“You
swine,
” she hissed at him, sitting bolt upright and snatching at the covers to shield herself from his eyes.
He turned glinting eyes on her. His mouth was compressed into a hard, straight line.
“You filthy rotten bounder!” She was spitting the words under her breath. The last thing she wanted was for Pearl to hear, and arrive on the scene to witness the degradation to which she, Isabella, had sunk. She thought she could not bear it should anyone save herself and Alec be privy to her shame.
“Isabella …” Alec was frowning at her, his breeches fastened now, his hands on his hips as he stood by the bed. Shirtless, barefoot, and tousled, he was impossibly handsome. Isabella gnashed her teeth at him.
“Cad!”
“Now wait—”
“Alec?”
“Rakehell!”
“Damn it, Isabella—”
“Alec! Are you coming back to bed? I’m cold!”
“Blackguard!”
“May God damn all women to bloody ’ell!” Alec lost his temper at last. She could hear it in the roughening of his accent, see it in his eyes. Still he did not raise his voice, but the tone of it was enough to raise the hairs on her neck.
Except that she was too blindly furious to be frightened of him.
“Scoundrel! Villain! Rogue!” Isabella’s fists clenched over the coverlet she clutched to her breast. Her eyes shot bullets of pure rage at him. Never in her life had she been so angry—or so ashamed.
“Damn it, Isabella, I—”
“Ale-e-ec!” It was a wail.
“Cur!”
Alec’s eyes blazed furiously at her. His hands clenched into fists. Then he was bending, snatching up her nightrail from where it had ended up on the floor and throwing it in her face. The soft muslin wrapped itself around her head like a cloud, temporarily both silencing and blinding her.
“Put that on, woman, and shut up, before I wrap the bloody garment around your bloody neck!”
Isabella yanked the nightrail from her face.
“Pervert!” she spat.
Alec was already striding toward the dressing room door. As her insult hit him, he turned back to glare at her. Even through the shadows darkening that corner of the room she could see the savage gleam in the golden eyes.
“Remind me one day soon to teach you to swear, Countess,” he gritted. Although it seemed he had regained control of his accent, his fists were still clenched with rage as he turned his back to her again and stalked into the dressing room.
XX
H
ad there ever been such a bloody damned disaster? Alec slammed the dressing room door with enough force to shake the rafters and found, to his increased fury, that he was left in total darkness. The only illumination had come from the fire in the other room. The saber-tongued little shrew’s room.
“Alec? What’s the matter, darlin’? Where’ve you been?”
The sleepy voice from his bed made him grit his teeth. Before he could give vent to the fury he felt in the explosive manner it deserved, he had to get Pearl out of the way. Should she guess exactly what it was that had kept him so long from bed, she would explode in a shrieking tantrum that would be heard clear to Kensington Palace. Then he would have two bloody women furious at him, and at each other.
Christ, how had a canny chap like himself ever got caught up in such a tangle of petticoats? It was like to be the death of him—if he didn’t strangle one or both of them first.
“The countess had a nightmare. Her caterwauling woke me up, and I went to see what ailed her.” His voice was carefully even, carefully indifferent as he struck flint on steel and lit the candle near the bed.
Pearl, stretched out flat on her back, lifted her head and blinked at him.
“Ow! What’d you do that for?”
“Since the little—Countess—woke me, I might as well do some work. You know how I am about going back to sleep.”
“Aye, I know.” Alec’s insomnia was something that Pearl and Paddy had long since learned to live with. He prowled the world when others slept, and thereby got twice as much accomplished as an ordinary man.
She sat up, stretching and yawning, arching her back provocatively. Alec saw that she was dressed in a silk nightrail in a shade of emerald green that did wonderful things for her dark blue eyes. Her white-blonde hair was a mass of curls about her face, and her body—that magnificent body that was her fortune—was temptingly on view. Dispassionately Alec decided that he’d never seen a better pair of tits on a woman. They were nearly bared now, falling enticingly out of the neckline of that provocative nightdress, lush, tantalizing white globes the size of melons with nearly the whole of her nipples popping out over that tiny excuse for a bodice.
