Midnight's Wild Passion Read online

  Almost reverently he touched her hair, his fingers as light as feathers. “Why do you cover it?”

  “I’m a companion, not a courtesan,” she snapped, and fumbled to restore her cap. And somehow in the process restore her sangfroid, her confidence, and her resistance to masculine wiles.

  Against better instincts, she turned her back on Ranelaw to check that she covered her hair. She stopped aghast as she caught her reflection in the mirror. The hand clutching the cap dropped to dangle at her side. In spite of the ugly spectacles, she looked vivid and alive in a way she hadn’t in years. The last time she’d looked like this, her life had collapsed around her in smoking ruins. She refused to let that happen again.

  Her cheeks were flushed and her lips were red, begging for a man’s kiss.

  Not just any man.

  Unfortunately the kisses she wanted belonged to the rapscallion who loomed behind her and put his hand on her shoulder with a gesture she read as possessive. Furious despair flooded her. Never, never would she allow another man to destroy her. She must scotch this insidious attraction. Loneliness was vastly superior to harlotry.

  Ranelaw didn’t shift his gaze from the pale braids coiled around her head. The severe style did little to conceal her hair’s unusual color or its thickness.

  “It’s a sin to hide such beauty under that hideous rag.” Ranelaw turned her to face him.

  After a moment’s resistance, she let him have his way. Angry bewilderment knotted her belly. How had they reached a point where he touched her with such authority, spoke to her with such intimacy? They were strangers. Antagonistic strangers at that.

  He stared at her as if he’d never seen a woman.

  So he liked her hair. That was no reason to glow with pleasure. Johnny Benton had liked her hair too. He’d particularly loved to comb his fingers through it and drape it over her bare breasts.

  It hadn’t stopped him seducing her away from her noble family and leaving her alone to face the consequences.

  She stared into Ranelaw’s glittering black eyes and recognized that he entertained similar fantasies about her hair draping her naked body. He grabbed her wrists in adamant hands, stopping her from tugging the mangled lace over her head.

  “It’s too late. I know.”

  “What . . . what do you know?” Dread snaked through her, almost killing the desire.

  Desire was an old enemy. She knew to her cost that nothing killed it once it stirred. It had stirred the minute she’d seen this beautiful, dissolute man.

  Only the damage awaiting kept her from surrender. That and the truth that he didn’t really want her, much as his eyes sparked hunger and his big, strong hands warmed her skin. The knowledge that he initiated this elaborate charade merely to smooth his path to Cassie made her straighten and glare at him. He took her for a henwit if he imagined his feigned desire duped her. He didn’t desire her. He couldn’t.

  But it was hard to believe the seduction halfhearted when she met his arrested expression. He frowned at her scared little question but his answer allayed her worst fears. “I know what beauty you hide under those rags.”

  “Don’t be a fool, Ranelaw,” she snapped, anger defeating momentary vulnerability.

  “Oh, I’m a fool, all right,” he muttered and tugged her into his body, his arms lashing her against him.

  A chaos of impressions, familiar and unfamiliar, overwhelmed Antonia. She knew how a man’s embrace felt. But the fierceness of this hold, the hard strength of this body, the clean, fresh smell, these were all Ranelaw.

  She flung her head up to deliver the scolding he deserved, then forgot everything when she met the blazing excitement in his eyes. A blazing excitement echoed in her pounding heart and rushing blood.

  “No . . .” she whispered, but he didn’t seem to hear.

  He bent his head and kissed her hard, using his tongue like a weapon to part her lips and give him access to her mouth. He was ruthless. He was insatiable. He gave no consideration to her unwillingness or her lack of preparation or what he believed was her inexperience.

  Shock rather than anything as commendable as virtue kept her unmoving under his mouth. Even as molten heat flooded her and a deep trembling set up in the base of her belly.

  With a muttered exclamation of frustration, he raised his head. He seized her shoulders in an adamant grip and stared down at her. “You can do better than that.”

  Anger flashed through her. The famous lover had kissed her with all the finesse of a navvy breaking ground for a new canal. “So can you,” she snapped.

