The Deception (Baron 3)

“Then you say I’m also the best-endowed of all your lovers to date?”

> She felt the rumbling laughter deep in his chest. She arched back against his arms and hit him on the shoulder with her fist. “Damn you, stop this. I don’t understand you. Why are you doing this? I’ve told you the truth. Leave me alone.”

He grabbed her hands and easily rolled her onto her back, jerking her arms above her head. She struggled briefly, then lay rigid beneath him.

“I should beat you,” he said, his voice soft and thoughtful.

“You try it and I’ll hurt you badly.” He wasn’t moving, was just lying flat on top of her, their bellies pressed together. She had to leave him now. She had to escape.

She took him by surprise, but he managed to keep her down with his weight. He looked down at her pale face, her tangled hair, her mouth, beautiful, so very beautiful, and those eyes of hers that were so deep and held secrets he wanted to know.

“Let me go,” she said. “Just let me go.”

“I’d take myself to Bedlam if I let you up. Oh, no, as your most skilled lover to date, even more skilled than that clod, the saintly departed André, I want to leave an impression that will always be with you, until you’re an old woman and your memories are faded and blurred. You’ll still remember me, Evangeline. I’ll still be with you,” and he lowered his face and kissed her.

She fought him, willing herself not to let him make her wild again, even when she felt those urgent feelings welling up inside her.

He kissed her chin, her throat, licking the wildly beating pulse. Then he came up between her legs, pushing them even wider, and he smiled down at her, his eyes black and gleaming in the candlelight. He told her what he was going to do to her, and then he began kissing her breasts, every few breaths repeating what he was doing to her, what he was going to do to her next. By the time his mouth was hot and urgent against her belly, she was heaving and mewling, her hands in his hair, squeezing his shoulders, reaching any part of him she could. When his hands lifted her to his mouth, she was tense and ready. She heard herself begging him not to leave her. And he didn’t. When she bucked and yelled, he felt as if the world was his. And he was king of this world.

He came into her hard and fast and deep, and though she was very small, her flesh quivering around him, he knew he wasn’t hurting her. He wanted it to last, he wanted to bring her to pleasure again, but his body wouldn’t allow it. He’d wanted her for so very long. He roared his pleasure to the rafters in his bedchamber.

Finally, he raised himself on his elbows over her. “Tell me again that you don’t love me.”

She raised wild eyes to his face. She stared at him, just stared, not speaking. Then she started crying.

He rolled onto his side, leaned over her, and began to smooth the hair from her face. He lightly kissed her forehead, her temples, and the salty tears on her cheeks. “What is this? My Evangeline breaking into tears like just any weak woman? I wouldn’t have believed it possible. Not you, not my strong, stubborn girl.”

She turned her face away from him. He heard her sniffing, heard her begin to hiccup.

“Don’t move. I’ll take care of this ailment of yours.” He started to get up, but to his delirious pleasure, she held him, trying to bring him back to her. He grinned at her, and she hiccuped. “Let me go,” he said, and finally she did. “No,” he said over his shoulder, “I’m not leaving you. I’m just getting you a glass of water.”

When she drank the water and sniffled into the handkerchief he’d brought her, she looked away. He stared at her tousled head, wondering why he must always be forced back further than where he’d originally begun.

He frowned when he saw her thighs streaked with her virgin’s blood and his seed.

This time when he left her, she said nothing. He imagined her brain was squirreling about madly to find more excuses, more lies to throw at him. He didn’t say anything, just returned with a basin of water and a washcloth.

That roused her. “What’s that for?” she said, struggling up on her elbows.

“Be quiet and lie back down.” “Oh, no. I won’t do anything until you tell me what you’re doing.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Of course you know what I’m doing. I’m going to bathe you, naturally.”

“Oh, no, you won’t. Are you mad? That is certainly something I shall do for myself. Oh, goodness, I’m covered with blood.”

He ignored that and said easily, his voice as matter-of-fact as a magistrate’s, “It’s always the lover who performs this task.” He added with infuriating calm, “I assume that Frenchmen are no different from Englishmen in that regard.”

That confused her, and he would have laughed openly if only things weren’t so damned serious, if only his life weren’t on the line here.

“Of course not,” she said finally, and he could feel her struggling with herself to accept what he was doing to her, not wanting to, but knowing she had to accept it because it was the done thing.

“Sometimes one wonders,” he said, “if there are differences amongst men of different countries.” She lay on her back, her eyes tightly closed, while he stroked the wet washcloth over her flesh. She’d bled a lot. But it seemed to have stopped. He leaned closer. Her woman’s flesh was chafed. He’d not been rough with her, but still it had been a lot for her.

It was time to end it, but he said only, “Evangeline.”

She opened her eyes to see him looking intently at her face. “It seems to me that you’re only expressive when I’m kissing you or caressing you or making you yell. It’s all going to stop now, all of it. All the secrets, they’re going to come out now. I can see that you’re already trying to think up more ridiculous lies. Let’s begin with an easy one. I know that you are—were—a virgin.”

She was a doe facing a hunter. “That’s a stupid thing to say, your grace.”