanting him to enter.
“Want it now, do you …?” He breathed hard and fast as he plunged himself into her—and then suddenly stopped!
* * *
Shock riveted Kit’s body. He had not expected this—not after she so eagerly accepted his advances. He had thought she had experience. What had he been thinking?
True, the intensity of his own desires had blotted all reasonable thought; still, how could she be a virgin when she had so hotly, so wantonly given herself to him? In fact, he had quite made up his mind that she was an adventuress
running
not from a would-be husband, but
from a lover
—
and for some obscure and detached irrationality, this notion had a stung him into a frenzy.
He only knew he’d wanted to make her his … and now he felt a cad. She was what she represented herself to be, and he had taken advantage …
However, Myriah had her arms around him and yanked down on him, and he found himself plunging deeper, harder faster.
* * *
Something stung at her heart and made a painful track to her throat. He wasn’t declaring love, only shock she was a virgin. Oh no, he was apologizing for using her because he didn’t want her forever.
He was apologizing? Had he not realized that he would be her first—that she would think him her only? Had he not known who and what she was? Had he not realized that she gave herself freely with her heart?
Yes, Myriah, but you dove in, didn’t you? What was he to think?
Her sense of fairness jumped at her with words that stung and grabbed hold and shoved her into a blackness of despair.
She found herself totally, irrevocably, and most painfully in love. Love promises much in a young woman’s dreams. And then very often throws its victims into the whirlwind of conflicting sensations from which recovery seems impossible.
Myriah lay there silently, waiting for the heavy breathing that told her he was asleep. She took up a quilt, slipped it around herself, and quietly padded towards the door. She wanted to look back at his beloved sleeping form, but she steeled herself and instead left the room, hurried downstairs. She retrieved her clothing and quickly returned this time to her own room. There she not only double-checked the lock at the door between his room and hers, but wedged a chair under the doorknob as well.
She dove for her bed, buried her face in her pillow, and suddenly released a sob. That sob went on for some while until, true to her nature, she told herself to buck up and get over it!
Oh, Myriah
, she thought miserably,
now you’ve gone and
tipped yourself a settler! You search about for a gallant with the magic to win your heart, and when you find him, he turns
out
to be a penniless and secretive lord who thinks you (and with good reason) nothing but a tart—a fancy piece who he will never court for any reason other than to aid his financial situation when he finds out who you are!