  Immediately she realized her mistake when challenge sharpened his black gaze.

  “N-no,” she stammered, at last making some attempt to sidle away. So far she’d stood in his embrace like a quiescent doll. She needed to start thinking about self-preservation before it was too late.

  It was too late.

  “Ah, but how can any red-blooded man ignore a demand from a lovely lady?” he said silkily.

  “Believe me, you should ignore it.” Her voice was as uncertain as her attempt to escape.

  “Chivalry forbids.” His lips twitched with the humor that never failed to transfix her. She was so utterly brainless when it came to Ranelaw. He turned her common sense to sawdust. Before she could summon a crushing retort, his touch softened to seduction and a calculating light entered his eyes.

  Run, Antonia, run. . .

  Her feet didn’t heed her mind’s panicked message. Instead she waited in tremulous silence for his mouth to claim hers.

  At the touch of his lips, she made a muffled sound in her throat. She clenched her hands in his coat, ready to push him away. Until he began to ravish her mouth and her knees turned to water. The salty, spicy taste of Ranelaw flooded her senses.

  Briefly everything but pleasure receded. With a sigh, she sagged into his arms. Impossibly she felt him hesitate, as though her abrupt surrender disconcerted him. Before she could take advantage of the fleeting reprieve, his mouth moved in unmistakable demand. Everything dissolved into heat. Her mouth opened wide, her tongue curled over his in welcome, her arms circled his powerful body, drawing him closer.

  Antonia shut her eyes and drowned in hot, black delight. Deep in the recesses of her mind, she admitted this was what she wanted from him. Had always wanted. It was wrong, but his kiss made her feel more alive than anything else in the past ten years.

  “You taste so sweet, Antonia . . .” he murmured against her neck. He bit down on the tendons until she trembled.

  He returned to her lips, kissing her so violently that she staggered. As she stumbled, he caught her and dragged her tighter against him. She felt the nip of his teeth, the rough velvet of his tongue against hers.

  Through the symphony of desire, discordant bells clanged warning. She must end this shattering pleasure. Before she was lost.

  Weakly she pushed at his chest even as she stretched upward to seek more delicious torment. Her body arched shamelessly into his, relishing the heavy weight of his rod against her belly. She wanted to touch him there. She wanted to hold him in her hand. She wanted him to push that hard length inside her until this restless, throbbing need ignited in a climax to eclipse anything she’d known with Johnny Benton.

  Stop.

  Don’t stop. . .

  Her attempt to hold Ranelaw away turned into a feverish exploration of his chest. He was as hot as a big open fire. She wanted his waistcoat and his fine linen shirt gone. She wanted his skin against hers.

  She wanted . . . him.

  His hands moved up and down her back in rhythm with the movement of his lips. She drifted into a fog of sensation. A place that held only Ranelaw and his rich scent. Still he pressed her, giving no quarter. She felt dizzy, off-balance, bewitched.

  Incapable of protest.

  Until one hard hand closed over her breast. Her nipple tightened, and sharp pleasure slashed through her bedazzlement like lightning through a cloudy sky.

  She realized what she did. He kissed her and she let him. Worse, she encouraged him to pursue this encounter to its end.

  Where only misery lurked.

  For the sake of fickle pleasure, she’d once sacrificed everything. She’d never do it again, no matter how intoxicating Ranelaw’s kisses.

  She ripped her lips from his and forced out the word she must say. “No.”

  The denial nearly killed her. Wild, unleashed Antonia, reveling in her first freedom in years, screamed in protest. Wild, unleashed Antonia demanded more of Lord Ranelaw, the way a drunkard craved gin.

  He returned to kissing her neck, shooting arrows of heat straight to her belly. His hand opened and closed on her breast, making her shake with arousal. She sucked breath into lungs starved of air. She gripped his arms. Pride insisted the action was intended to control any further incursions. Brutal honesty made her admit she just wanted to touch him.

  “Ranelaw, no.” This time her denial emerged with some conviction. She backed toward the hearth. Eventually she’d run out of space, then what would happen?

