She did, and now that she was beginning to understand what he liked she was more confident. She kissed and nipped her waydown his body, leaving him gasping, following the line of dark hair that pointed the way – although she was not likely to get lost, she thought, with such a substantial signpost beckoning to her. There was something intoxicating about his responsiveness and the power she had over him. She could doanything. She’d never been shy, not since she discovered how to give and receive pleasure, and now she was made bolder by the fact that Rafe could not see her.
God, he was beautiful, with his hard planes of muscle scattered with dark hair. Not like a statue, or no statue of a Greek or Roman god that she had ever seen – no smooth marble perfection here. She lay down between his muscular thighs and amused herself by kissing them, and biting them where she found that he was most sensitive. Each little bite set him writhing with electric intensity upon the sheets. She made teasing forays up to stroke and kiss his silky hardness, and he was so aroused and so far beyond ready for her that after a while she could no longer resist tasting him more fully. She’d wanted to tantalise him longer, but – she couldn’t. Her lips were on him, her mouth and her hand. Her world shrank to the pure sensation of tasting him, touching him, pleasing him and herself. He lost himself in her. When at last his body was no longer racked with his intense and prolonged spending, she laid her head on his thigh and closed her own eyes, drinking in the scent of him, sweat and seed and spicy maleness, and the lingering taste. He was still blindfolded, his arms still tangled in his shirt. He’d cried out as he came, but he hadn’t spoken and he hadn’t been able to embrace her, captive as he was.
Now he said, ‘Sophie…’ There was a great deal of feeling in the single word.
‘Rafe. Yes, I’m still here.’
‘I thought you might be.’ There was a lazy, satiated smile in his voice. ‘May I disentangle myself now? I want to hold you.’
‘Of course.’
He was free in an instant, and she moved up his body to lie in his arms, her head on his shoulder. He was, to her delight, no longer immaculate, but as flushed and dishevelled as she must be. ‘I think you must know how much I enjoyed that,’ he murmured. ‘And I believe you did too, but I wonder how much.’
‘Very much,’ she said. ‘But not very, very, very much.’
He was so quick, and understood her instantly. ‘Well, that must be rectified.’
She lay back on the tangled sheets, inviting him, and he ran his hand down her body, slipping his fingers into her curls to find them damp, her secret places ready for his touch. ‘Mmm…’ she said. ‘Yes, just there. Oh, you are a man of many talents, Rafe.’ She was very aroused, she had been close to climax when he’d spent himself, and his clever fingers took her closer still with their first touch.
‘So gloriously wet,’ he whispered, sliding his fingers into her. She bit her lip and took one engorged nipple between her fingers, playing with it and arching her back as he pleasured her once more, pushing herself up against his hand, convulsing as he worked her, surrendering to the delicious waves of oblivion.
Afterwards she lay in his arms, dazed, and he pulled up the covers over them both. ‘Is it late?’ she said languidly. ‘I’ve lost all sense of time.’
‘I think it must be.’ The house was very quiet; it felt as though they were the only two people awake in the world.
‘Will you stay here tonight? I think you don’t normally sleep here.’
‘I never do, but I will tonight. I took a foolish vow long ago never to spend another night under Wyverne’s roof. But this is the time to break it, I think.’
She stirred restlessly. ‘I don’t want you to do violence to your feelings on my account.’
‘My feelings are different now. I’m not leaving you. Even if I could tear myself away from the warmth of your embrace, which I don’t think I could, I wouldn’t rest easy knowing you were here alone.’
‘I must admit I don’t want you to go. But I do need to leave your arms for a moment. It would be most romantic to fall asleep like this, but I am not entirely comfortable.’
He understood her instantly, and told her that there was a necessary behind the screen, which she had known already.
When it was his turn to use it, she returned to the bed. She was damp with perspiration, and so was he, and the room smelled inescapably of sex. There could be no mistaking… And with that thought, the clever, calculating part of her brain, the part that had seized on the chance to stay alive and thrive when it had been offered her by Nate, clicked into operation and gave her the solution.
He came back to her and joined her in the warm bed, and as she relaxed into his arms once more she said, ‘Rafe, I think I know how we can ensure that I escape suspicion, and no longer need to hide away here.’ She felt his body stiffen, and added hastily, ‘Don’t misunderstand me. There’s a large part of me that would like to stay here forever. It’s so tempting to feel safe in your embrace, and God knows I don’twantto leave you. But I must. You know as well as I do that my situation is desperate, and to think that I can stay concealed here for long enough to escape discovery is simply unrealistic. You can’t stay here all the time or guarantee my safety when you must be absent. Someone will realise eventually that I’m here, even if it takes days or weeks. And then I’ll be in a desperate case.’
