He flashed a wicked grin, ever his enigmatic self, and caught her hand in his, guiding it to the healing wound on the back of his head. “Not smashed, love. See? Perfectly intact, if ever it indeed was.”
She was grateful his wound had not been as grievous as it could have been and that he had not suffered infection or worse. But he seemed determined to tone down both the severity of his attack and the danger facing him. She meant to point as much out to him, to dress him down with precise words of condescension.
Instead, she allowed her emotions to once more get the best of her. “Do you not think whoever tried to kill you will realize he failed and try again? What if he succeeds the next time? What then?”
His grin turned wry and he released her hand. “Then you’ll be free to return to your beloved Virginia, won’t you? Perhaps you ought to relinquish your wifely concern. It seems my demise would do you a good turn.”
No it most certainly would not. The thought of him gone from her life forever—of the world without his engaging wit, magnetism, withouthim—seemed the most egregious thing imaginable. “How can you be so flippant about your own life?”
“Come now, little dove.” He trailed a finger over her collarbone, studying her in that penetrating way of his. “Am I meant to sit about crying in a corner? Don’t mistake just who it is that you married. I’m a man who has devoted his life to not giving a damn about anything, especially not my own worthless hide.”
Her heart gave a pang in her chest at hearing him speak about himself in such terms. What could have happened to him in his life to make him feel so contemptible? Perhaps it was the newness of the intimacy they’d shared. Perhaps it was the result of finally acknowledging she couldn’t turn away from the path she’d chosen. She’d sealed her fate when she’d lain with him. He’d seen, touched, and kissed her everywhere. He’d been inside her, had spent his seed within her. Even now she could be carrying his child.
The thought sent an odd, tingling warmth pervading her entire body. She stayed him when he would have trailed his touch lower, over the aching curve of her breast. She searched his shuttered gaze, wishing she could see within their blue depths an inkling of his innermost thoughts. “You are not worthless.”
His expression hardened, a grim cast calling the angles of his features into relief. “I was a whore. There’s no need to mince words or pretend. That is who I am, a man who sold his body and his soul. That is who you see before you now, the man who used his pretty face to assuage the ruin his bastard of a father left him in. You cannot do the things I did, Clara, and give a damn about yourself. And I cannot undo them now. They’re forever a part of me.”
She recognized the emotion coloring his voice for the first time. Not just scorn directed at himself, but shame. He was embarrassed by the things he had done to keep penury at bay. Clara wanted to weep for him, but she knew that would only shame him further.
Instead, she held his face in her hands as he had so recently done to her, relinquishing her hold on his hand and the bedclothes she’d primly attempted to pull between their naked bodies. “You did what you needed to do. You kept your sisters well taken care of. You kept your home. Stop punishing yourself for the past.”
Freed of her staying grasp, his hand was once again at liberty to continue its wicked travel. He cupped her breast, making her nipple pebble into his palm. His gaze lowered to her mouth. “Watch yourself, little dove. You make it sound as if you care.”
His words hit her with the force of a blow, for they pierced the confusion and emotion muddling her brain and made her recognize the truth for what it was. She did care. Of course she cared for him. If she wasn’t careful, in fact, she could love him.
How stunning. How terrifying. She’d never contemplated falling in love with the Earl of Ravenscroft. He was wicked and sleek and beautiful and altogether dark and dangerous. But he was also good. He cared for his sisters. He had been gentle with her, had taken pains to inflict as little pain on her as possible. Perhaps he could learn to care for her in time as well.
Her heart hammered in her breast and she wondered if he could feel it. “I do care,” she told him, tamping down her pride. For he needed to hear it from her now. “I care for you, Julian.”
“Ah, a common neophyte mistake, confusing lust for something else.” He rolled her nipple between his thumb and forefinger with expert attention. “Soon you’ll learn the way of things.”
She ignored the bloom of heat his ministrations sent directly to her core. He could not deflect her so easily. “Why do you think I’m here now?”
He tugged on the hardened bud. “Because I excel at fucking. Let me show you more, love. I’ll make you come with my tongue alone. I’ll sink it deep inside you and find a secret place you never dreamed existed. It’ll make you go wild.”
Traitorous heat slid through her, wetness and hunger pooling deep within the flesh he’d so recently claimed. It would be so easy to give in to him, to allow him to pleasure her and close her mind to the dangers surrounding them. To only feel, to bask in his seduction and forget all else. But that would be weak and wrong, for he meant so much more to her than his undeniable prowess. There was a physical pull between them but there was also something else. Something deeper and stronger.
“No.” She would not allow him to dismiss her feelings for him. To suggest she’d change the course of her entire life merely because he was a skilled lover was an insult to the both of them. “I’m here because I care. For the past few years, I’ve devoted my life to returning home. Everything I’ve done—every scandal and worry I’ve caused my family, every madcap plan I’ve devised—has been with one goal in mind. To return to Virginia and the land I love. I never strayed from my course. I never intended to have anything more than a marriage in name only with you. But then I saw you bloodied and broken, and I realized that I couldn’t bear to lose you. Icare, Julian. Do not dare to insult me by suggesting I’m too naïve to understand the difference.”
There. The words left her in a great rush, before she could rethink them or attempt to lessen her admission of the extent to which he had made her fall beneath his spell. Her chest heaved. He hadn’t stopped toying with her nipple, but the rest of him remained oddly still. She was reminded again of her early impression of him. A rattler. Sleek and powerful and ready to strike. His gaze, formerly pinned to her mouth, met hers at last. She couldn’t read the emotion simmering in the fathomless blue depths.
His silence made her flush. She felt as though all of her was displayed before him along with her body, her weaknesses and faults, her every desire and longing, before him to judge. She’d never felt such a depth of feeling, such a confused, wonderful and awful mixture of hope and dread pent up within her. He could cut her down with a word. He could render her mindless with a touch.
So much hung between them.
“Say something,” she demanded at last. “Have you no response?”
“You’re so very young,” he said at last as he released her nipple and his hand skated lower, over the curve of her belly to the bud of her sex. His fingers worked over the sensitized nub, playing her as he would an instrument. “So innocent.”
Damn him. How dare he condescend to her now, after she’d just bared the bewildering contents of her heart to him? But even as she resented him, her body responded. Her legs fell open, her body arching into his knowing touch. A breath hissed from her lungs.
“Not so innocent,” she reminded him.
He slicked wetness over her seam, parting her folds to stroke her gently. “Still innocent.” He kissed her then, with slow tenderness before withdrawing, his breath a hot curtain over her lips. “And sweet. So damn sweet. I want you all over again, little dove.”
The stubble of his whiskers pricked her palms. She still held his face trapped between her hands, almost as if she could not let him go. The fear fueled by her dream licked at her. The chasm she’d felt at losing him was a ghost inside her that refused to leave. Why couldn’t she release him? He was safe, flesh and blood before her, his skin branding hers. She wished she knew the answer.
“You toy with me,” she accused him without the heat she’d intended.