  Sadly, she knew exactly what would happen.

  “You don’t mean that,” he said unsteadily, lifting his head to survey her from under sensually heavy eyelids.

  “I do,” she said, then gasped as he began to flick open the buttons that fastened her modest bodice. “Stop that.” She brushed his hand aside.

  “I want to see you.” His low voice was a seduction in itself. But she’d come back to herself enough to be horrified at how close she verged to disaster.

  “You’re not getting what you want.”

  Her dress gaped, revealing plai
n white cotton stays and shift. He must have seen women in the scantiest, most enticing of underclothing, but even so, she couldn’t mistake how his attention sharpened on her cleavage.

  “I promise I’ll just look.”

  She sent him a quelling look. “Yes, I believe that. Of course I do.”

  His arm firmed around her waist. “I like you better when I’m kissing you.”

  “I won’t fall victim to your shabby charm.”

  She tried to fasten her dress but her fingers shook so violently, she couldn’t unite even one button with its buttonhole. Furious misery closed her throat. Damn Ranelaw. His charm might be shabby, but she couldn’t resist it. The glint in his eyes told her the devil knew it.

  “How can such pretty lips say such nasty things?” His mouth twitched with amusement.

  The hint of humor made her burn to kiss him again. She silenced Wild Antonia and lifted her chin. “Get out, Ranelaw.”

  He looked breathtakingly handsome with his hair mussed. To her shame, she knew how those thick golden waves became so tousled. She’d buried her fingers in his hair while he pleasured her mouth.

  God help her, why was she so weak? She knew what she risked, but one touch from Ranelaw’s skillful hands and she forgot everything else.

  He grabbed her chin. His face was alight with a mixture of blatant sexual interest and laughter. “Oh, no, sweeting. This encounter is too interesting to abandon at this critical point.”

  Inevitably he’d kiss her again. Determination tautened his angular jaw and arrogance sparked in his eyes. He believed her opposition merely token.

  Why shouldn’t he when she’d kissed him as if he showed her the gateway to heaven?

  “No,” she said staunchly, stiffening without managing to pull away.

  “Yes.” He tilted her face up.

  His mouth covered hers. She braced for another assault on her senses, but this time, he wooed her with a gentleness as ruthless as his passion. For one lost moment, she succumbed to delight.

  He grabbed her arms, his kiss deepening. On unsteady feet, she retreated. Heat on the back of her legs told her she neared the fire but the only really dangerous flames in the room were those Lord Ranelaw ignited in her soul.

  He slid one hand under her bodice. At last he touched her naked breast. A blast of arousal shuddered through her. As his thumb brushed her beaded nipple, she gasped into his open mouth. Her muscles loosened, resistance faded to a whisper in the far reaches of her clouded mind.

  Desperate, knowing she had seconds before she begged him to do whatever he wished—and what he wished was no mystery at all—she fumbled behind her with one hand.

  Damn it, where was it?

  At last her hand closed over what she wanted. Her grip firmed, she summoned the faltering shreds of will.

  And clouted him as hard as she could with the fire iron.

  Chapter Five

  Merciful heaven, she’d killed him.

  Antonia stared aghast at Lord Ranelaw’s loose-limbed form sprawled across the red and blue Turkish rug. The poker she’d swung at his head dropped from nerveless fingers to hit the carpet with a muffled thud.

  Bile soured her mouth. Vaguely she realized she should feel remorse, but terror was paramount. A terror that cramped her throat shut and set her swaying with dizziness.

  Explaining a live Lord Ranelaw in her bedroom would be difficult enough. How to excuse a dead one? She had no way of hiding the body. She’d have trouble even shifting him.

  The blood flowing copiously from his temple stained the rug, she’d never get the betraying marks out. Her heart racing, she whirled toward the washstand. Before she reached it, someone knocked on the door. Antonia’s stomach twisted with nausea as she remembered it wasn’t locked. If anyone came in, her goose was well and truly cooked. In fact, her goose was completely incinerated.

