Nick’s hand left her hair and stroked down her back to her waist, hips, and the delicious curve of one buttock. “Jane,” he whispered, agony in his voice. He pulled her closer against him. In response, she groaned a deep strangled sound, and then she wrenched her head free and buried her face in his neck, lifted one knee and wrapped it around his hip, trying to climb on top of him, instinctively opening herself, poising herself for him.
He needed her, desperately.
He wanted her, with every fiber of his soul and being.
In horror, he saw them then. The depraved brute and the innocent schoolgirl. Jane was moaning and whimpering into his neck, clinging, and if she lifted her other knee she would be astride him …
With supreme willpower, Nick threw her to the ground.
She lay panting, face uplifted. “Nicholas,” she begged.
He stood panting, staring down, more horrified than he had ever been in his life. More afraid. “God, what am I doing?” he cried into the night. And then he turned and ran.
Jane managed to get to her room. Her dress was soiled, her hair a tangled mess. She fell gratefully onto the bed, her heart still beating frantically. She covered it with her palm, hoping to still it. She was in love.
And it was as much pain as pleasure.
She would never forget his kiss and the fire he had set within her. Never. “Nicholas, I love you,” she whispered, and then she started to weep.
She loved him but he didn’t love her. As naive as she was, she knew that. He had kissed her in anger. Only in anger, and then the kiss had taken on a life of its own.
But hadn’t he been jealous?
Jane wasn’t sure. As far as the earl went, she was utterly confused. He was a dark, complex man. And like all men, he could make love to a woman without loving her.
Jane didn’t want to be another Amelia.
She wanted to be his wife.
Seriously, realistically, she considered this. Was it possible? And she knew it wasn’t. She did not doubt that the earl had no intention of marrying. She could sense it. And even if he fell in love and did marry, why would it be her? There were more beautiful women in the world, many of them, and the earl was a big catch.
Could she settle, then, for crumbs?
Could she be his mistress?
Jane wasn’t sure. She only knew that she loved him so much it hurt. She only knew that she wanted him, to hold him, comfort him, to make him laugh. And she wanted to be in his arms again …
Remembering their heated kiss roused her blood—and her despair. He had so few friends. Maybe Lindley was the only one. Look at what she had done. She had destroyed their friendship. She was so sorry. If she had known, if she hadn’t been so damn impulsive, so damn reckless—as always—she would have never flirted so brazenly. Jane hugged her pillow. She would have to reconcile the two men somehow. Oh, God!
“Nicholas, forgive me,” she whispered.
The earl froze in the center of his library, where he was standing. He heard the carriage wheels crunching on the graveled driveway. His head turned toward the windows, and in the gaslit night, he watched as Lindley’s coach pulled away from the front of the house. He knew a moment’s insanity, when he had the urge to run out and stop him. He did not. He felt the pain, and he rubbed his chest, as if he could physically erase it.
Oh, God.
He sat down heavily, head hanging. Lindley had betrayed him. It didn’t matter that Jane had provoked him; Lindley was older, he knew better. He had betrayed him. His best friend, his only friend. The man who had stood by him through the damn trial and all the ostracism since. “Damn you,” Nick cried into the silent library. “Damn you!”
He damned himself.
He thought of Jane.
Jane, who, before his very eyes, was awakening to her sexuality, and God, it was hot, potent—dangerous.
He clenched his fists. She had been smitten with him, until Lindley had arrived. Then she had become infatuated with Raversford. She was an impressionable adolescent. Nothing more. Who would it be tomorrow? It had better be, he thought savagely, the man he would marry her to!
He would have to keep an eye on her. He would have to chaperon her. He could not trust her, not after tonight. She had begged Lindley to kiss her. She was a flirt. An accomplished flirt! And then she had kissed Nick back passionately when he had been trying to hurt her!
She was fickle and faithless.
