‘Quinn?’ Lina reached for him and he rolled away and off the bed to stand with his back to the wall as though she had gone for him with a knife.
‘Quinn?’
Quinn fought his way past the string of swear words that was all his brain seemed able to produce and managed to articulate. ‘You were a virgin.’
He had just taken a virgin with the briefest of caresses, hard, fast, without care. Dear God, I have ravished a virgin. His mind filled with the nightmare images that still tormented his dreams: the huddled, bleeding figure in rags that flinched away when he tried to touch her, her eyes glazed over in pain and anguish. He had bought the girl when he bought Gregor,
two broken, abused pieces of human wreckage. Gregor had fought back to life, had tried to help him with the girl—they never discovered her name—but men, any men, simply terrified her. The fourth night she killed herself as they slept.
For weeks afterwards Quinn had not been able to bring himself to lie with a woman. Gradually the revulsion against his own desires became rational again. He did not behave like that to women and he had done his best for her. But the experience had left him, he knew, with reservations that were not shared by most men of his age and class. He had paid for a night of frustration before now when he had realised that the apparently willing professional in his arms was being forced by a pimp. The idea of buying a virgin nauseated him.
And now, because he was aroused and angry, he had taken Celina as he would have an experienced Cyprian. He had expected her to behave like one, she had taken him in her mouth as a result of his demands. How could he have done that, how had she managed to overcome the revulsion she must surely have felt? What had he become if he had not even realised?
She was lying there just as he had left her, Quinn saw as he turned his head. As he stared at her, the image of the slave girl cleared, replaced with Celina’s slim, pale body. His brain struggled with the confusion: she admitted she came from The Blue Door, that her aunt was a Madam, that she had been with a man, intimately, before he died of what sounded like a stroke brought on by excitement.
But she was a virgin. Don’t make excuses. There are no excuses for what you have just done. Celina looked back at him, her eyes wide and dark with questions and confusion.
‘You were a—’
‘Don’t you want me?’
They spoke together and answered together. ‘Yes,’ Celina admitted.
‘Yes,’ Quinn said between clenched teeth. She looked vulnerable and soft and infinitely desirable and he wanted, more than anything, to take her back into his embrace and love her—love her gently and sweetly and with skill, as a virgin deserved from her first man.
‘Then, why have you stopped?’ she asked and he realised that, much as he wanted to make love to her, he was losing his temper as comprehensively as he ever had in his life and that he really did not feel safe touching her. Which was a good thing, he concluded grimly, because he should not be touching her, gently or otherwise.
‘Do you really have to ask?’ Quinn demanded as he snatched up his robe. There was blood on his body, a smear. Hers. ‘I do not deflower virgins—or I did not until you lied your way into my life.’ He belted the robe and flicked one side of the coverlet over Celina as she sat up.
‘But…’ She paused and he saw her collect herself, fight the after-effects of unsatisfied passion, just as he was doing. ‘You are upset because I did not tell you. But I tried—’
‘Upset?’ He stalked over to the dresser and poured himself a large glass of brandy, thought about it, poured another and went back to the bed and handed that to Celina. ‘Yes, I would say I am upset. And all I can say is that you did not try very hard, Miss Shelley. In fact, you deceived me, did you not?’
‘Yes,’ she said, chin up. She was not defiant, he realised, feeling a sneaking admiration for the fact that she was making no effort to placate him or wriggle out of this. If his body would only stop admiring her too…
‘Did you think it would not matter to me?’
‘I realised I would not be very good at making love and you might be disappointed,’ Celina began and Quinn saw red. ‘But men seem to like—’
‘I do not force women,’ he snarled between gritted teeth as she flinched away. ‘I do not deflower virgins—but I have just done so because you, I presume, thought you had better attach me in some way to ensure I do not hand you over to the authorities after all. Which means that I have somehow given you the impression that you cannot rely on my word any more than I can rely on yours.’
‘No!’ Celina protested, sitting bolt upright and letting the silk coverlet slide down to her hips with devastating, innocent, effect. ‘I wanted you to make love to me because I desired you.’ The wide blue eyes vanished as her lashes came down in confusion. Quinn winced at the stab of ridiculous, treacherous pleasure the words gave him. He could not trust this woman, yet his own instincts threatened to betray him.
She was acting again, of course, and he was coming to believe that this wide-eyed protestation of innocent desire was her best performance yet. Miss Celina Shelley was a courtesan in training being groomed to take over from her aunt one day. She had been about to lose her virginity very profitably to Tolhurst when he had keeled over and, while it cannot have been anything but a very unpleasant experience, it was difficult to believe that she had been a prisoner of her own aunt, a woman she said she loved, or had been forced against her will.
There was no other explanation for her willingness to make love to him as she had, to be as bold and as sensual.
‘I should have told you, but I had no idea you would take on so,’ she finished with a gasp of indignation. ‘You are a rake, you told me so yourself. You have a shocking reputation. I thought rakes did that sort of thing all the time!’
‘Well, I don’t,’ Quinn retorted. ‘Where do you think I would draw the line if you believe that of me? Abduction? Rape?’ He threw himself into a chair at a safe distance from the bed—and the temptation to wring Miss Celina Shelley’s delightful neck. ‘And cover yourself up, I am not made of iron.’
She grabbed for the edge of the coverlet in confusion while Quinn tried to calm down. At least there was no risk he had got her with child, not that he would not have been careful in any case, he thought, resting his aching head on the chair back and glaring at the ceiling.
‘I suppose that being wrongfully accused of seducing Lord Sheringham’s daughter would have made you sensitive to such things,’ Celina ventured. ‘And being the victim of lies would give anyone a strong dislike of falsehood. I did not mean to deceive you out of any malice.’
Quinn looked at her curled up now against the pillows, swathed in the lush green silk of the bedcover. The picture of the perfect mistress, if it was not for the frown on her forehead and the anxiety in the wide blue eyes. And that lovely, kissable lower lip that just now she was biting in distress.
He let go of the anger as best he could and listened to his reason. Yes, she was telling the truth now: she had not deceived him about her identity for any motive other than fear. He was still not certain why she had wanted to come to his bed. He had a fair idea of his own worth, women appeared to find him attractive, but it took more than that surely, for a virgin to go so far?