  “Miss Smith, are you all right?” It was Bella, Cassie’s middle-aged maid, who slept in the dressing room next to her mistress. “I heard the most almighty thump.”

  “Bella . . .” Oh, dear Lord, could this get any worse? She struggled for a cheerful note. She hoped it sounded more convincing to Bella than in her own ears. “I tripped over a chair. Nothing to worry about.”

  “Are you sure you’re not hurt?” The maid, jealous of Antonia’s influence on Cassie, would luxuriate in any fall from grace. No way could Antonia ever enlist Bella’s sympathies to keep this incident secret. “Would you like me to come in?”

  Sweet God, no!

  “No.” Then because her sharp answer might rouse curiosity, she continued more carefully. “No, thank you. No damage done. Go to bed, Bella. You must be tired after these late nights.”

  There was a fraught pause. An iron band of suspense tightened around Antonia’s chest as she braced for the door to swing open. Then what on earth could she do? She had no money to buy the woman’s discretion. And she’d never bring herself to silence Bella permanently with the poker.

  Lord Ranelaw was one murder too many.

  Her breath hissed in relief when Bella eventually spoke. “If you say so, miss. Good night to you.”

  “Good night, Bella.”

  Antonia poised in quivering stillness as she listened to the maid make her way up the corridor to her room. Then, wishing herself anywhere but here, she stared at the disaster lying motionless at her feet.

  She’d killed a peer. She could claim self-defense, but who would believe a woman with her history? Given the scandal that threatened, the hangman’s noose almost offered blessed escape.

  Please don’t be dead.

  She’d caught him across the face as well as the temple. A long graze marked one slanted cheekbone. Blood dripped sullenly from his wound onto the carpet. Her paralysis shattered. She dashed over to splash water into a bowl and grab a washcloth. Breathlessly she dropped to her knees beside Ranelaw.

  So desperately she’d wished to banish him from her world where he caused nothing but chaos. Now it looked likely she’d never hear another of his sardonic responses or shiver with unwilling awareness when he laughed.

  She struggled against suffocating panic. She hadn’t hit him that hard. But when she was a girl, a branch had struck the temple of a workman in Blaydon Park’s orchard and he’d died instantly.

  Ranelaw’s face was pale, severe. The provoking glint in his eyes usually distracted attention from his elegant bone structure. Unconscious, he looked surprisingly ascetic. Like a knight carved on a monument, not a man whose name was a byword for vice.

  Please, don’t let him need a monument anytime soon.

  The dreadful truth hammered at her heart. She didn’t want him lying dead. He made her life difficult, he threatened disaster to Cassie. But the world, her world, would be poorer without him.

  She wet the cloth and pressed it to his wound. Her hands shook uncontrollably and she sank her teeth into her bottom lip to stave off frightened tears. His skin was warm. Surely if he was dead, he’d be cold as stone.

  Don’t die.

  She wasn’t aware she spoke the words over and over like a litany until he groaned and stirred, and she faltered into silence.

  He became terrifyingly still once more. Had she imagined that brief sign of life? His thick black lashes lay unmoving on his cheeks. At least her agitation had exaggerated the blood. It was only a sluggish dribble. She raised one hand to brush moisture from her cheeks.

  “Ranelaw? Speak to me.”

  Nothing.

  She injected a stronger note into her voice and his Christian name slipped out before she realized. “Nicholas? Nicholas, please, please wake up.”

  His face was white as paper, apart from the shocking red weal. She bit her lip so hard she tasted blood. She wouldn’t let him be dead. And not just because his demise made him as troublesome deceased as he ever was alive.

  Coherent thought gradually seeped into her numb mind. A pulse. She should check for a pulse.

  What the devil was wrong with her? That was the first thing she should have done. Usually she was coolheaded in a crisis, but Ranelaw’s kisses had turned her into a hysterical fool.

  She fumbled at his cuff until she pressed her fingers to his powerful wrist. Immediately her stomach clenched with sick relief. The hard, strong beat confirmed she hadn’t killed him.