CHAPTER6
Hart tugged Lady Emma unceremoniously over the threshold of his room and kicked the door closed at her back. Her blue eyes were wide as they met his. Astounded, no doubt. Perhaps a bit frightened. He could set her mind at ease. Let her know he was not the sort of chap who found pleasure in inflicting pain on those who were weaker than he was. But he was too damned filled with a dangerous mixture of frustration, fury, and lust to ease her concerns.
He flattened his palms on the door at either side of her head, caging her there with his body, and forced her to meet and hold his gaze. “You, milady, are the most vexing bleeding woman I’ve ever met.”
And beautiful.
He wanted the mask off her face so he could see her lovely features in all their glory, the delicate tracery of her cheekbones, the arches of her golden brows, unobscured by her disguise. He wanted to strip her bare. And to take her as she had been daring him at every turn.
Yes, he wanted to lay her in his bed and make love to her until the sun went down. And then he wanted to lick and kiss her creamy skin and heavenly curves and fuck her until he was mindless and boneless and the sun was rising once more over the East End.
To make her his.
Her chin went up, and oh, how he loved her defiance. If at all possible, it made his cock harder. He did not recall wanting a woman this much. Not ever.
“I suppose we are even then, Mr. Sutton,” she said, “because you are the most irksome man I have ever met.”
She thought he was irksome, did she? He would have laughed if he did not want her so damned badly. But he did want her. He wanted her more than he wanted his next breath. It was wrong and it was stupid, and he hadn’t brought her here to fuck her. She was here for one reason only, and it was to use her as the leverage he needed against her bastard of a father. It was so he could get the answers he needed about Loge.
Saint Hugh’s bones, he wasn’t thinking about any of those reasons now, however. He was thinking about the way her lips felt beneath his, smooth and full and warm. He was thinking about the way she tasted, musky and sweet. He was thinking about how she had come from his mouth on her alone. And he was thinking of what else he could show her. Thinking of sinking deep inside her and stretching her cunny with his cock.
No, no, no.
Floating, bleeding, hell. No.
It was a litany in his mind. A warning. He knew this was wrong as he watched his fingers work on the strings of her mask, untying the knots. Knew it was wrong as the mask fell to the floor. And as he cupped her face, reveling in the smoothness of her skin, the contrast between her dainty aristocratic elegance and his rough East End, work-roughened hands.
He knew it as his head lowered, as his mouth connected with hers, as he kissed her furiously. And he knew it still as she kissed him back, her fingers finding the loose fabric of his shirt and tightening on it, pulling him nearer rather than pushing him away.
He knew he should stop.
But he was not going to. Not now. Not yet. She had driven him to the edge of reason with her defiance and her beauty and her maddening presence in his life, in his room, in his gaming hell. She should have stayed here, out of his reach. He had almost begun to forget about her and pay attention to the plan to lure Haldringham to The Sinner’s Palace for a game he could not resist.
Almost.
You can never forget this woman, whispered an insidious, mocking voice within. She is seared into your memory.
Aye, she was. Just as the ghost of her kisses would haunt him even when her usefulness to him was done and she was long gone from his world, returned to her gilded cage where she belonged.
He kissed her harder, wanting to punish her, to punish himself. But if he thought to force her into pushing him away with the pressure of his mouth, she proved him wrong. Her mettle was far stronger. She kissed him back with every bit of the frenzied hunger, the furor and the need, as if she were giving him everything he bestowed and more. She pulled him even nearer, hands still fisted in his day-old shirt.
Christ, he was making a muck of this plan. His second day, the invitation to Haldringham not yet issued, and Hart’s resolve had so faltered that he was kissing Lady Emma against a bleeding door. But the fires of his self-loathing fiercely rivaled those of his desire for her. The conflagration burned hot and quick as lightning within him.
He tore his lips from hers, thinking to put an end to this nonsense, but he could not resist stringing kisses across the regal line of her jaw, to her ear. She shivered and pressed closer, her breath falling hot on his throat as he grazed the shell of her ear with his lips. And then, consumed by the beast within, he caught the fleshy lobe in his teeth and tugged. He nibbled and bit. Used his teeth on her the way he longed to consume the rest of her.
Push me away, he thought, needing to overwhelm her. To let her see the depth of the desire he felt for her, to understand what she was asking for, what he was determined not to give. She was not for him, and nor was he for her. They would both do best to remember that. Tell me to stop. He kissed down her throat, open-mouthed and hungry, suckling her sensitive flesh where she still smelled decadently floral. She released her grip on his shirt as he found his way to her collarbone, to the madly thumping pulse hidden in a sweet hollow there.
But she did not shove him away. Instead, her fingers curled on his shoulders, the nails digging through his shirt in sweet agony. She was not a calm, icy lady as he had anticipated. Hart would have been able to resist a cold, arrogant, aloof nob with ease, regardless of how beautiful she was or how pouting and pink her lips. He had not expected such flame. And that flame was proving his downfall now.
Her gown was staid. Another garment borrowed from Lily. The bodice concealed her generous breasts, those nipples he had so recently sucked. How far would she allow this to progress until her tears returned?
The question cooled some of his ardor, for while her breathing was harsh and ragged as his and her heart was beating fast and she clung to him as if he were the difference between life and falling to her death, he had not entirely banished that sadness from his mind. He understood her now, he thought. What he had mistaken for unwillingness before had been confusion.
She wanted this every bit as much as he did—it was in her touch, in her kiss, in her every response. Those bleeding kisses could not be feigned. But like him, there was something keeping her from losing herself headlong into passion.
What was her bugbear?
And why did the reminder of that bleeding tear make a new and strange part of him ache, right in his chest, as if it were his heart feeling for her? He owed her nothing. She was no one to him. Floating hell, he had only known her for the span of one day. He was hardly responsible for her happiness, for her fears, for her pain.