Claiming the Courtesan

She shrugged sullenly. “So kill me. Kill me now and save yourself the inconvenience of a long journey. Threats won’t change the way I feel.”

As she should have expected, the challenge didn’t dent his self-assurance. “Perhaps not. But I’d hate to end this particular drama just when it’s getting interesting.”

Balancing himself against the lurching with an ease she resented, he crossed the carriage to share her bench. Verity cringed into the corner before she could stop herself. The seat was narrow, and while he wasn’t a heavyset man, he had plenty of lean strength to fill the available room. His legs lay alongside hers, and their heat seeped through her thick black skirts.

But she was a fighter. She’d had to be.

“So you’ve decided to murder me after all.” She hoped her statement was mere bravado.

He turned his dark head and regarded her steadily. She suspected he understood how unnerving she found his brooding concentration upon her.

“No, not yet.” His lips quirked with frosty amusement. “Although you might wish I had before I’m finished.”

She inched further into the padded leather on the side of the coach, but it made no difference to how the duke dominated the space. The bumping carriage constantly moved him against her, creating suggestive friction. Each brush of his arm or his thigh seared her with unwelcome reminders of pleasure.

“What are you going to do?” she asked in a voice she struggled to keep steady. Curse him for tying her up. Her bound hands were helpless to push him further away.

“Don’t you like surprises?” he asked softly. For all their talk of murder and his earlier attack on Ben, she sensed no violence in him now.

“No, I don’t,” she snapped, light-headed with a nauseating mixture of nerves and anger. Just what was he playing at?

“How sad,” he murmured. “That is something we should remedy.” He raised one long-fingered hand and trailed it down the side of her face to cup her chin.

Every second of that mocking caress burned. She tried and failed to wrench away. “I won’t lift my skirts for you in a moving carriage.”

His touch was gentle but inexorable. “You’ll lift your skirts when and where I say. You gave up any right to command me when you ran off.”

“I’ll fight you.” She prayed it was true.

“I count on it.” He leaned forward to rub his cheek against her face. His shadow beard prickled faintly against her skin. His warm, musky scent, familiar from a hundred afternoons in Kensington, enveloped her.

She stiffened, rejecting the false tenderness as much as the threat of force. “Stop it!” she grated out.

Kylemore laughed softly. “Shh,” he breathed into her ear as he nuzzled at her throat.

I can bear this, she swore to herself. I can bear this.

“Verity.” He nibbled his way to her shoulder, brushing aside her dress’s high neckline. “Verity, you’re as delicious as Soraya ever was.”

“I hope I make you choke.” She was horrified to hear a husky edge to her defiance. He laughed again, the short huffs of breath warm across her collarbone.

“That’s my girl.” He turned her more fully toward him and concentrated on a sensitive nerve between her neck and her shoulder. Twelve months of intimacy had taught him that attention to that particular spot drove her insane with pleasure.

Because of course they both knew her insults were empty. She bit back a moan. The Duke of Kylemore was a skillful lover who had always drawn a response from her. A genuine response, not the tired ruses of a doxy placating her rich keeper. She’d enjoyed his lovemaking, had even found it exciting if she’d ever permitted herself that much feeling when they’d been together.

It was just a healthy young woman’s natural response to a vigorous lover, she’d always told herself.

Her first vigorous lover.

With more effort than she wanted to acknowledge, she distanced herself from what he was doing to her now. In London, sex had taken place in a strange atmosphere of trust. Since her desertion, he no longer trusted her. And she certainly didn’t trust the madman who’d snatched her from the public road and tried to kill her brother. The memory helped stifle any response to his touch.

Eventually, the duke sat back and studied her with an expression of displeasure on his spoiled, handsome face.

Good, she thought.

“You can’t escape me, even in your mind. There’s no point wishing yourself somewhere else,” he said in a tone completely different from the seductive purr of a few seconds ago.

“Unfortunately, you make it impossible for me to go anywhere, Your Grace.” She raised her tied hands in an ironic gesture. “I find myself less than enraptured with your hospitality.”