Lord of Scoundrels (Scoundrels 3)

“It doesn’t turn out that way,” she said shakily. “You only came to make fools of them—and of me, especially. You marched in and took over and made everyone kowtow to you, like it or not. You made me dance to your tune as well.”

“You seemed to like it,” he said.

“That doesn’t mean I like you,” she said. “You had better let go of my hand before people start thinking you like me.”

“I don’t care what they think. Andiamo.”

Her hand firmly imprisoned in his, he started walking, and she had no choice but to go with him—or be dragged along.

He was leading her to the entryway.

Jessica was looking frantically about her, debating whether it would do any good to scream for help, when a loud crash came from the cardroom. Then someone screamed and several others shouted and there were more loud crashes. And in the next instant, everyone in the ballroom was rushing toward the noise.

Everyone except Dain, who merely picked up his pace and continued toward the entrance.

“It must be a fight,” she said, trying to pull her hand free. “A riot, by the sounds of it. You’ll miss the fun, Dain.”

He laughed and tugged her through the entryway.

Chapter 7

Dain knew the house. It had belonged to the previous Marquess of Avory, and had been the scene of more than one drunken orgy. It was promising to become one of the most notorious residences in Paris when the marquess had met his untimely death. That had been about two years ago, and the furnishings were vastly different now. Still, Dain had no trouble recognizing the small sun parlor on the ground floor whose French doors opened into the garden.

That was where he took Jessica.

To negotiate.

Because—as he should have expected and prepared for—matters were not proceeding as he’d planned.

He had planned to wreak havoc and mayhem. Within five minutes of his arrival, he’d found that the combined pride of the Ballisters and Usignuolos wouldn’t let him.

No matter how much he was goaded, he would not be reduced to behaving like an animal.

Not in front of her, at any rate.

He had remembered the scornful look she’d given her brother two weeks ago, and the contemptuously amused look she’d given Dain himself, and how it had made him behave like a complete idiot.

He’d tried to forget it, but every moment and emotion of the episode was branded upon his mind: humiliation, rage, frustration, passion…and one stunning moment of happiness.

He had experienced a host of disagreeable emotions this evening…and forgotten them all the instant he’d danced with her.

She’d been slender and supple and light in his arms. So easy to hold. Her skirts had swirled about his legs, and he’d thought of slim white limbs entangled with his amid the rustle of sheets. Her scent, the provocatively innocent blend of chamomile soap and Woman, had whirled in his head, and he’d thought of pearly skin glimmering in the light of a single candle and long black hair tumbled upon a pillow…and himself wrapped in her clean, sweet womanliness, touching, tasting, drinking her in.

He had told himself these were ludicrous fantasies, that clean, sweet women did not lie in his bed and never would, willingly.

But she had seemed willing enough to dance with him. Though she couldn’t have enjoyed it, and must have had a typically understand feminine motive for seeming to, she’d made him believe she did and that she was happy. And when he’d gazed into her upturned countenance, he’d believed, for a moment, that her silver-grey eyes had been glowing with excitement, not resentment, and she had let him draw her closer because that was where she wanted to be.

It was all lies, of course, but there were ways to make certain lies half-true. Dain knew the ways. She, like every other human being since the Creation, had a price.

Consequently, all he had to do was find out what it was and decide whether he was willing to pay.

He led her to a corner of the garden farthest from the blazing lights of the house. Most of the late Lord Avory’s collection of Roman artifacts was still picturesquely strewn among the shrubbery, doubtless because it would cost a fortune to move the mammoth pieces.

Dain picked his companion up and sat her upon a stone sarcophagus. Standing upon an ornate base, it was tall enough to bring them nearly eye to eye.

“If I do not return very soon,” she said tightly, “my reputation will be in tatters. Not that you care, certainly. But I warn you, Dain, that I will not take it docilely and you—”

“My reputation is already in tatters,” he said. “And you don’t care.”

“That is completely wrong!” she cried. “I tried to tell you before: I do sympathize, and I was willing to help mend matters. Within reason, that is. But you refuse to listen. Because, like every other man, you can keep only one idea in your head at a time—usually the wrong one.”

“Whereas women are capable of holding twenty-seven contradictory notions simultaneously,” he returned. “Which is why they are incapable of adhering to anything like a principle.”

He took her hand and began to peel off her glove.

“You’d better stop that,” she said. “You’re only going to make matters worse.”

He pulled away the glove, and at the first glimpse of her fragile, white hand, all thoughts of negotiation fled. “I don’t see how matters could become worse,” he muttered. “I am already besotted with a needle-tongued, conceited, provoking ape leader of a lady.”

Her head jerked up, her grey eyes widening. “Besotted? You’re nothing like it. Vengeful is more like it. Spiteful.”

He went to work with speedy efficiency on the other glove. “I must be besotted,” he said evenly. “I have the imbecilic idea that you’re the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen. Except for your coiffure,” he added, with a disgusted glance at the coils and plumes and pearls. “That is ghastly.”

She scowled. “Your romantic effusions leave me breathless.”

He lifted her hand and pressed his mouth to her wrist.

“Sono il tuo schiavo,” he murmured.

He felt the jump of her pulse against his lips. “It means, ‘I am your slave,’” he translated, as she snatched her hand away. “Carissima. Dearest.”

She swallowed. “I think you had better stick to English.”

“But Italian is so moving,” he said. “Ti ho voluto dal primo momento che ti vedi.”

I’ve wanted you from the first moment I saw you.

“Mi tormenti ancora.”

You’ve tormented me ever since.

He went on telling her, in words she couldn’t understand, all he’d thought and felt. And while he talked, watching her eyes soften and hearing her breath quicken, he swiftly removed his own gloves.

“Oh, don’t,” she br

eathed.

He leaned in closer, still speaking the language that seemed to mesmerize her.

“You shouldn’t use masculine wiles,” she said in a choked voice. She touched his sleeve. “What have I done that’s so unforgivable?”

You made me want you, he told her in his mother’s language. You’ve made me heartsick, lonely. You’ve made me crave what I vowed I would never need, never seek.

She must have heard the rage and frustration throbbing beneath the longing words, but she didn’t recoil or try to escape. And when he wrapped his arms about her, she only caught her breath, and let it out on a sigh, and he tasted that sigh when his mouth closed over hers.

Jessica had heard the turmoil in his voice, and required no powers of divination to understand that it boded ill. She’d told herself a hundred times already to run away. Dain would let her go. He had too much pride to force her into his embrace or chase her if she fled.

She simply couldn’t do it.

She didn’t know what he needed, and even if she had known, she doubted she could provide it. Yet she felt—and the feeling was as certain as her awareness of imminent disaster—that he needed it desperately, and she couldn’t, despite common sense and reason, abandon him.

Instead, she abandoned herself, as she had been tempted to do the first time she’d seen him, and as she’d been more painfully tempted when he’d unbuttoned her impossible glove, and as she’d wanted past endurance when he’d kissed her in the storm.

He was big and dark and beautiful and he smelled of smoke and wine and cologne and Male. Now she found that she’d never wanted anything so desperately in all her life as she wanted his low voice sending shivers up and down her back and the lashing strength of his arms about her and his hard, depraved mouth crushing hers.