Alec stared at them, at all of Pearl’s voluptuous beauty, and was dismayed to find himself totally unmoved. Then, unbidden, came the thought of breasts small enough to fit into his cupped palm, of delicious strawberry nipples and a slim, lithe body, and eyes the size of saucers and the soft color of a pigeon’s wing. Alec gritted his teeth, and banished the image with a curse.
“What’re you swearin’ about?”
To his chagrin, Alec realized that he had muttered the curse aloud. Now Pearl was staring at him, a frown gathering on her brow. To soothe her, he ruffled a hand through her curls, and forced a smile.
“Nothing. ’Tis just that I’ve been feeling a trifle out of sorts lately. My temper’s not of the sweetest, as you may have noticed.”
“ ’Ave I ever!” Pearl giggled, and reached up to run a hand across his bristly cheek. “Darlin’, I know just the cure.”
Alec remembered another hand, smaller and much more hesitant, that had touched his face in just such a way not an hour earlier, and before he could stop himself, he jerked his head back beyond her reach.
“My, you are grumpy!” Pearl pouted at him. As much because he was genuinely fond of her as because he wanted to distract her—whatever else she was, Pearl was nobody’s fool—he leaned over and planted a quick kiss on her mouth. Then he grabbed her hand and hauled her from his bed.
“Alec!” she protested, swaying slightly as he pulled her to her feet.
“Now, you know I’d never get anything done with you in my bed distracting me. Go to your own room and go back to sleep, Pearl. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“But I don’t want to sleep. Not now.” She was smiling at him, a wicked little curve of her lips, and reached out to thread provocative fingers through the hair on his chest. She tugged, meaning to bring him closer. He frowned at her, and removed her hand from his chest.
“Alec!”
“I’m no fit company for man or beast tonight,” he said, a little apologetically because it was rather beyond the line to turn her out of his bed in the middle of the night when she’d done nothing to give offense, and he knew it. But there was no way he was going to be able to sleep with Pearl when what he really wanted to do was go back in that bedroom and ring the little countess’s bloody soft neck.
“Well!” Pearl stared at him, eyes narrowing. Most of the sleepy softness had fled her face. “If you don’t want me, Alec Tyron, there’s plenty who do! And maybe I’ll just go find one of ’em!”
“Aw, Pearl …” Now Alec felt like the cad he’d so recently (and unjustly) been called. But even as he tried to think of a way to take the edge off his dismissal of her, Pearl stomped off in a huff. Her rounded hips swayed enticingly beneath the clinging silk, but Alec was in no mood to be enticed.
“Good-night,” Pearl said with immense dignity, and jerked open the door to the bedroom. It was only as she walked through it that Alec realized that in order to leave the room, she would have to pass through Isabella’s bedroom. He rushed to the door after Pearl, holding his breath as she stalked across the bedroom to the door that led to the hallway and beyond, Isabella, a small mound completely hidden by covers, was motionless. Alec thanked heaven for small mercies.
Pearl reached the bedroom door and, without so much as a backward look in his direction, let herself out. Alec listened with relief combined with a healthy dose of guilt as her footsteps disappeared along the hall.
Then, when he was sure he was alone with the real object of his ire, he turned his attention to the lump in the bed.
It took only three strides to reach the foot of the bed.
She was totally hidden beneath the piled bedcoverings. Not so much as an eyelash or the tip of a toe showed. How she was breathing under there was a mystery, but one which Alec had no patience for solving at the moment.
“Wake up, Countess!” he growled, and brutally pulled the covers from her recumbent form.
She gasped, and jacknifed into a sitting position. There were tear-streaks on her cheeks, which would have made him feel like a bastard had there not been a regular forest fire of fury spitting from her eyes.
“How dare you!” she hissed. Her fists were clenched as they rested against the mattress on either side of her, and those soft blue eyes shot sparks of pure rage as she glared at him. Her hair was still confined in that childish plait that fell forward over her shoulder to end in her lap. Although a lavender ribbon confined the end of it, soft tendrils of hair escaped to wave around her face, making her look very young.
Some of Alec’s anger died as he looked her over. In that transparent excuse for a nightdress that all the bawds except Pearl wore at the Carousel, she seemed very small and fragile. He’d seen the nightdress or its like before, of course, on many occasions, but never had it had the impact on him that this one did. And under the circumstances, his involuntary reaction did a great deal to revive his failing anger.
