Claiming the Courtesan

His weight must have been crushing her, but she made no protest. Her hands had slid off his shoulders after her climax and now her arms extended stiffly at her sides. She was trembling.

Bitter disappointment was a rusty taste in his mouth and worried at the edges of his physical satisfaction.

He’d forced a climax from her, but in the desolate reaches of his mind, he recognized that in the end he hadn’t really vanquished her. He wanted her complete surrender. He wanted her willing in his bed. He hadn’t even come close to either goal.

Soraya had always sought her satisfaction with an openness he’d found bewitching. Verity had lain in contemptuous silence beneath him until he’d finished.

He rolled off her. She exhaled on a muffled sob and scrambled across the mattress to curl up as far away from him as she could.

He didn’t have the strength to protest. His chest heaving as he fought for air, he stretched out next to her. His muscles still quivered from the powerful sex, and sweat chilled his bare skin. He raised an unsteady hand to brush his damp hair back from his forehead and wondered what the hell would become of the two of them. And then asked himself if he cared.

A long time afterward, he finally dredged up the energy to speak. “Your coldness won’t deter me.”

The sound of his own voice was almost shocking after the wordless coupling. First light seeped into the room through the drawn curtains, and he saw how she’d gone back to huddling on the edge of the bed.

“I have nothing but coldness for you,” she said woodenly.

He couldn’t see her face. He didn’t need to. He knew the pride and suffering it would convey. “Soraya is a woman who understands pleasure.”

“Soraya never existed.”

Ignoring how she flinched away, he leaned over her. He’d expected her to appear composed and distant, but he read only vulnerability in her lush mouth and shadowed eyes. “You’re wrong. You are Soraya.”

She closed her eyes and shook her head. “No, I am Verity.”

“You are Verity and Soraya.”

He bent his head to kiss that soft mouth. For a moment, her lips moved against his, and he thought he’d won. Then she jerked away.

In the growing light, she looked exhausted. A man with any compassion would leave her alone.

Hell, a man with any compassion would never bully her into his bed in the first place.

“Soraya still exists in you and I mean to find her.” The words were a vow.

She merely shook her head once more. He rolled away from her in impatience and sat up. With a disgusted gesture, he flung the sheet up to cover her nakedness.

In truth, he wanted her again. After so long without her, he was still far from sated. But the compassion he denied he possessed prevented him acting totally the selfish libertine, much as he wanted her to think that was all he was.

After the long night, he sensed she was very close to shattering. Once, he’d have said nothing short of cannon fire could rattle the gorgeous Soraya. But this woman, still flinching away from him in rejection, had fewer defenses than his exotic mistress.

Of course, one day he might have to break her.

But not yet. Dear God, not yet.

Kylemore paused at the top of the waterfall that tumbled from the cliff at the end of the glen. The afternoon light was dazzling on the rushing water, but he was blind to the scene’s beauties.

Instead, he brooded upon his mistress. That was nothing new. His mistress had dominated his thoughts since she’d left him. And for a considerable portion of time before that, if the truth were known.

Would he ever be free of this damned inconvenient itch for the chit? She didn’t know it, but she wasn’t the only one struggling against unwilling captivity.

He sat back against a rock familiar from his childhood and stretched his legs along the sun-warmed ground. It dismayed him how clearly he remembered so many things here, despite having left when he was seven years old for his unhappy sojourn at Eton. He’d thought time would have softened the painful memories. The hope had been unfulfilled.

He’d had a long walk up to this spot, and he’d need most of the rest of the day to return. Just as he’d intended when he’d set out this morning.

Although he wasn’t hungry, he took some bread and cheese from his pocket and bit into it. Scotland had the ability to kill his appetite, he discovered.

Below him spread the pitched jumble of roofs that made up the hunting box and its surrounding buildings. Originally, this lonely glen had contained only a crofter’s cottage. His grandfather had used the simple house while stalking the estate’s abundant deer. Of course, the isolation meant this was a lunatic place to want to live. But his grandfather had been an obsessive hunter.