‘I know,’ he said a little bleakly. ‘Everything you say is entirely correct. I collect that you have a plan?’
‘I do. And I do believe it could work. But I don’t think you’re going to like it.’
30
Rafe wasn’t happy about Sophie’s scheme. It was ingenious – there was no denying that – but it was also extremely risky. She was so brave, and she was prepared to accept that risk, so he must be too. If it worked, her plan would release her from concealment and give her a great deal more latitude to move about the house and the estate than she’d had even before she’d fallen under suspicion. She wouldn’t be a servant any more, and so, presumably, she couldn’t be detained here by Lord Wyverne. He might, he surely would, want to search her luggage before she was permitted to leave – that was an obstacle they still needed to overcome – but it was still a step towards setting her free. He’d been horrified when she’d first suggested it, worried most of all about her safety, but she’d been so emphatic in her disregard of herself that he’d been obliged at last to accept that it might be the only solution.
It wasn’t as if he wanted to keep her here in his room. Well, he did, but it was selfish and unfair to dwell on the idea. Of course he wasn’t a man to keep a woman prisoner. He might wish she had a stronger desire to stay, but he dismissed that unworthy feeling and tried very hard not to show her the leasthint of it. She was that strange paradox, an honest thief. She’d never claimed to be able to imagine any world in which they could be together forever. For his part he could imagine it, quite easily, but he knew it was no more than a self-indulgent dream.
The truth was, he was torn, and in a state of sad confusion. He was a man who’d lived his whole life up to his current age of one and thirty in the fixed determination not to be anything like his scandalous father. He’d always known this gave him a dilemma that might have been devised by some ingenious demon to torment him. No innocent woman could be brought into his family as his wife while Wyverne lived and Rosanna stood at his side, but if he had any hope of restoring some honour to the family name, which was vital for the sake of his sister and brother and the secure, happy future they deserved, he must marry someone with a far better reputation than his. Only a woman far above reproach, famously virtuous, could help him reverse the damage Wyverne had done. It would be hard enough to persuade such a woman to take him, Rafe; impossible, until his father and Rosanna were gone for good. He’d never found a solution to this problem, other than to wish for Wyverne’s speedy death. Amelia was still young, he’d told himself – she need not think of marriage for a few years yet, and by then, he hoped, the family name would be restored so that she might be free to pair with the sort of man she deserved. As for him, he was lonely while he waited in this limbo, but he could bear it.
But now Sophie had come into his life, and his previous predicament took on the aspect of a child’s puzzle, compared with the tangle he found himself in now. It was quite easy to picture the sort of woman who might take on the Herculean task of reclaiming the Wyverne name; she would most likely be socially ambitious, highly interested in his fortune and conspicuously devoted to the outward show of morality andpiety. She probably wouldn’t be enormously enjoyable to live with unless he was luckier than he could hope to be, but one thing was certain: she’d look nothing like Sophie. She would have no sort of a past, let alone a past like Sophie’s. What hurt him was that Clemence de Montfaucon could have been a much more palatable version of that woman, she could have helped him build a better futureandthey could have shared so much more, they could have made each other happy beyond all his current expectations. Again the vicious elegance of the trap revealed itself, for whose fault was it that Sophie was no longer Clemence? Not hers. He was not the man to blame her for surviving. It was Wyverne, spreading his poison wherever he went.
No, she had to be free to leave, for his sake as well as her own, and he had to do everything in his power to help her, however much it went against his own deepest wishes. He knew he should tell himself it was for the best; at present, he couldn’t quite manage it.
The audacious nature of the plan required that they’d both have to endure a certain amount of discomfort and humiliation – inevitably, she more than he. It would also mean that they’d both be brought into direct and unpleasant contact with Lord Wyverne, and likely with his wife too. Sophie had been worried about that, worried about him, and if he’d said he couldn’t countenance it, he believed she’d have been perfectly prepared to abandon the idea. But it was quite clear to Rafe that as far as she was concerned that was the only flaw in the scheme. And so he’d realised that it would be wrong to refuse. It wasn’t as though his relationship with his father and stepmother could well be much worse. If Rosanna realised at long last that he would never have any sexual interest in her, that would be a relief. And Sophie’s idea had the further advantage that it wasn’t at all likely to cause some final rift with Wyverne,which she knew he could not afford. He’d gladly endure a little unpleasantness for her sake. Look whatshewas prepared to do.