“Oh, I dare,” he said grimly, tossing the covers to the floor in a deliberate gesture and coming around the side of the bed to stand, fists on hips, glaring down at her. By rights she should have been frightened to death of him, not just because his size and strength were many times greater than hers, but because he was the Tiger, and she’d put him into a flaming temper, and because she was, after all, completely in his power. But the snippy little miss scowled right back at him for all the world as if she was the lady of the manor and he was nothing more than a peasant born to grovel at her feet.
The comparison infuriated him, and the perfectly reasonable explanation he’d meant to offer her (in the heat of passion, he’d completely forgotten that Pearl was even in his bed) was lost as his temper flamed.
“I dare,” he said again, and reached down to seize her by her upper arms and haul her out of that bed to stand in front of him. She fought, of course, kicking and squirming to be free, but her puny efforts in the face of his strength were laughable.
“Unhand me, you conscienceless libertine!” she spat.
The utter inadequacy of the insult would have amused him at any other time, but he was beyond being amused at the moment. Furious or not, her nearness was having a definite effect on him, and he didn’t like it one bit. Firelight made that damnable nightgown so transparent it might as well not even have been between them, and his body responded instinctively despite the best efforts of his mind.
“Make me,” he said through his teeth, his hands tightening fractionally over her arms to draw her up on her toes and thus demonstrate the totality of his power over her.
He was looming over her, holding her so that they were practically nose to nose, his hands powerful enough to snap her fragile bones like twigs.
“You disgust me,” she hissed at him.
“Do I now?” he growled, yanking her even closer so that her body was brushing against his. Feeling the softness of her breasts pressing into his chest, the bloody nightgown more provocation than barrier as they stood practically skin to skin, made his blood heat. And that made him madder than ever.
“Yes!”
“I didn’t disgust you earlier. ‘You’re gorgeous,’ you said, and ‘That feels wonderful’ when I put my hand on your—”
“Stop it!”
“Oh, no! I’ve not the slightest intention of stopping until I’m bloody good and ready!”
“Let me go!”
Alec smiled evilly into her eyes. Then, holding her gaze just to demonstrate how extremely helpless she was against him, he bent his head and put his mouth to hers.
Her mouth was soft, and warm, and tasted as honey-sweet as he knew her to be. As he kissed her he forgot everything but the rising passion that made him ache, God, he wanted her.…
And she wanted him too. She quivered in his arms, and her lips parted to let his tongue in.
Alec groaned, and released his grip on her to slide his arms around her, tilting her practically off her feet as he crushed her to him and drank his fill of her mouth.
His right hand slid around to her breast.
She made an inarticulate sound into his mouth and squirmed against him. The friction against that part of him that was already badly swollen for want of her made his passion blaze.
The hand that supported her back slid down to catch her buttocks and press her more fully against him. The hand that held her breast ever so gently squeezed.…
She shoved against his shoulders, violently, taking advantage of his loosened hold as she managed to jerk herself out of his arms. Then, incredibly, a fist exploded into his unsuspecting face just below his right eye.
“Damn it to bloody ’ell!” he yelped, staggering back a pace, a hand flying to his eye. The whole area surrounding it felt numb, but he’d been on the receiving end of enough punches to know that this one would leave its mark in the guise of a fourteen-carat shiner.
“You ’ell-born little bitch!” he gritted, the streets surfacing to color his voice as he took his hand from his eye to glare at her with equal amounts fury and awe. No female but Pearl had ever dared to hit him, and even she of the truly volcanic temper had never landed more than the occasional ringing (and usually well-deserved) slap. Now this little scrap of freckle-faced femininity had actually dared to plant him a facer! “I ought to paddle you until you can’t sit!”
“Just you try it!” she panted at him, leaping with the agility of a cat from the floor straight to the center of the bed and standing there, fists clenched, daring him to come after her.
Alec eyed her, lips compressed into a tight, straight line. Never in his wildest dreams would he have suspected her capable of landing the kind of blow she’d dealt him. The little countess had a wealth of unsuspected depths, it seemed.